As a pannist who often performs solo and never with backing tracks, it is clear that there are pannists of the solo performing persuasion who consistently use backing tracks when performing. Often, these backing tracks are of the midi variety and inherently produce a significant cheese factor as far as solo performance goes. How great this particular cheese factor ultimately is depends upon the individual performer. Backing tracks produced using live instruments are a somewhat different story, but for the sake of staying on topic, let us stick with the overall idea of solo steelpan performers who use backing tracks in general.
The Ultimate Cheese Ball
For the readers who are fond of cheese balls, one of the main ingredients of this popular snackfood as you may know is corn, and rightly so. The word ''corny'' has been used in this blog in the past in order to refer to the general handpan community. As this blog has an international audience, there have been some readers who have failed to grasp the meaning behind the word, ''corny''. For those readers who may not be familiar with American slang, the word ''corny'' is used to describe anything lacking coolness, or anything uncool for all intents and purposes.
With that being clarified, the epitome of steelpan cornball cheesiness is definitely Bob Lyons.
So much for merit based views on YouTube, as if a meritocracy ever existed in the first instance as far as steelpan videos on YouTube are concerned. With over 2 million views to date, the above video is apparently the most viewed steelpan video on YouTube. KaribPAN has published some recent articles concerning this pan disparity; Questionably Low YouTube View Counts of Stunning Steelpan Videos as well as Three Important Things We Can Learn From These Throughly Underrated Pan Videos.
Solo Pannist With Backing Track and a Splash of Class
Clocking in with just over 1 million views is a pannist hailing from St. Martin who is performing the standard, ''Yellow Bird'' along with a backing track and unlike Bob Lyons, this pannist's 1 million views are well deserved as he definitely has the talent and the touch to back up his numbers.
Although the preceding video features a backing track, there is no cheese factor evident with this particular pannist and the reason for this is as stated earlier, namely that the cheesiness of performing with backing tracks as a soloist is strictly dependent upon the individual performer. This can be said for any musician utilizing backing tracks, regardless of what instrument is being played.
Performing on the Pan With a Hawaiian Shirt And Straw Hat is Corny
Apparently Bob Lyons never got the memo that donning a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat and adopting this outift as his steelpan performance uniform is not cool, especially in light of the fact that it is hard to find a photo of Bob Lyons in an outfit other than a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat.
It seems as though there is a consensus among certain pan performers regarding Hawaiian shirts and the role that they play as standard steelpan performing attire. Hawaiian shirts and straw hats are one thing, but Hawaiian shirts topped off with an old, beat up, snapback baseball cap is almost another issue entirely, yet still closely related enough to the issue at hand to be relevant.
Terry Baber is another steelpan cornball who appears to have a comfortable airport gig, and while he may do a poor job representing authentic steelpan culture to airplane travelers, he does it with heart. All of this in spite of the fact that his pan sounds out of tune, and his backing track sounds like something that was recorded from a child's karaoke toy.
Closing Out With Class, Freddy Harris III
Freddy Harris III is one of those up and coming young pannists who is carrying the steelpan torch for the current younger generation of pannists. It is virtually guaranteed that Freddy Harris III will never perform with a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat. And although he is sporting a fitted baseball cap, it is far from worn out. Hence, pannists of a Caribbean background who perform solo with backing tracks, will not usually come across with anything corny about them, and naturally so.
I’ve worked with Terry for years, sharing the stage singing and playing guitar. Mr. Baber is an ENTERTAINER. He takes his pan to the people, and EDUCATES those that have no knowledge of the history. He uses HUMOR and WIT, bringing the music to the audience in a wonderful stylized manner. I would crack up to see you trying to play at any of our gigs, crying about the backing tracks and purity, then cashing those fatty checks. You’re mighty close to that old “those that can’t do, criticize..” I seriously doubt you could cover a steady gig in a tourist town, I’ve worked with malcontents who blew doors, and I’ve worked with pannists that are still reaching for their potential, and you are a malcontent that could very well be not as good as you think. I’ve played with Ellie and Andy, and I don’t remember attitude like yours….As for what you said to my friend and stage dawg, Terry Baber… .Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. I think an apology from your kind is impossible, so maybe a week of real diarrhea, instead of the kind that flows from your mouth, would be in order.
Who died and made you the arbiter of what is/is not “cool”? You need to take a chill pill and enjoy the music! I am curious why you have chosen to disparage the artists you called out? They are busting hump to make an honest living and are enjoyed by many!
Rap isn’t my cup of tea, but I don’t go around carping about this or that rapper. If something doesn’t sound good to me, I simply don’t listen.
The folks/groups I play around are very supportive of each other, toss gigs around, share freely with each other, and genuinely care for each other. I feel sorry that you seem to need to bring fellow musicians down, in order for you to feel better about yourself.
You need to grow up and learn a lesson you should have learned long ago…If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all!
Way to preach racism and hate… You don’t know these people you trash or anything about why the dress the way they do or anything. Just go out and be the best you. You must have wasted a lot of time trying to find examples. I hope somebodies lawyer comes after you….I will do my best to discourage people from buying anything from this site.
Obviously, this is written for the sake of luring people into getting upset. Pay no attention to this and continue to support your local musicians.
Augustus Arthur please don’t bite him, I trash myself all the time I busk, and I go plugged and unplugged, my audience seems to like the Tracks I made to the downloads, most people use, they do sound cheesy even on a state of the art system relying on just the tracks and playing some mediocre licks or unrelated runs don’t really cut it, environmental adjustments are important, I am horsing around with what has been labled as an untunable pan, by all tuners the stainless steel , it does go out by itself if the notes are not locked right, and needs to be played a certain way to keep it in tune, its my science project, it is not environment friendly, location changes affect the sound. People let me know if I am chessy, by not responding then as I adjust
I love to analyze my audience nothing is wrong with using downloads trick is to edit them and now you are talking, try to not let the tracks do the talking, simple trick every time a loop changes play a different lick, without articulation, it does get cheesy if done correctly a solo performer should sound like they are playing with a band of invisible players, I have stopped traffic, had dozens of people singing at the top of their voices 3am in the rain on 50th and Broadway in NYC,