Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting myself into a live performance situation once again. I don’t exactly know why it is that I continuously, after so many years of disappointment, return to the allure of live performance.
Maybe I’m not being clear.
I love to appear before an audience (of preferably more folks than, say, me and the people who work at the club) and make something out of nothing. I am fairly unsteady when it comes to stage confidence, or at least to a certain extent anyway. I’m not the kind of person who pisses himself with fear. No, I am more the sort who is in a near perpetual state of generalized discomfort.
To go one further, it is fairly rare for me to ever get to the point on stage where I feel totally comfortable. Though, I might add, I fake it rather well.
This might be a completely normal state of affairs for people who are staking themselves before their peers in a performance capacity. For me this is definitely the case.
I can get the job done, but I rarely am “feeling it” when I do, and that is a goal I strive for whenever I touch an instrument.
So anyway, I have been thinking about reviving my Powers of Light and Darkness project. I have total freedom in that guise, and that is something that is eternally appealing to me. I can play songs in any style I wish, or not play songs at all, and I don’t have to argue as to whether or not the fucking “crowd” will get bored if I play six measures instead of the apparently court ordered four.
Here’s a tangential thought on the above concept.
Fuck the “crowd.”
Play what you are inspired to play and let the “crowd” come to you. No one lives in a vacuum, but we also don’t have to bend over and ask those who watch us to shove their sanctimonious opinions up our asses either.
Naturally if I even do it at all I will eventually end up in a puddle of semi-realized failure, another side effect of creative entropic decay. Such is the life of a loser in mid life.
I guess I just honestly love the internal tension I feel whenever I play a loud electric guitar in front of others and do so with little to no preparation.
Do I love it more than I hate booking, flyering, and hell, promoting in general? Ultimately, no, I don’t. And that is why I am constantly walking this tightrope over a sea of oblivion. I will do a certain amount in order to get myself out there, but beyond that I pretty much clam up and stick to the place in which I find the most comfort: my head.
Despite that fun packed endorsement for live performance, I suppose now is as good a time as any to start trying to get things up and running again, if only for a little while. Basically the way it ends up, after a long enough hiatus from it, I start to miss the playing live part enough to deal with the rest, at least for a spell.
I mean, it doesn’t help me at all to be the way I am. No one will get excited about a musician they can never hear, find, or contact, unless the musician in question has a fairly airtight shtick like, say, Jandek. That guy is a fucking wizard when it comes to effortless self-promotion. I ought to tear a page from his book except that I can’t read his mother tongue: Nut Job.
Reading about the LP4 playing SXSW, despite knowing how demoralizing it can seem to play the festival, or at the least how overwhelming it is, makes me remember how much I enjoy the act of playing live itself. The rest for me is pretty tedious, truth be told, but playing itself is still pretty rewarding.
Considering all the idiotic razzing I have given Ramon in the past few weeks, it might be easy to make the mistake of thinking that I have no respect for the guy. In fact, I have the utmost respect for his drive, his passion, and his motivation to do his thing with almost total disregard for how pointless it all is beyond easing things for his band to exist on their tiny little planet.
That’s good stuff, and I posses practically none of his better qualities.
So keep your eyes peeled, because buried somewhere in the last page of some paper, in the tiniest of small print, opening for the openers who are opening for the band opening for the band on tour no one has ever heard, at some minute closet of a club, on a Monday night, at 6 PM, in Baytown, you just might see a listing for a band called The Powers of Light and Darkness.
That band is actually me, and if you have an ear for self-indulgent meandering (not sure if anyone ever has), then put aside that night with your kids, that rendezvous with your paramour, that band, ________, playing at _________ to a guaranteed crowd of hundreds, and come on down and watch me play.
But don’t put it off too long, because I’m sure to give it up again after six months or so.
What’s it like to be me?
No need to ask, folks, no need to ask.
You know what I think you might benefit from? a monthly early gig in some dive. Say the first Tuesday of every month at the Pik and Pak (or whatever current version of the pik n pak is around in houston these days).
If you do that, you just put up flyers once and then don’t bother again with any promotion or booking. You just know first Monday comes around, you show up and play. Eventually word gets out and maybe a few people start showing up. the dive doesnt give you any grief cause what else are they going to have on an early monday night? And your chops get better every month and eventually people start showing up and word spreads, and you start doing it every week, eventually there are so many people there the bar has to expand, then a record deal, fame and fortune and then you disappear again leaving everyone in the lurch.
Just a thought….
Rock it.
I’d look for different types of gigs too, rather than opening for the opener Rock club types. Artist collaborations, house parties, side shows, speak easies.
If you need a place to park your amp, Novox has a room at Sterret St. Safe and sound.