Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

This morning I'm thinking of several times I've been to a concert and been so blown away by the musicianship or performance or whatever that I go home wondering why I would even try! For me, this feeling always fades after a day or two, but I still think it's a curious phenomenon. Anyone else experience this?

Short answer is: yes, of course. Definitely.

Sometimes.... And sometimes I want to be the one up there in the spotlight!

Yeah, whenever I...

- play guitar
- play sports
- try to cook
- deal with my family
- follow a particularily witty remark on the Rickenbacker Forum
- and so on...

Once in a while, but in the end it just encourages me to be who I am.

I keep tryin' to tell people: there is no "better", there's only different.
Music isn't a contest, it's art.
It's how it makes you feel that counts, not how well someone can play. Excellent playing is just a vehicle to let you express the feeling more eloquently.
Just my opinion, of course!

You're absolutely right, Kevin.

I've had this experience too but then again, I've also been to some fantastic shows and said to myself, "Wow, I have to get home as quickly as possible so I can better!" Virtuosic performance can inspire as well as discourage.

Gotta separate the times when you say, "Wow, that was incredible!" and the times when you say, "Hey, I want to get up there next!"

I will never sound like Al Demiola, and really don't want to. But no one else sounds like I do. And I kinda like that.

Be you!!! No one else will.

That's just the fun of it....

I know I'm not the world's greatest guitarist or singer, but I've got my own style and my own songs, and I feel that what I've got is worth sharing. I love it when I get opportunities to play my own music in public.

I'm with you Jdog, but it depends on what I've seen. I'm still an indie kid at heart, and there are plenty of bands in that scene who aren't virtuoso players by any means. But from time to time I'll see someone who just has complete and utter command of their instrument, and I get discouraged. It usually pushes me to do better. But it also makes me feel like someone who has a working knowledge of a certain language, but no fluency. No elegance. No sparkle.

It can be an uplifting experience if you can use it to launch your own creative juices. I was blown away by the Who on their latest tour, which was totally unexpected. I was shocked at how much firepower Townshend still has. It was inspiring. I just wanted to spend weeks and weeks ripping it up in the noisiest, most ramshackle, chaotic way. But my day job got in the way. I gotta pay for these Rics somehow ...

I guess the flipside to the question is, do you feel better when you see a bad gig? I saw the Shins on SNL the other night. I thought they sounded very good, but I was also playing "spot the chord progression". Once I'd figured out that I could play it, I lost interest and turned the TV off ... pretty smug and stupid in retrospect.

Tommy Emmanuel has that "why bother" effect on me. But I'm still blown away by what he can do.

Besides, I didn't practise eight hours a day for forty years.

I'm thinking a lot of people have a whole lot of different ways of seeing a musical performance. Entirely different perspectives on the nature of fame, on their opinions of a performance, on the reasons why people perform, and why it is important.

I used to want to be famous. I got a taste of it in High School, from acting in plays and musicals and from singing for a rock band, prophetically called "Ecstasy" ...and immediately realized it was kinda creepy the way people respond to you once they sense "fame" or the possibility of it. It didn't look very appealing at all to me. I think a lot of stars regret being famous, while others like Fagan and Becker minimize their public exposure for years as they record under umbrella names like Steely Dan. Maybe it is better for most of us to play smaller venues, ones filled with people we know. And then we try to play it like its never been played.

I usually feel like quitting after I have a particularly bad practice and/or jam session. Once in awhile I'll just have a bad day and not seem to be able to do anything right and I get really down on myself cause I'm sort of a perfectionist but the feeling usually passes a day or two later.

I usually find that really great performances inspire me rather than make me want to quit.

One thing's for sure, of all the bass players in the world, I am truly one of them.