Monday, October 31, 2011

A British gathering of bands

There was some kind of British talent-show TV special, in a large, dark auditorium with lots of theater-style seating and a big stage. The host was calling up random people from the audience and asking for their five favorite bands. One audience member rattled off five, and was surprised to see that a couple bands who were sitting near the front row of the audience (as the camera panned onto them) started getting up to go on stage as the audience applauded.

Apparently the host anticipated most of the audience's preferred band choices and invited them to the show beforehand. At least one of the bands the audience member named, however, was not present, and the host told his assistant to make sure "N19" (or something like that — the band's name) got here quickly.

Then, on a big projection screen up on stage, the host started narrating a presentation. It looked kind of poorly done. There were a number of large thumbnail images on a white background (in an interface that looked like Windows) representing bands that had been selected to play. They cycled through each of the thumbnails, playing a clip from a popular song of theirs.

Two or three of the bands' voices sounded distinctly like Beatles vocals, which surprised me. (I'm annoyed that, with all that music, I can't remember how any of it went.) The last band looked like it was actually a side project of George Harrison's, and the song clip they played was sort of a chill electronica remix of "Let It Down"; the thumbnail looked like an outside view of a cave entrance.

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