1. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Take Away Shows
Music streams
Xurxo Martínez
UW MCDM
Web Strategies for Storytelling
COM 597b–FALL 2009
2. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Abstract
This paper is concerned with the online video series Les Concerts a Emporter, created by French
collective La Blogotheque–from now on I will use the English translation, ―Take Away Shows‖, as
a generic term for what I argue is a new genre of music videos, employing the French version to
talk about the videos created by La Blogotheque, and their role as a seed for a number of projects
around the world that try to set up a new way to film musicians, alternative to both concert filming
and the music video, or video clip.
In these videos the musicians are filmed in unusual spaces–the street, a roof, an elevator–in a
guerrilla style and depriving them of the kind of sound facilities they are used to when performing
on a stage, keeping all the small mistakes on the final footage and allowing the interaction with the
environment.
I will also explore how the new technologies and social media tools make it possible to create,
distribute and organize culture artifacts without the involvement of any institution, public or private.
The main instruments that I've used for this paper, other than researching literature–academic or
from news sources–on media theory, social media and culture distribution in the internet era, are a
survey on like-minded projects and a direct interview with the creators of the concept: filmmaker
Vincent Moon–real name Mathieu Saura–and blogger and entrepreneur Chryde–real name
Christophe Abric.
3. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Introduction
One of the most famous quotes in rock history, credited to Brian Eno, puts that "only a few thousand people
bought Velvet Underground records when they came out, but all of them started bands" (Kidder &
Oppenheim, 2008, p. 255).
The creative force that has produced the Take Away Shows has found in the internet a perfect ally for the
distribution of their work. That, connected to the easy access to video technology and an engaging concept,
is beginning to kindle a fire that has more than a hundred sources all over the world and generates tens of
millions of views. That also proves how terms such as mainstream begin to lose meaning in the new niche
culture.
The main conclusion of this paper is that we are in presence of a whole new, popular, and democratic form
of culture creation. In its core and purest essence, the Take Away Shows are cultural artifacts created with
cheap technology that look for an intimate relation between the musician, the space and people present in the
recording environment, and the spectator. These artifacts are, then, distributed world wide without the
participation of any public or private institution through free internet video services.
In first place I will give a frame to explain the relevance of the Take Away Shows, overview the history of
their creators and other related projects and will start to define the concept.
Then I will explore with examples the three main characteristics of this new form of expression, with the
work of Vincent Moon as reference: compromise with the artist, a preference for a non-conventional
disruption between music and image, and the interaction with people and space.
Before analyzing the results of the survey conducted among producers who create similar video works, I will
talk about the roots of this new way to film music performances and how these are created and distributed:
from the counter culture movements of the 1970s to theoretical works that propose a more active role of the
users in the creation and distribution of culture artifacts. On the mainstream—the old mainstream—side of
music video history, I will also show the differences between the concept of Take Away Show and MTV
Unplugged.
As REM's singer Michael Stipe said, talking about the Take Away Shows: "Let's put the final nail in the
coffin of the term 'music video' and allow it to be something of the past, because that's exactly what it is. But
now music and film hasn't been in a more exciting place for 20 years. There's a beauty and rawness there"
(Cole, 2008).
Basic Data
I‘ve decided to include this data section at the beginning of the paper to state the empirical relevance of a
poorly known project that hadn‘t been subject of academic writing to date.
All the data included in the paper is dated December the 1st, 2009, except noted. The web sites URLs are
included as endnotes.
La Blogoteque1 begun to create the Concerts a Emporter2 in 2006, uploading their videos to official channels
in both YouTube3 and the French site Dailymotion4. A year ago they started to post them on a regular basis
in the web site Vimeo5, gradually stopped using Dailymotion and only have used again YouTube for the last
weeks to promote the takes on the French band Phoenix.
Overall the videos in their official channels have been seen around eighteen million times–ten in YouTube,
six point three in Dailymotion and one point five in Vimeo–(Chryde, personal communication, December 14,
2009).
4. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
As it usually happens in most video services, it is also possible to find clips produced by them but uploaded
by others. In their case these 'others' usually include the own bands portrayed in the Concerts a Emporter or
even fans that want to share their content. One example of the former is the video collection that La
Blogotheque filmed for US group Beirut, shooting one clip for 12 of the songs–All but the 18 seconds
introduction "A Call to Arms"–included in his record The Flying Club Cup. The videos were published in
special channels in Dailymotion6 and YouTube7, and had a combined total number of 2,470,060 views.
Talking about Beirut, one clip previously filmed, titled "Nantes", was also uploaded by other YouTube user 8
and so far got 2,324,020 views. Another 'pirate' version of their Take Away Show with Arcade Fire, showing
only with the fragment where the band plays inside an elevator, has 1,193,857 views9. Other popular non-
official version of their videos would be the Bon Iver version of "For Emma‖, which accumulates 487,412
views10.
Among the official videos that have reached higher number of views we should talk about the Kooks' "Ooh
la"–with 1,430,034 views11, the two Grizzly Bear videos–with 431.254 and 451.830 views each–in
YouTube12, or the three Phoenix videos, that got 228,000 views in just eleven days–as December the 13th–in
Vimeo13.
