Clown Act Blooper - Saltimbanco

After an audience member pretends to slip on a banana peel as part of the clown act in our show, Amo, our clown walks him over to the band where we hold up scores for his performance. We all give him high scores except for Benoit, our guitarist who gives him an 0.6.

This guy wasn't thrilled about the low score, so he walks towards Benoit where he...well...you'll see what happens.

Barnaldo Lucrecia - Sao Paulo, Brazil

A friend of our's here in Sao Paulo happened to work at a very cool club here called Barnaldo Lucrecia. They invited all of us from Cirque du Soleil to their once-a-month jam night. All the musician that play at this club are also invited and play their hearts out all night long. It was a fantastic evening! (click on pics to enlarge)

The waiters came out and banged on pans with sticks as they joined in on the action




Serge, me, local bassist and Benoit playing some Sting


Video of the waiters joining in on the action during the set

Elephant in the Room - Saltimbanco Blooper

Expecting the unexpected during a live show is a good rule of thumb. So when you don't expect the thing that you might not be expecting to happen, and an unexpected event unexpectedly occurs, it could show up in the most unexpected way.

Take for example my sometimes-problemactic keyboard setup that I "inherited" upon joining this show which I mention in the previous post. There are intermittent occurrences that I experience on it, i.e. sounds mysteriously being erased; a ton of reverb/echo may all of a sudden appear somewhere; and my favorite one: the wrong sound at the wrong time which is what happened the other day.

In our double-wire act, the music starts with some powerful taiko drums. Then I slowly bring up in volume a drone played with my left hand. Following that, I wait for our horn player, Paul Hanson, to turn on his talk-back microphone and count "1-2-3" as he and I begin the melody together (he plays electronic drum pads in the intro). Lately, Paul's been turning on his mic earlier than normal, and since he's had a cold and the Big Top has been very dusty, he tends to cough, hack and make other non-human-like screeching noises before counting me in which the entire band enjoys. He knows it's gross but it makes us laugh.

So we're playing the melody, I'm changing chords in my left hand when I hear what I think might be Paul coughing up a hair ball in our talk back mic. Our bassist, Marc Soheir and I both look at each other confused, then look back at Paul who is shaking his head as if to say, "Nope! That wasn't me!" Hmmm...then what the hell was that sound?

Then we hear it again and I realize it happened on the same notes I played with my left hand. Was it a scream? Was it some animal noise. I grimaced as I was about to hit the same octave D in my left hand, and sure enough, there is was - the elephant sample from the previous act - the clown act...blasting at FULL VOLUME for everyone to hear. This 3rd time I hit the D and it sounded and I quickly let off the note so it was only half an elephant. I knew it would, but I just had to check again. I'm one of those people that sees a "wet paint" sign as can't resist touching the paint to see if it's still wet. Everyone on stage and backstage had a good laugh.

Check out the clip:

If It Ain't Broke, Break It

Anything out of the ordinary is a welcome thing for me on my current gig. I do 10 three-hour shows every week with one day off. It's the same show over and over again. It's a lot of fun though because we (the band) are constantly entertaining ourselves on stage and the inside jokes never stop.

However, I must be careful of what I wish for, because yesterday, I certainly got it. Our bandleader, Marc Sohier, came up to me an hour and a half before the first of two shows and said, "Armen, we have a problem." See, I was having lunch/dinner with my wife and just relaxing in the dining area. I was planning on finishing our meal, doing a sound check, putting on my makeup, and then starting the show. "They were cleaning the inside of one of your sound modules (Korg Wavestation A/D for those of you keeping score) and the tech removed the battery that keeps all your sounds in memory when the unit is turned off. So all your sounds are gone." Because I "inherited" this keyboard rig and was told that everything was backed up, I never double-checked to see if in fact there was a backup. Apparently, there were two backups made for this unit, but they were no where to be found.

In short, I looked at my wife, smiled, and said, "I've gotta go." I went into the type of calm that I would imagine one experiences as the plane is going to crash into the ground and they quietly accept their own death. I became very focused because I knew that I would probably have to program new sounds for the entire show in a matter of 30 minutes. Usually, you could spend days programming sounds on this unit for a show like this. This is a sound module that I'm not familiar with, but if you've programmed any synthesizers in the last 10 years, it wouldn't be too hard to figure out. It's amazing how quickly you can learn how to program one of these things when you're under the gun.

I did the best I could, made it through the sound check, put on my make up in 20 minutes (usually takes 45-60 min.), the show went on as I continued to tweak sound patches during the show, and I received kudos from the Marc. Whew! Marc came up with a great phrase during one of the shows when things were going haywire, and I'm going to use it right now: This was "too much situation."