VERA ELLEN / PHOTO BY ASHLEY BROWN
A celebratory energy swirls. The final note rings out, filling all corners of the bar. The audience applauds and cheers. I bow, looking over to my band to smile. As I step off stage, the tail of my aunties wedding dress drags behind me. Backstage, I push the emergency door open, gasp! Thirsty for air like someone was yanking the ribbon on my dress tighter and tighter. My head spinning, the ground beneath my feet corroding. Instinctually I want to run, clear my head, but am acutely aware of my friends and family starting to gather around me. Celebratory hugs and accolades on offer, all the while I sink deeper and deeper inward. I climb into each compliment like a life raft, only to find it deflates moments later. My personal hell. A foreboding vacuum that is both terrifying and uncomfortably familiar. Where the hottest pain points in my psyche are ever expanding and all consuming. I feign social niceties but poorly, questions are being asked, “what's wrong?” Well, do I express in painful detail all the moments on stage that hurt? Dissect how in my mind this is evidence I have failed at the one thing I purport to offer to the world? Do I undermine their experience of the show in favor of my delusional own? I want hard liquor and a cigarette. Anything to lighten the load, dampen the consciousness. I am preempting how daunting the night ahead will be, lying in bed, unable to sleep as the voice becomes impossible to silence. It convinces me; everyone is either laughing or so disappointed they will demand a refund and never attend another show. It convinces me; whatever illusion I have managed to maintain to win people over, is now shattered. It convinces me; I have only showered people in my miseries and deprived them of the light fun they sought on a Saturday evening.
That night I wrote a diary entry;
“The feeling is embarrassment, shame.
The feeling is, I let everyone down
The feeling is magnified
It’s my cross to bear.
The critic that exclaims anything less than perfection is worthless.”
The following week I emerged from my shame spiral with some serious questions. I was certain I was not the first musician to have a bad show, or my mental health in the toilet. It felt so extreme that something one person could perceive as light weekend entertainment, could drag me to such devastation. I was curious to talk with other musicians in the community and hear their experiences. Was there a trend here? Was there something we could do to prevent ourselves disappearing into internal hell? Or were we at the whim of every perceived “bad” show for eternity?
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PART ONE: THE SHOW
I.E CRAZY / PHOTO BY PICTVRE
I.E CRAZY
I have a fraught, tumultuous and passionate relationship with live performance. It’s about walking the knife edge between ecstasy and despair. I used to ride that lightning more willingly; my own struggles with depression and extreme sensitivity seeing me live my most purposeful and despondent moments on stage, in that potentially transcendent space. I think it’s a sacred thing that – when handled responsibly – can be akin to communing with otherworldly forces. Like magic – if you are reckless with it, or the conditions aren’t right, there are consequences.
I struggle with the line between performing and not performing; being vulnerable on stage and then figuring out how to safely come down from that afterwards – peeling your skin off publicly then walking around without armor. I wonder why I do it, all the time.
MARLON WILLIAMS / PHOTO BY DEREK HENDERSON
MARLON WILLIAMS
I reckon it’s important to acknowledge that playing live/touring isn’t for everyone. It can be taken for granted that musicians have to tour to make a living. While it's true touring is often a solid way to bring money in while generating interest, not all personalities are suited to it (and not all modes of art!) so it’s important to regularly check in with yourself, especially when you’re starting out. If you can’t do this honestly and earnestly, you’ll run into trouble sooner or later. I can’t actually think of a bad show experience that was brought on solely by external factors (i.e. playing badly, sub-standard production, minimal or negative audience response); the only bad shows I remember are the ones where I was either utterly exhausted or dealing with a personal situation behind the scenes. I haven’t had to deal with the latter too often thankfully, but the former is unfortunately not uncommon…
LUDUS
Performing is obviously such an adrenaline-filled experience, ethereal when it goes well, painful to get through when you're just not sure. Both I'd say can be equally intense in their own ways.
For my first couple of years of performing, nine times out of ten I would be on a lineup full of dudes. Waiting around at soundcheck with guys who thought they were the first people on the planet to play I dunno, gabba or something, gets old real fucking quick.
JAZMINE MARY / PHOTO BY COURTNEY RODGERS
JAZMINE MARY
I could give you 1000 experiences of the worst gigs of my life, which now I have convinced myself are endearing tales. It sounds dramatic because it is. Sometimes these things affect me in the short term and I can shake it. Other times I lose complete perspective of my own experience, hearing praise after what sometimes is a traumatic experience can leave you doubting your reality.
BEN LEMI (DAWN DIVER)
Reflecting on the range of performance contexts that I've experienced over the years, my perception of a "bad" show has changed a lot and continues to change. As someone who really values the opportunity to perform in a general sense, I can say that currently it's a lot about appreciation for me. I also believe this part of the equation is easy to forget if we are selectively focused on things that didn't play out perfectly during a show. I subscribe to the idea that perfection is redundant, but in the process of working hard to give something meaningful to a friend or your community, we as artists can function in a place that is kind of adjacent to the illusion of perfection. I think that the more we can accept our imperfections aka 'bad shows' as completing the honest picture of who we are, the less we're focused on trying to control everything. So from my point of view a bad show is a null concept unless I/we haven't put in the work. There have been many times in the past where I have not put in the work, so I try to avoid that.
EBONY LAMB / PHOTO BY EBONY LAMB
EBONY LAMB
I had a horrendous show around the time I was getting more substantial supporting slots, I wouldn't say it was perceived, it was completely psychologically gutting. I basically had to stop and restart a song twice, maybe three times (mid song). I played in a different time signature to my band. I didn't have control of myself, so there wasn't a leader for the band, and it got pretty avant garde and we looked out of our depth. We’d actually rehearsed for weeks. I remember thinking, I wanna quit, I wanna quit, fuck this, as I drove an hour to get home really late at night, alone, pretty desperate. I phoned another musician in confidence, I think he talked me down from a big fall that night. It's hard to explain, but the shame & misunderstanding of the whole situation was like a dagger. I really feel, we need people, people to be artists agents, to be walk alongside, to check in, to not bullshit, to make sure in advance, what to expect, to be prepared, to get calm, to make sure we have food instead of petrol station pies, to drink water, to champion us in small actions that mean we have the stability behind the curtain to know, we've done everything we can. That night almost stopped me from ever playing or performing ever again.
PICKLE DARLING
I don’t necessarily think of an individual show going “bad”, but I think after a bunch of shows I just always start to feel bad about what the show actually is and then just either not want to play for a while or change how I play live. After my NZ tour, I just felt pretty shit about being on stage, and felt really out of step with everything, the music, the band, the audience, I would sing with my eyes shut and just be in my own head the whole time.
NIAMH PRITCHARD OF BIG SUR / PHOTO SUPPLIED
NIAMH PRITCHARD (BIG SUR)
I play music and I’m also a mental health nurse working in youth mental health services.
Experiencing long lasting effects of anxiety often manifests in people having difficulties with their self esteem and changes how they perceive themselves and their skills, which is one of the first major consequences of feeling like you've performed badly. That feeling of embarrassment and shame from having failed in something that you've attempted to do, but also having had that be shown and witnessed that so called failure has ongoing impacts for people.
A lot of research into the area of performance anxiety and self esteem looks into what we call 'positive' and 'negative confirmation bias', which is a psychological term, but it pretty much means that humans tend to have what we call 'a negativity bias'. As we grow and live in the world, we create and shape the beliefs that we have about ourselves based upon what other people think. It's just a normal evolutionary hang up that we have. And that starts from a very young age.
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