My band at the time, The Watermarks, were invited to play at small music festival in a small venue. These events don't give you much time to set up or a proper soundcheck, so I had no time to go over the song one last time. As soon as we started to play that song I realized that the words were somewhere unreachable in my brain ether. So instead of using CPU cycles in locating the lost words, I asked my brain "what the fuck should I do? quick!" and my brain tells me "just mumble with conviction, lots of conviction". And so I did (except for that one line on the chorus that I had written a few weeks ago and still remembered). I even looked at people in the eye while saying things like "smare lingy huntinaminashion". Oh man, what a train wreck!
Thankfully, these festivals usually allow 20-30 minutes sets, so I didn't have to be onstage for too long after my Mariah. As soon as we played the last note, I tried to get my gear quickly out of the way, so the band performing after us can setup, but even more because I just wanted to get my crap and leave quickly with my head down.
It's a terrifying situation, you're embarrassed and disappointed and you hate yourself, and you don't want to look at anyone in the eyes, especially your bandmates, who you just had let down. You can almost feel people point at you with their eyes, you can smell their brains feeling sorry for you, and you can see them trying not to laugh when they are talking to you. Pure nonsensical paranoia that sometimes our minds take the freedom to generate to give the situation a touch of horror.
I can't remember the reason, but I had to wait a little while before I could leave. "Oh well, what the hell, I'll face my crap, fuck it", I thought. A couple of minutes later I was talking to one of our friends, someone who I knew wasn't going to "hey-man-great-set-me", and the other typical political cordiality among friends and musicians. To my surprise, he was very complimentary. Hmmm... Out of curiosity, and without having told him about what happened, I asked him if he remembered the new song we played, or rather, if he noticed anything weird about it. He hadn't. So I told him I wasn't singing real words because I had forgotten them. He didn't believe me and that was good, not good, great! This could change everything about that day, literally 180 degrees, but first I had to confirm my friend wasn't a unique case. So I went around the venue, and every person who approached me, whether I knew them or not, received the same question: "you remember the second song? the one I said was a new song? did you noticed anything weird or peculiar about it?" Nope, no one had noticed. The day was saved! I even felt pride, even when I had no reason to be proud. None.
It's also the only time I've been grateful about shitty PA systems in local venues.
No comments:
Post a Comment