Audience of One

The Talent Show

Last night was my school’s talent show: an annual event with supposedly the elite of school talent. Generally there’s a few good acts along with some pretty poor ones – this year was probably better than normal.

As ever the organisation was varied. In charge (under the authority of the legendary Dr Ryan), Natalie delegated well and took responsibility for some things herself. On the whole, those delegated tasks were just as organised as Natalie, with some exceptions. Somehow the main sound engineer forgot that the keyboard needed power (meaning that we had a dead weight of a keyboard until about an hour after our supposed sound check), as well as forgetting that two acts were in fact using the real piano and needed a microphone next to it. Oh, and he hadn’t realised that he wasn’t actually going to be able to make it for the first two hours (the half with all the South Site acts). So at around three in the afternoon I was asked to do the sound for the first half – something which subsequently ate into all our rehearsal times that afternoon as I was constantly “needed” in the hall to answer questions I didn’t know the answer to. (The main sound engineer couldn’t bothered to admit that it was actually his responsibility.)

Then Dave (the sound engineer) suddenly left with half the sound checks left to go. I realised that any chance of me going home for food had left and sat down for the long haul.

The South Site acts weren’t bad. Actually, that’s a lie. Some of them were, but they weren’t excrutiatingly bad and that made the difference. One girl (probably the smallest person from any of the acts) did, however, manage to make the microphone level go into the red (the only person that evening to manage it) by screaming as loudly and as incoherently as she could manage sporadically throughout the act. One girl played and sung a song of her own composition (and won the first prize for South Siters). One guy read out a poem he’d written about the Buckingham Palace chef (he won the prize for “Best ‘different’ act” or something along those lines).

An hour and a half later I was tasked with providing music for the interval between the South and North Site acts. Half an hour of 80s and 70s hits later (from Madness to Huey Lewis), the North Site half started.

We had the usual dominance of bands, playing songs ranging from Muse to Elvis Presley (and ranging in proficiency from excellent to appalling). Our band came on second last, playing “Get Happy” (which has grown on me, but only a little), which apparently sounded fantastic (not quite sure how…). We were followed by a band playing “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness, a great song torn to pieces by the fact that almost no-one can sing as high as Justin Hawkins and sound good. We then returned to the stage to provide music while the judges conferred.

We ended up coming third, one place behind a band who should have got disqualified for playing for too long, and two places behind a similar act who just happened to do something more popular and upbeat (more crowd- and judge-pleasing). Actually, they did deserve to win in my opinion, because as I’ve constantly said we should have played something better :)

Music Tech Monday morning’s going to be fun – we’re going to be rewiring the entire recording studio which Dave gutted to provide the sound equipment for the hall. We’d better have it finished that day – I’ve got to do a recording session that afternoon…

Currently listening to The Polyphonic Spree – Ensure Your Reservation

Matthew @ 15:31, March 19, 2005 to Diary | Comments (0)