Re: How Do We Sabotage Our Live Performances

[Petri Lahtinen <kollegavalmentaja@gmail.com>]

whoa - thats was pretty close Per! 
Great stories, good thread!

-Petri-

2012/1/11 Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Michael Peters <mp@mpeters.de> wrote:
> 1. Recently I sabotaged myself by going away to get some food and
> socializing with friends _before_ everything was set up, and then I had too
> little time to set up in a relaxed way (I won't do that again)
>
> 2. by wanting to do too many too complicated things. The complex setup that
> I can handle at home where I have enough space, enough light, and no time
> pressure is clearly too demanding for me live when there is only a crammed
> corner on a dark stage full of cables, and I only have 20 minutes left to
> setup. Horror. The last time it was like that, I just about got everything
> to work but I felt tense inside. It sometimes seems I only have 70% of my
> usual capacities available to me on stage.
>
> 3. Some parts of my complex setup that _always_ used to work at home will
> inevitably fail for mysterious reasons when on stage. I sabotage myself if I
> rely too much on everything to work 100%, including myself
>
> -Michael

4. Using the computer for too many other tasks.
When you have a computer it is tempting to use it for other purposes
than being the central brain of your music performance rig. I made
this mistake at the latest International Live Looping Festival in
Santa Cruz CA. I had been taking lots of photos and also helping
friends to move photo files between cameras and USB sticks. Somehow
this interfered with the system, OS X, and when I should start my
concert at the festival the damn laptop never booted! While everyone
thought that I was sitting by the stage side properly waiting for my
slot to enter into the spotlight the truth was that I was waiting in
chock for the Macbook Pro to repair itself. I did a "boot in save
mode" by holding down the shift key while pressing the power button
and in save-mode I opened the Disc Utility and set it up to "repair
file permissions". The process was initiated and estimated to take 11
minutes. My GO time was due in 12 minutes. The box was fixed and
rebooted exactly at the moment my slot was announced. Phew... it was
really nice to start playing after that . Didn't "sabotage the gig"
but it could have done so just as well.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen

-- 
Petri Lahtinen