When you get down to the brass and the balls of it, there are really two kinds of live act: there are bands that play like The Beatles and bands that play like The Rolling Stones. Both were great, but The Beatles stood on stage, swaying back and forth, smiling like school boys, and the crowd screamed and fainted. The Rolling Stones hopped around on stage and Keith Richards found a couple dozen inventive ways to play the guitar – inspiring guys like Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix to do the same – and were able to do crazy shit like incite riots and cause murders. The Beatles gave us the concept album and a level of pop artistry that you can trace directly from them through pop music history to artists like Michael Jackson. The Rolling Stones gave us the epic teeth-gritting ecstatic rock operatics that make some bands’ world tours into environmental hazards. It makes sense that one of these bands lives on through music and the other one is still performing worldwide (mind the dead Beatles).
So which kind of band is Bloc Party?
