I was yesterday listening to Chaka Khan concert* in Singapore Jazz Festival.
The event was typical Singaporean culture event. It was mostly corporate and stiff audience mostly concerned on social media updates and eyes on their mobile phone screens. Presenter talking about “building jazz ecosystem” (whatever that means) made me cringe. I did not have that high expectations, but the music was great and the audience (including couple of stiff Finns) started to dance.
When Chaka Khan had just ended one of her greatest songs “I love you, I Live You” (listen below), someone from the audience screamed:
“PLAY FREEDOM”
Going to the next song (from the same album What Cha´ Gonna Do For Me?), the same dork screamed again.
“PLAY FREEDOM”
I would be a little bit hesitant to treat one of the best soul singers ever as a jukebox, but the main problem is:
Freedom is not even a Chaka Khan song.
Although it is a great song, Aretha Franklin has done it.
First it made me annoyed and then it made me think.
That guy was like your usual social media complainer: he wanted to be heard, he did not know anything about what he was talking about, he was loud and only thought about himself.
Quite often people complaining about you or your advertising on social media are not even your clients. They are people whose main satisfaction in life is to be upset about different things and make other people´s life miserable. If you upset people who are not even buying your product, does it matter at all?
Brands are overly sensitive of negative feedback, but quite seldom they stop to think who is actually giving that feedback. And again if you get any reaction from consumers, it just means you have already passed the clutter and created some cut through amongst your audience. As we know the biggest problem is not that people get angry, it is that they don´t really care. Negative top-of-mind is better than no top-of-mind at all.
Essentially we all were consumers in the show as we had bought (or got bribed) with tickets. Some consumers are more important than others though. Probably the guy (of course it was a guy) is super annoyed that the artist did not play the song he wanted to hear. Essentially his opinion is worthless. Do your homework: if you don´t even know the songs of the performer, shut up and enjoy the performance. Maybe you learn something new.
Well as we are heading to the weekend, we should leave all the negative feelings behind. Therefore I´d like to highlight these three nice edits of classic Chaka Khan songs to appreciate the great artist. No major mutilation to the originals, just extending the best parts. Also because she did not perform either Clouds or Fate yesterday:
Chaka Khan: I Love You, I Live You (Danny Krivit Re-Edit)
Chaka Khan: Clouds (Blackjoy Edit)
Chaka Khan: Fate (Todd Terje Edit)
Also for the guy who was yelling for respect, here is a little bit more re-imagined Baltimore version of it:
*Overall Chaka Khan was actually quite enjoyable. She did only the essential hits (like mentioned above, Fate & Clouds were pretty much only ones I was missing). She sang really well when she was singing but also looked a little tired. I did not mind her 30+ minute-break on the middle though, when her backing band Incognito took the reins. Incognito has always been a little bit too polished on their records to my liking (well they were Acid Jazz), but they actually worked better live. Colibri was an awesome version and their drum & percussion section was on some serious Whiplash-mode at times.
Stand-Up Strategy 