| (DON’T) SHUT
UP & PLAY THE MUSIC
Sick of being ignored by your favourite performer or band ? I’m
not suggesting that you are a stalker, but perhaps you are a modern
day concert-goer. Someone who’s bought the albums & now
buys a seat to see their chosen musical heroes as they play either
exactly like the record or utterly unlike it, both of which can
be good, but between songs don’t talk to their audience! This
is not a rehearsal in an empty hall, there are people paying rapt
attention to every nuance & gesture, listening intently &
yet the stage patter is often non existent or mumbled, surely they
could have anticipated the situation & thought of something
to say by now! Are they incapable or just rude?
Imagine if we sat silent between numbers, no applause
or whistles or simply mumbled amongst ourselves & ignoring them!
Years ago Van Morrison was canned for his Melbourne concert because
he did not say a word to the audience (& turned his back on
them for most of the time) & Neil Young who also played the
same week opened his concert with the faecetious “ They canned
Van for playing music & not talking, so tonight we’re
gonna talk & not play music!” But surely something in
between is not too much to ask. Our esteemed editor in last month’s
missive mentioned that Bob Dylan on his never ending tour does not
say anything to the awaiting throng, making you wonder if he is
really so phobic about being a spokesman for anything that he dare
not even speak. Mind you he rarely even speaks to his band, years
ago after a show at the Palais one of his stunned band members was
seen wandering around muttering "He spoke to me" as if
the sky had opened up. And this was half way through a world tour!
Even The Beatles & The Rolling Stones back
when they were powering through 25 minute sets that would put The
Ramones to shame still managed to engage with the audience with
a quip or 2, at least letting us know that they knew which town
or country they were in & who the hell they were playing to.
Mind you that can have it’s pitfalls, you can come across
as a “Yo Cleveland! ” Spinal Tap cliché or as
happened when a Festival Hall of B Boys & B Girls turned from
a rap along horde to a booing & abusive beast when Public Enemy’s
Flavor Flav yelled “ Yo Sydney! “ He may have known
what time it was, just not where he was.
But at least they made an effort. Most of these
people are intensely ambitious, it’s taken years of radio
& TV appearances, interviews, magazine articles, meet &
greets & photographic sessions to get to this point & now
they’re suddenly shy & “aw shucks” incoherent?
Surely someone would have pointed out to them by now that a concert
was not just about the music, that it was also about performance
& that that might require one or 2 words in an hour or so. Jackson
Browne, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Thompson & a few others manage
to include the audience into the performance, Browne in particular
on his recent acoustic tour was more than happy to chat to the audience
about his songs & even play oddball requests in a very entertaining
way,
I guess the exception to all this would be the
current crop of doom & gloom fragile folkies, who’s lyrics
would indicate that they find it difficult to walk out their own
front door, let alone walk on stage. This new sincerity thing is
making for some excruciating moments. Speaking of which, anyone
who witnessed the stunning slo-mo carcrash performance of The Brian
Jones Town Massacre’s lead singer’s on stage Melbourne
meltdown that was one long stream of conciousness rant inerspersed
with the occassional song fragment, would attest that too much talking
is more than enough.
What drags a lot of us away from our home stereo
& the money out of our wallets & into the live music venues
is the human factor, a curiosity & fascination with the person
or people behind the work that we’ve come to love & intimately
know, the desire to watch & hear the creator creating their
creation. It’s a special kind of magic. And by being there
we are part of the process, witnessing a series of once only moments
that will perhaps never be repeated again, that it’s different
because we are there. If it were just the music we could almost
make do with the CD or DVD, but it’s not, it’s a lot
more than just the music, there’s a yearning to commune, to
mesh with the moment & it is a bit of a jolt to suddenly have
an awkward silence, a self concious snigger, an embarassed shuffle
or eyes averted mumbled “thanks” as the punctuation
between works of such eloquence, style & & dignity. An actor
doesn’t relax & scratch his arse on stage just because
they’re not talking. The art continues.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating
lounge lizard style nightclub schtick but simply the awareness that
it’s SHOW business & the more you give the more that you
get back.
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