It’s been 2 days since one of our biggest show in Tokyo yet.
I’m still processing the evening. Yesterday I completely crashed and slept half the day, woke up for two classes and went back to sleep.
Then at night I had a bit of an uncomfortable interaction with a promoter who told us he wasn’t sure if we could play an event or not but then put out fliers before telling us we could and confirming details with us…. now threatening to cancel take us off the bill… passive aggressive much? 🙃 I sure do pray I don’t run into many situations like this as I play more shows. I hope we can play because it’s at a friend’s art exhibition but I’m not going to play games with this guy either. I will have my friend talk to him since he’s the one who wanted us to play.
The show was not big in the sense most people would imagine, it was a very tiny show, only 40 people came but it was a place that could only fit just 40…45 if you stand on top of each other.
Glad it was a full house and not an overfull house!
The reason I call it a “big” show is because not only was it a full house, the headliner was a French indie pop singer with 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and probably just as many on other platforms.
He’s the first real social media celebrity I’ve met. I’ve met plenty of musicians, and while we aren’t close, I’m on a first name basis with one of the biggest bands in East Asia. I don’t say that to brag, just for some context.
But the big bands I know come from my world. They started out busking on the street or jamming with friends after hours at the live houses they worked at. They like experimental music or loud music or anti commercial music.
This was different.
This guy is an artist for sure, but he came out of social media. He writes very catchy pop songs and plays the whole social media game and does well. I respect him because he remains independent and travels a lot and tries to use his music to connect with people.
But it was culture shock for us as I’m sure it was for the audience.
We come from a world of imperfections and we bring that into everything we do. That’s not to say we are a total mess, but we are focused on very differny things. Some of those things I really admire and others make me roll my eyes
I few things stood out in my mind.
I notice him looking in the mirror for about 2 minutes after he came out of the bathroom. I noticed many people wanted pictures with him which is rare at a small venue like this. I noticed he follows internet trends. I notice he speaks ultra charismatically to the point where I have to doubt his sincerity although I don’t assume he’s insincere
Those were the things that made me roll my eyes a little bit, not looking down on him, just thinking it kind of silly because in my mind that’s part of a world that’s dying, the world of Oz where the wizard is just a man behind a curtain.
But then there were things I really really admired about him which made me feel that maybe I shouldn’t completely throw out the idea of “professional” even if I don’t care about such terms most of the time.
He and his manager really know how to do a sound check.
He managed to find a supporting band that learned his songs in 3 days and played very very tightly with him.
His playing was nearly flawless.
He adapted his songs from piano and electronic to guitar very well.
These are all signs of someone who knows what they are doing, and it’s the only definition of professional that matters to me. It isn’t necessary to make good art but it sure is a powerful tool.
We are learning, moving slowly in that direction, but it was inspiring to see someone who was so comfortable on the stage and connecting with people through their work.
It didn’t feel like my world at all though. None of his fans knew anything about music really. They just follow what their feeds lead them to. They all had good, high paying jobs, which is totally fine, but I felt completely out of place. It was a room full of people who have mostly lived easy lives and found their place in the world on a normal path, the kinds of people I’ve always been misunderstood by.
Unlike those days when I was just a misfit in the bar though, this time I was part of the entertainment though and so I felt as if I was suddenly getting respect from kids in high school who once made fun of me.
It didn’t feel particularly good, but it did feel relieving, like maybe one day I could help some of them understand the parts of themselves that they are afraid to look at, that I could help them find beauty where they’ve never seen it before.
Our performance was a very strange thing. There were so many mixed signals from the audience. Everyone was talking as I started playing, something I both worried about and anticipated. So I put my all into singing and after 30 seconds the room was fully engaged with us. That was the first positive signal.
We had a few problems with gear, feedback in one of the mics that I run into effects. That’s one of the reasons you don’t have a lot of independent artists running mics through effects, because without the right equipment in both your arsenal and the venues arsenal, you run a high risk of bd feedback.
But I recovered quickly and I got the sense our third song really broke through to some people, which is interesting because it’s an 11 minute song with a 3 minute jam tagged at the end, half of our set.
The fact that our catchiest song is 11 minutes goes to show you how far we are from pursuing mainstream attention. Our goal is always maximizing the depth of emotion we can help certain people who are already into the kind of music we play, and maybe bringing in a few stragglers from adjacent scenes, not catching as many people as we can.
After we finished our last song, people clapped and then a few seconds passed and I started to walk off stage and they clapped again even louder. That was probably the best applause I ever got from an audience.
Still there was a big question mark hanging in the air. Not many people tried to talk to me although a trio of European guys told me they loved it and the backing musicians for the main act said it was great.
I think when you aren’t selling products, it’s a little hard to gauge if people are just being nice and friendly or if they really enjoyed your work. I always assume it’s half and half.
From next week we will have CDs to sell so that will give people a new chance for people to show us they like it, although they may like it and not buy it, combined with social media follows and likes and purchases I think we will get a clearer picture.
The thing that really let that question mark longer was that aside from the venue and the people who came to see us, no one shared our videos on social media like they shared his.
It made me a little sad, but it makes complete sense. It doesn’t mean people didn’t like it. It just means they didn’t fall in love with it upon first exposure, and that is to be expected because we aren’t the kind of music that tries to be immediately understandable. Quite the opposite. We want to start as something somewhat unfamiliar, sometimes even uncomfortable and then give people a taste of what we can cook that may make more sense to them and slowly learn to love us.
Our songs have moments that can catch people but they are treasures to discover, not handed out in the beginning. We want to take listeners on a journey, to put them in our shoes or the shoes of a character of the song so they can understand at a deeper level.
So I don’t think we made any new fans, but I do think we tested new waters and it was somewhat promising. I think if we happened to come across any of these people again they may listen more seriously next time and end up really liking it. I think that if they did they may even tell their friends about this weird band they don’t know how to classify that they might be falling in love with.
In any case, I want to keep practicing so I can play as flawless as he does, not because I want to be perfect but because it gives me more leeway to go outside of my comfort zone and try new things on stage.
I feel I’ve grown tremendously as an artist in the past year and it’s only just getting started 🔥🔥
