What I Blame:
- myself
- the microphone
- the echo/Y generation
- books
This weekend AG & I went to see an elite DC U's A Cappella show (rhymes w/ Orange Brown).
First, it was pretty strange of us to attend a university singing show (Express Night Out events weren't enticing, so I slummed it & looked to the U site & we decided to try some free undergrad singing!)
It was VERY ENTERTAINING & very lame.
While the beat-boxing was excellent, the student solos were intriguingly pathetic. No one put their mouth to the microphone. It was passive singing, on pitch. It was like someone who could juggle a soccer ball, as sort of a skill, but couldn't figure out that the point was to move the ball toward the goal.
The room was tiny w/ a stage the size of a kitchen (held an audience of 110), yet the voices hardly went past the 3rd row (you could hear them, but you couldn't FEEL them.) The sound system was sub-par, but that wasn't the reason their gig-presence had the affect of someone practicing in the corner.
It was a series of soloists blandly mimicking the lyrics to A.Morrisette, Hanson, Death Cab & Obama campaign songs, in a nice "I memorized these words for my 'choir team'" sort of way.... w/ a weird 10 person entourage of humming-finger-snapping 18 year-olds as backup. Is this normal for the East? (When I visited Duke one weekend, most buildings I saw had a "circle of standing ppl" gathered in practice, which I was told was the "A Capella rave.")
I mention books and the Y generation, because this was the downfall of the Fall concert, I think. These students were too smart to be good singers. Secondly, they grew up in a "team-achiever" generation & didn't know how to punch a solo-performance.
What I appreciated:
- thinking about Andy Bernard
- the guy in the hockey jersey who sang an awful solo but broke stereotypes
- Miami's amazing A Capella choir, probs fueled by our lack of presence as a"world power political" feeder
- DC free events
No comments:
Post a Comment