Putting on concerts (shows) has always been a thing for me. Since I was about 16, I’ve been arranging shows of some sort or another. And looking back, they’ve always taken place in rooms other than music venues. Whether it’s my parent’s living room, a stuffy basement, church space, or community building, they’ve always been outside of bars/clubs etc. I think all along there has been a hope for a dialog of some sort to occur if everyone is outside of spaces with a stage, bouncers at the door, and beer bottles chinking a soft refrain. By dialog I mean a space where a performance can take place and the audience is a part of the general feeling of the night. Where the performers can see the audience just as much as the reverse. It has never made sense to me for 20-50 people of varying sorts to enter a space and be drowned out by however the grouping at the front of the room are feeling that night. I’m not thinking communal to the point where the “band” is dismantled but where the audience can ask a question of the band, can maybe talk to their neighbor, or even take the music being played and do something constructive with it (maybe draw/write to it, or just sit with it for later use).
I guess it’s this idea of use that I’m most concerned with. Nights can be valuable, sometimes the past month is eating us away, and we need to recess to a dark corner of a music venue (or movie theater) to figure things out (or the complete opposite..). Having sound and vision to entertain us for a couple hours was the norm. Drink, have some bar talk, barely listen to music or a movie, this has been our way.
However, my interactions with attendees to shows I’ve been putting together the past couple months suggests a new thinking. I might be taking a jump, but with the advent of blogs, myspace pages, youtube videos etc., I think small concerts might start morphing. At just about every show I’ve hosted, someone has wanted to talk. This could concern everything from their 20 year background in the underground noise scene, the differences between the Amish and Mennonites, and what gear they use to some pretty serious subjects like how to grieve for a passing father or how to balance the morality of what happens at a show on Monday night with what happens at a “service” on a Sunday. I feel people are coming to shows ready to talk, no more to just be an observer and be spoken to but willing to engage themselves verbally. Through the expression of blogs where everyone has an opinion, shows are becoming more meeting grounds of equal voices.
An accomplice to these ideas can be the distance between musician and fan. I remember writing to a record label to receive a paper catalog of their albums and then maybe a band would include a personal mailing address on an album. Weeks would go by and nary a word, most of the time I doubted the envelope ever made it. But now, you can be “fakreal” friends with your favorite band, receive updates of their every action, and preview songs not yet released. All this hopefully in the end contributing to more of a level ground for performer and fan. I’m not promoting a future where the spectacle of a performance is belittled to the point of becoming unnecessary or blasé, but rather a night where the crowd can chime in freely. “So, what was that song all about” “Where did you learn to play a no-input mixing board” “Hey, Claudie, you know how my father is…”. 4 people at the front of the room getting a night to express themselves will no longer be enough, however, everyone in the room will be able to contribute somehow and move the night forward. It’s almost like going to the museum and interesting yourself more with the comments of a family as they walk into the Cy Twombly room than with looking for yourself at the same paintings you’ve looked at too many hours before. It creates something specific for that moment, that night, so that a band playing in Chicago and then playing in Philly are two specific events, not events where the same “set” was played out like every other night but one where the people in the room made it unique. Too cheesy and romantic, possibly. After some of the conversations I’ve had at shows with utter strangers, it seems more tangible each time.
I have never been too into the music scene. I have not been to hundreds of shows. But I am always fascinated by people with talent and the people who know how to adequately describe it. I like a lot of music but I am not an afficianado by any standard. What Adam is describing is what I like best about going to a concert when I have gone; being part of an experience and relating to the band and my fellow audience members. The shows at Circle of Hope Broad and Washington (and the ones at Frankford and Norris) are an opportunity not only to relish the moment but to also do our mission. Jesus is best shared incarnationally, that is to say through rlationships and whole lives. By incarnating the shows with our presence we add to the dialogue that Adam describes. We add our saltiness, our light, our Jesus.
good call Ben. I like where youre taking this Adam. It sounds like its more about a dialogue than a monologue or performance. We’ve got enough of those already, and theyre rather good too. But maybe when bands come to play at CoH spaces, they’ll know that its a different kind of thing happening.