Their YouTube channel is the fifth French one with more subscriptions–22,766, nearly double than the
Universal Music channel–13,34014.
The La Blogotheque web page has also felt the impact of the Concerts a Emporter' popularity, rising from
3.000 visits a day in 2006–where the web site was already established and three years old–to the actual
10.000 visits a day (Chryde, 2009).
We must also add 1.4 million video downloads through the video podcast15, which started in January 2007
and obtained more than one thousand subscribers during its first month. The number continued growing
steadily, as the distribution through video sites started also to be more regular. Right now they have 4,700
subscribers, according to La Blogotheque' Feedburner stats (Chryde, 2009).
Analysis of concept and creators
Who are they and why they do it
Before talking about the Concerts a Emporter let's introduce their creators and the reasons that moved them
to start this series. Chryde is the man behind the French music blog La Blogotheque. He wanted to create
music videos that were completely different for the usual MTV stuff, and found an associate in the
filmmaker Vincent Moon. In Chryde words:
The Blogotheque was three years old by 2006. Three years of just written articles. I wanted to make
videos, but not the typical bad shooting of a concert. Then I went to that Arcade Fire show, their first
in France. At the end of the performance they went into the street and I told myself 'this is it'"
(Chryde, personal interview, November 13, 2009).
He is also focused on websites about humor or projects related to food and French music while tries to figure
out how to make the Blogotheque economically self dependent without partnerships with music labels
(Delye, 2009).
On his side, the self-taught Vincent Moon had previously worked as photographer and video editor, and
wanted to focus his work on moving image. As an improvisation music fan, and "frustrated musician", he
doesn‘t like to have a fixed plan before shooting. ―I‘m really excited about the process. Just go the street and
start to try different things‖ (Moon, personal interview, November 18, 2009). He even emphasizes the casual
and impressionist side of his works when says in another interview that ―when I see my films I realize that I
don't try to make beautiful films, but to come across beautiful moments, beautiful stories―(Anima, 2009).
As his name has become more known because of the Concerts a Emporter and his works for artists as Arcade
Fire16–as cinematographer–, The National17 or, specially, REM18, Moon has been approached by established
music video companies. He considers this ―quite funny‖, arguing that with his work he is ―fighting against
5. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
them, against what has happened with TV in the last 20 years. MTV was cool at the beginning, but now the
fast cuts have totally devastated our cultural ecology. They are disrespectful with the audience‖ (2009).
His critique to most of the commercial TV is influenced by the thoughts of director Peter Watkins, one of the
precursors of the docudrama and theorist on the mass media language. In his main theoretical work, The
Media Crisis, Watkins argues that commercial TV and cinema perpetuates themselves creating the belief that
their formats are the only acceptable by the public and through the trivialization of the audiovisual language.
And these formats are displayed in a way that the only role the audience has is that of the passive consumer:
We can no longer separate or differentiate films in terms of being artistic, pleasurable, aesthetic vs.
those we consider as rubbish–without understanding that nearly all contemporary cinema films,
documentaries, and TV programs–including news broadcasts–which are intended and shaped for a
mass audience, share certain common elements: a Monoform structure and a hierarchical relationship
to the public (2007, Conclusion).
Other related projects of Moon are the site Temporary Areas19–aimed to look around the world for creators
experimenting with new visual languages and technology–, Tanzanian music project Changes in Rhythm20,
or Fiume Nights21, a radical approach to the one-shot video combined in this weblog with thoughts on
filming, among others.
Both Moon and Chryde were included in 2008 in a list of 10 Innovators to Watch by Daily Variety "to build
the entertainment industry of the future" (Variety, 2008).
Other than Moon and Chryde, the Concerts a Emporter are also the result of the work of other very talented
directors, audio recorders, technicians and a production team that makes it possible to film in the best
possible locations. But in this paper I will focus my research and analysis in the episodes filmed by Vincent
Moon, even at risk of being partial and overlook any feature present in the work of other producers.
Developing the concept
Then, what is a Take Away Show? In the La Blogotheque site is defined as a video podcast where they invite
an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator and film the whole
session. The idea is to capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without tricks or professional
editing, keeping the raw sounds of the surroundings, the little incidents, the hesitations...
And they have been succeeding in creating a new way to present a music performance. Chicago based music
writer Chris Catania had reviewed concerts of groups like Fleet Foxes or Ra Ra Riot when he discovered
their Take Away Shows in Current TV. Suddenly he realized that in these performances he could notice "the
feel and emotional elements of a live show even though they didn‘t have most of the basic elements and
surroundings of a live concert" and asked himself questions as if these videos are redefining the concept of
concert or how he can feel the same or more intimacy from a screen than from a live performance (Catania,
2008).
In a deeper way, one of the other creators that also make this kind of videos, and part in the survey, Hannah
Baker, says:
It creates a union between cinema and music, sound and image, color and rhythm. A Take Away
Show is an object of wonder that inspires people to realize their potential, as what Gabriele
D'Annunzio called 'mystical creators' in the constitution of Fiume, the pirate state.
