Boss Christ live @ The Harbour Sessions, Wunderbar, Lyttelton.
The Harbour Sessions is a bi-monthly showcase of Christchurch and New Zealand’s underground, DIY singer/songwriters and has been running for a few months now. The Sitting Room recording studios has been involved since day one providing the live sound for the night and as of last month running the full ‘multi-tracked live recording’ of the evening. Now, multi track live recording is a whole different blog to come from me but for the mean time here’s a great article from Remix magazine about live recordings HERE.
Anyway, if you are ever in Christchurch or Lyttelton and get a chance to check out a Harbour sessions I thoroughly suggest that you do. Likewise if you are ever in a town where you see a poster or a gig guide with the name Boss Christ I strongly suggest you do the same.
As I mentioned above, Tim and I had not just been asked to do the live sound for the Harbour sessions but also record, mix and master them from here on in. So we took out a sexy wee portable recording gig (consisting of our Black lion Audio modified digi 002) and a selection of the studio microphones… set it up, had a few ales and just enjoyed the night. Tim also had his Nikon D90 there and so we rolled some footage. Great news is that from here on in The Sitting Room recording studio will most probably be recording ever show for the end goal of mixing and mastering a BEST of album for release later this year through ‘The Harbour Sessions’.
Below is a small video of one of the Boss songs, and below that is a long rant of mine about the night.
So I had never seen ‘the Boss’ before and had only heard crazy and great things about him so I was anxious with anticipation. I could feel my chest tightening as the music between each act played on and it was at this time I noticed what seemed to be a crazed, long zz-top style bearded, drunk madman stumble onto the stage at the Wunderbar. I was confused and my heart pounded much harder when this bare-footed behemoth turned around and seemed to be wearing a black ‘Boss Christ’ muscle tee. The Boss then set up a ratty old kick drum, some old hi-hats, an old beat up hollow bodied electric and a lovely old valve amp. I could not believe my eyes and felt as though I could well have been some how mysteriously transported across the atlantic to some tiny, hick town in the mid-west USA where the local hill-billy, shed dwelling, tobacco chewing mad-man had arrived to play his renditions of country classics. The pre-show music faded away and the Boss started his show by stamping his bare-feet in stage and chanting in a deep, husky like growl. An a capella style intro that also felt like the beginnings of some form of ritualistic seance, it did work the crowd up in to a frenzy and set the scene for what was to follow. As Boss then picked up his old guitar, sat behind the drums and finished downing his 6 pint of beer, he lowly mumbled something and then kicked into a frenzy of HOT roots/blues style playing with a catchy country shuffle style groove permeating from out of the rickety old drum kit. Every head in the room nodded, and feet started tapping. I turned to look at the friend I was with and we both had smiles from ear to ear as we could feel the party beginning. After the 3rd song Boss was joined by legendary slide guitar player Delaney Davidson who jammed out the rest of the set on slide which just added an eerie edge to the foot-stomping, swamp rock that was being blasted out infront of me.
Most of the Boss songs were about Parties, Partying, drinking beer, drinking whisky, smoking or brewing home brew beer. Never had a seen a performer whom I believed they had fully lived and experienced EVERY aspect of every song they were singing about. There was something disturbingly impressive and intriguing about this man. He was a great player, and excellent singer however also seemed to not care at all about how he was perceived by anyone in the room. There was almost an air of arrogance about him, yet it could also be mistaken for a man that just simply doesn’t have a lot of social interaction. It seemed as though he would’ve been just as happy playing on tin cans and pipes as he was playing on his old gear and I think it would’ve been just as intensely enjoyable. This was one of the most interesting performances I have ever seen in my life, and because of it really got me thinking about how / we all approach playing, practicing and performing. For too long a lot of friends and I think have grown complacent with our playing, with our practice, with our performances. For too long it all now seems so ‘contrived’, so rehearsed, so passionless. It got me really thinking about the best players, the best songs and the best ‘feelings’
you get when you see a hot player or listen to an amazing song. What is the ‘one’ common thread that runs through all of these things? Passion.
It made me realize that for us all to be great players, great workers, great friends, great parents, great lovers… passion is what’s needed.
It’s so easy to get caught up with whether you have new strings on, am I in tune? What is the sound system like at the venue? Will there be a band rider? These are all too commonly asked and not backed up by intense passionate playing or song writing. I would go so far to say that Boss Christ was either the best or worst experience I have had in a long time, and if only to come to the realization that complacency will creep in to every single on of us at some point, and it does creep, it creeps slowly and infiltrates our beings. It’s at these times we need our very own Boss Christ to come and shake it up for us, remind us about what we really are doing!
Anyway… think about that….and next time you are playing or performing, if your audience aren’t on the edge of their seats for any reason… then I think you have failed.
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