Click here to view the embedded video.

After watching two NME videos about The Arcade Fire and Guns N’ Roses from Reading Festival, I’m certain that the fan experience doesn’t get any more polar opposite than this.

On one side, angry live music fans spoke loud and clear about how much they loathed and hated Guns N’ Roses’s performance and the ridiculous aftermath. Then on the other side, The Arcade Fire spoke candidly and genuinely about how much they value the connection between them and their fans.  So what does this mean for fans of both bands?

What happened at Reading Festival is nothing new. I’ve seen this happen many times at summer music festivals. One band will put on a great show, while on another stage, a train wreck ensues as confusion and disappointment conquers another band’s set.

And when I watched the NME fan reaction video about the Guns N’ Roses fiasco and then watched the Arcade Fire interview, I was amazed at the striking difference between what the fans said about Guns ‘N Roses in the interview versus the genuineness with which the members of the Arcade Fire spoke about their concern about connecting with their fans in the wake of their increased popularity and playing larger arenas.

And, you know what? The difference I noticed between the two videos interviews makes complete sense.

Because when you look at what happened during the Guns N’ Roses protest (see above video), which Axl Rose tried to explain yesterday, it becomes very obvious why things happened the way they did at Reading.

And you can’t deny the fact that each band is heading in an opposite trajectory when it comes to their music and the relationship they have with their fans.

Simply put, The Arcade Fire are a band on its way to higher ground, while Guns N’ Roses sadly continues its tailspin before the band ultimately crashes and burns.

More importantly, the Arcade Fire not only have honed their live show, they also know how to connect with their fans in a unique and personal way.

And by doing so, they demonstrate how much they value the close emotional connection fans experience during the their live show.  And if you’ve seen the Arcade Fire live you know what I mean. It’s almost like a sacred ceremonial exchange between the fans and the band. You can hear the emotional connection, feel it in the music and see it in the way the band behaves and engages with each other on stage.

Again — judging by what happened at Reading Festival — when it comes to connecting with fans through the live music experience Guns N’ Roses has clearly lost its edge.

They should stop touring and take a closer look at what other intimate experiences The Arcade Fire is giving to their fans.

Getting Even More Intimate with The Wilderness Downtown

Following up the successful release of their latest album The Suburbs, the Arcade Fire recently released an interactive HTML5 Google Chrome film experiment at thewildernessdowntown.com.

Making  creative  and forward-thinking move like this shows me that the band want to push limits and use cutting-edge technology to spread their music ever further to new audiences. But this type of experience also shows that the band wants to use the Wilderness Downtown experience to make the connection between their fans even more intimate than it already is.

And that intimacy is something that cannot be bought. It can only be earned. And they’ve earned it from me.

And I hope they do find a way to translate the Wilderness Downtown into a live show social experience similar to what Recreate My Night did with the Constellations or Big Live has done for virtual concert fans watching at home.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll see a Layar Augmented Reality mobile app version of the Wilderness Downtown released soon? I’m definitely going to add it to our Improving Lollapalooza List for next year.

Can The Arcade Fire Be Extinguished?

If the Arcade Fire keep putting on shows like they did at Lollapalooza 2010, I have little concern that they will have problems connecting with their audience during the show. I was curious about the same that connection before I saw them at Lollapalooza 2010, which is why I stood on the edge of the crowd and didn’t go into the massive clump of fans in front of the stage. I wanted to see if front man Win Butler and company could mesmerize me from afar.

The Distance Test is one of the experiments I like to do when I want to see if a band can truly project their music and make their live show emotion go beyond the stage.

And if the band can amaze me from afar (minus the jumbo video screens and any sound issues) then I know the band is really putting on a show that’s not only resonating with fans in the first few rows, but all the fans throughout the venue.

And that’s the type of show that fans deserve. And that’s the type of show that The Arcade Fire gave thousands of fans at Lollapalooza 2010. And the way Win Butler interacted with the crowd was an excellent example of leadership in live music.

That said, I don’t think the Arcade Fire have anything to worry about if that’s how all their shows will be.

Can we say the same for Axl Rose and his “backing band” Guns ‘N Roses? Nope. And it’s really sad to say that. Because it’s never fun to see a once great rock band reduced a one man show that’s going nowhere.

But Axl Rose gives fans no choice  but to feel let down when he shows up an hour late to the concert, waits nearly 15 years to put out an album that wasn’t very good, and then proceeds to stage a silly protest during the show.

Reading Festival’s Reputation for Legendary Shows

Awful or amazing, Reading has been the scene for many legendary concert moments like Live at Reading when Kurt Cobain rolled out in a wheelchair in 1992 and then lead Nirvana in giving fans a concert experience they never forgot. Now, I’d like to watch a fan reaction video after that show. And I wonder what Cobain would have said about the connection between the band and the audience during that performance.

Make Your Own Reaction Video

Were you at Reading Music Festival to see the Arcade Fire and Guns ‘N Roses?
Tell your story and let us know what you thought of both performances and share your other Reading concert experiences in the comments below. Check out more exclusive Live Fix fan interviews here.

Or…

If you’re on YouTube and want to make your own reaction video please do and leave a link to the video on the comments.

Quick Question About The Wilderness

Have you tried out the Arcade Fire’s  Wilderness Downtown? I did and I wasn’t able to view either of my childhood addresses or my current address because the Google Maps said the street view didn’t have enough info to render an image. I was only able to put in the Chicago Cubs Wrigley Field address and virtually cruise around Wrigleyville. Which was still lots of fun and pretty cool. So how was your experience using it?

Click here to view the embedded video.

This “failed stage dive” video has been circulating the web for the last few days and it brings up a very important topic: the art of stage diving. But I warn you… what we’re about to discuss is dangerous and extremely liberating.

We’ve talked before about fans who do crazy things during a show and we’ve explored the painfully unfortunate occurrence when an artist like Slash gets tackled on stage.

But after watching that video above, and thinking about the the Jesus Lizard’s David Yow painful leap, and Iggy Pop’s retiring from stagediving, I think it’s time to review a few things about the art of stagediving.

Now, you would think that stage diving is a pretty simple thing, right?

