Bredonborough.
A grey, wet day in Bredonborough, mainly spent catching up & practising.
An audience is a motley patchwork of contributors and as likely to be undermined in its integrity, by the various members, as is a band. Just before I left DGM HQ yesterday an e-mail came in from a pal in LA. From an onstage perspective, this can be filed under you know something's going on but not necessarily exactly what. This refers to the Crimson performance on October 31st. in California --
I went to the show at the Canyon Club in Agoura on Halloween. I thought I'd catch some of this performance closer to your mix, so I positioned myself about four persons back from you.
At one point, an extremely drunk, rough character was weaving in front of you. He was teetering on his feet and I thought he was going to go down at any moment---he was waving a beer over your pedals and it was looking uglier by the second (this is the guy who blurted, "man, the crystal ship already sailed!" at the end of Ade & Pat's gamelan duet.)
He made a few more incomprehensible comments and there was an awkward moment; I could see that Ade was sensing something was weird going on down in front and it was taking his attention away. I could see that the drunk was getting fixated on you and becoming more agitated when you did not acknowledge him.
The show was about to die; this guy was stinking drunk and on the edge of violence. I really didn't want to get involved, and I honestly felt a little frightened about stepping in. I thought that if I got the help of the security guys, it would erupt into something worse. But things were getting worse anyway.
Suddenly, I knew what to do: I sent a wave of good will in his direction with the command of: "look at me, NOW" -- which he did. Then, I pretended to recognize him as an old pal. "Hey buddy! How you doin'? Let me buy you a drink. C'mon." He was just confused enough. He leaned on me and I led him off the dance floor and over to the bar. The barman refused to serve him a drink, and at this point, the drunk had sussed me out and he turned abusive toward me.
The barman got the security guys over, they hustled him out, and I went back to the dance floor, shaking and weak in the knees. I didn't feel available to the music by any stretch of the imagination ---all I could think about was how lucky I was that I didn't get my lights punched out. So if you're thinking it was a weird night, even for Halloween, it was one of the weirdest and scariest ever for me!
"Life is too short to take on the unnecessary."