Moon himself has also talked about Fiume–hence the name for his blog–and D‘Annunzio, saying that his
hope is ―to be able to realize in the 21st century, what he did after the World War I‖ (Videology, 2007).
D‘Annunzio was an Italian writer and war hero who created an independent state in a small port between
Italia and Croatia, proclaiming that music was a fundamental principle of the state and poets were among the
"superior" human beings, alongside heroes, prophets and supermen (IstriaNet.org, 2007).
6. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Les Concerts a Emporter and other La Blogotheque works
The first twelve episodes of the Concerts a Emporter were shoot by Moon in Paris. Then they came other
directors–Jeremiah, Nate Chan, One Shot Seattle, One Take New York, Ty, or Val3rie–and other spaces–
Buenos Aires, Osaka, St. Malo, New York, Copenhagen, Seattle… but always with Moon and Paris as main
references. To date, they have released 98 numbered sessions–some compound by several videos–and other
86 unnumbered. The idea is to reach the hundred with special features and stop numbering them at all.
Another Concerts a Emporter series is named City Series, where the La Blogotheque team go to a French
city and organize a series of Take Away Shows with local bands. The first one had Bordeaux22 as base camp
and a second one is focused on the Rennes music scene23. In the same vein, some of the like-minded projects
included in my list also focus their work on a local showcase of their cities' music. Some examples would be
Athens Soundies24 or Osheaga–in Montreal25, as happens with the similar The Duluth Scene26, while the
latter lacks of the urban element.
Other than the content posted in La Blogotheque and the Beirut videos we told about before, there are
another twenty-six original Take Away Shows filmed for both Sony's Crackle TV–2127–and Current TV–
528–during 2007 and 2008. In the episodes, all of them recorded in the US, we can find performances by
Fleet Foxes, The Dodos, Grand Archives, Quasi or Bowerbirds. Current also published in their web site
several of the videos included in La Blogotheque and a couple of clips with interviews with founder
Chryde29. There is also another three Take Away Shows created for French mobile network operator
Orange30, for what Chryde and Moon were even protagonists of an advertisement31.
Other creators and the expansion of the concept
But the Take Away Shows, as a new way to shoot music performances, are not just confined to what's issued
in the La Blogotheque web site. In the last two years other projects that found inspiration in their work or
that were also looking for a new way to film music have started to publish their videos. In order to create a
list of similar projects I started focusing on the Vimeo group ―Everyone's Take Away Show‖32. Created by
La Blogotheque in November 2008, these group hosts more than 700 videos created by like–minded projects.
Vimeo was also a good start point as is a web focused on original video content. Other than in their personal
web sites, a number of video producers also host their content in Vimeo. In this group I have identified one
hundred and five producers–not counting members of this group that shoot regular concerts or the alternative
Vincent Moon project Fiume Nights–. Then I found another thirteen projects that didn't have presence in
Vimeo or do not have works represented in the referred group, making a total of one hundred and eighteen
like-minded creators. The validity of the projects was double-checked with Chryde, so I made sure that the
list was accurate. The growth of the group is noteworthy, with 210 videos added in the last 30 days.
Quite less popular in terms of visits than other video sites as YouTube, Dailymotion or Metacafe, Vimeo is a
community of video creators and lovers that only accept original content with no commercial intention. So
Vimeo is, in the context of video production, a place where to find and spread ideas in a context much more
quiet and reliable than the YouTube kind of ‗far west‘. In YouTube people stumble upon the videos, while in
Vimeo is still possible to look and discover, a fact that is slowly adding popularity to this site. Taking a look
at the Compete.com data for the November '08 to November '09 period–see screenshot after the endnotes–,
Vimeo traffic has grown a 125.6%, compared to the 34.46% rise of YouTube, the 16.66% of Metacafe or the
30.8% of Dailymotion. Another site focused on independent creators–Blip.tv–has also experienced a growth
of 59.02% in the same period, showing how original content is gaining appeal between online video
consumers and how it looks for niche websites that provide a more focused and clean experience than the big
video aggregators.
As Clay Shirky says, the activities of the amateur creators are self-reinforcing. "If people can share their
work in an environment where they can also converse with one another, they will begin talking about the
things they have shared" (Shirky, 2008 p. 99).
7. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
La Blogotheque has also created other related video series, like the ones for the Soirées de Poche33, 'regular'
concert films under the name of Back on Stages34 or the animation series Piticlip35.
As it is said before, the concept of a Take Away Show is quite simple–to film a musician while playing in an
unexpected environment trying to capture the freshness and spontaneity of the moment–and, at the same
time, attractive and easy to replicate. Vincent Moon explains how he tries to make the viewers part of his
work: "be transparent and show them that if I can do it they also can. There‘s no longer an audience that just
see what you do, but people who after viewing your work and realizing how simple it is can decide to make
it themselves" (2009).
So anyone can create a Take Away Show, share it through the internet and get new viewers for this kind of
video that can themselves shoot another of these videos that will keep on expanding the idea. Ten years ago a
concept like this might have ended as ten videos compiled in a VHS tape and then distributed to five or six
film libraries through France. But now, with the viral nature of the social media tools, anyone in Bangkok
looking for a video of their favorite indie musician can discover, promote, and ever become producer of a
Take Away Show.
