They played the Floyd standards really well, in an exact copy, note-for-note fashion, but it was like listening to a recording. There’s no doubt these guys are competent musicians, but rock and roll is all about innovation and improvisation, to simply duplicate what’s already been recorded comes across as kind of creepy, an insult to both the performers who play and the ones they are mimicking.

If you’re good enough to presume to play the work of the masters, then you should be good enough, and have the confidence, to make your own interpretation of the work, rather than just serve up exactly what the fans want to hear. The really great bands never play the same song exactly the same. I have five separate recordings of Grace Slick singing “Somebody to Love”. They are all totally unique, and they are all wonderful.

It happens in classical music as well. The Strauss “Blue Danube” has been played so many times by so many people that it has become trite and hackneyed through sheer repetition. Yet the performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conducting (the version used by Kubrick in “2001″) stands out because of its incredible power. The timing, pacing and phrasing, the stresses, accents, minute changes in rhythm, even the spaces between the notes, transform that particular performance into a totally different work. It’s no coincidence the director chose that particular recording as part of his soundtrack. Note-for-note, strict adherence to the score, yes. But its the performance that makes it art, not the notes printed on the manuscript. That’s just data.

They are coming to Red Rocks this summer. Tempting. Red Rocks is amazing but concerts are so much trouble.

ER, have you seen them?