On Tuesday at the Final Performance, Crimson performed “Go With The Flow”, “Mardy Bum” and “Hey Joe” for an audience in one take. I was the drummer, and I was terrified.
We performed our songs at 20:00 exactly in the video, and as far as criticisms go, I am proud to say I am very pleased with the results produced. I think that for this being my first live performance, I didn’t do too bad. There were moments that I could have been better, but I have more positive remarks about my showcase than negative. For starters, the tempo was kept well; I did not speed up or slow down any of the songs, and I managed to play “Go With The Flow” at its original tempo. There wasn’t any mistakes in playing my notes either, as it was a fairly simple yet fast song. The only critique I have about it is at two points in the song, I dropped my stick in my right hand due to it slipping out because of sweat. Though, I asked some people after the performances if they noticed anything, and they stated that it wasn’t too noticeable; some didn’t even realise I had dropped it. This proves that I was able to get back on track quickly, and not make it sound like I ruined the song.
Mardy Bum went completely well except for one of the guitars almost failing to join in the chorus change, but I feel like I stayed on the correct bars when I needed to. There was no problem with the song and each note was played correctly.
For Hey Joe, I didn’t use my previous criticisms and I kept to a few safe fills of about two or three, but because I did that, it sounded like a full song anyway – I didn’t dare myself to do things that I haven’t practiced; because I feel like I did a good job performing this song anyway. The way I ended the song did hurt my arms a little, but it was still a very rewarding and satisfying end to a very stressful performance.
I think I would like to perform live once again.