In the last statement I mention the other two key elements in the development of this video format: the
followers or like-minded creators, and the musicians portrayed.
As I've stated few paragraphs before, there are a growing number of video creators that are filming the same
kind of video or others with a very similar vibe. Some of them have well established projects, as the London
Based Black Cab Sessions36–that, obviously, locate their films in a black cab–, other are related to a music
label–as Tugboat37, magazines–as Tracer38, music venues–As the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee39, radio
collectives–as Dublab40, and there are even musicians–as the Swedish singer Lykke Li41. All of them have a
different approach to the concept, and sometimes only part of their music videos can be really considered a
Take Away Show, but always keeping the idea of a performance where some of the elements–the
instrumentation, the place where it happens, the traditional seated audience–are unusual and the result has
some rawness, intimacy and natural feeling that makes it stand away from the traditional music video.
Another important point when talking about the success of these shows is the fact that musicians all over the
world–but mainly French, US, and UK indie singers and bands–have agreed to be subjects of these films.
Even when the Take Away Shows are becoming a marketing tool for them and, so, reach a bigger audience,
the presence of bands and soloists with strong base of fans was key in the popularization of the format.
Chryde explains that at first "it was terribly hard to get to the bands. Now that we are more popular is easier.
Even some bands contact us in order to have their Take Away Show. They know we can help discovering or
rediscovering some music to the people" (2009). But other than the promotional side it seems obvious that
they also enjoy the experience and the challenge. And that's how medium and big–in terms of sales–groups
that have been filmed by La Blogotheque have decided afterwards to work on further video projects with
Vincent Moon and other Blogotheque's producers as Jeremiah. Examples of that would be films, already
distributed in DVD as the previously referred works with Arcade Fire and The National, a soon–to–be–
released work with Scottish band Mogwai and the two collaborations with REM: the film This is not a
Show18 and the project Supernatural Superserious42.
And what happens when you produce tons of videos of independent musicians and post them on the internet?
That their fans will sooner or later discover them, share them and even prefer them to the official video clips:
both with Beirut's ―Nantes‖ and Arcade Fire's ―Neon Bible‖ the Concerts a Emporter have up to ten times
more views than the traditional videos43. The freshness of this kind of videos, the feeling of viewing
something special and the non-openly commercial nature help to distribute them.
8. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Basic elements
I've identified three representative elements of Vincent Moon's Take Away Shows: compromise, a
preference for a non-conventional disruption between music and image, and the interaction with people and
space. Let‘s see some examples:
– Compromise in this case means to be true to the musician that he is portraying. While filming, Moon is
another performer and places him at the same level as the musicians. If the video asks for any challenge
he will be the first taking it. An extreme example would be the video where Sufjan Stevens plays ―Lakes
of Canada‖ on the roof of Cincinnati‘s Memorial Hall44. This is a video of a raw beauty, where the
performer transmits both physical–the wind makes him step back and forth–and emotional fragility while
the camera floats around him in an impossible trip through the roof.
On this idea of the camera being another instrument Moon says: ―I feel myself closer to music than to
cinema. In a way I play with the camera.‖ (2009) We can see this approach in the second fragment of his
series with Japanese cult folksinger Kazuki Tomokawa45, that more than a Take Away Show are
fragments of what will be a full documentary on the figure of the artist known as the "screaming
philosopher", La Faute des Fleurs–French for Because of the Flowers–. This video series, arguably
Moon's best work to date, is also the perfect example of how any person can become part of the process
of a Take Away Show: its origins are in an email that a Japanese fan of Vincent Moon send him talking
about Tomokawa and inviting Moon to go to Osaka in order to film his performances46.
– About the marriage of sound and image, Vincent Moon says "a very good audio gives you more freedom
at the time of being more experimental with the image". He even likes to play with rough dark images,
hiding elements: ―If you don‘t give the audience all the information they‘ll have to use their imagination.
That‘s another way to make them part of the process‖ (2009). And he also uses the audio as the linear
element that gives coherence to the moments where the camera decides to go on trips that the viewer
don't know where end. One example would be St. Vincent's ―Marry Me‖47, where from the start of the
song there is two minutes wait until we discover–maybe Moon too? –the shot that will protagonist the
video.
– Interact with the people and the spaces where the performance takes place means make it–the Take
Away Show–as natural as taking a photograph, capturing a moment and putting it into context. It can be
a group of children that joins the primitive street performance of Man Man48, Noah and the Whale
playing in the Paris Subway49 or Architecture in Helsinki playing in a back alley with the collaboration
of curious neighbors, a choir of fans of the band congregated thanks to MySpace and–after a problem
with the amps–the electricity taken from someone's kitchen50.
Following the thread of the MySpace calls, and although is not a stylistic element, is inarguable that the
internet also plays a key role in the Take Away Shows. Chryde says that the influence is triple:
First it makes it possible to produce and distribute a video without having the funds of a TV channel.
