Thoughts about 2012

By make the show more complicated, you mean having someone push "go" at the appropriate times, over and over? For Garter shows, they had the stage manager pull that duty, while mixing and otherwise calling the show.

Luminosity just needs a rollup door from the booth so they can actually hear the show. The mix was generally bad even without a live band.

RideMan said:
I think a big part of the push for tracked shows has to do with automation. You can assign all of the lighting, video, and pyro cues to the timecode on the audio track, then all the performers just need to hit the marks.

You can still automate very easily with a live band. The drummers played along with a click track to keep them synced with lighting, video, and the track. Even the older Garter shows with all live instruments played to a click to keep everything consistent. It also helped avoid any "speed shows" where they'd purposely play everything a good 5-10 bpms faster so they could get out of work earlier.

Mind you I don't remember the last year they had a live band, but Garter shows absolutely varied in length. I saw them race through their set much faster in the final performances.