A GIG IN THREE PARTS

I am, by nature, a bit of a perfectionist, particularly when it comes to playing music. I also like to improvise a little on stage; taking that risk and possibly messing things up is really scary and really healthy for a musician. But that also relies on being confident musically…hence, the perfectionist thing.

I did a gig once where things didn’t pan out so well.

Well, I suppose it can't be classified as a gig. It was a show for one of the schools where I teach. And, in a nutshell, what happened was: the school asked a few music teachers to play a complicated piece to show the students what can be achieved with hard work and dedication. Great idea. We all thought so.

But we didn’t rehearse properly. We sort of left it until the day before, and only had twenty minutes to run through the fairly difficult piece of Latin-jazz.

Now the other guys are all highly skilled, so I believed we could make it work live.

Except…

The sound guys forgot to pull out and activate the monitors when we went out to play. So we couldn’t hear a thing.

Now, I was playing an electric kit that night, which was blasting through the main system and should have come out the monitors if they were there. But they weren’t. So we could only hear the drums through the top. And, because of many scientific rules about sound waves and bouncing off walls, we were hearing the drums a few tenths of a second after I was hitting them.

And so, the band would start, and I would play in time with them. But the sound would be heard late, so they would adjust to the sound. Then I would adjust to their adjustment. Then they would adjust again. And on and on and on…

It was a disaster. And I still wish I could throttle the backstage crew who were too busy checking out girls to lay out some monitors.

Anyway, that whole story is just to show I don’t like screwing up on stage.

Now…

Tomorrow night (I am writing this on Monday), K, Ray & the Bird (the band I play for) are playing at Die Boer, a great restaurant in Durbanville, Cape Town. And to be honest, I’m not feeling so confident. The band has been so busy working on editing and mixing for our new album (to be released soon) we just haven’t had much practice time. We had one tonight, but it just didn’t go so well.

So. The night before, and I am pretty nervous. My plan is to take a simple kit, play tight and bash the hell out of the drums. Hopefully the audience will feel the energy so much they don’t see gaping holes in our execution, and hopefully the rest of the band follow and stay in time, while playing their hearts out.

THE GIG

Well, the gig went alright. I have to say it wasn’t our best performance ever. There were a number of contributing factors; we had our times mixed up, so sound check was shortened; as a result we did have a few sound issues. But most of all we just weren’t as tight as we normally are. Perhaps we were the only ones who noticed it, but there were cracks in the armor.

Anyway, it still seemed well received. The songs did get better as we played, and there were one or two real standouts.

MY CONCLUSION

Situations like this make me think about the prospect of being a full-time employed person who plays in a serious, working band.

Our time issue was that the venue wanted us ready to play by 6, where it had always been 7 in the past. I have no problem with a change in policy. But we all work, and we all finish around 530. So even starting sound check by 6 would have been an issue.

I think this is why bands fade away in South Africa. It’s so difficult to find paying gigs (or even gigs in general), guys have to do them on the side, usually for nothing. But this means working somewhere else, and that sucks up time and energy that could be spent perfecting songs. We just don’t have the musical infrastructure to support bands that are unknown. It's not like, say, America, where guys can make a day to day living walking into bars and just playing. As a general rule, only the really big guys are able to concentrate all their efforts into their music.

And so young, talented bands try to get into the scene, and they have good material, but it feels like there are so many barriers, and their music just doesn’t get to the right ears. And so they throw in the towel in disgust and walk away.

How will this change? I don’t know that it will. The entire music network needs to expand, incorporating into it more venues, artists, and, of course, fans. It can be done, but it’s like moving a mountain.

Here’s hoping.