Apparently, some folks need a guide.

Think I’m joking? Just take a look at this ehow.com 6 step instructional guide on how to stage dive.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a really helpful guide to make sure you safely and successfully convert a stage dive.

But the only part that’s missing is the perspective. I say that because this guide teaches fans how to do it. And as we saw in the video above, it was the artist who flopped down hard on a fan, not the other way around.

Clearly this artist didn’t read Step 1 or 6 of ehow’s guide, or he would have seen that the crowd was a bit thin and the timing of his leap was all wrong. I added a few tips of my own in italics just to make sure the guide was complete and the fans were correctly represented.

1. Ensure that there is a critical mass of people pushing forward at the front of the stage. If you can easily walk through the crowd to the front of the stage, then there are not enough people to safely stage dive.

5. When you are ready to return to the mosh pit be sure to look before you leap. The stage front is often littered with such items as stage lights, electrical cables and flash pots. It would be too bad if your flying body connected with any of this equipment, or crushed unsuspecting fans who don’t served to be smashed underneath the body of an uneducated and inexperienced stage-diving artist.

What Should We Do Next?

For starters, I think we need to add an interactive and educational stagediving experience to the list for improving Lollapalooza 2011.

Now It’s Up To You

What do you think? Do we need to stop the violence and protect innocent concert fans by offering workshops? There’s a lot of videos floating around YouTube, like the one below, that show the exhilarating benefits of a well-executed stage dive.

So do we need to start creating online video tutorials for artists who don’t know how to correctly stage dive?

What tips do you have about the art of stagediving?

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happens when you use social media to express and share your favorite concert memories?

In what ways do you and other concert fans use Facebook and Twitter to capture, share and celebrate your favorite concert moments?

I’ve been wondering about the answers to those questions, and as we continue to explore online, social and virtual concert experiences, I’ve been checking out and cruising around RecreateMyNight.com, a new site that allows live music fans to connect their social networking account so they can share their concert adventures and follow their favorite bands.

Besides it’s integration of social networking elements, one of the other key elements of the site’s current Beta launch has been the featuring of  psychedelic/hip hop rock band The Constellations.

And in an effort to introduce the site to live music fans, over the summer the creators of Recreate My Night have begun to allow fans to share their experiences with the Constellations in real-time and post-concert via “a living, digital scrapbook” as the tour unfolds and the excitement around the Atlanta-based group’s new album Southern Gothic builds.

Since Recreate My Night utilizes your Facebook or Twitter accounts for the login, whenever you upload videos, photos, and status updates into your Facebook profile, you have the ability to stream that content to your RMN profile.

From there you can select a time frame on the virtual calendar that zeroes in on the exact date when you attended the concert you’d like to “recreate.”  Then the site pulls all related “concert” content from that time period that you entered via photos, status updates or tweets.

I’ve been exploring the site these last few weeks, and so far, I think Recreate My Night is a pretty fun and promising site that can serve many purposes beyond just entertainment.

As more fans begin to use it, Recreate My Night could be not only an interactive and engaging way to follow your favorite band, but it could become an organic online community where concert fans can catalog, share and document their concerts experiences from multiple perspectives and POVs.

I’ve also considered Recreate My Night to be a helpful sociological and behavioral tool to document concert anthropology. Or even a cool tool to use for our concert genealogy experiments.

To get more background on the story behind Recreate My Night, I asked President Tejpaul Bhatia about the creative development of the site,  his future plans to work with other labels like EMI to promote bands and why he chose the Constellations as the first band to feature.

And since we recently spoke with Big Live about their new site, I was curious to know how Bhatia sees RMN as a different experience from other similar online live music social sharing sites.

Live Fix: What concert experiences, real or online/virtual, of your own inspired the creation and development of Recreate My Night?

Tejpaul Bhatia: RecreateMyNight came about from a confluence of experiences including concerts, weddings, parties and just regular nights out. Vik, one of the cofounders is an avid musician and also worked at MTV prior to conceiving RecreateMyNight.com, so it makes sense that the application was a great fit for bands, musicians and concert fans.

Recreate My Night was created using time stamping algorithms and social media integration, and it was developed by engineers with advanced degrees in computer science and cognition. The development team and the founders also worked previously at MTV and ESPN. How did all your previous experiences and technology background help you create this new social media concert site?

The technology part of the site came from our experiences at big companies and at startups. The time stamping algorithm came from a lot of brain power and late night brainstorming sessions from some solid engineers.

The user experience and social media integration came from using the site and working with bands to create an experience that adds value to concert going. We are not only developers but also users of the site. We are improving the site daily.

We’ve gotten really good at quickly transitioning from an idea on a whiteboard to a working application that people can interact with and give us feedback on. We also were able to leverage a lot of knowledge and expertise we gained from working on our earlier products and previous applications to build a really robust infrastructure that scales on demand, and we’ve been integrating with social media APIs since the early days.

Those experiences have directly impacted the quality of the site and the feature set available, as well as how we approach evaluating its utility and effectiveness for users and incorporating feedback to make it even better.

What element of Recreate My Night are you most excited about?

We are most excited about being able to document concerts and shows in a way that has never been possible before. We are also very excited by the support we are getting from the music industry as a whole.

RecreateMyNight really lets fans at a show engage with other fans and the band in a really direct, conversational way. It’s really cool to enable people to share their passion for a band in a way that lets them connect with other fans, even if they weren’t able to experience the concert first hand.

As other online concert experience sharing sites come into the industry, how does Recreate My Night stand out from the rest, what do you feel makes it unique from other concert-based fan social communities?

A few things make us different from the rest. The first is that everything “recreated” on our site can live beyond just the concert experience. For example if your night consisted of a concert and then a wild after party, RecreateMyNight captures that. The other major differentiator is that RecreateMyNight gathers media from all other sites. We aren’t asking people to change their behavior. People should keep uploading their photos, videos, tweets, status updates and whatever to the sites they love. RecreateMyNight will do the hard work of pulling everyone’s assets into one place.

Concerts are very powerful events in people’s lives, and Recreate My Night empowers fans to remembers their concert experiences in a unique way. How will RMN allow fans to remember their concert experiences like never before?

