Quiet nights of would-be stars
I’ve been thinking about Vic’s comment on my last post, about “having achieved so much out there”, and it’s made me realise that my list of Things I Want To Achieve Out Here is actually pretty long.
Off the top of my head, it includes, but is probably not confined to: to get to know a new place and its culture, to have fun, to become a better musician, to become a better performer, to pass on my musical knowledge to the musicians I’m working with and help them to grow as musicians and performers too, to make friends, to do alright without B in my life, and to get myself in better physical shape.
Very important, that last one.
I do think I can achieve all these things; in many ways it shouldn’t be a tall order. But in terms of not feeling overwhelmed by wanting to achieve them all, it probably serves me (on days like today, at least) to remind myself that it’s a gradual thing, and I can’t possibly achieve all of the above overnight. It would make this trip fantastically short, for one.
In terms of becoming a better musician and performer, last night’s gig was evidence of the learning curve I’m on here. Well, I suppose every gig will be, one way or the other - but last night, my challenge was not so much a quiet night in the bar, but a quiet audience.
I read an interview with the comedian Richard Herring in The Guardian this week (or should that be on The Guardian, if it’s read online?), in which he talked a lot about his nervousness about performing, including what can make a bad gig. He said:
“Tons of things are way beyond your control - the roof’s too high, they’ve got a band on before you, you’re on a boat… But mostly you can adapt. Last night’s gig was in an L-shaped room with the stage in the middle, so I sort of had two audiences - which can be confusing if you’re doing a visual gag. It’s about experience. You have to learn how to play to 30 people - that’s a really difficult skill. Once you’ve played to 30 people you can play to 5,000 people.”
Maybe the jazz equivalent is learning how to play to 3 people.
Either way, it’s fascinating to see how different audiences react differently to what is, essentially, the same thing. On Saturday, people were going crazy for me. Last night, I got barely a golf clap. And yet in theory - no, in practice - I was doing exactly the same thing.
I’ve worked long enough in the business of show - in a former life, I was a stand-up comedy promoter - to see great performers die in front of one crowd, only to be lauded by another (or indeed by the same one a matter of months later, if they’d became famous in the interim). And while you tell yourself that, as Richard Herring says, a whole host of things beyond your control can affect how a gig goes, you can’t but help but think: “I must have done something wrong. Why don’t they like me?”. You tell yourself that there must be something wrong with you; that they would have clapped another performer; that if you have left them unmoved or bored or even worse, actively not liking you, that you have failed somehow.
Maybe to some extent, that’s true. It’s good to question oneself as a performer; to hone your craft and to do whatever is in your power to make the evening go as well as it possibly can for both you and the audience.
But if there’s one thing I learned from my year working with stand-up comics, it’s that plenty of them simply plough on, dying on their arse sometimes, but sticking to their guns and doing what they do night-in, night-out to the best of their ability. And sure enough: some people will always like them. And hopefully that number grows.
If there’s another thing that I learned: it’s that it happens to the best of ‘em.
I must remember that for every couple not clapping on one night, there was, and will be, a couple dancing on another night. That for every person who meets me after a gig and doesn’t say that they liked it, there’s a fellow jazz musician telling me that he rates me as one of his favourite singers (thanks for that, P).
And I must, as my friend S so wisely said - although she might have been quoting Churchill - keep on keeping on.
February 6th, 2008 at 7.24pm
Hi yes - setting yourself up for a feeling that you’ve not achieved your list is inviting a sense of failure This is another little lesson learned from my counsellor.
The other was reversing the negative evaluation, i.e. begining to that I had achieved in life, it hadn’t been all bad, and to stop thinking that I should be better and turning that into a negative failed future set of thoughts. At first meeting he had to get to know me, so once I’d got to the end of list of academic and extra-curricular achievements, and we’d been to all the places that I’ve spent time in in the world and he’d heard about the jobs I’d held down etc I had to realised that actually i wasn’t such a bad or boring person really.
The other thing was to learn to separate my own ego from other people’s reactions to me (or my perceptions of how they were reacting to me). To live life with esteem measured by other people is to be on a very bumpy roller coaster that is not in your control.
So learning to accept, like and forgive self. And leave other people to their own reactions, bless em.
And the best piece of counsellor advice was:
You know it’s OK to be crap?
R x
February 6th, 2008 at 7.28pm
Re the Jazz equivalent of playing to 3 people it reminds me of the joke about the difference between a Blues musician and a Jazz musician.
The Blues musician plays 3 chords to thousands of people whereas the Jazz musician plays thousands of chords to 3 people.
I can relate to that feeling of the same music going down a storm or not on different nights and in different places. As long as one is aware of that then that’s OK.
I was surprised to find recently when hanging out with some top flight pro jazz players that they have the same doubts about what they’re doing and how it will go down.
February 6th, 2008 at 7.37pm
Whe quoting Churchill is that Winstone or Pete
?
February 6th, 2008 at 8.07pm
When I was Warden of Halifax Hall I booked a new and relatively unknown stand-up comedian for one night (it must have been in about 1997/8) and he was pretty good but the students hated him and booed him off the stage (tossers). His name? Peter Kay. The same stduents would probably wet themselves to be in Halifax Hall bar with him today (tossers).
February 6th, 2008 at 11.35pm
Whoops of course it should be spelt Winston….
Must have been thinking of the story about when Pete C and Norma Winstone were doing a concert as part of the Porthcawl summer school. The sign outside said ‘Tonite for one night only the Winstone Churchill Quartet’ or summat like that.
February 7th, 2008 at 12.56am
Rachel - thank you so much for your wise and helpful words.
Peter - thank you so much for your amusing anecdote.
John - thank you so much for the joke. and the Peter/Winston thing ;-). interesting that old school jazzers get that feeling too.. although not wholly surprising. I guess it affects all ‘artistes’ (it was fascinating to read how nervous and insecure Richard Herring, who’s been around for years, feels) - and I also guess that ‘propah’ jazzers are likely to be one of the most misunderstood groups. it goes with the trade. that’s why everyone does it for the love of making the music, and not for fame or fortune.