Roller-coaster ride

So this is how it is on the other side of the microphone.

On Sunday night at the Sportsmen’s Tavern in Buffalo, the Demo Daddies gave their debut public performance. That’s the band I sing with, and it was the first rock ‘n’ roll show of my life (excepting singing Carl Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues” with a blues band in a college bar in the late ‘70s).

As somebody who has written about musicians more times than I can recall, it’s good to get the other perspective. For instance, I’m starting to understand performer’s paranoia.

The show Sunday night was a rush of adrenaline. The band was great, and the audience was friendly ... enthusiastic even. It was fun to have a chance to sing my songs for a group of people that had mostly never heard them.

I’ve had a chance to listen to the show (reminder to self: never listen to shows that have been recorded through the microphones on video cameras). I went to sleep Tuesday night thinking I stink. Good band; lousy singer. Who would even come to hear it.

Now it’s Wednesday. Was it really that bad? Probably not. Nobody ran from the bar screaming. I still think the songs are pretty damned good and the band was great. I probably wasn’t as good as I like to hear myself in my head, but I suspect I wasn’t as bad as what I was hearing in my head last night.

But now I have a better understanding of the insecurities of the job of going up on stage and belting out songs for an audience, and for the need for reassurance that you actually are good.

It’s one show and it’s a roller-coaster, the build-up and the letdown.

No wonder people who actually do that for a living end up so screwed up.