RecreateMyNight pulls in all media generated at the show or about the show. It first starts with what you created. It then goes through what your friends created. Finally it goes through what everyone at the show created. You get to remember the night from your perspective and you also get to remember it from everyone else’s perspective as well, including the bands.

In what ways do you feel Recreate My Night will change the regular non-virtual concert experience for fans?

RecreateMyNight will encourage fans to document their experiences and share them with other fans. It will also create an experience that lives on long after the final curtain call. Engagement with the show can live on forever now.

As we integrate more deeply with bands, we’ll provide both a destination where people can return to revisit a night, as well as a jumping off point for bands to promote their merchandise (songs for sale / download, t-shirts, posters, etc).

During concerts there can be a barrier between bands and fans that keeps them from connecting beyond the music, so how will the site change the concert experience and performance for bands when it comes to connecting them socially, emotionally and psychologically?

Band members are attendees of the shows as well. These days most artists are connected on many platforms. Fans can see the night from the band’s perspective and can share their experiences directly with the band.

You can also envision some scenarios where fans could interact with a band well before the performance, and impact stuff like voting on songs for the set list, helping to choose the opening band, suggesting favorite local venues. The band doesn’t have to be huge for RMN to make a real impact. We’re excited to dig deeper into the long tail of the indie music scene as well — there are so many talented bands that have really passionate local fan bases in cities and towns all the

across the world.

A Night with The Constellations

If you could go back and have the chance to use Recreate My Night for one of your favorite concerts, what concert would it be and why? And how would you use RMN to do so?

Tej: I would recreate The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters concert in Hershey Pennsylvania about a decade ago. It was a crazy show and I talk about it all the time. I am curious if my memories are actually accurate or if I was just high on the performance.

Vik : I saw U2 play in CT on their Elevation Tour back in 2001. It was literally one of the best experiences of my life — they were totally at the top of their game, they played lots of their best songs, I was with really fun people. I’d love to be able to go back now and watch performances of that night, or see photos that other fans had captured, or look back on other people’s reactions in real time from all over the stadium. None of that stuff was possible then in the way that it is now.

Why did you choose the Constellations as the first band to utilize Recreate My Night?

The great thing about The Constellations is that they are a big band (lots of members), they tour a lot and they are very connected on social media. It seemed like a natural fit when the label proposed it to us. The name of the site “A Night with The Constellations” also sounds cool!

What other bands will be featured on Recreate My Night?

You will see more bands featured on RecreateMyNight soon, but we can’t say who just yet. Stay tuned.

Since the site is associated with EMI Virgin, will that record label be the only record label to use Recreate My Night?

RecreateMyNight is not exclusive to any one label.

What plans do you have to develop the site and make adjustments? How can concert fans help improve the RecreateMyNight experience?

Our goal is to develop the best possible user experience. We are fortunate that we found an application that serves a great purpose for fans and bands alike. We welcome all feedback and take it very seriously. If anyone has ideas on how to improve the site, they can click on the feedback tab at www.RecreateMyNight.com and tell us what they think.

Thank you to Tejpaul and Vik for sharing the RCM story and their own concert experiences.

How Would You Recreate Your Night?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m excited about the potential to use RMN as a organic and living concert fan experience experiment. And as I’ve been thinking more about the site, here are some other questions that we should think about and you’re welcome to add your own in the comments below.

• If we continue to give concert fans the ability to share their concert memories in ways like this, will the concert experience become more impersonal from the oversharing?
• Overtime will we begin to see which parts of the concert experience fans don’t want to document, share or remember? Will a pattern develop that will tell us key insights into what fans love the most about concerts?
• By sharing and documenting their own experiences, will concert fans force concert photographers and writers to rethink how they document a show?

Go Check It Out:

You can visit recreatemynight.com and click on the big yellow “Start” button to get involved

Or

You can go right to  theconstellations.recreatemynight.com to see their tour and digital scrapbook in action.

Go to the RMN blog for more news, updates and info.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last week, Scottish post-rock band Mogwai released their new live album Special Moves and first-ever live concert film Burning.

For the last few months the group has been sharing clips of Burning on their YouTube channel and other places, including a live online screening via Ustream with a Q&A chat where fans could ask the film’s director and the band questions in real-time.

And now you can check out the film at select public screenings.

After checking out the teaser clips, I’m excited to see how the film captures the power and force of Mogwai‘s sublimely thunderous live show.

Burning was shot at Mogwai’s sold-out three night residency at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg in April 2009, which has been the location for several of my recent virtual concert experiences, so I’m also looking forward to seeing how director Vincent Moon and Nathanael Le Scouarnec, who also worked on La Blogotheque’s Take-Away Shows, capture the emotion of the fans getting lost in the waves of sound and sonic pleasure.

We’ve explored Blogotheque’s concept before and wondered if they re-define what a concert really is, so I’m super curious to see how Burning’s story unfolds on screen.

What Are Your Mogwai Memories?
Tell your story and let us know about some of your favorite Mogwai concert experiences in the comments below. Check out more exclusive Live Fix fan interviews here.

Amazon FREE download: Mogwai Fear Satan
Buy via  Amazon: Special Moves/Burning

Get more info on Mogwai.

Public Screening Dates:

Aug 29 – Chicago, IL @ Smart Bar
Sept 2 – Pontiac, MI @ The Crofoot
Sept 4 – San Francisco @ Roxie Theater
Sept 10- Portland, OR @ Bagdad Theater
Sept 12 – Los Angeles @ Echoplex
Sept 14 – Toronto, ON @ The Drake Underground (2 showings)
Sept 23 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
Oct 3 – Montreal, QC @ Ukrainian Federtation

Tracklists:

Special Moves
1. I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
2. Friend of the Night
3. Hunted By a Freak
4. Mogwai Fear Satan
5. Cody
6. You Don’t Know Jesus
7. I Know You Are But What Am I
8. I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School
9. 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong
10. Like Herod
11. Glasgow Megasnake

“Burning”
1. The Precipice
2. I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
3. Hunted By a Freak
4. Like Herod
5. New Paths to Helicon Part1
6. Mogwai Fear Satan
7. Scotland’s Shame
8. Batcat

Click here to view the embedded video.

