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Music makes people move.
That’s how you can tell that you’re listening to great music.
So, if you’re playing onstage and you’re barely moving at all, what does that say about you and your song choices?
Yep.
Boring
And that translates over to the crowd.
And even the most peaceful type of music elicits some form of reaction. It could be the gentle swaying of the hips, a slight nod, a smile, fingers conducting, light tapping. Good music will always get a reaction no matter how small.
One of the reasons why I shied away from alternative music back then was because everyone thought Eddie Vedder just stood still while playing in front of crowds. You think?
He was climbing up on the rafters and jumping into the crowds until a new contract was drawn up for him to minimize that for fear of bodily harm. To the concertgoers. He really had to stop but that didn’t stop him from having wild antics onstage.
Yeah, that’s Eddie Vedder. The guy from Pearl Jam. He can’t stand still.
Looking back, Alice in Chains, Tool, Nirvana all those alternative bands who rebelled against glam rock’s party all night antics actually did the same thing but in a very different way. Jerry Cantrell has a head toss thing going when he plays lead. Kim Thayil takes a one two step forward and back. Chris Cornell raises his guitar neck close to his body and looks up to the sky. Looking back, everyone moved, in a different way.
And when you go watch live videos of these bands, they moved in even more exaggerated ways.
Whoever came up with the idea of not moving onstage should be shot.
I think it all started when someone said: Real men don’t dance. That’s what men who can’t dance say. Or those who are too scared to even try.
I can’t dance but I keep trying. It horrifies the crap out of my fiancee. It horrifies the crap out of me but I keep trying.
Real men don’t dance. What a very toxic thing to say.
I’ll dance. Maybe I’m not a real man.
Who cares?
No one.
Ok, let me prove my point here by showing you guys that even the biggest, most bad ass bands actually danced.
Like real men.
Pantera
One of the greatest bands for me while I was growing up was Pantera. That was about as metal as you could get during that time. Watching Pantera was tiring. Everyone was running up and down. Everyone. DimeBag was all over the place. Rex ran from one end of the stage to the other and Phil, well, he had to get a lot of painkillers for all the abuse he caused on his back. Oh yeah, they used to be a glam band. An all out glam band. lipstick, glitter and all that. So yeah.
Guns and Roses
One of the most bad ass bands on the planet actually danced onstage. Real choreographed dancing. For all their bad boy image, these guys knew how to entice a crowd to move with them. Yeah, Slash doesn’t just stand still while doing his riffs and solos.
He had the mudkicker move that I really loved to emulate in my younger years.
Metallica
What’s Jason Newsted famous for when onstage with Metallica? He hops and skips from one end of the stage to the next and then grimaces as he plays bass. Robert Trujillo? He does a crab walk kinda thing. James Hetfield, same thing. He moves from one end of the stage to the next frantically bobbing his head up and down. Roaring lines into the mic. Kirk Hammett? He’s where James and Jason (or Robert) isn’t trying to get his own crowd. Yeah, the biggest metal band in the world has some sort of choreography going.
Why do you think all of those heavy metal bands in the past banged their heads furiously? Because they probably did not have the natural ability to dance. Well, you don’t need to sashay on the stage. Check out Nickelback.
All they really do is take a one step forward, one step back, one step to the side and another to the other and it looks good enough.
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Think about the band you admire the most
Think about the band you admire the most. If they came to your city, town, whatever, and you paid tickets (doesn’t matter if you’re front row or in the nosebleed section) to watch them, would you have a great time just watching them stand still, look at their instruments and play or do you wanna see some movement? Some interaction? Not fun if they ain’t moving eh? Not worth the money. You wanna be in the big leagues, learn to move. Haters are gonna hate. And then you’ll get bigger and those guys who didn’t believe in you at first are gonna fall by the wayside wishing they had the same guts as you did.
’nuff said.
In Davao, we have a really good frontman in an awesome band. Guess what he does to keep that status? Yep. He moves. A lot!
Bottom line is: If you don’t move, you’re career’s dead.
Me, I’m going up onstage, play my instrument the best way I can and have fun dancing.
