Re: [Harp-L] Live performance

["Bill" <bill.eborn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I know some guys that have a got a Tuesday night residency for a jazz gig at 
a bar in town and they are really, really good - Luke is a great guitar 
player a'la Wes Montgomery and Ian the tenor player is just a monster 
frankly and then there's Rikki on double bass who's tasteful and steady as a 
rock.  Normally they do it as a trio because the money won't stretch to a 
drummer but for a couple of weeks around christmas they had a drummer with 
them. Anyway, couple of weeks ago (sadly i wasn't there but my mate Ross 
was, he's not a bad tenor player himself and told me the story)  they did 
the monk tune, Well You Needn't and totally ripped up it, Ross said he was 
dribbling and in jazz heaven but they emptied the place.  Everybody except 
the guys that you regularly see around the jazz scene just upped and went. 
It makes you think what's the matter with people, are they so conditioned by 
their sanitized jazz chill-out CDs and the ubiquitous Kind of Blue playing 
quietly in the background that when they hear raw BeBop played hard and fast 
it just freaks them out -wierd, if you'll excuse a quaint English 
expression, it's all just upside down and arse about face'.

Bill
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Hunter" <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, January 10, 2010 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Live performance


> Robert Bonfiglio wrote:
> <I am getting this very weird feeling at live performances now.  The 
> people love you, <they go nuts, but somehow the dots no longer connect. 
> Take last Friday, 2800 <people, they go nuts , buy CD's but there is this 
> very odd Star Trek disconnect, as <if you were some kind of freak show and 
> I don't me the harmonica, I mean the whole <idea of live music.
> <
> <Anybody else getting odd vibes at concerts?  The old "I didn't know 
> musicians were <still doing this" kind of feel.  My life is on my iPod 
> feeling......
>
> I discussed this issue at some length in my book "World Without Secrets' 
> (Wiley&Sons, NYC, 2002--available used on amazon.com if anyone is 
> interested). In a digital world, a performance is the audience's link to 
> reality, not a freak show.  They go wild precisely because it is real and 
> can't be duplicated. Its value to the audience is in direct proportion to 
> its rarity and singularity (especially compared to a recording, which can 
> be duplicated endlessly at a marginal cost of near zero for each copy).
>
> The ability of artists like the Grateful Dead and the String Cheese 
> Incident to make a good living without a hit record--in fact, to use 
> recordings as a kind of global free advertising, a vector to an audience 
> that will support the artist via paid performance--is one kind of evidence 
> for this shift.  The promotional--so far apparently not financial--success 
> of Christelle Berton, who has used YouTube as a free advertising platform 
> for her renditions of (with rare exceptions) other people's songs, is more 
> evidence.  To complete the cycle--and earn a good living--artists must 
> deliver live performance experiences that are singular and striking, as 
> Bonfiglio so obviously does.
>
> So don't freak, Robert.  You're the real deal.  And that's what a 
> significant portion of the audience wants--the real deal, live and in 
> their faces. A concert performance is a rare and precious experience that 
> no recording can duplicate.  And unlike recordings in the modern world, 
> it's something the audience will pay for.
>
> Regards, Richard Hunter
>
>
>
> author, "Jazz Harp"
> latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
> more mp3s at http://taxi.com/rhunter
> Vids at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightninrick
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