On Monday, Ticketmaster launched their new blog Ticketology. We’re glad to see them take such a bold, fan-friendly and social step forward. But we have a few questions for them. Because that’s what we do.

There are many reasons why I think that launching  Ticketology was a great idea. A move like this is long overdue and it’s about time Ticketmaster decided to use a blog to begin a conversation with fans.

And I hope Ticketmaster is genuinely interested in understanding the pain and dissatisfaction fans have felt regarding the service fees and other questionable behavior that makes concertgoing and ticket-buying a drag.

But it still remains to be seen just how “Upfront,” honest and transparent Ticketmaster will really be on future posts.

I’m an eternal optimist who has a good grasp of reality when it comes to how the concert industry works, so I’m not going to hold my breath.

But I will expect Ticketmaster to live up to the promises they’ve laid out in their first post.

Because with the summer concert industry turning out to be a downer this year, Ticketmaster and their recent merging partners Live Nation, have a lot of work ahead of them.

And this new blog seems to be the first step as they attempt to clear up any misconceptions about why Ticketmaster has to pile on all those service fees while Live Nation still charges high prices for beer and other concessions, even though they’re apparently hurting in the sales department. I know I’m looking forward to their explanations.

That said, after the ticket selling and concert promoting superpower reported quarter one losses and an even tougher 2010 summer, it was a smart move to cut service fees on Wednesdays this year.

But is their plan to let fans and Ticketmaster dialogue and understand each other better? Will they be meeting the needs of fans and customers like these.

It’s hard to tell since the first post doesn’t let you leave any comments, which makes it difficult to believe Ticketmaster really wants the dialogue between them and the fans to be open and transparent.

Again, I hope they do seek to be honest and open. And I hope they do allow blog comments on future posts, or at least let the dialogue between them and the fans be seen by everyone in some way.

Besides the transparency issues, I’m wondering about a couple of other important things too:

• Considering the recent merger, will Ticketology share and discuss the inside story of both Ticketmaster and Live Nation?
• Will the stories of the fans truly be told in their “fan spotlights?” Or will it be another form of manipulation? I hope for the former.

Who knows, maybe this will actually allow us to start talking about a real CARS program for concert fans?

And wherever Ticketology lead us, we’ll definitely keep an eye on future posts. I know I’m excited to see what happens.

What Say You Concert Fan?

What do you expect from Ticketology? What would you like to see from Ticketmaster and Live Nation on future posts? Do you think they will be fully transparent about their business and how their decisions impact the rest of the concert industry?

Continuing our exploration into iphone and android mobile apps and live music, I wanted to share with you some of the experiments I’ve been doing on my Droid with one of Layar’s augmented reality apps. Now, let’s see how you can use Layar’s Tweeps Around 3D to enhance your next concert experience.

Well, for starters, as we’ve discovered in previous Live Fix Experiments, during my two experiments with Tweeps Around 3D I’ve realized that in the history of concertgoing live music fans have never had more ways to connect with each other during the live concert experience.

And with the development of mobile and Augmented Reality, I’ve been super curious to discover ways that these emerging technologies can also be useful and create meaningful connections for concerts fans.

And so far I’ve discovered that the virtual connecting of fans with the Tweeps Around 3D mobile app is definitely high on the cool scale, but more importantly, it has the potential to be more than just simply a slick mobile augmented reality app to play around with.

Putting Layar’s Tweeps Around 3D To The Test

In this review, I’ll share with you a few screen shots I took with my Motorola Droid while I experimented this summer with Layar’s Tweeps Around at Pitchfork Music Festival and Perez Hilton’s One Night In Chicago Pre-Lollapalooza bash.

And I’ll explain how I’ve been able to virtually connect concert fans who were enjoying different concerts in different locations.

On one level, for me, this was a positive forward leap in our augmented reality mobile experiments. It sort of felt like what Big Live is doing by using social media to connect concert fans virtually through shared concert experiences online in real-time.

But, in some ways my Layar experiment was a bit different that what Big Live does for fans, because I was actually at the concert event with others fans while other fans where at home watching another concert online and tweeting about it via Twitter.

Though most of the AR “concert” apps that Layar has developed are designed to help fans find and locate various things at shows — like this Signet app that was recently used during Vodafone’s Sziget Music Festival — I’ve actually been more interested in discovering ways to use the AR apps to help connect fans connect at a show, or show how different types of concert fans are connected during concerts no matter where the shows are taking place.

Yes, I think AR has a long way to go to where it is truly useful in everyday life or for concerts.

But after these two experiments, augmented reality certainly seems to be moving forward and it can be used at least as a great experimental and sociological new media tool.

And it’s a tool that I believe has potential to enhance our connect experiences by bringing the community of concert fans closer together so we can share our experiences as they happen in real-time.

What Is Layar?

According to the Swedish developers who created Layar it’s a “Reality Browser that shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of the real world as seen through the camera of your mobile phone. This technology is called Augmented Reality. We augment the real world as seen through your mobile phone, based on your location.”

Sounds cool, right?

It is.

But again, my biggest challenge beyond the coolness test — like Foursquare — has been to find applications that are both useful and helpful for people — and my main goal is to find reasons why concert fans would want to use it.

Experiment #1: Connecting Pitchfork Music Festival with Tom Petty and Heartbreakers

The screen shot above shows you what it looked like as I used the 3D Tweeps Around Layar app during LCD Sound System’s show at Pitchfork Music Festival in July.

Here’s how I did it:

First, I downloaded the Layar mobile app from the Android Market. Then I selected the Tweeps Around Layar 3D app — which shows 3D real-time images of people who are tweeting (there at the concert with their mobile phone or at home on their computer) within a selected mile or kilometer radius.

Next, I set the radius at 5 miles and I held up my Droid as if I was taking a picture and gradually the app gathers the search results (see the circle radar in the upper right hand corner).

And as I moved my Droid around the 3D images of the people avatars, or the big blue and green bubbles, pop up showing me who’s tweeting.

Then along the bottom of the screen the person’s tweet shows up. You can click on the tweet, read it and then respond directly to them in real-time.

