I was just in Berlin, Germany (one of my favourite cities in the whole world) catching up with friends and re-newing my visa for the Ukraine. The most exciting thing I did while there was jumping in at the last minute to sing a song with my best friend's band 'Disco Inferno'. The nine piece band is made up of excellent singers and musicians from Germany and America.
One of the singers didn't turn up for the gig. She just rang and said she'd "made a mistake" and wouldn't be coming. No explanation or apology. Very Strange. So my friend Corie (with whom I was staying) called me up in a tizzy begging me to step in. It was for a TV show called 'Das Super Talent', the German equivalent of 'America's Got Talent'.
The lead singer of 'Disco Inferno', David, had been called in by the television network as a "plant". I don't know if they do this in the States, but the standard of auditions in Germany is pretty poor, so professionals are paid to take part to make the whole thing look more glamorous. 'Plants' are generally not supposed to get voted through to the next rounds, but somehow David was, so he agreed to come back, only this time with his band 'Disco Inferno'. The band did it for free thinking it would be good publicity for them.
Corie had a costume for me, a little white dress with a silver pattern on it, but unfortunately I had no shoes to match, only knee-high brown boots. Not a good look. In all these talent shows there's always a nasty judge. Dieter Bohlen is the German Simon Cowell, only not as talented. Those of you who don't know Dieter Bohlen, he's a former star of the 80's duo 'Modern Talking', A Milli Vanilli who made himself famous lip syncing.
Remember hits like "Cheri Cheri Lady" and "Brother Louie"? Or that 80's classic "You're My Heart, You're My Soul"? Watch the video below. Bohlen is the blond one pretending to play guitar.
You're My Heart, You're My Soul
Nicky, the band's manager took me to one side and warned that my outfit was perhaps worthy of one of Dieter's rants, and was I sure I wanted to go through with this?? "You should feel comfortable" she said........"Well I'm not
now" I thought and went back to the dressing rooms to think it through.
Stage fright is a big problem for me at the best of times, and being asked to step in an hour before set me right on edge. I didn't know whether I could handle being ridiculed on TV too in front of 800 people. At the end of the day dropping out would have been a cop out. This was a good excercise in quick learning and nerve control. "I'll do it!" I decided.
As I put on my make-up though, I formulated in my head a witty and cutting response in German should the great man single me out for critique.
I'd given myself a good talking to and was at the point where I could look in the mirror without cringing at the brown boots. Just as we were about to go on stage I over heard the technical crew discussing me. "What
is she wearing? Those boots don't match the dress at all! How funny". I whipped around and hissed "
Hello? I can
hear you! ". It was exactly what I didn't need to be hearing just then.
We went on and immediately suspicious, Dieter Bohlen asked whether or not we were professional. The judges are not told who's a plant and who's not, but clearly Mr Bohlen thought we were, and felt he was being jerked around. Skeptically, he asked David what his day job was, to which David replied "I'm an IT engineer". We all laughed thinking he'd made that up on the spot for the benefit of the cameras. David's a full time singer, but when we ribbed him about it later in dressing room, he said "Hey, it's the truth! It's what I trained as at college".
We prepared to start when Greg, the guy on guitar, discovered cables were all over the place and not plugged in. We stood there for about four minutes while the people in the audience shifted in their seats and the three judges sat there with crossed arms and raised eyebrows as Greg tried to sort himself out.
Paul, the band leader asked several times for a member of the technical staff to come on stage and help, but none of them moved a muscle. It was like they'd been told not to help. Good techies, which I'm sure these were, would never forget to plug in the right cables, and we wondered afterwards whether it had been done on purpose to make us look bad.
We sang our song and everything went fine. I remembered all the choreography and sang the back ups like I was supposed to, "Burn Baby Burn!" The crowd seemed to like it and even a few people were up out of their seats dancing.
Corie's belt fell off during the song and the three cameras all zoomed in on it. On these kind of shows, they jump on
anything negative to make more drama, and therefore better TV. My boots probably got more than the once over too.
When we finished and the audience quietened down, Bohlen ripped us to shreds. "David, that was nothing. You are nothing. You're an average singer with an even more average band. The audience wasn't with you at all". (At this point the people who'd been dancing quickly sat down, not wishing to appear to be contradicting the mighty Bohlen. It was 6:00pm in the evening anyway, and the audience had been sitting there since 12:00pm. No wonder more of them weren't that enthusiastic). Bohlen went on "There are any number of disco bands in Germany better than you, and if you just want to continue playing at weddings, then that's what you should do. Goodbye." We all gritted our teeth and smiled as we said thank you and left the stage. If you react badly and argue, it just makes you look bitter. Better to bow out gracefully.
We all left the theatre cursing. It had been a complete waste of time, or so we thought. As we sat there in cafe afterwards rehashing things, Nicky called to say that three agents came up after the show and asked for the band's business contacts. See? There really is no such thing as bad publicity
Regardless of the outcome, I was secretly a little bit pleased with the whole thing, proud that I'd put myself outside my comfort zone and over come the stage fright. I'll let you in on another little secret too, which is that the main reason I did it was because I knew it'd be a good story to put up here on "How was your week?"
