Ever wondered why concerts never start on time?

Richard Witts addressed the question recently in Cambridge University’s international multi-disciplinary academic journal Popular Music. His study is called I’m Waiting for the Band: Protraction and Provocation at Rock Concerts.

Equipment difficulties - some of them unexpected, others devised to incite the audience - play a part. Witts finds that these, or simple miscommunication, account for about half of the long delays. The most common glitch, he reports, is the simple, though mysterious, failure of the PA system’s left or right channel.

But, Witts explains, then “there is a curious, ill-defined period between the moment the technicians have finished their on-stage preparations and the moment of the band’s arrival.”

He contends that “it seems to be implicitly accepted by management and the audience that there may be a pause of up to 20 minutes following the end of the roadie cabaret.”

The article then delves into three case studies involving Nico, the Cult, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. One delay was caused by a 2 1/2 hour search for heroin, one by an en masse trip to the toilet, and one when a member of the band took a bit too long in getting sexually serviced by a fan as the show was set to start. I’ll let you guess which delay corresponds to which artist.

Of course, the study’s main conclusion is exactly what you’d expect it to be:

Nature’s imperatives notwithstanding, some delays stem from performers’ basic psychological needs. Of these, Witts’s research identifies two factors that, singly or together, make for long nights: ego-feeding and fear.

The former I suspect is the main reason artists never seem to begin on time. Same for that most self-indulgent and riduclous of rock n’ roll rituals, the encore.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 8:00 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.