What makes a good concert?

Music concerts are strange beasts. Some people love them and go to every show they can get tickets to; others find the whole experience unpleasant and prefer the intimacy -- and the volume control -- granted by their own speakers or headphones.

For most everyone, however, the appeal -- in the abstract, at least -- of seeing your favorite musical group live is undeniable. If an artist can wow you with a recording on a CD and video on MTV, then surely having the entire band and their trusty instruments within your presence would transcend the packaged experience and bring aural pleasures previously unimagined.

But, the truth is, unlike watching a movie at a theater, with its massive screen, pulse-pounding surround sound-capable speakers, and myriad special effects thanks to THX or whatever snazzy acronym makes it digital, more often then not the listening experience at a concert, even when its your absolute favorite band, is subpar. Whether you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a massive stadium or sitting crossed-legged on the lawn of Central Park, most venues do not compare, especially as far as clarity is concerned, with simply sitting at home in front of your stereo.

This is most decidedly the case when you are unfamiliar with the artist. Sure, intimate settings such as an acoustic show at a college or an limited and unadvertised engagement at a dimly lit bar in the seedy part of town can easily make you a moderate fan of any artist. Close proximity tends to do that. But that notwithstanding, attending a concert is far from the best way to expose yourself to new music and expect anything to come from it other than a ringing in your ears and some mild confusion over what exactly that singer was shouting.

For me, what makes or breaks a concert featuring a new or unfamiliar artist is not the sound quality, or how easily I can follow along with the lyrics; instead, I gauge such a concert on what follows it.

Allow me to explain: Let's assume I've already got that one song from the radio for band X. Well, if I take to band X's music with increased interest and seek out the rest of the album after seeing them in concert, then it qualifies as a 'good' show. If, after downloading their songs, I double-click each of them and actually listen for more than 5 seconds, then the concert gets recorded as a 'great' one. If -- and this is rare indeed -- I begin to listen to that album with regularity, then the show goes beyond 'great' to 'fantastic' and I couldn't have asked for much more -- except perhaps proper sound engineering.

I write all of this because last weekend in Seattle I saw Modest Mouse at the Paramount downtown. Of course, I already had "Float On" committed to both memory and hard drive space but I had not listened to the rest of the album, let alone any of their previous work. Despite the fact that I could hardly hear the lyrics and the bass drowned out the band, I've now revisited "Good News for People who Love Bad News." Thanks to the show, the rest of the album is getting frequent play in Winamp.

Now, if only someone would do something about the lead singer's voice.