Engaging Audiences

There's something phenomenal in experiencing a live performance. Seeing the intensity on a singer's face, seeing the speed of strumming, the speed of drumming, the beads of sweat developing under the hot lights. Seeing the emotion first hand is always an enlightening experience. But I find that there's another quality that makes a live show that much more amazing: an involved audience.

An audience that really seems to give a shit, I think, is one of the most amazing things you will ever find. When you find a group of people who are all actively engaged in a musician's work, you know you are in good company. The energy becomes palpable and contagious and moving. It sometimes gives me goosebumps to hear my fellow concert patrons chanting the words back at whoever is chanting them toward us.

I've experienced this a few times. The first time I conciously experienced it was during a Third Eye Blind show in October of 2005. It was at a university, so much of the audience was growing up during the peak of TEB's popularity. We all knew their songs. Most of the songs anyway. A few of the hits were played, but everyone was waiting for the same song: "How's It Going To Be."

Huddled together in a mass in the university's field house, a thousand-odd college kids jumped and cheered as those familiar starting notes rang through the air. "How's it going to be/ when there's no one there to talk to/ between you and me/ 'cause I don't care," the lead singer belts out. "How's it going to be?" chants back every single member of the mob. At one point, lead singer Stephan Jenkins had stopped singing altogether, but the crowd carried on the entire chorus, a thousand voices mingling together to deliver the words.

You know that's gotta make him feel good. I was able to record one of these moments on my phone, and though it's a crappy recording, you can still hear the crowd distinct from the band. It still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it. To know that so many people were sharing the same moment with the same (or at least similar) emotion is thrilling.

But perhaps the best example of when this happens is during a Dashboard Confessional show. Now don't put down the Dashboard. Chris Carrabba has an amazing ability to write a song, to write lyrics that connect with so many people. Yeah, so a lot of them are teenage girls. There's still a connection. And the live performance results are heart-melting and chill-inducing at the same time.

I also experienced this first hand. He probably didn't even have to sing. The crowd could have, and did, do it for him. He played and the crowd chanting his words back at him. Sometimes he couldn't even be heard. Amplified by a speakers, he was still the same volume as the hundreds of college kids who came out to see him that same October 2005 (some of who had driven in from the next state over just to see him... *cough cough*).

Perhaps the true test of popularity and "making it" is being able to play a show and end up not really having to be there. Everyone else is so willing to do it for you, you're the one who's singing with them. They're your words, but eveyone else knows them by heart too. They cared enough to learn them. And they enjoy them enough to sing them back at you, sometimes louder than you do, sometimes at the top of their lungs.


Examples for you listening pleasure:

This isn't the show I went to, but the set looks the same. The crowd is acting the same way, too.




Also not the show I went to. But it's one of the songs I heard. And this is what it was like to hear it.

Dear Yusuf (formerly Cat Stevens),

I eat my last words from that last entry. I kinda dig your new song "Maybe There's a World." It starts out with a nice acoustic strum, and your voice is solid and deep. It has this rough feel to it, and I love it. Vibrations, right? Haha. The beat of the song is nice too. Almost like a walking beat. Parts of the song seem a little confusing as there are voices on off-beats, but actually, when you stop to think about it, it's pretty darn cool sounding. I caught myself bobbing my head along to the music. And I didn't even know that it was your song (you're lucky I'm listening to Paste Sampler 27 - the free CD inside the new issue of Paste Magazine). And then when I found out it was you, I was surprised that I kinda dug it, haha. I guess I gotta admit. Your song is pretty good.

So I'm sorry I said I would never listen to your music. That was perhaps a little hasty. I dig that one song at least. We'll see if I feel like getting your whole album ;)

Love,
Christina

Good Vibrations

By Christina R.

I was just reading Paste, a cool new magazine that I discovered back in November. On the cover of every issue, it says: “Signs of Life in Music, Film & Culture.” Now, this is my kind of magazine! I’m thinking of getting a subscription. But anyway, in the process of reading it cover to cover – as I am occasionally wont to do – I turned to an article about the recently socially reintegrated artist formally known at Cat Stevens.

Now known as Yusuf, he has just come out with a new album that seeks to bring Muslims understanding of the West, and the West understanding of Islam. This wasn’t necessarily surprising, as I already knew that this was the kind of person Cat Stevens/Yusuf is. But then he said something that blew my mind.

“The closest you can get to a person, I think, is listening to the vibrations of their voice.”

In and of itself, it is not all that astonishing a comment. And it didn’t strike me as such the first time I read it either. I nodded and said “hmm” to myself. Like “good point, Yusuf. Well done.” But then I read it again. “Wow,” I thought this time, “I agree. Those words are exactly what I’ve been thinking for the past few years.”

I always liked music; listening to cassettes and CDs was always one of my favorite pastimes. But a few years ago, my obsession began. Listening became my therapy for whatever was wrong. Depression? I have an album or song for that. Feeling anxious? I have some good calming music for that too. Over the past five or so years, Music has become my cure-all.

But trying to describe what I love about music often just brings me odd looks. I am in love with voices. Good music and good lyrics are wonderful. You can’t have a good album or song or whatever without them. But a good voice is like the end-all be-all for me. A good voice can send me to my happy place and make me forget about everything that’s wrong with my life and the world.

Emotion in a voice makes the muscles in my neck weak. The timbre of a singer’s voice can send me over the edge. Just listening to a song, the voice streaming through the air, emoting over the singer’s own laments or joys makes me almost sick to my stomach. You can kind of get the gist of what someone is feeling by the words that they write, and the music can typically add to it, but you don’t understand until you can hear their voice straining to make them understood. If you can hear the pain, you can feel it too. And there is nothing sexier than a voice ripping across lyrics, raw and honest.

So well done, Yusuf. In passing, you said something that I have been trying to put into words for years. Finally someone else gets it! And that’s awesome.

(It probably won't get me to start listening to your music though. Sorry.)