Let's Give the Singer Some!

Dear Mr. P.C.:

We recently played a trio gig backing a vocalist. She announced to the audience, "And now the boys are going to do an instrumental number." She quietly asked us what we would play, and we said, "When You're Smiling." She immediately told the audience, "They're going to play 'When I'm Smiling.'" Is it true the world revolves around singers?

—The Boys

Dear TB:

Follow the science: For centuries, everyone believed the sun revolved around the earth, until Copernicus proved the exact opposite. You're mistakenly comparing singers with the sun, thinking the world revolves around them; the truth, as they know it, is that they're actually the world. The whole world—everything that is real and important to them, and should be real and important to you and everyone else. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll trust Quincy Jones: When he convened dozens of the best-known vocalists in 1985, what did he have them sing? We are the World!

So the better question is: If vocalists know they're the world, what place do instrumentalists have in their universe? The answer should be obvious enough: instrumentalists are the moon. The world can't revolve around singers since they are, in fact, the world, but you, your fellow instrumentalists, and the rest of humanity are expected to do just that. That's why a singer's gig can make you feel so cold and lifeless; just try to make it to the end before you show your dark side.

Dear Mr. P.C.:

Seems like a lot of my fellow instrumentalists give singers a hard time, especially the ones who haven't learned their keys or how to count off a tune. But musicians overlook the fact that singers have to spend more time on their appearance than we do. A lot more. Nice concert clothes don't just appear—they have to be shopped for, and that takes time. So do hairdos, pedicures, make-up, and everything else the audience sees. Shouldn't we be a bit more sympathetic?

—Calvin in NY

Dear Calvin:

What you're saying is absolutely true. And here's what you may not realize: The worse the instrumentalists look, the better the singer has to look. From the audience's point of view, a trashy-looking band can be leveled up only by a beautiful front person. And the same with the music: That gorgeous singer doesn't have time to learn about music, but the band members—who forgo their appearance in favor of practicing—are able to compensate.

Obviously, it's a symbiotic relationship that serves an important function: assuring an overall consistency of experience for the audience. Actuarial tables are employed, when necessary, to tabulate the correct musical and sartorial offsets.

Naturally, musicians want better music from singers, and singers want better looks from their bands. Rarely is there sympathy for the other side—kudos to you for being able to see beyond your own bad haircut.

Dear Mr. P.C.:

When critics want to compliment a horn player, they say their lines have a vocal quality. When they want to compliment a vocalist, they say their lines have a horn-like quality. What gives?

—Christ Fymer

Dear CF:

Think about it: If the horn players sound like vocalists, then how could the vocalists not sound like horn players—specifically, those horn players who sound like them? Or maybe the vocalists started it by being horn-like, dooming the horn players to have a vocal quality.

Either way, it's a shameless power trip by the critics, using the lure of supposed compliments to make vocalists and horn players their unwitting yins and yangs.

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