Comments on: Work it, earn it, own it

By: Caroline

Caroline — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 05:35:32 +0000

I didn’t even mention the music much… the band was out of time, out of tune and just not on most of the time. It’s a little unfair they get to tour, purely because of Marster’s fame, when other far more talented musicians can’t get a deal or a tour together.

I agree, Heather, he seems a nice guy – but his talents defininately are better suited elsewhere.

By: heather

heather — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 03:02:00 +0000

I usually work tech staff for DragonCon, a very large sci-fi convention in Atlanta. Last year, Ghost of the Robot performed. James Marsters – nice guy. Band – mediocre talent.

As staff photographer, I wanted to photograph our staff members backstage during the concert, and I wanted photos of them interacting with the band. I already determined that the band manager wasn’t terribly useful, and we had already deemed Marsters’ manager “Evil Queen of the Dead”. So I decided to just ask James if I could take photos.

He had no problem, and he told his bandmates. The band manager looks at me funny as I’m setting up, and I told him James gave me permission. At this point, the Evil Queen of the Dead walks into the ballroom and goes COMPLETELY BALLISTIC when she sees me with my camera. She pulls me aside and starts berating me, and as I’m trying to tell her that her client gave me permission and she can take a flying leap, the band manager waves her over and tells her what happened. She gets huffy and leaves, because she knows that if she pissed off tech staff any more, we’d start screwing with the soundboard during the show.

We (the staff) all agreed that the show was awful, which was a shame, because he’s quite a nice fellow. He may be hot, but he doesn’t belong in a band. He just hasn’t quite figured that out yet.

By: Naz

Naz — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:01:51 +0000

Forgot to add in there, everytime before we play our set, our guitarist always says, “Play it like you own it.”

Words to live by indeed.

By: Naz

Naz — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 02:00:56 +0000

Agreed. Showmanship and connecting with the audience is important. I’ve always hated bands (even if I like them) that have a very poor live show.

One of the things I’ve learnt from reading Get in the Van, the book about Black Flag by Henry Rollins was their attitude about playing shows and giving it everything they’ve got. There was one entry about their bassist who told Henry early on that it didn’t matter if there were 3 people or 300, you play the same and play as hard as you can.

It’s the same attitude I’ve adopted over the years playing music live. It’s this feeling of wanting to wake the audience up, to communicate – that’s what music is about.

It’s also the reason why I’d probably never go to a pop concert – staged, choreographed and robotic.