Tuesday Morning Update #9
Sep 2, 2003 myMusicShare/Save
So I sang at the Sidewalk Café tonight. I was number 20, so I went on at a little before 11. Tim, Murphy, and Carlos all turned out, while soce, the elemental wizard offered experienced advice and moral support over the phone.
I played If We Were on a baby grand so out of tune that it sounded like a barhouse upright. Needless to say, my creamy rich sonorities and liberal pedaling technique did not go over well on this instrument. I also somehow managed to place the microphone about 2 inches to the right of my face, so I was continually leaning to the right to be heard. I made it to the end of the song though, and when I was done, people clapped and cheered. The cynical sound guy who seems to have the run of the place said that I sounded great, and that they definitely wanted to see more of me – this is of course not the same as being offered a full-length show, but my performance was clearly too spotty for such a thing, and, frankly, what would I have played?
The thing I marvel at is how, after so much buildup, so much pre-performance nervousness, the experience itself was so unexciting, or more importantly, unfulfiling. I guess the drive to perform is largely based on the continued search for the perfect transcendental experience, and not achieving it keeps me going. But it would be nice if some of these performances came a little closer, if they didn’t always feel so mundane.
But all in all, a very valuable experience, demonstrating to me a number of things. That I can sing the pants off of a number of people (but not all of them) without really trying. That my perfectionism during the compositional process is not quite as important as I make it out to be. That I cannot expect any single experience to change my life, but that my goals can be achieved, as I have seen on these past nine Tuesday mornings, through persistent action. I would do well to apply this to other spheres of my life.
This was a milestone day. My first time performing my own music in public. I think that’s pretty huge. I can now consider myself a performing singer/songwriter or whatever I decide to call myself.
This is only the beginning. There is always more to come.
September 2nd, 2003 at 8:25 am
Congrats!
September 2nd, 2003 at 9:51 am
Yeah, congrats! Now you can even have a beer too!
September 2nd, 2003 at 10:10 am
Yeah.. I feel you on the whole “it didn’t change my life” part. I have been taking it to da stage for quite a while now, and even when I do a smashing performance that rocks the house and gets enormous volumes of applause, they still then go on to either announce the next performer after me or else shut down the bar if I was the last guy. It’s like somehow I’m expecting the whole world to stop and people to be like “Wow, soce, you have completely CHANGED MY LIFE with your amazing music!!!” Even if 50 people came up to me and said those exact words and then all went down on me or whatever, I still wouldn’t be all that excited.
I mean, it would be cool, but there is always tomorrow, with its whole new set of tasks that I should (yet won’t) be completing.
hope that cheers you up,
Scoe!!
September 3rd, 2003 at 12:34 am
Soce, it’s not really the lack of response that gets me. It’s the same problem I always had after Duke’s Men concerts – regardless of how people reacted, I still wasn’t satisfied, not necessarily with how it sounded or how well I performed, but with the actual act of performing.
To some extent, I find music to be my way to enter a space of transcendence. I’m really on this quest for that everlasting unconscious moment that some people search for through meditation, religion, sex, or drugs. I don’t want to start the song or finish it; I don’t really care about the mechanics of mixing or scale technique – I just want to get into it. I find that I haven’t really been achieving that recently. I’ve been getting up on stage, doing a little something something, clap clap hooray hooray, next please. But there are fleeting moments. So I am hopeful.
September 3rd, 2003 at 10:50 am
You just gotta find something you feel really strongly about and run with it. I am lucky in that I get a huge excitement when I take to the stage and shout such lines as “I AM A HOMO” or “Aye yo, my VIDEO GAME COLLECTION is bigger than yours!!”, both of which I did at an open mic last night. I also have a great passion when I rap about my enormous dick sucking capabilities or my anger at men who are attractive but straight (ie., h but h).. yes much of my true feelings come out when I am rapping about being gay. It’s fun and exciting.
Alas, not everyone can simply get up on stage and rap about being gay. But I know others who are extemely passionate about other things, such as being in love (WITH THE OPPOSITE SEX?!), how much america SUCKS, the evils of cloning.. I don’t know, basically sex, politics, drugs.. just choose your poison and run with it all the way home, baby!!
September 4th, 2003 at 12:28 am
Nah, it’s not about lyrics for me – they’re totally secondary and have stood in the way of my getting anything written for many years. it’s about entering that sacred musical space – in truth, if I can get there, I don’t really give a shit how the audience reacts. I mean, I do, but I do this thing for me, not for them, you know.
It kind of relates to some comments I made over at another post. Music is, to some extent, my version of religion – my way of achieving a communion with the spiritual underpinnings of our world. It’s a state of meditation I can sometimes get into by myself at the piano, but that I need to be able to share with the world. I guess maybe that’s my goal, more than anything having to do with genres or instruments or lyrics or whatever – to share with others, through music, a transcendent state of being, if only for a fleeting moment.
It’s been some time since I’ve achieved that sense of timelessness, of the extended moment hanging heavy in the air. It’s at the core of why I love music.
And I miss it.
September 4th, 2003 at 10:50 am
You were brought up as a reform Jew? Who is Jewish in your family? Your mother? Pops? Wow, I never knew.
If lyrics are so unimportant to you, then you should be churning out five songs a day. I mean literally, you could be singing “Boo Bee Bah, I like Chocolate”, but with that voice and melodic touch of yours, it would come out way better than if R Kelly, Maxwell and Mary J Blidge had a threesome and formed a symphonic lovechild.
Also, always make sure that your mics are turned up really loud, and *project* your voice!! yeah, s-
September 4th, 2003 at 12:09 pm
Reformed Jew? I was brought up Catholic. Huh?
September 4th, 2003 at 3:41 pm
I’m sorry. I read a different blog that you had linked to and somehow assumed that I was still reading yours. “I guess the test is pretty honest or I have a lot of predisposition’s towards religon because I was brought up in a Reformed Judaism enviroment.” Darn, these blogs are like the Washington, DC subways!! They are all futuristic, gray and look the same!! urrgh–socetew [[ps, you posted twice.. sucka!]]