Blame it on the Rain

I don't know who the heck Ashlee Simpson is. She's the sister, I gather, of someone else I don't listen to. But on SNL the other night, she had a Milli Vanilli moment. Blame it on the rain, I guess. :-)

I cannot say I have much sympathy. I spent ten years partipating in a weekly blues jam called "Blues Tues" (every Tuesday.) The idea of a blues jam is that you go up on stage with other musicians you may or may not know, and coherently try to play together without any idea of what the other guys (or gals) on stage are going to do. It is a big risk, musically - you'll either create unmatched heavenly blues, or a pile of steaming.... well, let me just say the colour is not blue. :-)

But working at that for years, I gained an appreciation of how real musicians can just figure out how to go with the flow, and improvise their way out of mistakes and mishaps. What did Simpson and her band do? Well, when she lost her cue, she did a silly embarassed dance and then left the stage. The band kind of tried to chug ahead with the song as-is, without trying to do anything interesting with the gaping hole left open by the lack of singing.

So I suppose my problem is not with the lip-synching per se - it is just the lack of general musicianship that seems to have taken hold these days. Let me tell you, when Mark Knopfler or Ry Cooder screw up a song, they take the mistake and do something wonderful with it! Today's pop-dance artists take their cues more from Milli Vanilli than from, say, the Police or even Phil Collins... when the computer screws up, they don't know what to do.