Issue 14: Converge - Jane Live

On the spiritual experience of live music

Part I: Audience attuned

The creation of and attachment to culture is nothing less than the pursuit of immortality.

As mortal beings consciously and subconsciously staring in the face of a theoretical death every single day, we cling to what will stand beyond us. We attach our self-worth to art, sports, religion, national identity and so on. Recorded music, of course, is among those as well, as it is something that can last in a physical sense – records have a shelf life (if taken care of) that outlasts the general life span of a human being, let alone music that is available online, copied over many servers in many countries.

But then: live music, where does this fleeting form of magic fit in? In my estimation, it is people coming together at the altar of music to seek something more. Interestingly enough, just days after I started assembling this issue, I came across an interesting quote from Nick Cave. In the recently published interview book Faith, Hope and Carnage, he says about live performances: "We come together around a shared objective, not just with the band but the audience as well, something that unites and raises the collective soul. There is also a loss of self, a sense of being swept up by something larger. Where can we access this feeling these days, you know, outside a church?"

Cave was perhaps hinting towards a religious experience in the more traditional sense, considering his comments in the rest of the book (which is definitely worth a read). But to my mind, it all amounts to the same thing: a pursuit of life eternal, however symbolic.

It brought to mind something I once heard Converge vocalist Jacob Bannon say, roughly halfway through their set. It was in 013, Tilburg, on August 26, 2017. "I’d like to thank you all for coming out and sharing your time and energy with us," he said.

At the time, this simple statement of gratitude stood out, because it acknowledged and illuminated the audience’s share in the performance. Anyone consciously considering live musical performances would come to the conclusion that the audience bears its share, of course, but perhaps it’s so obvious it just never entered my conscious thoughts.

Perhaps it is more interesting to look at this from another viewpoint: faith. To get the most of out the whole ordeal, both performer and audience have to come to it in good faith. Both have to be willing to put their souls on the line and be open and vulnerable to experience the connection to this larger objective.

As noted earlier: recorded music is one thing in the pursuit of eternity, but live music is ethereal and finite: the last tones ring out, the band packs up its gear – and gone it is. And yet, many bands have tried to capture this magic, some more effectively than others.

An interesting experiment in this field is Jane Live, the recording of the integral live performance of Converge’s Jane Doe.

Part II: Spiritual session

Live albums are certainly not rare, more often than not also acting as a band’s 'greatest hits' collection. After all, most performances of most performers are mostly just that: the most popular songs. Woe betide the artist who refuses to play their hits, a feat that takes Dylan-esque stature to be able to pull off and still have a career.

Having said this, it’s interesting to see a band do what Converge did: play an entire album in front of an audience, record that once again and release it. Of course, Jane Doe being one of the band’s most beloved records, it amounts to roughly something similar.

The performance was recorded at the 2016 edition of Roadburn, a Dutch festival specialised in heavy music (in all its facets) that’s known to ask bands to come perform one or more of their records integrally. One could say it’s kind of their thing, in fact.

What’s striking about listening to the Converge play Jane Doe live, is just how similar it sounds to the original record. Or rather, if you haven’t heard the album in a while, this live version is how you remember it sounding. But even played side-by-side, the ease with which the band runs through these songs is astonishing.

Of course, they have played a number (it not all) of them hundreds, perhaps thousands of times over the fifteen years since the original record was released, which comes across in the familiarity that leaps off the vinyl here. These are definitely not new songs still finding their way into the repertoire, these are muscle memory.

Which begs the question: what sets this record apart from the original? If the songs feel so well-rehearsed, what is the added value?

I’ve posited this, humbly, before, that besides in the audience energy, the value of live music lies in the fringes. Slight deviations, different vocal deliveries, all-consuming volume – all little things that keeps one on their toes during a performance. Jane Live has plenty of these, from a guttural howl that kicks off Concubine that’s not in the original recorded version to the screeching feedback leading into Phoenix In Flames, lending it even more urgency than before, there is plenty to enjoy around the edges of what Jane Doe is, live.

Of course, if you’ve read the 500+ words that constitute Part I of this issue, you’ll note that this is not really why I wanted to discuss Jane Live. Instead, it’s more the way the band (or rather, the people responsible for recording and mixing it) has managed to capture part of the, if you’ll forgive such an indulgent word, vibe of the live performance.

It’s the sound of roughly 3000 people who are all coming together to experience Jane Doe performed in front of them. It is the sound of the band, feeding on the audience’s enthusiasm to drive this music to its highest point. It’s not quantifiable, and hard to capture in words.

Much like a telepresence at a religious service does not convey the spiritual journey quite that well, a recording of a live concert does not come close to the experience of actually being there.

Rather, it becomes something unto itself, a memory of an event that the listener most likely did not create themselves

This is valuable. It allows us to summon and hang on to a feeling – an experience of immortality – that is otherwise not available at will – a rarity in a world where even the strangest material things seem just a touch away.

Part III: Immortal snapshot

If one were to catch me at a concert, they would most likely find a camera in my hands, as I have the tendency to do some concert photography now and then. Some of the photos in this issue are from the Converge set I mentioned in Part I, in fact.

Concert photography is a bit of an odd art form – or perhaps it’s more a form of journalism, capturing a moment of (in the context of this issue) worship. The results being these small moments grabbed in time that might communicate a certain state. I suppose the aim is mostly to capture this memory of a moment of immortality, in its process adding to it.

The live record, then, is similar to this idea, but perhaps even broader, deeper. It allows for submersion in this form of worship, this communal celebration of what is, in the end, a search for immortality. And again, in the process of creating more of the recorded form, adding to its potential to avoid mortality salience.

Jane Live stands out from the mass of live records in that it is more interesting to explore yet – a classic album reimagined through the lens of live performance. With that, it combines some of the artists’ most successful output with the religious experience that is a concert.

A powerful combination indeed.

If you’ve made it this far, you’d probably also be interested in my physical zine, also called Terror Management. It’s a rework of some of the earlier issues of this newsletter, but now in printed form. Greg Bennick of Trial fame was so kind to write a foreword. Check it out and buy it here.