I remember hearing a live version of some Garth Brooks song years ago on the radio during a car ride where the audience was so loud, Garth stopped singing and basically told everyone to STFU. It's always the first thing I think of when I hear the phrase 'live recording.'
You have to realize that popular culture was very tightly controlled and restricted by the Polish communist government at this time. This photo was taken at the Jarocin festival, which was a rare chance to see many bands play that otherwise had no radio play or record contracts and often played styles of music that were viewed with great suspicion by the establishment. Recording these live performances and trading tapes was often the only way people got to hear many of these bands.
I grew up in a neighboring country during this time, but I wasn't much into the rock scene then - I was into folk music, which had a similar scene in my country - many folk artists were straight up banned by the government, so it was impossible to hear them on the radio or buy their records, but tape recordings of live performances existed and were traded among the fans. Same of my favorite music from this period only existed in this form. There were even recordings of shows that got shut down by the police mid-set.
The 80s were a period of economic stagnation in eastern Europe, resulting in a lot of pent up anger and angst in the youth, and at the same time, the establishment was slowly losing its grip on the population. As a result artists were getting increasingly bold in channeling this anger and dissatisfaction, of pushing the boundaries of what was allowed, sometimes crossing them and getting slapped down - but you never knew what could happen at a large gathering of the youth back then - taping was an important tool to document and spread this to the wider population.
I have liked exactly one live album and it's was the Wilco Kicking Television: Live in Chicago album. Any other live album I've wanted to check out a window.
i feel the same way but i make an exception for the live album “stop making sense” by the talking heads. specifically the songs “crosseyed and painless” and “once in a lifetime” sound so much more energetic on the live album. depending on my mood, i sometimes pick the live versions over the studio recordings. they feel like different songs to me
I really dislike this trend of making not so old photos black and white in an effort to make them seem older. It seems disingenuous and misleads people into thinking it was longer ago than it actually was.
And still is. I shoot a fair bit of black and white film. It's cheaper, I can develop it at home, it produces a silver negative that will last centuries. The medium itself had been around for a century, so it imparts a sense of timelessness. I appreciate a good photo that you can't tell if it's 1924 or 2024 until you notice some dude with a cellphone in the background.
That's true and still quite possibly why this photo is black and white, though regardless, that's a trend I don't care for.
I realize I'm probably in a gray area, no pun intended, but I just think it's used as a tactic to make certain past events feel longer ago in an attempt to make it seem like a different time with problems that no longer affect us.
I guess I was just briefly triggered and realize it doesn't really apply here.
I was disgusted when I realized he only just died. I just hope that I will live long enough that I know that I have lived longer after his death than during his life.
He died on 2023/11/29, so almost seven months ago.
Now that you mention it, it looks like this was a concert exclusively for men. I don't know how concerts worked in Poland at that time, but I'd expect at least some women. I was super involved in my local punk and metal scene growing up in the early 2000s and the crowd was always around 50/50.
I bet he's angry because he knows the built in mics are crap and will pick up just as much noise as they will music, and then he got even angrier as he considered how Poland was part of the USSR and that there was no way he'd be able to pick up a high quality microphone for an affordable price.
Most Polish people would disagree. Poland got pretty fucked in ww2, from all sides, but at least they managed to hold on to some of their sovereignty and not be forced to join USSR as a Soviet Republic.
This partially allowed the democratization movement to form in Poland in the 80s (with Solidarność) and eventually for Poland to get out from under Russia's boot and join the EU and NATO, and avoid the fate of former Soviet Republics like Belarus and Ukraine.
