The Crosstalk Project.... Part 2

A Bit Of Feedback: As a guitarist I appreciate the importance of a bit of feedback at times, but not just the Jimi Hendrix kind - the kind that you get from your audience as to whether you're getting it right on stage or not. Obviously the tunes you play can always be gauged on the clapometer but whatever way you look at it, the relationship that you have with your audience is symbiotic and absolutely paramount. After all, your audience make the effort to turn out and support the gig and they are the ones ultimately paying your wages and making the gig a success, so it is nice to think that the trip and the outlay has been enjoyable and worthwhile for them. Listening to and taking advice from one's audience also means the band can try and improve its performance, its sound, or its set, ultimately making gigs better and nicer occasions for everyone! A bit of good quality feedback can help sustain your tone and your position indefinitely because everyone is happy! A harmonious and happy life is all about the tone and as it goes this is a lesson that I'm sure many of us would like to see our politicians take on board. Yes, they may be the band on stage, running the show, however, we are the paying audience supporting the gig and we are getting very bored with hearing the same old tunes. It is therefore about time they started giving us a little bit more consideration, taking a few requests from us and playing some tunes that we want to hear instead of ones that we don’t.

Bum Notes: From local to national government, there should be no room for little Hitlers on the stage, or big ones either! Dictators are dinosaurs and ultimately need to go the same way, as I’m sure they eventually will. There is no place for such an archaic backward relic of a concept in any modern society or political system and there is absolutely no reason why the ordinary people, that is the paying audience, should not have much more say in the running of our affairs and the resultant performance. After all, we can hardly do a worse job than the politicians, who have failed abysmally, hitting bum notes and discordant tones in just about every tune they have had a go at. Of course up until now, painful as it may have been, it’s all we have known, and perhaps we haven’t had the mechanism in place to do otherwise, but with TV and the internet, that has all changed.

Dragged Into It: When Jesus said the meek shall inherit the Earth, I’m sure he was referring to those who are happy to share; share control, share land and share resources in a peaceful and adult fashion without fighting and squabbling. Now that is a good idea and most of us would appreciate the sound of that. However, it only takes one person to hit a bum note and it messes it up for all of us, especially when we have so many people playing so many bum notes all at once. We've seen enough of our current political systems to observe that they only really work for those that are in power, who use them to manipulate things for their own ends, and who hide behind walls and security services. Of course, like the proverbial attracting the flies, those political systems attract those undesirable people for those very reasons. Unfortunately, the rest of us get dragged into it also. Poverty, war, misery and suffering are the fruits of all this, as we have seen over past centuries.

Getting In Tune: As far as the ordinary people are concerned, most of us are happy with somewhere to live, some food to eat, a few pounds in our pockets, perhaps a holiday once a year, and of course a job to pay for it. The present system, or more to the point those that orchestrate it, just haven't been able to get that right for people and have let us down time and time again. As a planet we would all benefit greatly if we didn’t waste money on war and nuclear weapons. Such things are not really an answer and it gets us nowhere. If arms manufacturers don't make and sell weapons to every Tom, Dick and Harry, then life on Earth will be much more peaceful and much less noisy for all of us. Of course, we still have a few idiots in the world who think nuclear weapons' development is a good way to spend much needed public money whilst their own people go without essentials such as power and food. These sorts of people shouldn’t really be in the position that they are but until all people on this planet agree that it’s a waste of our resources and that we’re not going to do it anymore, you’ve always got the problem that one of those little Hitlers will try and use such technology to threaten others. Bad apples and bad attitude does infect others, as we are still seeing. Yes, there are still far too many people that do not appreciate the importance of getting in tune, hitting the right notes and getting the tone just right!

Turn Up The Volume: As well as some of the many connotations one might attach to the word ‘crosstalk’, it is actually an electrical engineering term, especially used in music and communications. It is the term given to the tiny leakage of signal, or information, from one channel to another. From person to person, this can be likened to a whisper in the street. Something the powers-that-be seem to have a lot of trouble hearing! But then they do stick their fingers in their ears, so that could explain it. Well, perhaps we just need to turn up the volume a little! The point is, how do we actually get such tone deaf people to listen and take some notice of us, their audience? Now that is a good question! Let’s hope we can find a good answer!