Second because it gives you immediate exposure to your prospect audience. Finally, because in our
work we adapt the spontaneous language of the internet.
He even points to a fourth influence, as it has been a way "to discover myself new artists through music
videos like ours done by other producers. That‘s the way I knew about groups as Girls, Tune Yards or
Sharon Von Etten" (2009).
9. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Where do the Take Away Shows fit?
The above question will be answered in two different sections: one focused on other film versions of live
music performances and the meaning of the concept of authenticity in the show MTV Unplugged51, while the
other goes back to counter culture movements in the decade of the 1970s and different theoretical works on
the active role of the users in the creation and distribution of the culture artifacts.
MTV
It's been said in previous pages of this paper that the Take Away Shows are videos where the musicians are
filmed creating new versions of their songs, usually with acoustic instruments, in an unusual environment,
mainly urban. Looking for precedents other than any kind of recorded street performance, and if we put aside
the film location, it comes to mind all kind of acoustic sessions taped in video for radios or TVs. Specially
one of them, the MTV Unplugged show, that got much of their success and prestige marketing an attribute
that is usually linked–see the survey below–to the Take Away Shows: authenticity.
Let's summarize quickly the origins of MTV Unplugged. In the first 80's MTV created a postmodern video
way of displaying a music performance, the music video–also a new advertising–oriented commercial tool
(Radcliffe, 1996, p. 27)–, in which the form had a higher hierarchy than the music itself. At the end of the
decade Unplugged co–creators Robert Small and Jim Burns recognized a need for an alternative to the new
wave and heavy metal merry–go–round that dominated MTV's music videos during the 1980's... viewers
would be left to form their own interpretations about the music, in contrast to the story provided by videos
(Radcliffe, p. 2).
The show consists on an onstage acoustic performance of the artist songs or those that inspired him or her.
The series got a massive commercial success, not only as a TV show but also through the sale of the
recorded albums. Authenticity, rebellion, and spontaneity were some of the adjectives linked to the show and
that paved its reputation, even as a rara avis inside MTV.
However, the result is another commercially crafted product filmed on a basically static set and aimed to
promote the artist, make profit with both the records and the air emission, and smart enough to capitalize the
appeal of the acoustic sound as opposed to the saturation of the pop productions.
Unplugged also keeps many of the MTV clichés, as the use of very short cuts to engage young users.
Radcliffe mentions as an example "Nirvana's two-and-a-half-minute song ―Dumb‖ 52, in which there were
forty-nine camera changes. This does not include zooming or shifting of an existing shot. This means the
camera changed on average every three seconds while moving and zooming continually" (Radcliffe, p.51).
So what happens with the idea of authenticity in a product that is designed to appeal both the general young
MTV audience and those who are looking for a more organic relation with the music and the musician? As
Groosberg points, "authenticity has increasingly become a self–conscious parody of the ideology of
authenticity, by making the artificiality of its construction less a matter of aesthetics and more a matter of
image-marketing. The result is that style is celebrated over authenticity, or rather that authenticity is seen as
just another style." (as cited in Radcliffe, p.34).
In contrast the Take Away Shows not only benefits from the interaction of the musician with the space where
she or he performs and the people they come across, but also of an intimacy feeling–Vincent Moon argues
that ―people get touched by the videos because you can feel the human hands that are behind. Some times we
don't even know what we are doing‖ (2009)–, and a broader freedom to choose and be part of the cultural
artifact, because here we don't find a broadcast, but the infinite multicast of the internet. And we don't have a
single point of production, because any viewer, if mesmerized by the format, is invited to become a creator.
In the survey that I have conducted, producer Theyshootmusic explains, when asked about what makes these
videos special, that Take Away Shows "transport a lot more emotions and intensity than 99% of "classic"
MTV-style music videos. You get a very different view of bands and musicians and at the same time
experience the life of a city".
10. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
And what about the commercial element? Is easy to imagine how some independent artist in the present and
other kind of musicians in the near future will use this style of videos mainly as a way of promotion, even
trying to limit the challenge represented by the interaction with the space and the lack of resources. But even
though it would embody a new and different format that has roots in both music and film and looks for a
more open and natural connection between any performer and any viewer. As another of the producers
surveyed, Bandwithfilms, points out "is a democratic art form, as democratic as being able to pick up a
guitar. And so these videos appeal equally to musicians and music lovers, filmmakers, and film lovers."
The culture created by people
Once La Blogotheque created the concept of the Take Away Shows and it proved to be both consistent with
its time, similar to other initiatives, and easy enough to be reproduced by others, we must state that is no
longer an exclusive brand, as their work converges with those of like-minded projects, creating between all
of them a corpus not driven by any company or institution–public or private–. This is a piece of the still not
set folklore of our time, as it is a cultural object created by any individual–as the price of the technology and
the distribution is almost free–and open for comment and review by any other user of the internet.
Trying to state what kind of culture production system could be related to the creation of those videos, we
can take a look at Jenkins definition of 'participatory culture' as one in which consumers and media
producers doesn‘t occupy different roles and even interact with each other according to a new set of rules
that contrast with older notions of passive media spectatorship (Jenkins, 2006, p.3).
