[Psycho - Live in 2004 :-) !]

EDIT: just watched the video shared above, it goes as far back as '99. Amazing it took that long to make it into a song.

I'm struggling to find it but I'm 99% sure there is video footage as far back as 2001 for the riff being played live. 

[LP9: WOTP Discussion/Speculation Thread]

On 7/26/2022 at 7:38 AM, Clunge said:

I much rather bands didn't attempt to capture the studio version/sound live – that's not why I go to gigs. The studio lets you do anything, layer it up with 80 different takes and embellishments, that's fine – that's the point of being in the studio, even more so these days when you can just add infinite tracks in ProTools and don't have to worry about bouncing things down like The Beatles did.

Live should then be about making that work live, not 100% faithfully recreating it. Pare it all back to the core components of the song. Get extra musicians in if you want / need, but the last thing I want are robotic recreations of studio versions. The perfect example being how Matt used to (perhaps still does) uses a backing track for the harmonics in the Stockholm Syndrome intro. It's just complete unnecessary. Same as when Chris used a backing track for the Time Is Running Out bassline (yes, I know he plays over the top of it, but he's since proved it wasn't necessary in the first place).

Also, Muse's songs really aren't all that complex or technical – either to actually play or recreate sonically. It's why I still find the rigidity of their sets quite irritating. Songs like Muscle Museum, Uno, Hyper Music, Dead Star, MK Ultra, The Handler, Reapers, etc, could easily be rotated in and out without issue is they thrashed them out in a rehearsal room on tour for an hour or so. Metallica manage this and their songs are infinitely more complex. Radiohead typically rehearse 60-70 songs per tour and rotate most of them. Pearl Jam's setlists are bananas. Pixies often manage 40 songs in a single set, more than Muse might rotate in four or five years. The Cure sometimes manage nearly that. Horses for courses perhaps, but Muse don't have a lot of excuses here.

While I understand the sentiment of frustration around rigidity of set lists, the production setup of the bands mentioned is very different. Marc Carolan (MUSE FOH engineer) has a few videos explaining his live setup - the layers of automation across his mixes, their integration with the visual setup is entirely different to how a band like Pearl Jam or Pixies are set up, so swapping songs in and out isn't as easy as rearranging a setlist.

I'd love to see them play more varied sets but sadly, they're not geared that way.

[WOTP NFT Release]

There's been an announcement that the band are to release an NFT version of WOTP, you can read about it in this article

Personally, I find it a shortsighted cash grab and an opportunity to be massively manipulated, exploited and exclusionary.

To give a better account of this, check out This twitter thread from Alan Graham who's way better placed to discuss the issues based on his industry & tech experience.

I'm wondering how fans feel about this?

Do you know much about NFTs and the touted benefits that come with the proposition? In the case of the WOTP album:

"The Muse NFT album will retail for £20 and will be limited to 1,000 copies globally. As both an NFT and a limited-edition format, it is relatively sparse in its offering. Buyers will get a downloadable version of the album – complete with different sleeve – as high-res FLAC files; the members of Muse will digitally sign it and each of the 1,000 buyers will have their names permanently listed on the linked roster of purchasers." 

Is this something that you'd buy? 

With a limit to 1000 pieces, do you see it as a potential investment? By comparison, I've always wanted to get my hands on the MUSE EP - its tangible, a real thing with real, limited numbers in thew world but I've never seen the benefit of legally owning what is essentially a digital receipt. If someone buys this, they could pass anybody copies of the FLAC files. Now, of course there is the opportunity to resell it in the future but what needs to happen to make it valuable enough that somebody would want to purchase it. 

In case you didn't read the article, from a commercial POV, Warner/MUSE would receive 15% of any future resales - what's stopping somebody coming with a way to manipulate the value to encourage resale and commercially cash in, in the future?

I appreciate my take on this is entirely biased because I don't like the current NFT market and how its being shaped.

Interest to know what others think and if you see some positives that I'm missing.