I don’t need to watch Finding The Yeti. The show is about finding it, but if one is found I would hear and see about it then. It would be all over the place, not just on the Discovery Channel.
Also the recent headline “A Smart Phone Battery That Lasts a Week?”. I don’t need to read that article. When that battery is available to me, I will know about it. If that battery was available to me now, the headline would read differently.
We’re looking for a reason to click, to engage. But we’re also looking for a reason why we don’t have to.
If we need to know now, let us know now. If we don’t, save it for later, or for never. Respect your audiences time and attention.
A friend of mine saw U2 a couple weeks ago in San Francisco.
Seeing U2 is a big deal if you’re the type of person who goes to see U2.
Its a big show with big songs. Some of the biggest songs.
(First of all, regardless of political leanings, homeboy can still deliver a speech.)
Probably the biggest of those songs is Where The Streets Have No Name.
When that guitar riff comes in over the synth pad, heaven opens for a brief moment in time.
Then after the synth and the guitar riff do their thing for a while, it’s Adam Clayton’s turn on bass to thump those eighth notes.
My pal sent me the video he took of this song.
This is THE moment. The full band comes in and it’s everything you love about music and life.
But when the bass came in…he was in the wrong key. The waaaaay wrong key.
And it didn’t get fixed quickly, it took a while. On the video I could see Adam and the Edge walk to the middle of the stage trying to figure it out. And eventually they did, but man it was painful.
The biggest band with the biggest show during the biggest moment of the biggest song. Probably the biggest mistake Adam Clayton could conceivably make.
I just thought this was worth passing along.
p.s. My friend said the show was absolutely amazing.
How come we think the smartest, most correct review is the one that talks about us negatively?
We believe they’re the ones who see the truth, who see through us, so we hold onto it…because most of us believe about ourselves what the negative review is saying.
The thumbs down, the one star, the negative feedback, the snarky comment…
The truth is you’re the one who has put something out into the world, and it just so happens it’s being “reviewed” on any number of websites in any number of ways.
An overtly negative, hot-headed review doesn’t take courage to write. Digital courage is not real courage.
All this review really tells you is that you’ve put something out that has the potency to hit people hard and elicit a reaction.
So if you’re the type to concern yourself with reviews…the one star and the five star are both great reviews.
That’s what the big mamma-jamma pros do to get their show ready. It’s not to learn the songs, or argue about arrangements or even come up with the bulk of the show ideas. All this is done beforehand.
They rent the arena to implement and tweak, for the artist and the team to get used to the transitions and the flow. To hit the banter while walking the catwalk, hit the lighting cues, the guitar switches, hear how the in-ears react to the room.
It’s getting the show so focused and on-purpose that the spirit just might start showing up to see what’s going on…and sprinkle a little fairy dust on the whole thing night after night.
If you’re playing arenas you probably have the money to rent one out for rehearsals.
If you’re playing dive bars, rent out your mom’s basement. Whatever applies to you.
But not for rehearsal as you usually think of it. Not to rehearse the songs…but to rehearse the SHOW in which you will play those songs.
Do this.
If all we want to do is hear your songs, we’ll fire up Spotify.
But we want to get out of our house and experience something “you had to be there for”.