Also following what Benkler explains in his book The Wealth of Networks, "the networked information
economy makes it possible to reshape both the ―who‖ and the ―how‖ of cultural production relative to
cultural production in the twentieth century. It adds to the centralized, market–oriented production system a
new framework of radically decentralized individual and cooperative nonmarket production. It thereby
affects the ability of individuals and groups to participate in the production of the cultural tools". (Benkler,
2006, p.275). So through transparency and participation not only surfaces a new way to create cultural items
from the base, but also to be critical through the referred comments, reviews or even creation of new items
that reply each other.
And coming back to Watkins, in his The Media Crisis he writes the following sentence that connects to the
idea of making the viewer‘s part of the creation process of the Take Away Shows:
If we can somehow develop the idea that individuals and community groups–i.e., the public–can and
should play a greater role in deciding and creating what they–we–see on the mass audiovisual media,
then we will have taken a major step forward (2007, Public-alternative Processes and Practices).
We can even go back to the decade of 1970's and link these ideas of the users being also part of the
production in the counter-culture video collectives of the early 70's in the US, capitalized by the book
Guerrilla Television by Michael Shamberg and exemplified in the work of the UCV of Minneapolis–
University Community Video–where, as Deidre Boyle explains in his book Subject to Change: Guerrilla
Television Revisited:
There were created non-professional, magazine-style productions in which individuals, unfettered by
reporters or editors, told their own stories. The informal magazine format was designed 'to bring the
power of information to people who haven't had it before'. Access–and I refer here to the access of
individual storytellers to UCV equipment and the access of UCV to the public airwaves–was the key
to success in this endeavor, which began its run in 1974 on KTCA, the local Minneapolis PBS
affiliate (as cited in Won, 1998).
Also Mark Davis already talked in 1977 about the coming wave of 'garage cinema,' drawing an analogy to
the garage bands associated with Punk Rock:
Changes in technology will bring about a merging of independent video producers and home video
makers into a broad and active market sector... When the tools and infrastructures are in place to
11. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
enable cheap and effective home use of video annotation, retrieve and repurposing tools, the garages
of the world will be the site of the 'New New Hollywood' creating hundreds of millions of channels
of video content. The conditions of production and the use will have changed such that a large group
of amateurs and home users will be regularly making video that can compete in the information
marketplace of networked computers (as cited in Burgess, Green, Jenkins, & Hartley, 2009, p. 110–
111)
Another author focused on media culture and TV is Douglas Kellner. In the 90's he suggested that the media
culture is always a ―top-down form of culture which often reduces the audience to passive receiver of
predigested meanings‖ (1995, p.33) and that we could only talk about Popular Culture if it is of, by, and for
the people, in which they produce and participate in cultural practices that articulate their experience and
aspirations. (1995, p.34-35).
The difference now, as I have stated before, is that both the lower price of the technology tools and the rise
of the Social Media sites and its powerful free distribution makes this kind of 'Popular culture' possible.
Focusing on the distribution part of the equation, the internet enables novel forms of collective action,
making it possible, as Shirky explains, to create collaborative groups that are larger and more distributed
than at any other time in history. And coming back to the idea of a production that is not controlled by
institutional groups, that collaboration–as the one that shows up between Take Away Shows producers and
viewers in social web tools–signifies a profound challenge to the status quo (Shirky, p. 48).
Survey
At the beginning of this paper I used a Brian Eno quote on The Velvet Underground as an example on how
one cultural product can become influential and be the seed of a number of others even if its diffusion is
originally limited. Another instance took place in Manchester, when forty people attended, on June 4 1976,
to the first Sex Pistol concert outside London. Between the crowd there were many would–be notables
including Howard Devoto and Peter Shelley–Buzzcocks and Magazine–, Bernard Sumner and Ian Curtis–
New Order and Joy Division–, Mark E. Smith–The Fall–, Morrissey–The Smiths–or Tony Wilson–founder
of Factory Records–(Crossley, 2009, p. 31).
So the magnitude and the direction of the fire cannot always be inferred by the size of the spark, maybe by
its intensity. And in 2010 we must also take in account the way social media spreads content and reaches
other users not only eager to share the finding, but also ready and able–thanks to the low price of
technological tools–to create their own artifacts.
We have already said that there are more than a hundred of projects that follow or share the path that La
Blogotheque and Vincent Moon are walking. Will the Take Away Shows be the spark that ignites the
relation between music and image? Time will tell, but their popularity is rising and the format is spreading
among video creators around the world, with projects in Mexico, Australia, Norway, Japan or Italy. Now
each of their videos is watched by thousands of people, some of them–as we had pointed out before–even by
millions. And among the viewers are also creators those film videos that are seen by other hundreds and
thousands, using the power of social media and the internet viral distribution in a way that was impossible
just a few years ago.
What we can do now is ask these video producers about their thoughts and the reasons that took them to
shoot Take Away Shows.
12. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Details
Between November the 18th and 30th, 2009, I conducted a survey among the video creators included in the
list of like-minded projects.
