I'm not going to criticise how anyone does their shows. I will say that
the artists who make it a point SOMEHOW to make their show a show, will always
get further with audiences.
My buddy Tack Fu makes hip hop beats, and gets asked to open for hip hop
shows all the time. Tack being Tack, he's not going to sugar coat it -- he
brings a CD player, and plays beats. This has been a problem in that 3/4
of the audience don't distinguish between him playing beats and the radio
being on. So we have DJ Squint on the scratch, which helps a lot, and
Squint can do his beat juggling bit for 15 minutes too, and then he's off
the hook for trying to fill an hour with turntablism. I've also started
working out some extremely minimalist guitar parts, and playing them live.
But what makes the biggest impression on audiences is when Tack brings a
bushel of old 78's and breaks them over his head. Last time he was breaking
78's over my head while I was playing guitar. One night he brought a couple
of bunches of bananas, ate them on stage and handed them out to the crowd.
People eat this shit up (in the case of the bananas, literally). I don't
think it takes away from the music at all, but if you're going to go out,
you want to be entertained. Otherwise you can stay home and listen to
the CD in your underwear.
I've often thought that if you're going to be doing a set based around mouse
clicks and knob twiddling, it would be cool to actually project what you're
looking at on your screen for the audience. Even if they don't know what
you're doing, it will make it clear you are doing something.
My sets lately have started becoming completely improvised, live sampled
performances. Basically I set up a bunch of sample buffers, and play into them,
with keyboards, guitars, hand percussion, my voice, etc. Simply talking
to the audience makes a connection with them that makes it less alienating.
But it's important also to realize that it is possible to connect with an
audience without making it a Vegas extravaganza. Performers like Yo Yo Ma
and the Chronos Quartet have no trouble keeping an audience with them, simply
by being really fucking amazingly good at their art. I see no real difference
between a violinist staring at a music stand and a guy staring at a computer
screen; the difference in how they affect the audience is entirely a function
of how good and emotionally involving the music is.
On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Brian Redmond wrote:
quoted 4 lines The visuals for my act consist of nothing> The visuals for my act consist of nothing
> more than button pushing and knob tweaking so we prefer to be side stage for
> that reason and also for being able to have the ear of everyone who passes
> through no matter what point in the night.
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