Observer: Behind virtually every band you see on stage, there are unseen men and women who wrestle with monitor mixes, tune drumheads, carry un-carryable bass amps, argue with impossible promoters, scramble to find change for someone buying a baseball hat, negotiate with hotel clerks who don’t speak their language, change money and change money back, drive thousands of miles through the night, drive thousands of miles through the snow, drive thousands of miles through the rain.
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My thoughts and prayers are with those who perished or lost someone in this attack. I think the true sentiment in this article is this: “He was a member of the ensemble who happened to play T-shirts.” I tried to impart this mentality onto my students at University of Toledo. While in completely different contexts, the thought is the same. The show isn’t just (or just about) what you see on stage. There are people who work hard, long hours to make these events happen. As somebody who is one of these people, I often find that I don’t need exterior validation. That being said, I do know how important it is to make sure that everyone knows how hard everyone else has worked on the production. Both the onstage and offstage talent needs to understand what is involved on the other side. Only then can we have a truly cohesive production.
Like many things, out of sight--out of mind. It's not until you really consciously start thinking that you realize productions and concerts and things of that nature are a collaborative effort and keeps together because of those working their butts off behind the scenes. It's not just the artists on stage who are putting on a performance of enormous feat. It's also those who run the merchandise table, those who cable the equipment, those who solve issues with annoying promoters and those who keep the energy up when everyone else is done. As someone who works behind the scene, its really satisfying enough to see and know what you were essential to making sure a production is put together and runs smoothly. It doesn't matter to me that much if I get external praise for doing what I'm doing (precisely because for the most part, everybody is working their butt off regardless of if you're backstage or onstage), but understanding and appreciating the amount of work that goes into what an audience doesn't see is nice.
I cannot wait to become a roadie. It is something I have literally always wanted to do and I cannot believe that I’m on a track to actually be able to work on the road, setting up arenas and stages in an amazingly short amount of time and just keeping everything fast paced. It is such a shame that someone who was clearly so spirited and so free-willed got mixed up in Friday’s attacks, but lives are lost and we do what we can to honor them, and for most people, a great honor is to continue out and love what they did and do everything you can to make it better than they ever could think it possible. I think a man like Nicholas Alexander’s outlook on life was a beautiful one and that he really found a great way to express his passions, and that many people will carry on his legacy.
It really bothered me when I started seeing the Paris flag filters everywhere on Facebook. Not because I was insensitive to the attacks in Paris, in fact they were much more immediate and terrifying to me then anything that has happened before because I have close family who live in the heart of the city. But why does it take an attack on a predominately white, European country for the world to sit up and take notice of the death and tragedy around them. And even beyond that issue, are you really appreciating what is lost by putting some colors over your profile picture? I think this article is much closer to what mourning in media should be. As is famously said, one death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is a statistic. Getting a glimpse into the life of a single person who was killed on Friday gives me a much realer sense of what has been taken from the world than just a number on a page. Now Nicholas Alexander can be mourned not just by his friends and family, but by what this article calls his brothers and sisters, those of us who work behind the scenes creating magic for people.
I am a little confused by this article. Is it to address the unnoticed work of the crew or to honor Nick Alexander. I think it is doing both, but I would have loved to have read more about Alexander. I think it is important to remember all the hard work that goes into putting on a show and how a lot of people who are doing that hard work go unnoticed. I am not saying that the crew needs to be as well known as the star but this article made me think about the varying level of life importance (I can’t think of better words). What I am trying to say is if a celebrity were to have died in the attacks on France the media would have focused on that death. But if the guy that operated the spotlight on him for 10 years died nobody would know. I am not saying this is a problem, we should just be aware that we naturally value some peoples lives over peoples.
I get that they want to honor the people who help make concerts what they are and without them there wouldn’t be any but I don’t know if using a person’s death is the way to acknowledge that job. The man who died was more than just his job. I’m sure he had a life completely separate of his work but that isn’t what he is remembered for. People always contemplate what they will be remembered for and I always wonder if their memory is the way they wanted it to be. Did this man want to be remembered for his work with concerts or something different? We can never know but it brings on the question that do we ever remember someone the way they wanted to be? Movie stars that pass are remembered for their biggest roles but what about their other life not on screen? Would they have wanted to be remembered as a loving father or dedicated fighter of good? What we can do is make sure that we live our lives to the fullest and hope that when we pass on we leave a footprint so important that people can’t help but talk about.
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