Quote:
remember when they used to use a giant floating head projection of Aimee on the back video screen?

Yeah, that's the MTV music video of the song. According to the Rush FAQ, Aimee's voice was supposed to come directly from the audio track of that projected film. And if the film gets desynched, Alex is supposed to step over during the choruses and trigger her voice samples from the keyboard he had tucked over Stage Right.

I can believe this, as I was at one of the concerts where the video got desynched, and I saw Al step over and handle it. I was up high in the nosebleed seats to stage right and could see the teleprompter monitors they had on the stage next to the monitor amps, and they do a little fimstrip-countdown of that backing film on those monitors, and the band is supposed to start based on that countdown, and they'd missed it.

I've also seen the song "Manhattan Project" go bad, where the middle-bridge string section (which is all one long digital sample triggered by Geddy pressing a key on his keyboard) got desynched really badly. The band kept playing right through it, and the sound guy scaled back the volume of the string section, though left it playing for continuity and fill. Sounded bad, but at least the song didn't stop. And if you look at the "Hold Your Fire" videotape, at that moment in the song where the sample is supposed to start, you see Ged look very intently at his keyboard as to not miss the cue, and also look quickly over his shoulder at Neil so they get eye contact and synch up on the downbeat to start that sample.

I've also been told a great story about the drum machine part on Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" from a friend who also happens to be Don's drum tech. I'll save that for another time.

But anyway, that's all a digression because that's not talking about lip synching. My point is that they're smart enough to only do the backing tracks as "extra bits" and to let themselves trigger the start points, because they know how bad things look when a backing tape goes wrong or when an underpaid roadie doesn't get the cue right.

Oh, yeah, one of those particularly embarrassing moments I mentioned earlier? One of them was when I ***WAS*** the underpaid roadie who was supposed to trigger the backing track from offstage. Me and the drummer didn't synch right, although I *did* make eye contact with him, I guess we just weren't on the same wavelength that night.

Having seen and been involved with those situations enough times, as an artist I will always resist putting myself into a situation where I need that kind of thing. I'd much rather embarrass myself by singing poorly or forgetting chords and lyrics than to completely ruin the performance with a technological train wreck.
_________________________
Tony Fabris