Le Big Mic

[Brian Cady]

>From the Washington Post:
http://tinyurl.com/m6upm

Question Celebrity
With Hank Stuever
Sunday, July 2, 2006; Page W03

Margaret Baird of Alexandria writes in, wondering why
pop stars still perform with what she acutely
describes as "big, fat, honkin' microphones." Seems
weird, doesn't it, given the decreasing size and
increasing status of cellphone receivers worn in ears,
iPods dwindling to the dimensions of a stick of a gum,
and Broadway singers who wear micro-microphones
camouflaged into wigs or costumes. Why, then, do
today's singers wield the big, black mikes with the
face-obscuring foam head?

"Is it really just because stars today don't know what
to do with their hands?" Baird asks. "Have we just
come to expect singers to hide behind their mikes?"
She remembers when lip-syncing on television was an
allowable crime; many groups went on variety shows and
had the freedom to clap, snap or gesture while they
"sang," sans mike. Then, for all its rebellion,
big-time rock-and-roll set forth certain conventions
and codes that still cannot be broken, and one of
them, courtesy of Mick Jagger, Roger Daltrey, et al.,
is that the microphone is an essential part of the
act. (There's also an obvious -- and plenty
overanalyzed -- phallic metaphor going on.)
 
Modern headsets -- which are favored not only by
dance-centric acts such as Janet Jackson and Britney
Spears, but also by today's hipster preachers and
motivational gurus -- free the performer to do any
number of things onstage, but headsets most certainly
do not rock. On some level, singers understand that
the big mike in one's hand conveys credibility,
authenticity -- even when it's not actually switched
on.

The mike also acknowledges a long-standing problem in
any stage performance: idle hands. Actors take solace
in props -- cigarettes, scarves. Corporate types rely
on PowerPoints and flip charts. News anchors don't
really need the sheaf of papers on the "desk" in front
of them; the press secretary doesn't have to stand at
a lectern, but it sure is more comfortable for all of
us when he does.

In the case of today's "American Idol" wannabes, the
big microphone is an improvement on the hairbrush that
we've all, in a private moment, sung into. Technology
could, of course, shrink the size of mikes (and for a
time, in the 1970s and '80s, microphones did appear to
get smaller and skinnier, and somehow less
impressive), but instead, they seem to have grown in
girth. More and more, the microphone has to lend
legitimacy to a performer who hasn't earned it.


-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com

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