I’m With The Band
This month’s Woodstock feature got me thinking about the importance of the audience in making great music happen. Surely only the musicians make the music, you might ask? On the contrary, the audience play an under-acknowledged role in summoning up magical performances on stage. An ecstatic response from the crowd sometimes elevates a gig from merely great to historic. That’s because experiencing live music is not a passive activity, like watching the television. If the performance is good, the crowd roars and that spurs the band to greater heights – completing a feedback loop that brings thousands of people together in a glorious moment of shared worship at the alter of music. That’s how it should be, anyway.
Sometimes you wonder if the modern gig-goer is losing the knack of being an audience member. For example, I went to a gig at an intimate but well-respected venue in Bristol a couple of years ago. The guitarist in the band had just embarked on a superb, spine-tingling slow-blues solo, in the style of Zeppelin’s Since I’ve Been Loving You. As the band hushed things down to a reverential whisper, so you could have heard a pin drop, a guy in the front row turned to his mate and said in fog-horn tones: “The bus goes in 15 minutes. Do you want to stay to the end of this one or go now?” Of course, the rest of audience swiftly invited him to shut up – but the spell was broken. I suppose that at least the twit had paid money to see a local gig, rare enough these days – but if you want to get the best from a band, put down the phone and give them your undivided, because you’re part of the music, too. Generally, though, the best way to get an audience hanging on your every note is to play a blinder.
With that in mind, I strongly recommend you check out Richard Barrett’s Woodstock-vibed Blues Headlines lesson on p150 and Phil Hilborne’s Thin Lizzy tutorial on p146 – they’re chock-full of stellar licks that’ll keep you busy until next time. Enjoy the issue.