Pretty cool, eh?

I think so.

And like I said, beyond the coolness of the app, the usefulness for me was that I had the pleasure of seeing what other concert fans fetl and were experiencing as they tweeting their hearts out all around me.

And it was fantastic because I could see  not only the fan experiences from just a few feet away, but I could also discover the experiences of those fans who were tweeting, dancing and grooving the swarm at the front of the stage.

But what I loved the most about using Layar at Pitchfork was having the chance to connect my LCD Sound System experience with another fan’s Tom Petty experience.

Yep. That’s right. Petty and Pitchfork became one right on my Droid.

Since Pitchfork was being held at Union Park — which is just a few blocks away from the United Center where Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were wooing fans during the current MOJO tour — I was able to merge the fan experiences of an indie-rock concert with the fan experiences of a classic rock concert as they were happening live in real-time.

How did I do this?

Well, as I explained before, I held my Droid up and as I turned around I pointed my Droid towards the United Center and up popped a tweet from inside the United Center.

And since the Tweeps Around 3D app lets you respond directly to the tweets that pop up on the screen, I quickly sent a tweet to the fan and we shared our experiences as if we were in the same venue.

So just like that, a Tom Petty concert experience was merged with a LCD Sound System concert experience!

And more importantly, two concert fans were able to connect, share and learn from each others concert experience, where in the past we weren’t able to do such a thing before in this way.

Experiment #2: Connecting B.o.B with Arcade Fire at Perez Hilton’s One Night In Chicago

My other experiment using Layar’s Tweeps Around 3D app occurred during Perez Hilton’s One Night In Chicago Pre-Lolla bash.

During B.o.B’s set I held up my Droid again and up popped a fan who was watching the Arcade Fire livestream online at Madison Square Garden from his home in an apartment just a few blocks away from where I was at the Hard Rock Hotel.

And like I did during the Tom Petty experience, I tweeted directly back to the fan and asked him how the show was and told them I was looking forward to seeing the Arcade Fire at Lollapalooza on Sunday. Another great fan-to-fan connection!

Experiment Wrap-up: Pros & Cons

As I’ve mentioned throughout our mobile and Augmented Reality and concert genealogy explorations, the big challenge is to go beyond the cool and wonderful so we can get to discovering the useful and helpful.

And for the most part, when it comes to connecting concert fans and sharing our live music experiences in new ways, I think this Layar Experiment was successful. And there’s many uses for this app as I’ve shown above.

On the downside the app doesn’t always give you the instant results you’d hope for. Meaning that you have to play around with the radius to find the right area of fans you’d like to scope out and connect with.

The other thing  that I hope is improved on future updates is the user experience. Because when you’re using it live at the concert the 3D images are a bit hard to click on and if there are a lot of results that show up, it’s hard to sort through them on the screen since they’re all clumped together. And if you move left or right the images quickly go away making it hard to click on them too.

Good and bad considered, I think you should try out the Layar apps and let me know what you discover, too. There’s also a few other concert 3D apps for finding concert near you. But I’ll get into those apps on a future post.

I’ll continue to share more mobile experiments with you, because as mobile becomes more integrated in the concert experience, we need to find more ways to make use of these apps and see them more than just a cool new gadget to find stuff.

To help get you going with your own Layar experiments, I’ve included a video that shows more details about Layar works. And I’ve also included links and info about Augmented Reality and where you can download Layar to your iPhone or Android smartphone.

• Droid and smartphone users can find the Layar in the Android market
• iPhone users can download Layar via the iPhone app store.
• How Stuff Works: Augmented Reality Explained
• Mashable: Augmented Reality for the iPhone
• Mashable: Augmented Reality apps for Android and iPhone.

How About You?

How have you used Augmented Reality, Layar or your iPhone or Android mobile phone to connect with fellow concert fans?

Click here to view the embedded video.

A long time ago I realized that there was no point in denying the influence of my parents on my musical tastes, especially my love for live music.

And in my early twenties, I started asking my parents questions about…who they were when they were young, why they made the decisions they did and other important details about their lives that I didn’t already know the answers to.

During my inquisitive quest, I got to know more about my dad’s love for Neil Diamond. And sadly, last Monday my dad, Joe Catania, passed away at the young age of 60. And like we’ve done for other live music fans who’ve passed on, this post is a tribute to his life and especially his love for experiencing Neil Diamond live in concert.

A Timely Tribute

38 years ago today, Neil Diamond recorded his legendary live album Hot August Night at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. I don’t know if my Dad had it in mind, or if God saw it as a proper time to call my Dad home, but in any case, I’ll always associate that live recording with my Dad’s passing because they happened within a week of each other.

And the other reason I’ll always remember that recording, is because it was on that tour that my dad had one of his most memorable, maybe even his all-time favorite, concert experience, as my Aunt Rosie, his sister, reminded me when I asked her to help me fill in some blanks for the Father’s Day Festival earlier this year.

What Did I Learn From My Dad’s Love For Neil Diamond?

That’s a question that I continue to answer everyday. And when I was preparing my notes for the speech I gave during my Dad’s memorial on Friday, I read the liner notes from one of my Dad’s favorite albums, Neil Diamond’s Stages, an anthology of all his live shows from *1970 -2002.

In the liner notes, Diamond shares a lot of interesting and appropriate insights about human emotion, life and the power of live performance for fans and artists alike.

So here’s a couple snippets that made me think about the connection between my Dad’s love for live music, Neil Diamond’s love for performing live and my curiosity for understanding what it was like for my Dad to experience Neil Diamond live when he first saw him in the 70’s.

…But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed…, and that’s the excitement I feel about performing live. Taking the stage is as palpable and seductive for me today as it was back then. The trill of the unknown, the new, the unpredictable is still as inspiring and welcome to me after all these years….

…Listen in then, as I revisit the stage of my life and my performances. From tiny folk clubs to immense arenas and stadiums, I have been afforded my lessons in humility and in “the kindness of strangers.” I have learned the value of an unexpected journey to an unknown place in the heart.

Like those words, I wrestled with a complex mix of emotions. I struggled with loss while I also celebrated and found joy in looking back and reflecting on my Dad’s life.

