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On Wednesday, April 12, 2006, at 06:11 AM, paulrichard10@adelphia.net wrote: > << people with little or no experience or little or no talent >> > > Sounds like most rappers to me. :) Ohh, man, did you have to go there? Why you be down wit' all the hatin' 'n sh*t. My band collaborates with rappers often. We've definitely had the experience like Rick's of the Rapper Who Wouldn't Shut The F*CK UP. In fact once we were playing what is probably the nicest jazz club in Eugene. Two rappers/street kids saw us setting up, noticed we had turntables onstage and asked to sit in for a tune. We did, they pretty much took over the show for 3 tunes, doing really off-color raps, asking the audience where they could score some weed, picking on people in the audience, etc. After we got them offstage and out the door, they demanded to be paid for the gig! On the other hand, we've had some amazing experiences with rappers. One guy, who has actually toured with us, and would be a full-time member of the band if he didn't have a life, always gets onstage, says his piece and leaves us, and the audience wanting to hear more. He's kind of like a bebop soloist whose medium is words and rhymes instead of #9 chords, amazing guy. He's extremely musical, and I look forward to every opportunity we have to collaborate. We also have a pool of about 5-6 other rappers that know they are welcome to sit in whenever we play, these are people we know and have worked with. But after the above incident, we don't let just anyone rap with us. Another pet peeve I have is with percussion. Our horn players play various hand percussion stuff, and it's laying onstage near the front most of the time. Why do people think that it's cool to grab a cowbell and whack away at it while a band is playing? I mean, everybody loves the Chris Walken/SNL skit about "Don't Fear the Reaper," but come on, there is such a thing as too much cowbell. Especially since it's one of those instruments designed to cut through large groups. We play a lot of stuff in weird time signatures that don't necessarily sound weird, we try to make stuff groove. A lot of times people will grab a percussion instrument, never find the groove, and still play until we can grab it from them. And while I'm on the subject, what about stupid requests from the audience? At a recent gig in Boulder, a girl came up after our last tune and asked us to play American Pie. Ok, for the last couple of hours we'd been playing angular funk, hip hop, afrobeat, electronic stuff, with no vocals, nothing to suggest that we would or even could play American Pie. She might as well have asked us to recite the Gettysberg address.