- Mar 10
- 5 min read
Up and Down (and Up) - [2025-03-10]
A fundamental law in (Newtonian) physics. Something goes up. Something else needs to go down. The principle that every action has an equal an opposite reaction. This is fabricated into the tapestry of nature.
Sometimes there’s even a predictable periodicity to these swings. More often though, at least in the natural world we live in, they are widely unpredictable. Like turbulence. Sometimes these swings can be reduced down to major principal components (a reductionist approach), but that rarely explains the true natural character and tendencies of the variability. Perhaps this is tugging at the heart of why the world is so interesting. Simple elegance in the unexplainable chaos. The Taoists would be pleased at the paradox here. Or perhaps we just don’t have the capabilities to make sense of it at our current human evolutionary juncture.
Regardless, it is said - “they can’t all be good gigs.” It seems nearly impossible, if not extremely improbable, that one can go from as close to a perfect gig as you can get to something just feigning off what feels like imminent disaster at any given moment. Same group. Same music (more or less). Different circumstances in time in space in the most reductionist sense of things. There certainly is truth in that they can’t all be good gigs. Of course, “good” requires some brief expansion. In many ways “good” is just a relativistic comparison term, in this case based on other gigs that have come prior based on experience. If they were all good, they would just be “neutral”. So, in the natural order of things, we have ups. And we have downs.
However, we still have the power to employ a reductionist approach and distill events to possible principal components in an attempt to better understand the potential follies, circumstances, or chain of events that may catalyze or influence the “bad gig”. How can a gig go bad?
1. Point person (event host) visibly flustered, accommodating yet at the same time dead cold, up-tight, and (perhaps worst of all) oozing of some sort of ego-driven image of self-importance. First ingredient in a bad human interaction - just add pure, unadulterated ego.
2. Upon introducing yourself to the sound guy (note use of “sound guy” is deliberate) during a break prior to the start of setup for the show, they ask, “how many vocal mics?”, to which you think about it for just a few seconds while you ponder reason and benefit of the doubt for why the two email exchanges with the stage plot and input list could have gone missing. In the short silence pondering the inevitable unfolding unprofessionalism of the question at hand, the sound guy then decides to remark, “uh oh, this is going to be a problem if even YOU don’t know how many vocalists there are.” Your response is clear now given that unsolicited jab - “did you receive or review either of the stage plots sent in the emails leading up to the show?” To which they note how they never read or opened it and crack a joke about a breach in contract. Not particularly humorous, however. Especially considering the time and care taken to provide these materials (which were specifically requested) both a month prior and a week prior leading to the event. Shame on YOU though. You reply, “there are 5 vocal mics needed”. At least you can do now is help with damage control.
3. Hospitality includes taking lipstick and putting it on a pig. Just find a dank dark corner of your establishment, put some Folgers on the table, maybe a few plastic water bottles, some fruit, and add a couch and you will be covered. Give drink tickets to the band but don’t include the lighting guy or the back up vocalist. Oh, and by the way there is no way to actually redeem the drink tickets because you will be setting up, sound checking immediately, then playing until the bar closes.
4. On stage the main FOH speakers on stands are pretty much at the same horizontal plane as the stage mics, to which you might casually ask the sound guy, “do you think you should move these a couple feet forward so that it doesn’t cause any feedback issues?” The reply being, “oh there will definitely NOT be any feedback issues!” Perfect. Maybe the ego-driven image of self-importance is contagious in this building. Hope I don’t catch it.
5. The host provides an introduction where they make a joke about the music about to be performed. Which is not received well by the fans. But at least the host was able to preserve their own self-righteous opinions on what proper song musical length should be.
6. The lights get turned on in the middle of your last song making sure that the band knows that at the nearest possible opportune time, they need to SHUT THE F*** UP!
7. Band cuts last song short given the weird end of the night vibes. Then the band and crew proceeds to frantically hustle everyone out of the building. Get the F out of here! And stay out! This is the message loud and clear. Sorry to have appeared to single-handedly ruined the venue's night. That should make you start to feel good vibes if you are not feeling them yet.
8. The best - Make sure the stage is soo loud that you hear everything AND NOTHING at the SAME TIME! Sound isolation and balance? What is that? I prefer a complete mushing of the 100k to 400k range (muddy musical purgatory). Extreme lack of fidelity, please and thank you. Oh, perhaps playing against a brick and window back drop with no sound treatment was going to sound good? At least you were prepared for that the moment you walked in and saw the stage. Good to know you have a sound guy you can trust and work with.
9. To reiterate - let’s make sure that the band has the worst possible stage sound. A tangled, terribly fatiguing, mushy mess of muddy music horse shit. Ready. Set. Try to make music! Oh, and god forbid the feedback on stage during the 5 minute sound check before the gig doesn’t calm your nerves. “Hey sound guy, it’s really loud on stage, is there anything we can do?” “Well, I could come on stage and just turn down all your amps? Would that work.” (OK asshole, thanks for that dig before we start our 2 hour set for less than half of the fees we usually get for our recent local shows).
10. Did I not mention how bad it sounds on stage?
What do you do? You make the most of it and get through the gig. They can’t all be good gigs. You smile on stage and you laugh at the missed changes and unplanned transitions. The planned transitions that became somehow unplanned transitions. You remember that the crowd is watching you and if you look like you are miserable (oh know, can they see how I feel like I never want to play music like this ever again?!), it INFECTS the vibes. Unfortunately in this case, you need to manufacture optimism. Run the positivity machine. Stay open to the idea that the music can still exist in these spaces and be quite transcending even in the seemingly most inopportune of times. And if you’re still not feeling it, pretend. And if the music is not transcending, pretend! Perhaps consider remembering that you never know what the next song will bring. If it brings more musical horseshit, smile and - you guessed it - pretend!
What goes up, must come down. They can’t all be good gigs. The real art in life is to temper, or buffer out the magnitude of these swings so that everything sort of hovers around a pleasantly sustainable threshold. The middle way? Or let's just "carry on". On to the next gig…