It doesn't bother me either.

"As long as they do it well" What he said.

The majority of professional bands use backing tracks in part or all of their shows. All that stuff Rick said was nothing new to me.

I think the first place I really listened to this was in Tucson. Andy Timmons was doing demos for Messa Boogie and playing to his albums with the guitar part removed. Andy was running Pro Tools on a laptop. My interest at the time was to take on stage studio effects we could not produce live so the live stuff sounded like the record.

We always use a click track in the studio. Using backing tracks with a live drummer requires a drummer who can play to a click track.

I think backing tracks enhance the music when well done.

Billy

Really, who gives a damn?

I was watching Christian artists use backing tracks live 50 years ago about the time that PA systems started getting good. This one guy touring with Hal Lindsey was really good at it. He and his songs were forgettable but the way he cued everything with a footswitch into a REVOX r-r while he was talking was most impressive. That church had just installed its $100,000 wireless PA, the first I ever heard that actually worked as designed. 1973 IIRC.

Ain't nothing new here.

I think it's fine for producing music or playing free gigs
but I'm not paying to listen someones recordings..period
I caught on to all that a long time ago when watching a keyboard player play the impossible.
I got ten fingers and I'm a decent keyboard player but NOBODY is that good.
Yeah, it makes for a good show but if I'm paying I want to see what you can do just yourself.
I remember long time ago watching Jessi Colin Young at a summer jam and he stepped on his chord and unplugged himself.
What a wonderful Pop and Spark it made and watching him reach down and plug back in was extremely satisfying.
Nice to know I'm getting the real deal.

It had to be 35 years ago because I have been running my company for 32 years and this event happened while I was on staff with a big company at a staff retreat.

We were being put up at a pretty swanky condo/hotel complex at Myrtle Beach. I went to the bar and there was a band playing there. Basically, two guys on stage. One playing the guitar, the other playing the bass and both singing. However, it was a full band sound.... strings, piano, drums, along with vocal harmonies, guitar switching tone from solo to rhythm, and even the lights were synced to the music.

My first thought was they were running tape.... So on the break, I spoke to the guitarist about the missing instruments and he explained that they were both studio musicians who put this "band" together to play the MB house gig. It wasn't tape. He showed me a computer... it was an old 286 dos machine.... state of the art at the time. Running Cakewalk sequencing and sending the midi to various midi modules for the other instruments. It also ran the guitar processor, the vocal harmonizer, and the lighting processor, all synced to the music. It took them a few days to a week per song to get the parts in and debugged. This was amazing technology for the time. Some time later, I met a local musician who was an early adopter of Cakewalk sequencing and I had a chance to spend more time with him asking questions about how it all worked. He's turned me on to some pretty cool stuff through the years.

Maybe this whole backing tracks thing explains a few of the concerts I went to sounding as good as they did considering what I was actually seeing on the stage. Heck... even Queen did this in the Bohemian Rapsody vocal layering part in the center of the song..... they'd dim the lights considerably and turn them back up after the vocal harmony part was done.... Even ZZ Top...I've seen them live 3x..... when there's 2 cats on stage with bass and guitar, and you hear a second guitar part and the sequencing that they have in some of their songs.......Can't say that I blame them though....

Personally, I don't care if you're using tracks.... as long as the whole show isn't a farce (Millie Vanillie for example)

I’ve been to concerts where extra musicians were hidden behind a curtain. I can see them doing that to not detract from the presence of a band.

I wasn’t sure what Beato was going to say. But I was happily surprised.

Some bands using backing tracks for, say, filling in that keyboard part that they don't have enough people for and Motley Crue or Kiss faking it and miming because they can't play or sing anymore are two entirely different things. Let's not get the two confused.

Well, the band also left the stage and changed costumes during that break. There was no attempt to hide the fact that the middle section was a recording. I saw them five times while Freddie Mercury was still alive.