Yes, I could feel my Dad’s spirit in the music as the tracks from Hot August Night flowed through the speakers and made my eyes well up and put a smile on my face.

And like a Neil Diamond concert, the emotion was raw and undeniable as I gave my speech and looked out into the eyes of those in who came to the memorial.

And for those very reasons, I will never listen to any Neil Diamond song in the same way ever again.

And like I told Frank from Windy City Rock when he asked me who I’d like to see live, I do hope to someday experience Neil Diamond live in concert so I can complete my quest.

A Special Memorial Playlist:

As you have probably guessed, music (live and recorded) is a huge part of my life. It helps me cope, celebrate, understand and most of all it helps me connect with people on this Earth and to those who have passed on. So, to wrap up this tribute I’d like to share a special playlist with you in screen shot below.

When I created the playlist to for my Dad’s memorial I carefully and proudly chose a mix from what I like to call my Dad’s Musical Trilogy: Neil Diamond, Gloria Estefan and Whitney Houston. He had many other favorite artists, but usually one of those three was likely to be playing on the stereo when ever my dad was around.

Besides those artists, I also mixed in a few of my own personal picks that have special meaning to me for myriad reasons. I hope you enjoy the playlist and found comfort in this tribute. Thank you for traveling through this post with me and feel free to ask any questions and add your own picks in the comments below.

Rest in Peace Dad. We will miss you.

Dad's Memorial Playlist

Secret shows are always a fun way to add even more excitement to the live music experience. And on August 28, Jansport is inviting fans to the inaugural Bonfire Sessions hosted by Seattle’s indie-folk band The Cave Singers.  Read on for more info about how to find the location for the secret outdoor celebration.

For those of you in the Seattle area and itching to go, here’s the info on how you can get a chance to cozy up around the campfire and soak up the soulfully slow-burning folky tunes of The Cave Singers in the intimate setting under a blanket of twinkling summer stars:

Beginning at 5:30 pm on the eve of the show, JanSport will transport party-goers to the event in style from one undisclosed Seattle bus stop and back.

For exact pick-up location, visit JanSport’s music blog, Unzipped on August 25, when the Seattle bus stop will be revealed.

We’re told that admission is limited to this exclusive concert. And for more info about the event you can visit the JanSport Unzipped blog: www.jansport.com/unzipped and JanSport Facebook fan page www.facebook.com/jansport.

Share Your Story
We’ve enjoyed exploring the wonders of Blogotheque’s Take Away redefined concert settings, and we’d love to hear about your Bonfire Session experience.

You’re invited to Tell Your Bonfire Sessions Story and other secret show experiences in the comments below.

You can also check out more exclusive Live Fix fan interviews here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You already know how good Prince’s tribute during the BET awards was. And we all know the creative development that Prince went through over the course of his career.
Now, I’d like to introduce you to Mishon.

The 17-year-old R&B/Rap artist and actor has been wowing audiences since he was seven years old and 10 ten years later he continues to develop his talents as a live performer. And after watching his impressive opening set at BET awards (video above), I was curious to learn how that experience impacted him and why performing live lets him be who he really is.

We’ve explored the battle between openers and headliners before.

But we’re not exploring battles this time. Maybe later.

For now, in this interview with Mishon, we’re going to explore the inspirational and creative elements that make up his live show.

We’re going to voyage inside the mind and heart Mishon to discover:

• What he overcame before his BET performance
• How his work as an actor on the TV show Lincoln Heights helped shape him
• What artists have inspired his fan-to-artist-transformation
• The studio-to-live-show insights surrounding the recording his forthcoming debut album The Yearbook.

LF: How have your experiences as an actor on Lincoln Heights helped you develop your live concert performance?

Mishon: Well, I was actually a singer before Lincoln Heights. I had performed in various venues around US and Canada. But acting and performing go hand in hand because you have to become someone else.

Over the last several years, you’ve performed on Showtime at the Apollo Kids Talent Search, Steve Harvey’s Apollo West and NBC’s “America’s Most Talented Kid. What would you say is the biggest similarity and the biggest difference, between being an actor and performing live in concert?

The difference is in acting I have to play roles that aren’t me. In singing, even though I take it up a notch, on stage it’s still who I am.

How was your experience in the studio recording your debut album The Yearbook been different from performing the album’s tracks live at the BET awards?

I’ve enjoyed being able to share the music we made in the studio with my fans. I’m always learning how much work it takes, around 2-6 hours, to finish one song. Performing is one of my favorite things. Every time I get on stage, my goal is to bring energy and that energy always comes right back from the audience. That’s what I do this for.

What did you learn the most during your opening performance at the BET awards?

It was a pleasure to perform at the awards. I was supposed to hook up my electric guitar but we had a small problem that wouldn’t allow it. So I learned to expect the unexpected.

At the age of seven you surprised your family—and yourself—when you belted out a moving rendition of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” at your great-grandfather’s funeral. You’ve said that that moment helped you to break out of your shell. What other moments, or in what other ways, have your favorite artists influenced your live performance style since then?

When I was 10 years old I used to watch Usher and Michael Jackson DVD’s before a show. I studied how they captivated the crowd and demanded the stage. I was also intrigued on how they were able to sing live and dance at the same time. So I guess I learned true showmanship from them.

What was it like for you during the BET Michael Jackson and Prince tributes?
The tributes were great, I thought Chris did a good job. The light show was my favorite part. I think next year Me, Usher, Chris and Omarian should come together and give the world the greatest tribute ever. Prince is another inspiration. He’s so talented and to put on a great show while playing instruments is remarkable. Being that the awards were around the time we lost MJ and Prince was being honored, I wanted to put together a performance that celebrated both legends.

Thank you to Mishon for sharing his story and concert experiences. You can check out his latest mp3 releases and videos on:

Myspace: www.myspace.com/mishon

Youtube: youtube.com/mishontheyearbook

Twitter: twitter.com/mishon

iTunes: “Turn It Up” ft. Rosco Dash

What Do You Think…

is the most important element, skill or talent an opening artist needs to develop besides his musical ability?

Who have been some of your favorite, or most surprising, opening acts this year?

