BBN
Fractal Fanatic
here's an example.
i just saw Animals as Leaders at NAMM on the big Yamaha stage. best music performance i've ever experienced in my life. it was amazing, the sound was great, everything was perfect!
i'd say the band played everything without mistakes like 99.9999%. and i don't even usually think about those things, just mentioning it for this example.
in Ectogenesis, Javier was playing the slow melodic line, and toward the end of a phrase with the bend, he kinda made some mistakes, missed some notes, the bend didn't bend as much as it should have.
now if someone posted a video of that song, or even just a clip of that moment, viewers with no context would just think "wow he can't play" or "wow this band sucks, they can't even play that easy part" or other things along those lines.
but the fact was it was FREAKING COLD out there! my hands were frozen solid in the audience surrounded by my friends with a little body warmth, but he's alone on stage there in the cold weather. i have no idea how they all played up there at all. someone just watching a video may never realize or think about that.
but during/after that slight mistake, he laughed it off, looked to the side of stage at his tech or something and said "it's freaking cold!" haha.
THAT is an experience we all shared being at that show. sharing the elements and the situation. and i know why that mistake happened, and i totally get it. i'm glad it did because it showed that they are really playing the guitar parts! there are some tracks in their shows so it's hard to tell what they're actually doing sometimes because they play everything so flawlessly!
so there could be a video going around with comments like "he can't play!" but that's so unfortunate because it was just like .05% of the entire show that was played brutally flawlessly and energetically. but internet comments will get hung up on that moment forever. while those of us at the show had a laugh and moved on and forgot about it seconds later.
i know this is different than the DLR video where he consistently didn't sound very good, but it's my general thought on judging people online. 1 minuscule moment ruins the entire experience because people rewind and talk about that one tiny thing, rather than enjoying the performance as a whole.
again props to DLR for still having fun and doing what he does regardless of what anyone else thinks, or how he may be judged. even if he thinks he's nailing it (when he's clearly not), he's having an experience and sharing himself with everyone there. and that's what is to be appreciated. not the specific execution of the talent, but the moments shared with real people in a physical space.
there's some video of Bobby Kimball sounding horrible at some gig. sang africa and other songs way, way out of key and out of time. it's so tough to listen to and you honestly can't help laughing. and he got KILLED in the comments of course. he replied saying the IEMs weren't working right, and he couldn't hear anything. now i wish he stopped the show and tried to get it fixed. but there's a generation of musicians who know "the show must go on" and he probably had limited time and just trucked through, thinking he was somewhat on. unfortunately he wasn't at all. and i think the video is still up. man i would ask for it to be taken down because it's clearly such a bad representation of someone. but shit happens at gigs, and you just gotta go with it. now someone of his status probably has every performance recorded like this, so what can you do other than pull a Judas Priest. but how irritating is it to have your every move recorded for analyzing later. meh.
again, just how i view things and my own opinion, but it's something that really gets me mad about the internet generation.
It's very true. The internet has added a level of scrutiny and expectations, that it's almost not worth it to post anything.
I also agree that the live show experience is where the magic happens. Watching back on video is never going to be the same (or even close, IMO).
I'm sure if someone recorded me every weekend and posted it, there would be PLENTY of trash comments.
But the fact is - only thing that matters are the people in the room when I'm playing. If they're enjoying it, then I'm good with it.