Sunday, February 3, 2013

Never give up

I'm usually thrilled when I see the curtain come down and a band is just genuinely what it is. Those are amazing moments-- usually, it's when everything has gone wrong, and a band is just keeping “the show must go on” with no worry of what's expected of them. I know the band on stage is in an awkward position-- I get that, and I'd hate to be in that spot-- but, as an audience member, I'm always energized by the band whose regular show was shaken up.

That's the kind of show that takes real guts. It's exhilarating.

We played a show once where we were supposed to follow a band that fed sequenced music from a laptop into the PA. They spent 45 minutes trying to get sound out of that laptop... there was almost an hour of dead air between bands... and we offered to go on, because people were walking out of the club. When they finally got the laptop sound sorted, it turned out to be some accents and a double of the lead vocal.

Just an aside: This is the same controversy that's hanging over the Beyonce performance at the inauguration: singing over/along with a previously recorded version of yourself.
That band's singer would not step on stage if pre-recorded vocal tracks weren't being fed through the PA. The rest of the band, for the record, was game-- they would just plug in and play-- but the singer wasn't going to go on without backing tracks.

Anyway, that singer wouldn't do it. And so we went on.

Compare this with the Buckbye show I just saw: they went on minus one member, without amplifiers, and killed it. They went on stage to play a badass show against impossible odds and pulled it off.

Their bassist, Dan (from 7 Year Old Blind Girl), wasn't there-- a missing member is rough for any band to deal with. Beyond that, their van broke down, so the guitar gear wasn't there. Karly played through a Boss distortion pedal, straight into the mains... and had to borrow the cable to get from point A to point B. Buckbye played like nothing was wrong.

Buckbye
(the whole band...
I didn't have a camera at The Kraken
with missing members and equipment)
Because nothing was wrong. They were there, and they were playing a show. Not a word of complaint was uttered because complaining wouldn't benefit anyone: they were there to beat the living hell out of a punk rock show, and, against all odds, that's exactly what they did. They didn't have bass, they didn't even have a guitar amp, and they just pushed as hard as they could to play the best show possible.

For me, that puts things into perspective: anyone would want to curl up and hide in that kind of situation, but I'd like to think  I would see it through. Just like Buckbye. The show must go on.

I can't imagine Karly refusing to go on because her per-recorded backing tracks weren't ready, and that's already science fiction: she'd never pre-record her vocals. But still: nearly everything that could impede Buckbye, did. And they played, regardless.

By my measure, all the the oddities within a show going wrong (or possibly going wrong, or kinda sorta going wrong) are part of the human element that make shows exciting, unexpected variables that make the show you expected into something unexpected. The kind of show you brag about having seen...

Compare that to a band who won't go on because there's a weird hum in the guitar amp, cancels, and everyone goes home early.

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