lyrics sheets onstage

[blackcoffee]

Some of you have mentioned that Perry is using lyric sheets onstage presumably to not mess up a song he's singing. I saw Social Distortion in Portland on Saturday (for the 6th or 7th time), and a guy would run out between songs and tape sheets of paper (presumably lyrics) down by the mic stand. I was really surprised. To be fair, when I'm singing along I sometimes make mistakes, but the way a band like Social D performs I can't see how having the lyrics taped to the floor could help. Maybe it's a form of insurance/security for the lead singer. Do young bands do this? Is it fairly common?

[nausearockpig]

I don't know if young bands do it but I do know that at some point Axl Rose started with a teleprompter.. You can see it on the 1992 Live in Japan videos....

[MYXYLPLYX]

It's becoming increasingly common, both teleprompter and paper.


I'll never forget one time after a Ministry show, one of the crew was pulling up taped lyric sheets from the floor when a fan asked "Hey, how come Al doesn't know the words to his own songs ?!"

To which the crew guy answered, "Uh, gee, I dunno? Maybe drugs?!!!"




Decades of drugs/alcohol catch up and most old rockers appreciate the security blanket of posted lyrics...

[Juana]

Social D was doing that because they were doing the whole self titled album and not their normal setlist. Hard to remember all the words to songs from 25 years ago. I saw them a few years ago and there was no one doing that and then this last time it was only during the self titled album songs. Like for Wild Horses there was no one doing that for Mike.

[Pandemonium]

The majority of major bands these days, especially older bands that have a large catalog of songs and switch up their set every show to some degree use a teleprompter. Even a guy like Bruce Springsteen who has an encyclopedic memory of his huge catalog of songs has been using them onstage since at least 1999. Surprisingly, Bono does not use a teleprompter (which may explain why he flubs lyrics so often) even though the band has someone doing song count-ins, chorus/verse/chorus prompts, etc through their IEMs. I think Axl during GnR's Use Your Illusion tour in '91 was the first guy I saw with big floor teleprompters onstage.

[Juana]

The majority of major bands these days, especially older bands that have a large catalog of songs and switch up their set every show to some degree use a teleprompter. Even a guy like Bruce Springsteen who has an encyclopedic memory of his huge catalog of songs has been using them onstage since at least 1999. Surprisingly, Bono does not use a teleprompter (which may explain why he flubs lyrics so often) even though the band has someone doing song count-ins, chorus/verse/chorus prompts, etc through their IEMs. I think Axl during GnR's Use Your Illusion tour in '91 was the first guy I saw with big floor teleprompters onstage.

I remember seeing them on the FNM, Metallica, GNR tour in like '92 I think

[guysmiley]

A lot of shitty local bands here use a music stand. Dumb.