My last blog, far from clearing my head of unwanted thoughts, just encouraged others to creep out. It's like the last time I tried to sort out my wardrobe - you take out a couple of shirts that have been lying neglected at the bottom and suddenly loads of others fall out and you have to take 'em all out and start from scratch. On the plus side there's always a sneaky little hoody or t-shirt or something that you'd forgotten you owned, so I hope my head-tidying might bring out something of value too, who knows...
Today's blog is inspired by a rather interesting gig I played at Moles with Nife a couple of Fridays ago. We were playing in support of Vintage Trouble, a hip blues / soul band from LA, who'd recently been building a following in the UK off the back of some great gigs, not least a Jools Holland performance. They were really nice guys, incredibly energetic and clearly in love with gigging all the time. Also interesting was the fact that they didn't have a record label, just some great management - kerching!
Nevertheless, this gig was to be far from the bangin' Moles shows we've been used to recently, but all the more inspiring for it. You see normally we play at Moles on a Friday or Saturday, it's free entry and it's a wicked night, a few come down to see us and we all party and do silly things til they kick us out at 4 and we try our luck with Bodrum kebabs (never wise, but we're ever forgetful).
This night however, the event was ticketed (£7) and a little suprisingly sold out, so none of our mates could come down! The end result of this was a pumped Nife getting up on stage and rocking out to a couple of hundred 30-50 year olds who wanted to hear some 'vintage' blues-soul. Nife does not play blues soul, in fact Nife does not like the word vintage.
It seems that many (especially the more bourgeois among us) are in love with the term:
adjective /ˈvintij/
1. Of, relating to, or denoting wine of high quality
* - vintage claret
2. Denoting something of high quality, esp. something from the past or characteristic of the best period of a person's work
* - a vintage Sherlock Holmes adventure
Assuming that vintage trouble doesn't reference a problem in working out how old a bottle of wine is, vintage must be referring to the high and / or old quality of their music. Most of society seems to have embraced the latter definition, with shops selling things that are deliberately 'aged', but which are usually just new products that have been scratched up, etc. How weird it must be to paint something, then mess it up, then sell it!
Anyway, it seems i'm not angry at the word, just its misuse today. Back to the gig, and we were playing our hearts out, goin mental, closing our eyes, shouting, screaming, sweating, and the audience were just stood there, politely clapping at the alotted points and generally looking a bit non-plussed by the whole thing.
Undeterred, we carried on putting out unrequited energy to 'em, and they just kept sucking it up, for the whole 40 minutes! This makes it sound like a terrible gig - it wasn't; they didn't leave, they didn't boo or talk loudly in the quiet bits, it was just a little bit like playing to a bunch of Marks and Spencer mannequins.
This brings me onto a bit of gig philosophy I've been pondering for a while. It's as if when you play a gig you put out energy to a crowd. Ideally the crowd bounces this energy back to you, perhaps adding a bit of their own in terms of movement, sound, enjoyment, fulfilment, whatever, and so the snowball continues, ace! Basically therefore what you want is an audience of 'reflectors', not the absorptive one we had at Moles.
The energy doesn't necessarily have to come from crazy running around and shouting though - it can come just as well and strongly from a really understated, gentle performance. It's a very unquantifiable thing, but to me it's about emotional intensity and sincerity, not just jumping around for the sake of it. If you've been at a gig when this emotional energy's really taken it up a notch you'll know what I mean.
So at Moles we felt like we'd put in a whole lot of energy, but the snowball really wasn't happening. The difference was that for the first time we really didn't care! On the surface the show wasn't great, but to us it meant a great deal, we'd finally fully committed to what we were playing, and if the crowd didn't dig it, well that was their problem. It's very easy to pander to an audience; see what they're into and try and tailor your set to please them a little better. Recently we've realised that there's nothing worse than going out of your way to please your audience at the expense of your own integrity - your set is and comes across as half-baked. It only ever works if you're fully committed.
Vintage Trouble went on after us and (not surpisingly) rocked the joint! But then their crowd had absorbed all our energy, so it was kind of cheating (joking, joking!) They were pulling out all the stops, jumping around, doing all that crowd participation stuff (which I do so despise), maybe there was even a bass solo chucked in somewhere, and the crowd were loving it. To me though, it was lacking a little in emotional sincerity, instead full of lots of those devices made to artificially manufacture the energy that makes gigs go off.
But don't get me wrong, it was a great gig, they're fantastic musicians, and they really do get that authentic 60s sound out live, which is not easy by any means. They played an epic 90 minute set and could have gone on for double that, (respect to their stamina!) and by all accounts it was a really great show, and exactly what the majority of the punters had come for, just a shame I was not one of them.
Waking up the next day I felt great spiritually (if a little hungover physically) knowing that even though those punters hadn't loved our set, we hadn't given them an inch! We gave them our emotions with sincerity whether they liked it or not. And as far as I'm concerned that's a musicians goal - to bring out and explore those uncharted things we have that separate us from the binary. After all, that is what we (humans) are good for, isn't it?
