Phil Williams wrote:
If you're a performer, you are a focus for people, and you have to be at
least civil to everyone... regardless of how many times you've been
approached, or how whacked out you are after playing 150 gigs on the hop...
Anecdote:
Sometimes, for whatever reason, I get booked to play live sets where I'm
sandwiched in between bone-crushingly brutal techno djs. If you know my
music, you'll realize immediately that this is going to set up some
cognitive dissonance problems - next to 3 hours of 140bpm loop techno,
my music sounds kind of like "West Side Story."
And inevitably, someone always comes up to me during my set and asks me
to play something harder. Last month at SO 36 I had a girl THROW BALLS
OF PAPER at me to get my attention, so she could tell me to play harder.
But I always stay cool - I politely explain that I'm doing a live set,
not a DJ set, and that I only have my own music and this is pretty much
what it sounds like.
I see my role as a performer as one of servant, not as idol. If someone
wants to talk to me, critically or complimentarily, I'm more than
willing to listen. That's part of my job.
My $.02,
--
Dennis DeSantis
www.dennisdesantis.com
