Into the Flow – Wayne 17

[For back story go here: Story so far at 27 July 2020 and more recent Wayne posts.]

Wayne was nervous. This was unsurprising and no one blamed him for it. Least of all Dave who was also, truth to be told, somewhat hyped, having been given the role of chief cameraman and technical troubleshooter. According to Cath there were several thousand committed to logging on to the live stream channel at 7pm BST and the online chatter had been startling in terms of the anticipation from fans, the music press and more. The artist formerly known as ManzDown had reinvented himself and the reinvention was about to go live. The stakes were high.

Added to the tech side of broadcasting the performance, Wayne was endlessly checking the music loop trigger systems and mixing desk to make sure this premiere sounded as good as possible. This wasn’t entirely in his control he realised as bandwidth and connections could easily scupper what he was trying to do. Added to which some of the effects and musical tricks he was about to try and pull off sounded a bit like the general fuzz, crackle and interference that occurred with poor connections. There was half a chance that people would actually turn off thinking his great new sound was a disaster, literally.

To offset all of this Wayne continuously rejigged his set list. There were songs from ManzDown’s back catalogue which he’d reimagined, new material which he’d pulled together from ManzDown material, filtered through his new musical identity and songs which frankly he wouldn’t have imagined even considering three months ago. Back before every happened.

“I’m going to kick off with ‘Militant Milicent’,” said Wayne aloud. “The fans will recognise it immediately and it’ll get them used to the set up.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Dave, only half listening, a fact which Wayne immediately sensed.

“Do you mean ‘good’ as in great idea or ‘good’ as in ‘whatever’?” he snapped.

“Great idea,” reassured Dave. “Great idea.”

“Are you getting the top notes from the guitar on your ‘phones?” asked Wayne.

Dave put the headphones on and Wayne strummed a little. 

“Yep, yep, clear as crystal,” said Dave.

“Make sure it doesn’t over-power the bass…” muttered Wayne to himself as he tweaked the mixer slightly.

“So… ‘Milicent’, ‘If we get through this’, ‘Night Rage’, ‘We might be just friends’ and end with ‘Stoned’, yeah?”

“Yeah, cool,” said Dave from behind the camera.

“‘Cool’ as in knock ‘em dead or ‘cool’ as in ‘shut up and get on with it’?”

“This is your show,” said Dave snapping suddenly, but controlling his impulse as soon as it went off. “I think the songs are great, the order is great but if you want to re-jig it you can, OK? It’s not really my department but…”

“Not your department? What – you don’t care how I come across?”

“Of course I do I just…”

“We’re two minutes to live,” came Cath’s voice over the video link. “About a hundred thousand registered and climbing fast. Very fast. All over the world. It's going to be big.”

This refocussed Wayne a little. He knew he had to make this work. He’d been offered all kinds of alternatives to this DIY approach. Promoters were going wild with experimenting with socially distanced performances, but the numbers you could get safely in a venue were pitiful to be honest. And then there were the car park gigs. Even in the best case scenario Wayne couldn’t get his head away from imagining that they would be little better than listening to a live gig on your car stereo while someone very far away stood on a stage. Would you really get any kind of atmosphere off that? If people liked you would they honk their horns or something? Would windscreen wipers mean you were truly awful? And he could think of no substitute for stage diving or crowd surfing. He’d get told off in so many ways for running across the car roofs.

“What if I did the whole thing the other way round?” said Wayne suddenly. “Start with the stuff they don’t know and then deliver the knock out blow when everyone’s into it?”

“It’ll work,” said Dave. “Definitely.”

“‘Definitely’ as in…” but Wayne realised at that point that there wasn’t sufficient time to change the settings. Cath gave them a minute to live and started the countdown. Wayne let out a grown of exasperation.

“I have to do ‘Milicent’ first,” he said, “‘Stoned’, ‘Night Rage’ and then ‘If we get through this’, ‘We might just be friends’.”

Amen to that, thought Dave as Cath gave the final countdown and Wayne hit the trigger to start the familiar intro loops for Milicent. 

As soon as the connections were made, as soon as the sounds from his room filled the stream to the outside world Wayne felt himself relax. Music was a wonderful place to be and he let himself get caught in the flow.