I went to see a live show this past weekend. The music was pretty decent (I wasn’t familiar with the bands before), but the main difference between the opening band and the headliners was their performance on stage.
I know a lot of musicians who spend ever waking moment rehearsing so that their sound is perfect. They invest in a lot of expensive equipment, practice with their bandmates so that they can sound tight, and when they’re on stage they pay attention to what’s coming out of their stage monitors. All of that focus on how they sound is what drives a great musical performance.
But it’s not enough.
Seeing a band live means that there is a visual component, and it’s not enough to pick out a snazzy outfit and headbang at appropriate moments. The opening band I saw had a lot of promise but some of the lead singers movements seemed like the kind of thing you saw at another show and thought they looked cool. They unfortunately didn’t, and just made him look twitchy and drunk.
I’m sure there are people that disagree and are able to tune out idiotic gyrating on stage, focusing on just the music, but if you’re performing and hoping to pick up new fans, you can’t risk alienating those who are visually-oriented. Especially, since it’s a fairly easy fix.
When you’re at the point where you’re no longer worried about how you sound as a band, set-up your rehearsal space so that it approximates a stage, and then set up a video camera in front so that it captures everyone’s movements. This isn’t just for the lead singer either – guitar and bassist can also detract from a performance by standing woodenly on stage, effectively draining out any energy the lead singer can whip up out of the audience. Once you’ve recorded a few songs, view them as a group. Critique the movements. Don’t just stop at “oh, that’s cool”, but really dig into what looks weird, what you do too often, what expression you thought looks soulful but doesn’t really work. When you’re done, keep the best ones, then think about what else you can do. Repeat until you look like pros.
Oh, and the headliner? Had fans set-up at the front of the stage, not because of the heat, but because it made the lead singers hair billow during the performance. In the hands of a less experienced band it would have looked cheesy, but for these guys it only made them look awesome. They had long curly hair, and more importantly their movements were unrushed and fluid, so that when they did stand back into the fans it only added to their performance, never detracting from it. Instead of picking apart their movement, I was able to sit back and enjoy the show.