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are a lot of moments I will never forget about Lollapalooza 2010. As I told you earlier this week a lot of great performances lifted me off my feet and dropped my jaw.

But on the flipside, there are a few things that could make Lollapalooza better for fans, bands and everyone in between. And this is how we can take the 2011 festival experience to the next level.

Though I didn’t see it live, I think that this Lady Gaga crowd-surfing moment captured in the video above is a great 90-second representation of the kind of urgency and intensity that festival organizers should act with when considering these 3 Ways to Improve the Lollapalooza Fan Experience.

More importantly, that video shows us how powerful live music is psychologically, physiologically and sociologically.

Just Imagine…

what if we were able to serve the fans in that video by exploring, celebrating and fully understanding why that crowd-surfing moment and the other unforgettable moments experienced by the 255,000 Lolla fans were so amazing?

1. Discover Lolla’s “150″ and Stick To It

Going into Lollapalooza 2010 I had my doubts about the increased capacity limits that reached 85,000 per day.

And after thinking about my experience at Lollapalooza, I believe one of the reasons why I felt more disconnected from my fellow fans this year was because of the increased crowd capacity.  So, no, increasing the capacity limit didn’t make the festival experience any better for fans or the music experience.

And over the this past week, I’ve realized that Lollapalooza needs consider Dunbar’s “150 Rule,” which, to paraphrase, states that once a group of people exceeds 150 people in number the quality of the connections and relationships between the group members tends to deteriorate and weaken. Essentially we, as humans, tend to thrive and develop best in small more manageable groups.

Does Lolla need to create their own version of Dunbar’s “150 Rule” to figure out a new approach to crowd capacity and how they lay out the festival across Grant Park? Yes.

Lollapalooza might have increased the acreage of the grounds to give fans more room to walk from stage to stage, but a bigger Lolla still didn’t solve the overcrowding at the main stages. And increasing to 112 acres only made all the non-music experiences — sponsor and non-profit booths — too spread out and disconnected.

Plain and simple. For next year, Lolla needs to consider a different approach.

Instead of figuring out how many fans they can cram into Grant Part to make the most money, festival organizers need to spend their time thinking of how to make the festival more interactive and engaging for the right amount of fans. I don’t know what that number is exactly.  All I know is that it should be closer to or less than 65,000 per day.

If they do that then they will increase the value of the Lollapalooza experience and the price of the $215 ticket will be much more worth it than it is now.

Because let’s be honest, most fans don’t see all 120 bands.  Most fans probably see about half of them, if that.

Yes, I completely understand the festival promoters rationale when they say that fans are getting a great deal because their getting to see 120 bands at less than a dollar a band.

But that’s always seemed like a ridiculous way to sell a concert experience. And it’s really a joke that I don’t find funny any more.  Especially when I know that fans deserve a lot more than what they’re getting at Lollapalooza.

For me, the future value of the Lollapalooza experience lies in the quality of the experience not just the quantity.

Meaning, a smaller, more focused Lollapalooza equals a better value and overall experience for the fans.

Now, let’s take a look at the two other areas where Lollapalooza can up the ante and make the fan experience far better for 2011 and beyond.

2. Sponsors Should Create More Engaging and Interactive Experiences

If Lollapalooza isn’t going to get any smaller, then they at least they and the sponsors need to offer more engaging and interactive experiences.

I went to the booths sponsored by Sony, Toyota and took a walk through the “World Largest Shoe Box sponsored by Adidas.  And I ended up walking out of all of them feeling disappointed and thinking how they could have done SO much more.

Adidas Mega "World's Largest Shoe Box" at Lollapalooza

There is a great opportunity for Lollapalooza and its sponsors to revolutionize the musical festival experience beyond just the music.

Yes, I know the sponsors are there to sell and promote their products, but that doesn’t mean the experience and the marketing has to be lame or trite for fans.

I think Lollapalooza and their sponsors should step up their game and take time to think of ways to educate, entertain and enlighten music fans during the festival.

How Can They Do This?

Well, for starters, they should find creative ways to use their products to explore the sensory, emotional and psychological aspects of the live music experience. Just like the Concert Experiments and Explorations we’ve been doing here on Live Fix, I’d like to see Lollapalooza do things on a much bigger scale and do it either live at the festival while the music is happening, right after the show, or before the show.

Like I said, there are so many possibilities to explore and Lollapalooza and its sponsors need to start diving into the possibilities right now.

Where Should They Start? What Should They Do?

There are many ways sponsors like Sony, for example, could create a sound or visual experience that takes fans deeper into the details of why live music is so amazing.

Wouldn’t it be cool to go to a Phoenix or Arcade Fire set at Lolla and afterward have the chance to go into an interactive booth where they showed you how your brain and heart responded to the music during the show?

Adam draws before MGMT

Before MGMT started their set on Sunday I spoke with a fan, Adam, who was drawing a sketch that was inspired by what he saw and felt as the masses buzz with pre-show excitement all around him.

Now, what if we did give fans the opportunity to create their own artistic responses using video, photos or other media live on-site just moments after the concert? I think we would all be very amazed at what was created and discovered. I know I’m looking forward to seeing how Adam’s drawing turned out.

What Experts Should Lolla Enlist To Create These Interactive Experiences and Experiments?

Well, for starters, they should team up with neurologists, scientists, psychologists, experimenters, sociologists and writers like Oliver Sacks, Daniel Levitin and Matthew Fox and the crew from MythBusters (to name a few).

By working with these cutting-edge thinkers and scientists, I’m sure Lollapalooza and its sponsors could create truly engaging, memorable and revolutionary interactive experiences that are better than the cliche spin-a-wheel-to-win-a-free-bandanna, button or a commemorative towel sponsor experiences you see at Lolla and other music festivals.

If Lollapalooza and its sponsors found a why to create live on-site concert “experiment booths” that go beyond the usual “here, take your picture in our car” gimmicks, I know the relationship between the fans, Lollapalooza and the sponsors would be much stronger and far more genuine.

