The Philip DeFranco Show - MS 5.3 Should the Dead Stay Dead?! How Holograms Are Bringing Late Musicians Back On Tour!

Episode Date: May 2, 2019

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Sup you beautiful bastard, hope you've been a fantastic morning, afternoon, night. Welcome to today's extra video. And with today's, we're doing something a little bit different, because we're going to be talking about the future of music, concerts, international tours, and bringing artists back from the dead. It's alive! It's alive! Also, no, just so we're clear, we're not talking about zombies or reincarnation. What we're actually talking about are holograms,

and a little more specifically, concerts and tours featuring hologram musicians. And of course, one of the most famous examples of bringing an artist back to life through a hologram is Tupac at Coachella in 2012. But before we dive into those tours and performances, let's talk about the science behind holograms. Even though we're using the word hologram,

these musicians aren't true holograms. True holograms use an array of lights to project a 3D image which you can view from all sides, kind of like the technology you might have seen in Star Wars. But currently, the technology to create a true holograms. True holograms use an array of lights to project a 3D image which you can view from all sides, kind of like the technology you might have seen in Star Wars. But currently the technology to create a true hologram of a musician that can perform on stage timed perfectly to music doesn't really exist, at least not yet. So the question is, well, how are companies doing it? Well, most are using an illusion known as Pepper's Ghost. If you've ever been on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, it's how they created the ghosts in the ballroom. This is actually a technique that's been around for more than

150 years. In fact, here's a diagram of the illusion being used in the 1800s. Like that old diagram shows, the illusion uses a sheet of glass, precise lighting, and an offstage subject to create what looks to be a three-dimensional hologram or a ghost. But despite all this, people have called the recreation of artists holograms. So just for the sake of not adding confusion, that's what we're gonna do as well. Now as technology has gotten better in recent years, hologram companies have been able to create lifelike figures by combining motion capture graphics and CGI. And that's partially why we've seen more artists coming back to the stage in the last few years.

But even with better technology, there are still a ton of challenges and hurdles in bringing hologram musicians to a stage. So with all of that in mind, today we're gonna be taking a look at how different tours featuring holograms of legendary dead musicians are dealing with those challenges. You'll even get to hear from some of the people involved in putting one of those tours together. And ultimately we're gonna be taking a look at how different tours featuring holograms of legendary dead musicians are dealing with those challenges. You'll even get to hear from some of the people involved in putting one of those tours together.

And ultimately we're gonna talk about whether or not we'll see more hologram concerts in the future. So on that note, to take you down the rabbit hole, we had Alyssa Shinicki from the Rogue Rocket team jump into it. On February 3rd, 1959, three legendary rock and roll musicians boarded a small plane headed for North Dakota. And what happened next shocked the world. We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin. Three young singers who soared to the heights of show business on the current rock and roll craze were killed today in the crash of a light plane in an Iowa snow flurry. The singers were identified as Richie Valens, 17, Buddy Holly, 22, and J.P. Richardson, known professionally as the Big Bopper. The deaths of Holly, Valens,

and Richardson have been immortalized in rock and roll history and are, known professionally as the Big Bopper. The deaths of Holly, Valance, and Richardson have been immortalized in rock and roll history and are often referred to as the day the music died. But 60 years later, Buddy Holly, the former singer of memorable songs like Peggy Sue and That'll Be the Day, is going on tour again, or at least a hologram version of him is. Now, Holly obviously isn't the first hologram musician to perform in concert. Phil already mentioned Tupac at Coachella in 2012. But Tupac's performance wasn't the first time a hologram of a real-life artist performed on a stage in front of a live audience either. Six years earlier, in 2006, Madonna performed with the Gorillaz at the Grammy Awards. And if you're familiar with the Gorillaz, you know they're a virtual band.

