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Keep Music Live!Dateline: 25th January, 2004One of the many legacies of Thatcherism is a tendency in many quarters to demonise trade unions and to make the automatic assumption that
Like so many of the accepted beliefs of the Thatcher era, these are based on a totally false premise, that trade union members are unthinking automata who blindly follow whatever the leadership tell them. Unfortunately for the believers in such nonsense, far from being unthinking, union members are too perceptive not to see the the double standard, that the desire to make as much money as possible is a good thing if you are a businessman but a bad thing if you work for a businessman; that a salary of six figures, plus share options, BUPA, car etc. etc. etc. is an incentive to work hard for a director but an extra 10p an hour is selfish greed on the part of the worker. And this is why I hope that no one in the theatre world is throwing their hands up in horror at the thought that the Musicians Union seems to be wanting to take on Cameron Mackintosh over the reduction in the size of the orchestra which will play for Les Mis when it moves from the Palace. Now Mackintosh does have a very good case in this instance. The fact is - and the MU acknowledges this - the pit at the Queen's will only take ten musicians and, if the large sound is to be retained, then the use of modern sound technology is going to be essential. But recognising this fact does not mean that the Union should be less concerned over job losses. It is there to represent the interests of its members, and it certainly is not in their interests to acquiesce in the loss of jobs without a protest. We have just finished the panto season. Panto, following its long tradition, is changing: some changes are for the better, others are unavoidable, but one really worries me: more and more the band in the pit is being replaced by a CD in the sound box, or, marginally better, a drummer and a keyboard/synthesiser. The same is happening with touring musicals, too, although there it's often the CD (or mini-disc) option that is taken. One problem is there is no margin for error: a band can adjust to the performance of a singer or singers, a CD can't, so if they get out of time, the whole thing becomes a mess. OK, so they shouldn't get out of time, but this is a live show and things totally beyond the control of the singer can go wrong. Think of a panto: a character moves downstage to start a song and slips on something left behind from the previous "slosh" scene -a band can keep playing the intro till the singer is ready to start. With a CD the singer has to start at exactly the right place or get left behind and "stutter" into the song. And staying with panto, one of the joys of panto for years - decades - has been the banter (including some great gags) between the comics and the pit. No band, no gags: a whole area of humour taken away. And similar things can happen in musicals. A friend saw a production of a famous touring show which required a children's chorus, sourced locally. On the night she was there, the kids' chorus got out of time with the music. It sounded, she said, horrible! With a real live band, led by a real live Musical Director, it would have been sorted without the majority of the audience noticing: with the CD, disaster! But apart from any other considerations, we are theatregoers. We recognise the difference - the superiority - of the live show over the recorded, whether it be on TV or film. It's just as true of the musical element of a live show. The MU is right to be worried. Keep music live! Articles Indices:
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