My Last Stand

Two gigs this weekend. That is just great. Playing one after the next is what playing live music is all about really. It gets  and keeps you in the flow of your energy. Always gives opportunities to refine tonight on what you learned last night.

Saturday it is off to Brussels at ‘Aux 12 Chaises’. If you don’t know what that means grab a chair and try a translation app. I have never played there before which makes for adventure from the moment I get to the door. Sounds like a tiny place, no? So if you wanna be sure of a seat, come early. You’ll get the extra treat of watching me set up, a ritual in itself. Apart from the fact that it is an ever changing ritual, of course, depending on the circumstances, I have become quite adept at fitting 3 guitars and myself on, say, 1,5 square meters. ‘Don’t wag your tail, you’ll topple the sanseveria in the window.’ I used to be the lead singer in a band that actually played some big (well, medium) sized stages and I enjoyed that a lot. Becoming a one man band takes one to smaller venues, for now (he said hopefully). But I still want to move around a lot when I play.

So recently I have (finally!) acquired myself a head mic, a thingy that fits on your ears and has a tiny mic next to your mouth. Its designers seem to assume that they gave the gizmo the color of human skin – I think it rather resembles pinkish toilet paper – it has been a joy. Actually that is putting it Way too mildly. Liberation, that’s what it is. 

The one object I truly loathe in music is the microphone stand. Never mind the easily ‘trip-overeable’ guitar cables, the absent (or shrieking, for that matter) monitor speakers, go ahead, pour on those (urgh, red!) spot lights that turn my guitar’s fret board into a murky sea of invisibility, but please, not the hell of the microphone stand.

It will pivot away from you during your most emotional note like someone trying to avoid a kiss and its hinge will make it take a bow so the mic hits you in the teeth just when you want to sing and it just stands there, smirking at you when, eyes closed, you start singing the next refrain completely next to the mic instead of in it. But, really, these are minor problems. The One Major Issue I have with the microphone stand is simply: its very Presence on Stage. Whenever I want to start singing I have to go to it. So when I get deeply into some groove that is so very into the Moment I have to keep some internal controller going who tells me I need to move back to the damn thing in order to be heard when I start the next verse. How into the Moment can one be, then? And if I am playing something on my guitar that is so difficult that I feel the need to see where my fingers are and I want to sing at the same time, I am forced to crane my neck, look down out of the corner of my eye sockets while my lobsided lips are trying to keep in contact with the mic to get my voice out. Apart from giving me cramps it makes me look like I am the victim of some strange seizure, which, in a way, I am at that point.
So here is to the head mic. Even if it makes me look a bit like Lieutenant Uhura (one finger on ear: ‘Still no contact, captain.’) it gives me true artistic bodily intergrity playing live. Feel free to come and judge its color for yourself.

---