I met MG out the back of a Swans gig once. Just sitting on his own in the car park behind the venue, bottle of water. I just said thanks for the show, didn’t bother him for an autograph or photo, he said he was pleased to hear it and thanked me for coming. Total gentleman, despite spending the last two hours screaming and spitting on himself.
@@thisiskris017 Yeah like, dudes been in prison for selling drugs in the middle east. He's a pretty big dude. His music is enough to strike fear in to the heart tbh
@nick I don't know if he's covered in muscle but 6'10 is damn impressive if true. I'm sure he can handle himself, thought it was weird someone would specifically be terrified of this guy in particular
@@thisiskris017 it's mainly that Michael Gira both has a past that beefed him up- he was a construction worker for a while to keep himself sustained -and he's known for having a nasty temper when people piss him off. Makes him a bit of a force to be reckoned with.
Gira exudes so much pressure during this performance he manages to make not one, but THREE water bottles to fall. 1:23 First bottle down 2:09 Another bottle down 3:40 Third bottle falls I assume the fourth one only survived because he wasn't able to finish the song.
this made me laugh so hard--what a sensible edit of this video, to just jump to your bottle markers. It's like I found a shortcut map that used someplace with a hilarious name, like "Whidlick's Pond"
Swans really was a good name for his band. He stated he wanted something beautiful with a temperament. I understand why he would get mad too. Unless you're a messy sounding band, then you can't just get away with it. Most artists who care about their art are perfectionists. Most people, including me, can never fully understand what it's like until you become an artist yourself.
i disagree. I think there are many great artists who truely connected with themselves through their music but were no where close to being perfectionists. How can art ever truly be "perfect"?
@@Yuckod thats not what perfectionist means. It’s a mentality and attention to detail, an attitude towards one’s art and having specific expectations. A perfectionist is not someone that believes perfect exists.
***** everyone will get mad if they get annoyed by not paying attention to their art, a professor in a room, a pianist, ive seen bill hicks rage because someone from the audience shouted you suck... gira puts alot of effort, and anyone in his place would like if they would appreciate his art.
In the early days Gira supposedly would fight people one on one and stuff, this image has sort of stuck around although some of it is a meme by people who know Gira usually calm and polite
B'dueri! Records Well, it’s the RU-vid comment section. People can comment whatever they please, express their thoughts, etc. Moaning about it isn’t going to change it.
I also think that's actually a cool sound effect. Many musicians come up with new interesting sound out of accidents...Although I don't think this particular malfunction is really something spectacular. But in general, such surprises also can be a good or interesting thing. He just obviously didn't like it.
Nothing can make one more livid that seeing a tech staff member not be alert to technical mishaps like this. Gira has every right to be pissed. He wants to give his audience a stellar experience. Not some half-assed bullshit.
didn't get any sense of him being an asshole. he's a dedicated artist trying to make a living and traveled to a foreign country to play songs by himself on a guitar. his dissatisfaction is completely warranted in every way, and he handles it like a man.
Actually, I would be kinda blown away by the lack of responce from the sound people over such obvious technical sound problems. Gira most likely knows how to fix a few things like this, depending how technical, but i think he was pissed at the fact that service were not holding their end of the job. I would have WTFed a few times myself. He wasn't throwing chairs or anything.
Saw Swans in 2014. Gira mic kept giving him electric shocks. He never lost his cool, even though it visibly bothered him. We talked after the show, very nice guy, nothing like the reputation he had in the early days.
I think he's more pissed that that the issue was obvious and no one came up to fix it. You can hear it pretty clearly multiple times in the video before he gets upset.
lol that's losing your temper? he said please and didn't swear at the tech. who seemed slow to respond. imo if it's your job as soon as you hear something you should be right by the stage ready to jump in.
I worked as a techie for 2 years, you are absolutely correct. And honestly, I've had people react much worse than this to stuff much smaller than this.
This wasn't as bad as I thought. I can see why people would say he's being whiney but I'd be pretty pissed if I was in that position, especially if I don't have a full band to help carry a song when a mistake like this happens. This is just him with full raw emotion and the amp is ruining the most intense moments. He still took it better than a lot of people would have and not only stayed (I can name some who would have stormed off the stage), but made some jokes about it. He's a champ.
honestly he handles this shit like a gentleman. speaking both as a musician and as a spectator, nothing annoys me more than a sound tech who doesn't lift a finger to help solve a problem.
Musicians are artists, and the best artists demand the optimal performance from their equipment/co-contributors. As a perfectionist myself, I feel his pain and I don't blame him at all for feeling aggravated when things don't go too well while performing. Give the guy a break.
this is a very peculiar kind of music...not easily understood. not easily appreciated.. there's one thing evident here. the music of Michael Gira defines his whole self as a person..it's really him. right there on that stage
I thought the clipping was all part of the eccentricity of the song, tbh I didn't know what the hell was going on and then he gets pissed, Gira's music is a hallucinatory, random, head fuck, but in a weird, captivating way, he is an interesting guy, at least he said please haha..
shawntik1 Haha is was awkward as shit! At one point though when Christoph was told to turn it up, he did and when Gira wasn't looking he turned it back down haha, also one time he dropped his slide pick and looked at me and the guy I was next to and he motioned me if I wanted to take it!
i saw swans live in 2016 or so, and one of the sound guys fucked up the monitors and he just started yelling at him over the microphone in the middle of a song lol
Hoy lo podrè ver en concierto en Medellín, en la Universidad Eafit, por invitación de un gran amigo. Swans hoy en Medellín, Colombia y provenientes en su gira desde el sur del continente.
The voice from the audience asking "why not?" was either utterly ignorant or deliberately provoking him to get a reaction. Surely the latter. No one can be that dense.
exactly yeah. it also seems like if the crowd doesn't behave exactly the way he wants which is most likely 99% of the time he gets really irritated. he reminds me a lot of mark kozelek. except mark handles it a lot worse and it always ends with really funny results
Gira wasn't a cock. He was playing, live, and the sound was fucked up. Here's whatcha wanna see a performer do: ". . . Um, excuse me. Mister sound man? Mister sound man? Mister, um. I'm playing for a paying audience. Jeez. Can you hear me? (He's looking right at me...) Why isn't he responding? Hello?"
Dude i think it's completely reasonable how Michael is acting. It's clear that he's pissed because he wants to play a good show for everyone and his amp fucking up ruins the show.
