Laptop for teleprompter

While on business two weeks ago, I checked out the local music scene... local band (four members) sounded tight (covers... mostly classic and some modern rock). Anyway, I noticed the guitarist had a laptop near the front of the stage. During the break I spoke with him and found out he wasn't running backing tracks or processing from it, but using it as a teleprompter for lyrics.

At first, I thought... if your doing this for money... get off the books and memorize the material. But I've noticed more and more professional acts using teleprompters at stage levels, (Eagles, Rolling Stones, Nickelback, Bon Jovi, etc.)... IS THIS REALLY TABOO?

Books with tattered pages, etc. looks cheesy, but a computer is asthetically pleasing to the eye, and unless you are looking closely, who really knows what the laptop is controlling.

Thoughts?

Funny you mentioned this.

A few days ago I was looking for some new acoustic songs and came across the Alice in Chains MTV Unplugged Sets. And they had music stands in front of them.

Now all I can think is perhaps the acoustic arrangements are varied from their LIVE on-stage songs? Lane and Jerry both used music stands from which they read music....yes their OWN music.

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

Perhaps "Brain-Fry" caused some memory loss? I dunno?

Yeah, heroin'll do that to a feller.

Seems pretty ludicrous to me if professional musicians can't be bothered to memorize their own material. What else are they doing all day?

The right way: Bruce Springsteen has a large screen set up like a stage monitor at his feet that scrolls lyrics as he performs. It's invisible from the front of the stage, but shows up clearly in many videos--including those made by Bruce's people. This system enables Bruce do take all of those requests from the audience he's been doing lately. Want London Calling? Sure (and the lyrics magically appear at his feet!).

The wrong way: Lucinda Williams (whom I love dearly) lately keeps a music stand on stage with a big binder. She flips through to get from song to song. Once a few years back at Radio City a roadie had to come on stage and find the song for her.

I have a horrible time with lyrics. I cut myself two little chunks of slack that will apply to all of you as well as the musicians mentioned above. First, I've been performing and teaching choir for over 30 years; how many songs have been in my head? How many have I memorized, performed, then shuffled aside to make way for the next set? Probably almost as many as Bob Dylan has written, and I have it on good authority that Mr. Dylan tours with a copy of all three bound volumes of his PUBLISHED songs.

Second, I was at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville for several of their "in the round" shows featuring professional songwriters. Forgive me for not remembering every performer (this IS a forum about memory probs) but Ray Stevens was in one of them to give you an idea that these were not amateur nights. Each night somebody had trouble remembering lyrics to a song they had written OR they had the words in front of them. OK, not Mr. Stevens, but we were all singing along on his.

We’re humans, not computers. These professional song writers work 8+ hours a day to make up new songs. By necessity their minds NEED to be a little loose. Those of us still out here in the fields need to not only work at creativity every day but do most of our own support work too; schedule and contacts and promotion not to mention the dreaded Day Job that uses some of those precious ganglia as well.

With these two points in mind, isn’t it silly NOT o use the occasional memory helper? Note book, laptop, big-screen TV, poster-board held by fans; I say do what you have to the get the show on. My only question about the laptop is; what the heck software is he using? That would be WAY better than my raft of notebooks!