And during their performance, they did appear as holograms. But Madonna also appeared as a hologram alongside the band during her song, Hung Up. And you can really tell at this moment, when she walks behind Murdoch, the gorilla's virtual bassist. But Madonna and Tupac aren't the only examples of real people taking the stage in hologram form in recent years. In 2013, old Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan appeared on stage in New York nearly 10 years after his death. A year later, a hologram Michael Jackson moonwalked across the stage at the Billboard Music Awards. And in 2016, the late Latin artist Jenny Riviera performed on stage at a Day of the Dead event in Los Angeles. But all those

holograms were singular performances. It wasn't until two years ago that the first hologram musician went on tour. In late 2017, Ronnie James Dio appeared on several stages throughout Europe, despite passing away seven years earlier. But like Phil said, this year, there are multiple tours scheduled to feature several hologram musicians. So is this the beginning of a new frontier for music and concerts? Are we about to see hologram versions of our favorite late musicians come back to the stage? Well, that's a really complicated answer, because creating a hologram version of a formerly living artist is tricky business.

Not only do companies have to secure the rights to the artist and their music, they also have to have the money to build the expensive technology. And ultimately, even if a company gets those rights and has stacks of cash ready to go, it comes down to what fans think, because you need fans to have a concert.

So let's talk about how fans have reacted to some of these concerts and what the reviews have been like. So let's talk about how fans have reacted to some of these concerts and what the reviews have been like. And well, a lot of these hologram performances and tours have received mixed reviews from both critics and fans. And while praise has ranged from how realistic the hologram moves to great audio quality, negative reviews tend to cite the strange feeling audience members have while watching the hologram. For example, Billboard wrote this opinion piece about Tupac's appearance at Coachella where they said, quote, On Twitter hours after, the general consensus on the stunt seemed to be, the Tupac hologram made me uncomfortable, and I'm not sure why. But there may actually be a

reason why some of these holograms make people feel uneasy. The Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley is a theory that hypothesizes there's a relationship between how human something can look and act and our reaction to that object. On the left, we can see that if something doesn't look very human, people don't tend to have either positive or negative feelings about the object. For example, if I show you this Roomba, you probably don't feel much.

But if we give a robot some more human features, like maybe some eyes and arms, your feelings might start to change. Wally was pretty cute, right? While on the other side of the spectrum if you can create something that's indistinguishable from a real person the idea is humans will just accept it as one of their own or they'll just forget the object isn't human in the first place. But the valley, this part right here, that's where the theory suggests people get this uneasy feeling. The idea

is if a person sees something that's human-like but not quite right, they're repulsed by it. Creepy, right? And in the case of hologram musicians, the illusions can fall into this valley for a lot of different reasons. For example, maybe the artist looks real but the voice sync is off. Or maybe the hologram doesn't move exactly like the artist did when they were alive. So for hologram companies, avoiding the uncanny valley is really important for a good fan experience. So that leads us to the next question. How have hologram companies tried to stay out of the valley?

And to answer that, we're gonna look at two different recent hologram tours. The first is the In Dreams Roy Orbison in Concert Tour that took place in 2018 and was created by a company called Bass Hologram. And the second is the Bizarre World of Frank Zappa, which was created by a company called Illusionologram. And the second is the bizarre world of Frank Zappa, which was created by a company called Illusion and is touring right now.

Now, much like the musicians themselves, both the Roy Orbison and Frank Zappa tours do share some similarities. For example, both feature never-been-heard performances. The Roy Orbison hologram performed his song "'I Drove All Night," which was released after his death. And the Zappa Show features never-been-released versions

of famous songs like Montana and Dynamo Hum. The tours also both feature live music to accompany the hologram, with Roy backed by a live orchestra and Zappa by former Mothers of Invention bandmates. But that's where the similarities really stop, because the way the two tours have tried to combat the Uncanny Valley couldn't be more different. The 2018 Roy Orbison tour took a similar approach to combating the valley that a lot of other hologram performances have tried. The tour tried to create a real concert fans could have witnessed while Orbison was alive.

Or in other words, the tour tried to land on the right side of the Uncanny Valley. In an interview with ABC, Bass Hologram CEO Brian Becker had this to say about the show. I think people are gonna either relive what it was like if you were lucky enough to see him or see him in a whole different way and in a very contemporary way if you're a fan today.

