What you need on stage and I don’t speak about your guitar,OK!?

One of the things that I really think about for a long time is what skills a performing artist needs on stage and I am not speaking here about musical skills, studies, licks or tricks …

Be an entertainer

What I speak here about is social skills, that quality that separates a singer, a guitar player, a musician from a real performing entertainer (in the good sense of the word). And before jumping to slap me because you didn’t study long years how to play the guitar just to entertain people, think about it for a moment.

Entertaining people does not mean necessarily making them laugh, OK? It means making people feel good at your shows, no matter you are Sepultura, Iron Maiden or Shakira. Think about Manowar and the motorcycles they use in some of their shows when going on stage, think about ACDC and Angus Young’s almost trademarked jump.

I know that some of you may think that music is what really matters, not acting foolish on stage, but in my opinion that matters also. It matters because it is part of THE SHOW, it is part of the whole thing going on there.

We have here a band where the lead singer is also an actor. It helps. It really helps. The guy does not have the best voice, he has range, OK, has a particular sound of his voice that differentiate him, has good songs, but he often sings flat on stage, loses his air and he really couldn’t care less because what he does on stage is not singing, is acting, is performing, is entertaining the audience.

What makes them different is, beside the songs, the fact that they seem to live every moment on stage and the public feels it very well…I have paid some thinking about this since we don’t have this on stage every time and we should really invest some time in this.

Teaming the beast

Also, speaking about social skills, I guess one of those skills you really need (at least at first) is the capacity to overcome unpleasant moments.

I remember one interview of two famous Romanian stand-up comics performing together. They were explaining how in one of their shows, in a club, some guy from the public started to make fun of them and didn’t want to stop. At one moment, one of the artists kind of blocked not knowing how to answer to what the guy from the audience was screaming at them, moment when the other comic, with over 20 years experience in this, decided to answer back and shut the mouth of the poor bastard in everybody’s laughing. Call it experience, but it is also part of those social skills you need on stage.

At one moment we had such a show where it was a mixed audience, rock and hip hop (small town, not that many bands, make a show, call everyone there. Bad idea!). At one moment hip hop fans started to throw things on stage at rock bands. Hip hop fans are not hard rock fans and will probably never be…well…

The reason that started this post is a video with Paul Gilbers and a stage “moment” he handled great! Take a look and let me know what you think!

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