The Joy of Performance

Psychic Fair played a Gus' show on Wednesday night, opening for an Edmonton two-piece called The Famines. I'd like to tell you they were great, but I was too tired to stick around, running home as soon as we were finished for an "early" 1 a.m. bedtime. I'm sure they actually were good, though — I checked out some of their songs online the next day, having been impressed by Raymond Biesinger, their gregarious guitarist. He's also a really great illustrator/designer, it turns out.

Anyway, the show went really well, as had the Reference Desk one the week before. Late weeknights are not a lot of laughs for an old man like me, but it almost seems worth it when I get to have such a fun time playing music for appreciative kids. At least, I'm glad my streak of dreading playing live seems to be over.

I really think having decent equipment has a lot to do with it. As bourgeois a concept as that seems, it makes a huge difference to a musician's performance if he can actually hear what he's playing. I got to use really nice amps at both these last shows. They were loud and clear, so the performance became less a matter of gauging how many mistakes were being made and more about playing around with the rich sounds I was hearing myself make. That's a much better scenario for both the band and the audience.

When I was younger I didn't care nearly so much about what the music sounded like on stage. Loud, quiet, clear, muddy… it all sounded good to me. Maybe as I've matured as a musician, my sonic judgment has become more refined, requiring extra clarity to be satisfied. Or maybe my hearing is just slowly disappearing as I get closer to the scrap heap at the end of life's conveyor belt. I'm gonna take it easy on myself and assume that it's a bit of both.