Thread February 20, 2016 editorial: comments

When Things Go Wrong Onstage

Even if you didn’t watch the Grammy Awards this week, you’ve probably heard about Adele’s rather unfortunate performance. First, there was an audio dropout near the beginning of her song “All I Ask,” and then in the middle of it, a strange noise became audible in the mix, sounding like a muted instrument of some sort. (It turned out that one of the piano mics had fallen into the piano.)

Adele was clearly thrown by it, and what was already a shaky performance from an intonation standpoint, devolved into a pitchy disaster that was shocking, coming from a singer of her stature. For those of you old enough to remember The Gong Show, she sounded almost like one of those intentionally bad singers that would get gonged halfway through a song.

Although I’m not a fan of Adele’s music, I did feel bad for her. Anyone who performs live knows that sometimes there can be distractions that throw you off your game, and it’s very hard to get or stay “in the zone” — the place you need to be to put on a great performance — when an unexpected problem (usually sound related) crops up.

Even before things started going wrong, she was in an extremely high-pressure situation, singing a ballad in front of millions with only a piano as backup. She was out there figuratively naked to the world. Even someone like Adele, who is no stranger to TV appearances, had to be nervous, and  then when everything went kerflooey with the sound — “fuhgeddaboutit,” as they would say in Brooklyn. That’s got to be a lonely feeling and very humiliating. Adele was later quoted as saying that she spent the entire next day crying.

I can totally relate to that feeling of being thrown off one’s game during a performance, although the story I’m about to relate took place in front of hundreds, not millions, so the pressure was not nearly as high. Still…

I was playing with a band at a benefit show in which there were multiple acts, and each did a few songs and then quickly vacated the stage for the next performer. The promoters were encouraging the bands to get on and off stage as quickly as possible, to keep the show on schedule.

When it was the turn of my band to play, we hurried onstage and started setting up, but because I was playing more than one instrument (guitar and pedal steel) it was taking me longer than the rest of the band to set up. And for some reason, my bandmates thought I was ready to go when I was still scrambling to get everything working — I was actually in the middle of troubleshooting why my pedalboard had no power — and they counted off the first song and started playing. I scrambled and got enough working to start playing, and I didn’t miss much of the song, but my gear wasn’t right for the whole performance, and I couldn’t mentally relax. My friends in the audience said it wasn’t noticeable, but I know that I didn’t play as well as I could have. It’s easy to lose your concentration, and your confidence, when things start going wrong onstage.

Have you had experiences with unexpected onstage problems? What was the worst one you ever had, and how did it affect you? Let’s commiserate.

To conclude this week, I want to switch gears and talk about something totally non-stressful: LiquidSonics, the maker of Reverberate 2, the convolution reverb that we reviewed this week has kindly offered an exclusive 20% discount to Audiofanzine readers if you purchase by March 4th. You can find the link right after the end of the review, but you can also get to it directly from this link. Once you do, scroll down to the Price and Purchasing section to find info on the discount.