The questionnaire was created in the service SurveyMonkey and promoted from the 'Everyone's Take Away
Show' Forum53 and through e-mail communication with the members of the list. The only mandatory fields
were e-mail and URL of their video website.
From the fifty two original answers to the survey eight were discarded because several reasons–the user
didn't create the kind of videos we are talking about or only answered to enough questions, so the following
data and conclusions will be based on the forty four that answers that meet the requirements.
There were a total of six questions, four of them consisting on free textbox for the participants to explain
their experiences and opinions, as to add detail to the sentiments that this kind of video creates in them. The
format for the other two was multiple choice, allowing them to use the field 'others' in case none of the
questions matched their preferences. I chose not to limit the possible answers to closed ones because of the
nature of the surveyed. They were not just fans of La Blogotheque, but creators who can have very different
reasons to make themselves this kind of videos. In this sense it can be argued that it was more a series of
conducted interviews than a questionnaire. For the multiple choice ones the order of the answers was
randomized.
Regarding geographic distribution, we can see a majority of participants from English and French speaking
countries–i.e. 34% from USA, 11% from both Canada and UK, or 9% from France, but also how the Take
Away Shows have reached places as Spain, Austria or Japan. See excel Appendix for more details.
Questions
Let's now see each of the six questions and review the findings showed in the answers.
1) How did you first know about Les Concerts a Emporter–Take Away Shows?
Here almost half of the video creators discovered the videos made by La Blogotheque through links in other
sites–mainly blogs, online magazines, and video sites as Vimeo or YouTube, while 22% say that was a direct
friend recommendation. As the diffusion of these videos is linked also to the popularity of the musicians,
many of the surveyed discovered the videos while searching for info about their favorite artists. The
musician or group most frequently cited is Grizzly Bear–11%. Many of the mentions talk about one
particular video, where the group creates an acappella rendition of their song "Knife"12 while walking
through the streets of Paris. In my conversation with Chryde he also mentioned this as one of the most
rewarding videos they have realized.
2) Why do you like to shoot this kind of videos?
In this case we can group the answers in three different sections:
a) Those that focus on the special relation between the artist and the viewer–with them as special first person
guests. As Bandwithfilms says "their–the band or artist–true personality shines through when 'exposed' to the
elements, taken out of their comfort zones and taken away from the safety net of amps and a stage". Another
surveyed, Lecargo points out that when filming the videos "I am alone as audience", connecting with the
second groups of answers.
b) Here the focus is less on the artist and more on words as 'intimacy', 'fragility', 'real emotions', 'magic' or
'sincere'. For Handheldshows the key is that the artist is "right in front of you close not only physically but
mentally". He also points out "the boundary between artist and spectator called "the stage" is torn down.
Gives a much more intimate performance and experience for the viewer". For Nathanaël Le Scouarnec "it's
also a new adventure, full of humanity".
13. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
c) Here the creators talk about the interaction between the artist and the space where he or she performs and
about the role that the streets and the cities themselves have in the final video. One of the producers–Manuel
Soubiès–even talks about "taking back the public spaces". Other, Hoovesotheturf, says that this format
"removes music from its commercial/industrial context". The absence of the commercial side is also pointed
out by Concertvole when says that "the viewer can almost fell that magic because it's a one shot without
artifacts, money or laws involved".
3) What does it make these videos special?
This is the first of the Multiple Choice Questions–see excel Appendix for details. There were two focuses:
one on the work of the artists and other on the relation that is created between performer and viewer. Clearly
the second one was the preferred, not only because 59% selected the answer 'They are intimate–you feel that
they are with you', but also because half of the 'Other' answers were broaden versions of that one:
Theyshootmusic comments that these videos "don't use the stage/audience hierarchy". On the same vein
Playgrrround says that are intimate "because it is an offstage, no produced video. Call it authentic". Here
again we come across the topic of the interaction with the space where they play and the people they meet.
Applecrisp is interested "in the connection between the artist and the space they are occupying..., their
interaction with the surroundings".
4) Describing a Take Away Show
As viewers and creators of Take Away Shows I wanted to know where they locate the style or genre itself. I
proposed seven ways to describe the genre and this time the results were more balanced than in question 3–
see excel Appendix for details–, with the votes divided between 'A new video experience', 'A way to attend a
music performance', 'A guerrilla video' and 'A short experimental film about musicians'. Again, in the
category 'Others', half of the answers are broad versions or mix between the proposed answers. And again it
raises the relation with the environment. One of the surveyed that chose 'Others', Showtogo, believes that is
―a new interdisciplinary art form that combines music, acting, filming, performance, street art, and new
media‖.
5) Do you think that this kind of video will ever be mainstream? Why?
Being as difficult as it is nowadays to define 'mainstream' the question tries to find out how much do they
think the popularity of these videos can grow and if this would mean that the style would be incorporated by
bigger video producers.
Most of the responses argue that these videos are already mainstream because they are highly distributed and
imitated, even in big televisions, as Manuel Soubiès argues that happen in Spanish public TV RTVE with the
program Fuera de Lugar–Spanish for Out of Place54.
