MCing Large Concerts

In my experience at festivals, MCs rarely make any attempt to go beyond the bare minimum for the job while on stage. Usually, there is zero effort at engaging the audience with humour, anecdotes, songs or whatever between sets.

Typically:

A few minutes later:

Should MCs be selected for their ability to put on a bit of a performance during the link time - or, as a punter, am I expecting too much?

Aargh, please, no. It makes the artist feel about three inches tall when even the MC hasn't seen him before. Unless of course he's a big name on a first tour from abroad.

It's like that dreadful MC gaff -- "Next week we've got Eric Bloogle. A great performer with a stunning voice and excellent songs, but this week we've got Vin Garbled" :-(

"Now we have an act that I haven't had the chance to see, but everyone is raving about them, and I'm very pleased to introduce ....."

and at the end... "so those people who said they were brilliant were absolutely right eh?"

Club secretary rises to announce the aforementioned Mr K. and spoke more or less the following glowing words of introduction. (In order to get the effect you should speak it all in one rushed sentence without even pausing for breath, especially not before the last two words.):

"I didn't want to book this fellow but I was overruled by the committee..."

One of the worst intros we've ever had (at a folk club) was when the MC - who had already arranged to put us on at 9:00 after three floor spots - went up on stage to take the second floor spot off and then said directly to us across the room, "You might as well go on now; it'll save me putting another floor singer on." Then he left the stage, walked out of the room and left us to it. What a build-up eh?

It was a long time ago and we were still fairly new to the business, but even then I had the presence of mind to jump up on stage and laugh as though I wasn't taken aback, and say (in my best over-the-top build-up voice,) "Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome -- Artisan! - Ta-daa!!!" And then I started clapping, jumped off stage and jumped back on again with Brian and Hilary. Luckily the audience played along with me or I'd have felt like a prize idiot. :-)

Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, doing a tour of the Orkneys / Shetland Islands a few years back. The concert is taking place is in a small village hall. The MC stands up and says "We're now going to have a few tunes from Aly and Phil".

From the back of the hall a drunken voice shouts "But Aly and Phil are crap!"

The MC draws himself up to his full height: "Nevertheless..."

Don't leave the auditorium during the performance without saying where you are going to your "runner"

Let the venue manager/sound crew know where you are sitting.

A single acoustic performer can get on stage in a couple of minutes, if someone like the Albion Band is moving in having played another stage, they might take twenty..

Keep the "on" times tight, better to get the previous act off a couple of minutes early, rather than ten minutes late.

Find out what the absolute final time the venue will tolerate is, so that if things do slip, you know exactly how far you can go.

"As performers, we've come across a lot of MCs good and bad. The good ones slip into the comfortable recesses of your memory but the bad ones stay burned on the front of your brain for evermore."