an0va's busking and performing thread (Page 1 of 3)

i hate seeing bands play what should be EXCITING music but nobody on stage who isn't stuck to their instrument (i.e. the drummer) is moving around. being boring makes you SOUND boring aaaaugh.

on stage i like to just be a fucking dickhead and flail around but i'm probably hella embarrassing to watch haha. at the last show i played the ceiling was kinda low and there was about a square metre of space for me to stand on, so i just kinda waved my hands around, bobbed my head and punched the rafters and ceiling

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+1 Xylo, but somehow he is right. Your t-shirt is awesome, and you know the audience loves it, as long as IT'S ATARI LOL1111Z

Hire an attractive female singer and lyricist just to write lyrics for your more melodic songs and to be your surrogate stage presence.

Foolproof plan!

Absolutely. Your music project or stage name is a brand, and you are making an investment in it every time you represent it in an official capacity, every time you perform. Regardless of your level of talent, being unprofessional isn't acceptable and will close doors, lose you fans, and alienate your audience. No matter how small time your act, or even how unremarkable your music itself might be, a show where everyone leaves the venue with a smile on their face having had a good time will get you booked again and again.

Conversely, I've seen famous and established musicians really fuck up by being rude to bandmates, other musicians, technicians, staff, and audience members. The best example I have is seeing Al Di Meola when I was like 19. He played at the Cactus Café, an established and renowned smaller venue on the University of Texas campus. He had mild and avoidable technical difficulties that he made big issues of, thereby upstaging himself. He brought a dual rectifier half-stack as his main amplifier, way too much amp for the venue, which his sound techs walled off with Lexan acoustic paneling  and dropped a mic in front of. He had a dedicated guitar tech literally adjusting his amp in real time as he played. Whenever he would get the slightest hint of feedback, he would roll his eyes and stare daggers into the guitar tech from center stage. At one point, a song ended after he had used the distortion channel, and he sat there staring at the tech instead of, you know, turning off the distortion to kill the feedback. At one point he dropped out of a song just to yell at the guitar tech about the minutiae of the amp, and he let the rhythm section maintain a pattern around him for the minute and a half he was offstage. After all of this, he commented into the microphone on stage that the venue was "smaller than his bathroom." Seriously unprofessional.

After the show, I ran into the guitar tech and shook his hand. I told him he'd done an amazing job working with the unfavorable circumstances, and that I was sorry that the musician had been rude to him during the performance. He said, totally unphased, "Ah, that's just Al."

The lessons here are simple, but very important ones:

• Plan Ahead

• Know Before You Go

• Work With What You Have

• No One Likes a Primadonna

• Don't Rely on Others to Solve Your Problems

• Blaming Others for Your Problems Doesn't Garner Respect

• Being an Artist is not a Free Pass to Disrespect Others

Seriously, though, I don't know why I was surprised that this guy's a tool:

EDIT: A much more recent example of an unprofessional professional musician losing a lot of respect is the Danzig Fiasco at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011. Virtually all of Austin now permanently knows Danzig as the guy who wouldn't play over French Onion Soup.

Last edited by Telerophon (Aug 26, 2012 12:13 pm)

i like your fucking style

just dont over think these things. jeez no one is paying to see a performing monkey. basically you try too hard and dance like a knob then of course you look like a knob. but you stand like a shy cardboard cut out and its pretty boring. Myself i dont really give a shit what people think when they look at me play, im pretty busy juggling between playing synths banging the mpc blah blah, so if people are like 'he doesnt interact with the crowd much' id say to them its cos im fucking busy keeping track of what im playing and thinking ahead 2 minutes at all times toget the next synth sounds/drum ready and transition to the next track. id rather see a seamless live show rather than someone stopping and chatting drunken shit into the mic between songs.but thats just me i guess. basically what im saying is concentrate on making the show decent 'sound wise', this is more important id say than wearing a cool t shirt or getting people to put their hands in the air.but for sure its good to have a few drinks first so you can happily shout into a mic for people to make some fucking noise every now and again. that does help.

I played trumpet with a band recently and we all wore full suits. Was pretty cool, but not the staple of the show. I think we were all relatively timid on stage when it happened, but the amp sphere of the music called for it and the crowd reacted ye way we wanted them to.