So how did they aim to recreate a live performance of the late Roy Orbison? Well, in order to answer that question, it's important to understand who Orbison was as an artist. Roy Orbison was best known for two things, his signature black sunglasses and his incredible voice capable of intensely powerful crescendos. And even though Orbison was a natural baritone, some music scholars have said that he had a three or four octave range.

Elvis Presley even once called Orbison the greatest singer in the world. And when it came to live performances, Orbison never danced. In fact, he barely moved other than to play his guitar. But Roy's shows were never about stage performance. He probably put it best. What happens is I sing and the audience watches me do that. So that's exactly what the hologram show aimed to recreate. Orbison stood center stage, wearing his black glasses and strumming his guitar.

He didn't dance or move about much. At one point, he did turn to the orchestra and wait for a cue at the beginning of Pretty Woman. But that's about it in terms of movement. So just like his concerts in the 60s, Roy Orbison in Dreams, the hologram tour, ultimately aimed to put emphasis on Roy's voice to stay to the right of the Uncanny Valley. The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa, on the other hand,

aims to stay to the left of the Uncanny Valley. For those of you in the audience with an interest in things scientific, you'll be able to see our incredibly expensive hologram hanging in the middle of the stage. And to get some more insight on how this current tour hopes to do that, I spoke with two people who are integral in the creation of the tour. Jeff Pizzuti, the CEO of Illusion, the hologram company behind the show, and Amit Zappa, Frank Zappa's son, who's also directing the show. The pair told me their concerts won't aim to recreate a live show at all.

We try to kind of lean into the fact that, well, we know that this person has passed away and we're not trying to make you believe that, oh yeah, this person is alive again. That's too much of a stretch, I think. I can tell you right now, I don't know what camera to look into. This is the show that you, I don't know that you recover from. This may send you into a straitjacket. It is such a fucking mind, a mind fuck. Yeah. Right?

Your brain is going to melt in your skull, pour out of your ears, right? And then you're going to try to snort your brains back into your head because of what this show is like. And unlike the Roy Orbison tour, the Zappa shows don't just feature the legendary artist's center stage. Massive screens also surround Pepper's ghost illusions, which the pair say was an attempt to embrace the technology available to them. When you have this magic box that we have, and you can make anything appear there, why the fuck wouldn't you? Jeff says the Zappa tour was also inspired

by Frank's music and career. When we first decided to announce the Zappa thing, and we had a commitment that it's going to be mind-blowing, crazy, everything that we thought that his father would be about, we're going to try and incorporate into the songs. When you go to one of my dad's shows, you expect super high levels of musicianship.

You expect there to be these kind of improvisational moments. You expect humor. You expect certain songs that you're familiar with. You want to hear new experiments on stage new, you know, experiments on stage. And I think we've done. decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply.

Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale expertise and innovative payment solutions learn more at visa.ca slash fintech and frank zappa's career in music can easily be described as bizarre his music ranged from funny to political to sexual to futuristic and he combined rock jazz classical avant-garde and even duo zappa also wasn't afraid to shake the status quo or say outrageous things either.

Some scientists say that the major building block of the universe is hydrogen because it's the most plentiful element, but my theory is that the universe is made out of stupidity because it is more plentiful than hydrogen. I was happy to outrage anybody who liked to be outraged. And to embrace the bizarre and outrageous, the show won't just star a realistic version of Zappa either. We also took a creative choice on this show that the things that sort of magically appear, some of the illusions on the stage,

are not just a photoreal version of Frank. You'll get the hot dog, the Frankfurter Zappa version of Frank, you know, on stage. You might see the supernatural dental floss version of Frank on stage. But at the end of the day, while each tour has had a different approach, the deciding factor is the fan experience. So how have fans reacted?

Well, for Roy, the answer was mixed. The LA Times noted some fans were over the moon about the show. Quote, fans screamed as they quickly positioned their smartphones to record the spectral image. This is as good as seeing him in person as you'll ever get, Marveled the 71-year-old Ray Sadowski, who paid about $200 for a pair of tickets

to the Tuesday night show. But others were a bit more harsh. The Telegraph wrote in their review that fans were unwilling to fully believe Orbison was back on stage, and therefore they believed the performance fell into the valley. Quote, applause was underpinned it was about as dead as could be.

