As I write this article, I am sitting in a new apartment without Internet or even 3G on my phone to do any research at all about the subject I’m tackling here. (I’ll be submitting it to The Odyssey tomorrow morning by mooching from Starbucks or McDonalds WiFi, depending on whether I’m feeling privileged or like white trash.) The information presented here is basically all my own speculation and not an objective representation of the topic.

A personal tradition that I’ve recently begun is a concert night in the house. All that it consists of is watching one live concert movie a week, because I feel that I am seriously lacking in that area of music knowledge. A lot of my favorite bands have plenty of live performances I haven’t yet tracked down (The Smiths, for starters) and, honestly, it’s a little embarrassing. I kicked the lifelong(?) event off this week with "Serious Moonlight," a "Let’s Dance-"era David Bowie concert that my girlfriend owns on VHS. (If it counts, I watched the Bob Dylan doc, "Don’t Look Back" last week...) It got me thinking, what happened to concert movies?

I mean, I don’t think that concert movies have necessarily gone anywhere. One Direction and Justin Bieber released their own a few years back...I think. (Can you blame a 22-year-old male for not keeping up with such acts? ...Even if said 22-year-old male loved Bieber’s latest?) Didn’t Katy Perry have a concert movie? I know that Taylor Swift has a Fearless tour movie that I’ve been meaning to check out since my first semester of college. That’s all well and good, but they’re also the biggest name acts of our time (whether anyone likes it or not, I should probably add for the cynics). I understand that concert movies are expensive to produce, especially with the audio recording process, but there are some bands that I think would absolutely deliver, if given the chance. Those mid-range bands with fan-bases that are too large to be a cult, but haven’t yet achieved household name status deserve some archival footage for those who can’t make the show, too, don’t they? One of my favorite things to do, back when I had time for enjoyment, was watching bands perform acoustic versions of songs in the studio or in radio stations. I think that live performance is an integral part of the art of music and that this has never been more true than today, the age of YouTube. Ultimately, it’s just sad that we’ll never get to see some bands perform in high quality.

But...such is the business. It’s all about making the most money, and I understand that. I don’t love it, but that’s just the way things are. What I don’t understand is that (I feel) these sorts of recordings are a viable market that the industry just isn’t interested in pursuing. Recently, I can think of two very successful live productions put onto the stage and recorded for television audiences (and that successful part is based purely on my own speculation, gathered from word of mouth and general social media hype within my own circle), "The Wiz" and "Grease." Yes, those are theatrical productions and not concerts, but I feel they also deserve some more attention. "Hamlet" is a phenomenon right now, and a performance captured on (high quality) video could kill in theaters, on television, or the Internet. Personally, I’m still waiting for a proper recording of "The Book of Mormon" to watch. Would the upcoming "Rocky Horror Picture Show" remake be facing such trepidation if it was a theatrical production rather than a traditional movie? Expanding that (or diminishing it back) to pop concerts, why don’t we have movies for every big tour? For all its acclaim, why isn’t the "1989" tour on DVD for all to watch? What about Kanye West’s "Yeezus" tour, which has been edited into fan movies from assorted footage? I don’t have the money to attend Chance the Rapper’s upcoming tour, but I’d still like to watch a proper recording of a show or two.

I genuinely feel that people would be interested in such a thing and that it could make a lot of money. If a TV network decided to make a weekly (or even monthly) event out of airing a concert, I think it could really catch on and would love to see that happen. Maybe there’s a financial or some other sound reasoning behind it, but (at least until I get some Internet hook-up,) I for one will never understand this.