[Harp-L] taking a compliment

[Michael Easton <diachrome@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Since the original post went somewhere else I retitled the current  
topic so as not to bust on the original poster.

I use to take compliments after performing badly.  What does the  
audience know. Don't they know only I can judge how good I was
 and wasn't happy with the outcome, with being drown out, with the  
tune not played right by bandmates. etc,
what do they know.

Then I read Kenny Werner's book. Brought home a lot of things that  
passes through the ego and goes to the brain of performers.

We are performing for the audience.  If someone comes to us and pays  
a compliment take it humbly. We know all the right and wrong things that
go on after a performance but putting down a compliment isn't the  
time to do it.  I learned to accept the compliment.   In time it went  
from, "man you're good,"
to "you were good, but you kicked a$$ tonight."   Our goal is to  
please the audience.  Sometimes they are  novice listeners to the  
music and instrument we play.  Other times they know what they are  
talking about.   If we allow a compliment, over time the audience is  
happy to come to you to express how far you have come as a player and  
them as a listener.

I have a band mate that complains about almost everything we do.  He  
prefers to play songs canned, starting, soloing, ending the same way.  
The rest of us
like to play it loose rewriting the songs at every performance.He  
started to complain after the gig last weekend.  I asked him, was the  
audience excited, were people dancing, did they ask us for an encore?  
So what do you have to bitch about?  You did your job. They don't  
know where the flubs were. We fooled them.  The only thing they knew  
is that we played the best we could at that moment in time.

If we come off the stage feeling cranky and someone pays us a  
compliment at least we know we were successful in some way in moving  
a listener.


mike
lemoyne PA.