That review closed with this line. To quote the Orbigram's classic closing song, Pretty Woman, Several negative reviews also cited people felt uncomfortable at how Orbison entered and exited the stage, which he did several times throughout the show. In this fan video, you can see Roy ascend center stage from a solid floor like a ghost.

At another point in the show, Roy looked like he was killed by Thanos. It was at these moments during the show that the suspension of disbelief by even the biggest Roy Orbison fans would have been hard. In order to garner how fans responded to the Zappa show, I traveled to Port Chester, New York to attend the first show of the tour.

The show opened to a nearly sold-out audience at the historic Capitol Theater, but the energy in the theater before Zappa's band, The Mothers of Invention, took the stage was mixed. Some fans told me they had no expectations for the show. Others were ecstatic in anticipation to see Frank again, while some said they were just eager to hear the mothers play again. The show kicked off at 8 p.m. without any technical difficulties,

and as fans poured into their seats, the mothers opened with Frank's song, Cosmic Debris. On stage, stars and Cosmos aligned to form the outline of Frank Zappa's face and iconic mustache. Two and a half minutes into the song, fans got their first glimpse of the realistic version of Frank's hologram. And at the end of the song, hologram Zappa addressed the crowd. The next song featured was Montana, where a supernatural dental floss version of Zappa

appeared. And as was true with most of the night, audience members bobbed their heads up and down, but mostly remained seated. The song was met again with cheers and applause. Next up was More Trouble Every Day, where the show took its most serious tone of the night. The mothers were surrounded by footage and headlines of Martin Luther King Jr., police brutality, and school shootings. Archival footage of Frank Zappa appeared on the digital newspapers. It was nearly 40 minutes before the realistic version of Frank Zappa would appear on stage again. But as the show progressed, audience members seemed to be more engaged and cheers got louder and louder after each song. But the show still received mixed reviews from some in attendance. Several Zappa fans I spoke

with were thrilled with the performances and noted visually the show surpassed their expectations. On a more personal note, I can say I wasn't aware of Frank Zappa's music prior to researching this piece, but I thoroughly enjoyed the show. I was totally engaged for the two-hour performance, and even though I was hearing some of the music for the first time,

after leaving the show, I even downloaded the set list. Most fans I spoke to said they had never felt the show was uncomfortable or awkward, but the show wasn't without its flaws, according to some. Several longtime Zappa fans told me they felt the visuals were actually too over the top. One fan told me, quote, It was quite a production. Visually, it was pretty spectacular. Too much so, actually.

After a while, it gave me a headache. And multiple people used the word cartoonish to describe what they thought of the show. I also spoke with audience members who weren't lifelong fans of Zappa, but wanted to experience a hologram concert, and they told me they wished the realistic version of Frank would have made more appearances throughout the night. Those same audience members, however, did also mention that the show had left them as new fans of Frank Zappa. And even though Ahmet and Jeff didn't want to recreate a live show, some fans were ultimately left longing for older days and shows of the past. So while the two shows that Alyssa talked about in this story took unique steps to combat the Uncanny Valley, neither were ultimately perfect. For some fans, the Rory Orbison show slipped into

the valley and created some awkward moments when the sense of realism really wasn't at its best. And for Zappa fans, at times, the bizarre world of Frank Zappa may have just been a little bit too bizarre. One thing we do know though, is that the technology involved is only gonna get better and better in the future. So with all of that said, we wanted to pass the question off to you.

Do you think that these hologram concerts are the way of the future? Do you think we're gonna see more musicians coming back from the dead in these kinds of shows? And if so, do you think they're going to combat the uncanny valley? Also in general, the idea of a hologram concert, what do you feel about that with all that said?

Thank you so much for watching if you liked today's show you want to support this video and everything that we're doing be sure to Hit that like button also You'd like to support the content that we're creating you can get a paid subscription or support one of our fantastic Sponsors at that link down below whether you do that or not be sure also Subscribe to make sure you get more of these videos in your future But with that said of course as always my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces, and I'll see you later today right back here on this channel with a brand new Philip DeFranco show.