Kia ora! Matty Flatt here again; Fitzie will be back on board tomorrow.
Some of you know (or at least, I’ve referenced it before, but nobody reads the articles – does this count?) that I am a musician. Mostly for fun, but occasionally I do some paid work on the side, either gigs or session work.
End of February I played a gig for an event. It was a lot of fun – 26 cover songs with a great band, and a theme of “Back to School: High School hits through the years”. We smashed out everything from Cyndi
Lauper to Kenny Loggins; Backstreet Boys to Black Eyed Peas.
When doing a gig like that you always try and create a great energy throughout, engage the crowd, and choose songs that will build an atmosphere and the ebbs and flows that entails. You try and make it mostly for your audience, but a little bit for you as well.
You don’t always get the right balance. Sometimes you pick a song just because you think it will be a bit of fun, and don’t necessarily expect to get much of an audience reaction – but then it explodes! You get the inverse situation as well, whereby you choose a song expecting it to be a guaranteed hit only for it to be a flop.
So here are my surprises from that gig – both good and bad! Note that given this was in NZ, what was popular here may be different to that which went big in your home countries…
Unexpected flops:
- Stop – Spice Girls: on the face of it, seems like a fun, poppy song; really though, it’s mid-tempo, repetitive, and lacks a lot of punch
- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper: this started well – but started flagging partway through, as the song isn’t really very dynamic and is the same parts over and over again. Singing “Girls… just wanna have fun.. girls…” probably gets old after a bit, and our energy probably flagged as well!
- Feel So Close – Calvin Harris: one that works well in a club / DJ context; but we just couldn’t quite give it that same energy. Again, a lack of dynamics in the song (apart from some massive sub-bass that’s hard to reproduce live) means it feels like it doesn’t go anywhere
Unexpected hits:
- End of the Road – Boyz II Men: this one was a real surprise. The crowd basically screamed the chorus at us. It’s short and sweet, and that chorus just lifts things.
- What Makes You Beautiful – One Direction: just one of those songs that live carried a different energy. The crowd were practically moshing, which isn’t what you’d expect from a One Direction song.
- Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus: oh boy. This one was HUGE. None of us expected this to go off the way it did, and we ended up doing it again unprompted at the end of the set as an encore, as it just absolutely ROCKED. It’s reasonably midtempo, so we were kind of 50-50 as to how it would go, but the big chorus guitars and vocal melody just invites people to go hard. Really, really fun! I mean, we should’ve known – have you watched the percussionist in the music video? He’s having a ball!
What are some of your most fun songs you’ve either played or experienced live?
Matty Flatt’s track of the day: Teenage Dirtbag, by Wheatus
And now for your links:
A round-up of Spurs’ loanees, courtesy of Football London
Tottenham Hotspur Women exited the FA Cup against Chelsea yesterday; here’s the official round-up
The Athletic ($) with a deep dive into yet another Italy World Cup qualification failure
Here’s an interesting tactical piece from Total Football Analysis (also $, sorry) on unlocking a mid-block
