parlando

it says heah....

Posted on December 19th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Performance.

Velma sings "Adelaide's Lament" in piano bars. It's one of her most reliable numbers. She made the decision from the start that she wasn't going to mess around with the accent, and she was right: the song is a great song independent of the character of Adelaide. Velma sings it dramatically and humorously, in her own voice with comic exaggerations.

Last night a woman sang along loudly from the audience. Singing along is of course part of the piano bar experience, though you ought to understand that you are singing along as a support voice, even when -- especially when -- singing the lead melody rather than harmonies, and that ideally no one should be able to particularly note your voice. This woman, besides singing loud, insisted on singing the song in character, copying Vivian Blaine's voice and every nuance of her comic performance.

It was of course rude -- get up and sing a damn song yourself if you want to be the center of attention, lady -- but it was also socially clueless, the kind of blithely dorky behavior that I used to think was exclusive to a section of science fiction fandom until I started getting out more. After all, what was the point? Was she being helpful? Was she hearing the song being performed "wrong" and providing a correction? Was she pointing out that she could do it better? Was she showing off that she knew it, imagining that more than a couple people there did not? Was she just blissfully singing along the way she would at a concert surrounded by ten thousand people? I don't know, but I think it's likely that she was entirely unaware that virtually everyone there, including the uncomfortable-looking fellow accompanying her, would have preferred she shut up.

There are professional singers at the bar who would have shut her down cold if she'd done that to them. For Velma or me, it's practice: learning to sing, and keep singing, no matter what.

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