I have a sticker on my drum case that came from MX-80 some time in the eighties. It reads “Just Say Nothing” and is their take on the “Just Say No” campaign that was so effective in staunching the thirst for drugs. I was reminded of it at our Margaret Explosion gig last night when Peggi suggested that some of us stop while we are playing, just leave some spaces in the music before plugging up all the holes again. We did so in the next song and we got rounds of applause in the two breaks. It is such a simple technique but incredibly effective.
We made up the music in both sets last night. That is, we didn’t play any songs. Some would call it jamming but if it sounds like a jam we consider it a failure. We try to hang melodies on a rhythm and develop and reinforce them in way that makes them sound like a song or at least a musical interlude. So without arrangements we need all the help we can get and this stopping thing works.
It alerts everyone in the room when the color of the sound changes and most importantly it alerts the other players. The space gives us some breathing room to solidify the parts or prompt a change in direction. It allows the person who is sitting out to think about their contribution before jumping back in. And when the other instruments do come back in it is a release for anyone who is listening. We don’t know what we’re doing and that is the whole idea. If we knew what we were doing, we’d be doing songs all the time. Leaving spaces makes it seem like we know what we are doing.
The funny thing about it all is that we don’t have to play any better during the breaks. We don’t really need to solo or anything. All we need to do is have someone stop. In the old days, in previous bands, we would work breaks into our tightly arranged songs and invariably the loudest cheers of the night were when one or two of the instruments stopped. The fist pumping crowd down front loved that stuff. The bass player and clunky drummer would just keep playing exactly what they were playing under the music and the crowd would start cheering just because someone had stopped.
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