Another group thinks that its own nature–independent, experimental, consumed mainly between small
circles–will make it impossible to get to mainstream audiences because "it doesn't appeal to popular tastes",
as Raymond Concepcion says.
A third big group of answers state that they will be mainstream not for themselves, but because in some point
the Music Industry will decide it: using these videos as a way to promote mainstream artists. Allournoise
thinks that Take Away Shows are becoming a regular promotional outlet, while Playgrrround says that it is
becoming almost mandatory "for bands and musicians to do these kind of videos" to succeed in the
independent market.
We can also set a fourth group stating that mainstream as a concept is dead or blurred. Tracermagazine states
that "we become more and more of a niche culture every day".
14. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
6) Social Media
The last question tried to answer how relevant has the Social Media been for the distribution and
popularization of the Take Away Shows. Here most of the answers capitalized the role of Social Media as
fundamental and focused on concepts as 'viral', 'instant communication', 'word of mouth' or the fact that the
fan/listener can intimate with his or her favorite artist 'one to one'. Handheldshows points it in a very simple
way: "No social media, no audience."
Another group of answers put emphasis in the ability–for the users–to find and hear artists based on their
personal taste, not on marketing, thanks to the exposure that Social Media makes possible. Shoottheplayer
explains that "Social media is immediate; it connects you to the world and democratizes access".
Two people also point out that this way of distribution also makes possible for the artist to experiment and
learn through the method of trial and error, in what is a clear reference to what Clay Shirky calls ‗Publish,
then filter‘ (Shirky, chapter 4). Lafilmvideomagazine thinks this kind of social net has a main role, as they let
you upload your videos and wait for other people to see it. Don't need nobody's permission to issue your
work."
Discussion
From this survey we can say that the emotional side–the intimacy with the musician, the physical
environment as another player, the freedom sense and the perception of something more natural–is far more
valued than the technical issues or the novelty of the format. Also is acknowledged some sort of purity in the
making, as it almost lacks of tricks or artifices and present the bands or soloists 'nude' in front of their actual
and prospective audience, creating a new way to experience a musical performance that set itself very far
from the production of the studio. One of the surveyed, Southern souls, even says that he can't listen to
records anymore because "they are pretty sterile".
So what this kind of videos represents for their creators is a new way to portray a musician performing his or
her songs through a piece of film and then make this experience more accessible to any user through the use
of Social Media. And I put the stress in the use of social media and the internet because this is a genre of
films that not only is distributed through the internet, but also seems to fit to the new generation and their
needs. As says Pablo Gil, Spanish music critic and one of the surveyed, "this is a format that is internet
native and exploits the best features of it: instantaneous, direct, simple and real". One of the main followers–
because of his activity in the Vimeo Channels and Forums–of the Take Away Shows, Croytaque, compares
the experience of this kind of video with "the perception of music when you're from the iPod generation".
For him describing these shows as more natural or more intimate is just part of the picture: "'The music we
dream' could be a better way to describe it. Something of music poetry into the daily life".
Moon himself seems to share the feeling, when he says that ―Being on the internet and having those videos–
the Take Away Shows–available to people on their iPod was something different–from the regular music
videos–. I think it‘s the best way to watch them–walking down the street, on the subway or in the bath–
because a similar environment surrounds you. It all mixes together in a way that creates a unique viewer
experience.‖ (Traynor, 2008). He also talks in another interview about the difference between editing for a
movie screen or for a portable device. "The smaller the screen is the more open the edits should be, and the
more open the film should be. The interaction should be more important on small screen than on the big
screen" (Bandur, 2008).
15. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
Final conclusion
As the amateur and intimate musical videos that La Blogotheque started to create in 2006 not only have been
increasingly successful in terms of views but also the seed for a number of similar projects all over the world
it was necessary to identify its main characteristics in order to state if we are in front of films of a regular
acoustic session or something else that could represent new genre of musical video.
Through the analysis of the data, the direct communication with both La Blogotheque creators and other
video producers, and the research of theoretical work on media production and social media I back up the
relevance of the Take Away Shows as a cultural artifact created, distributed and shared through a
collaborative effort not supported by any kind of institution, in which the musicians show a remarkable
degree of intimacy, usually through the interaction with the space of the performance and–if there are any–its
inhabitants.
Both if the Take Away Shows remain as objects produced and consumed by music and film lovers harbored
within social media networks as Vimeo, or if it gains mainstream attention and is supported or adopted –as a
concept–by public or private institutions, this works signify a remarkable example of participatory culture
made possible by the new social tools developed in the internet.
16. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
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17. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
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19. The Take Away Shows: Music streams
47. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35qs9_672-st-vincent-marry-me
48. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x665xt_955-man-man-a-day-at-the-races-and_music
49. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GijLH986ho8
50. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2jst9_architecture-in-helsinki-581-heart_creation
51. http://www.mtv.com/music/unplugged/
52. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vxsHzJPSL0
53. http://vimeo.com/groups/takeaway/forumthread:10081
54. http://www.rtve.es/rtve/fuera-de-lugar/
Screenshot of year-to-year data–main video websites–from Compete.com
Retrieved December 12, 2009 from the URL included in the screenshot
