Encore!

I promised a Muse concert review: They rocked. Biggest compliment I can give in this day and age: they don't record anything they can't recreate live. If you've ever heard a Muse song, then you can appreciate that statement. Combine that with a fun, innovative, visually stunning theatrical stage show*, and you had a whole lotta awesome.

However, it leads me to the Encore. Is there any bigger mutual charade going? It's not as obvious when there isn't such a "spectacle" and integrated show going on, but when a band leaves for 5 minutes, the audience keeps cheering, they come back out for an "encore" that's has full on stage show elements (song specific stuff), that's just a farce. That's not an encore, that's a planned 5 minute break. A REAL encore would happen after you do that, and the audience refuses to leave. But since they're a part of the charade, when the venue turns on the house lights as fast as they can, in a surprisingly efficient showing of groupthink, the audience turns and heads to the exit. But if they didn't, would a band actually DO a "real" encore at that point?

*Here's a shot of the opening of the show, a look they returned to a couple of times. Show started with scrims in front of those pillars, with images projected from them. They dropped to reveal the band up in the middle. Their platforms would come down, and rise back up, and the drum platform rotated. Combine that with your "usual" stage lighting and lasers, and really cool visual effects and video on those pillars, and you got yourself pretty spectacular eye candy to go along with the ear candy.