[Rob In Stereo] How Not to Put on a Concert

Some concert-playing rules are not meant to be broken.

by Rob Hamilton
May 21, 2008

Going to an awful concert is like going to an awful movie. You hate yourself for supporting the beast, yet you almost perversely cherish the memory. You can’t wait to tell your friends about the flagrant violation of music and performance rules. A couple of weeks ago, I sat through a set by the Maelstrom Trio, a New Orleans band, and knew their transgressions had to be addressed.

One of the first things you learn in any improvisational music class is to face the audience when you are performing a solo. Not acknowledging the audience during a solo is like a stand-up comedian telling jokes to the stage manager. This is a concert, not a play, and there is no imaginary wall between you and the audience. The saxophone player in the Trio didn’t seem to realize the audience wasn’t amused by him squarely facing the drummer, 90 degrees to his left, and giving him a giggly nod when he slyly adjusted the beat.

Next, don’t conduct a concert like a jam session at your mom’s house. The sax player violated this rule, too. He spent a significant part of the set seemingly experimenting with a modulator for his saxophone. You may wonder why you don’t see a saxophone modulator at many concerts. This is because a saxophone, like most wind instruments, is naturally very expressive and can tonally match most sounds or emotions. If you want to strip your sax of its soul by hooking it up to a computer, keep it in your basement. If you want your saxophone to sound like a guitar, buy a damn guitar.

If you fall between genres, choose your label carefully. It’s difficult to include words such as “high concept” (as the Trio did) or “bombastic” in your self-defined genre classification without sounding like a flaming mass of pretentiousness. Generally, artists who are talented enough to use the word “concept” in their work are smart enough to shy away from it, knowing the ramifications and preconceived notions that come with it.

Watch the vibe you are giving off. What fun is it for the audience to watch a band that is emitting the “just messing around, I want to try to hook my modulator up to my saxophone” vibe, as the Maelstrom Trio did? And I’m not talking about the band trying something different on a solo or experimenting with harmonies (think “OK Computer”). Trying something like that is like driving to California and taking a random shortcut or detour on the way. It’s a spontaneous, hit-or-miss decision that will be learned from regardless. What I’m talking about is the band that decides halfway to the West Coast that they want to go to New York instead, seemingly just to reaffirm their “experimental,” “high concept” status to the crowd.

Watching the Maelstrom Trio violate these rules of performance made me feel like I was hanging around a bunch of people I didn’t know, being completely excluded from their conversation and unending stream of inside jokes. There were two possible reactions to this situation: either pretend to know what’s going on and act enthusiastic about whatever “high concept” hair-brained idea is parlayed; or, turn to the guy next to me, talk about all the reasons bands like this shouldn’t exist, and complain about the exorbitant cover charge.

I chose the latter.

 
posted by on 05/21/08 at 05:51 PM. [printer-friendly version]