I want to see more things like:

• The Silent Disco
• Rothbury’s Reincarnation
• An integration that mixes live-streaming, social media and live concerts to create an engaging and revolutionary new hybrid experience that connects fans on-site with those watching at home.
• Exclusive exhibits that allow fans to explore the history of live music or concert genealogy in a new type of on-site virtual museum similar to the Bethel Woods Woodstock Exhibit that can only be experienced at Lollapalooza.
• Lolla’s mobile app was great to use, so let’s do more experimenting with mobile and Augmented Reality .
• A Discovery Channel Booth with MythBusters doing tests to disprove myths about concert culture.

And if sponsors offered experiences like these that gave fans the chance to discover amazing and helpful insights into what we think and feel during a concert, then I know I wouldn’t be so bothered by the corporate naming of the stages.

3. Integrate Mental Health and Addiction Awareness Into the Festival Experience

The last thing I’d like to see at Lollapalooza 2011 is the presence of mental health and addiction non-profit sponsors.

Back when it first started out, Lollapalooza prided itself on bringing emerging life-styles, provocative thinking and cutting-edge music to the mainstream.

And it still does today.

But it’s time festival originator Perry Farrell and his team take another big step forward.

They need to go beyond the music experience and meet the emerging mental health needs of fans.  And whether it’s inside the festival or outside the grounds on the city streets and walls — like one anti-Lady Gaga fan did below — fans will express their emotions in all types of ways. So why not give fans an official place where they can express them selves and also understand how live concert culture influences their emotions?

Entertaining anti-Gaga fan art just outside the Lolla grounds

Lollapalooza should see that our culture, especially rock concert culture, is in great need of the presence of on-site mental health counselors and drug addiction organizations at music festivals.

Yes, having mental health and addiction counselors at music festivals may seem very un-rock and roll, but really, I saw many of my fellow concert fans who could have used the help and knowledge of trained counselors who care about the well-being and health of festivalgoers.

Do We Really Need This At Music Festivals?

Yes. Absolutely.

And here’s a few reasons why we do.

This year at Lollapalooza I saw Japanese metal legends X Japan perform for the first time on North American soil. And they rocked the stage in the most epic way.

But there was something else about X Japan that made their performance emotionally unique and intriguing to me.

In my pre-show research I discovered that in 1998 X Japan’s original guitarist Hideto Matsumoto (aka Hide) commitment suicide. And when the group reunited in 2008 for show in Japan, they actually had a hologram of Hide playing the guitar parts of the songs. You can see it in the video below as the band performs their legendary song “Art of Life.” ( Hide’s hologram comes in at the 3:32 mark.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, I was amazed when I heard about that. I can’t even imagine what it must of been like for the fans (and the band) during that concert in 2008.

I know on some level the emotions of the crowd must have been raw and beyond palpable.

And I bet several fans went home after the show with heavy hearts thinking about Hide and how he took his life and why he did it.

I felt the same way when I saw Modest Mouse play “Float On” at Lollapalooza 2007. That concert and others, inspired me to write about experiencing grief, joy and community in live music.

I was curious to see if others felt the same way during concerts, so I sent that post to friends and colleagues.

And the responses in the comments and via email from my friends and colleagues confirmed that the live concert experience is not just as a place to escape from the daily grind, but it’s also a place where we encounter and feel a wide range of  emotions. Concerts are also a place where we find comfort and experience healing with our fellow live music fans.

The concert experience is a complex emotional experience. Some fans feel joy while others are ambushed by their grief unexpectedly when the band plays their favorite song that triggers a memory.

Whatever  and however we feel during our favorite concerts, I know all concert fans can benefit in some way by having the chance to explore our emotions and our mental health in creative ways while we’re at the concert.

One of the reasons I loved Arcade Fire’s set at Lollapalooza this year was because both the music and the communal emotional connection among the fans was so genuine and palpable. As the band played tracks from 2005′s Funeral, I thought about my three friends who committed suicide around the same time that album came out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That said, what if after that Arcade Fire show there were mental health experts or an interactive experience where I could explore what I was feeling internally? I know it would have been very telling to see inside my brain and heart as Win Butler and company tore through the show and conjured up a massive upward rush of grief and sorrow that ultimately turned in to cathartic celebration with thousands of other fans around me.

And I know that current mental health research has begun to use forms of real-time treatment and counseling to treat addiction. So why don’t we find a way to use that research to enhance the live music experience for the sake of the fans?

Knowledge is power, my friend. And for the same reasons why I love watching the Discovery Channel or reading How Stuff Works, I think it would be completely awesome if we were able to learn more about our bodies and brains through the exploration of our life-changing concert experiences.

If you need any more convincing why Lollapalooza — one of the premier music festivals in the world — needs to integrate mental health and addiction experts into the festival experience, you need only to look at the brilliance and popularity of TV shows like A&E’s Intervention, VH1′s Celebrity Rehab, and talk radio shows like Loveline.

Like the responses I received from my friends, those shows confirm that there is an increasing number of people looking for answers and more knowledge about fighting addition and living a sober life. I also spoke with fans and musicians at Lollapalooza who told me that, just like Eminem, they’ve actually had better concert experiences sober than when they were drunk or high.

So it’s time to see Lollapalooza lead the way in concert culture, and make mental health and addiction awareness part of the fans experience during the festival.

Lollapalooza has done a great job encouraging fans to vote by having Rock The Vote on-site. And if they can dedicate an entire area on the festival grounds to teaching fans how to live green and recycle (which are also very important to the future of our world), then they can also think of ways to serve concert fans by educating and enlightening them about how addiction and mental health awareness can have a positive impact on their festival experience and the rest of their lives.

Is This A Challenge? Is This Controversial?

YES.

But I know this can be done without alienating or taking the fun out of the concert experience. And like I mentioned earlier, having mental health and addiction awareness at Lollapalooza might even make some concert experiences better.

However we do it and whatever it looks like, we just have to find a way to do it and start thinking about how to make it happen right now.

How Would You Improve Lollapalooza?

Well, live music fans, that wraps up our coverage of Lollapalooza 2010. From Gaga and The Arcade Fire to thinking about a better Lolla, I had a blast sharing my experiences with you.

And I hope you enjoyed it too! As always, we’d like to hear your thoughts.

Tell us your Lollapalooza story and let us know…what would you do to improve next year’s festival.