Apparently I’m about a year behind the times, but I saw this vid for the first time last night. Excuse the huge ident at the bottom - I went for the Glumbert version rather than the YouTube version because the sound quality is better:

The guy with beard and the guitar is Mat Weddle. He’s part of a folk rock band called Obadiah Parker. You can hear another version of the song, along with some other stuff, on their MySpace page.

The video is an amateur effort. The sound and image quality is as good as can be expected from a live performance recorded in a less than optimal space on what seems to be mid-range equipment. But that doesn’t make it any less brilliant. Why? Well, first off Weddle is a wonderful singer (’classic American pining vocals’ as my good friend Mr. Adam Warne puts it). Second, although the guys who shot, recorded and edited the video have worked hard to do the best job they could within the restrictions they faced. Third, they’ve chosen great material: Hey Ya! is a superb song.

So although Weddle’s performance is amateur, it’s not amateurish. Tremendous skill, thought and attention to detail have gone into it. It’s better than most of the stuff you’ll find in the music charts at any given time.

Amateur, but not amateurish. What do I mean by ‘amateurish’? Time for another example.

A while back I was asked to play the piano for an amateur dramatic group - just for a single rehearsal while the regular pianist was on holiday. The director had written the script herself, and it was good. The actors were good, and they were using an excellent stage in a local community centre.

One of the songs the director had included was Paul McCartney’s We All Stand Together. Each time we ran through it, the singers speeded up in one particular bar, cramming three crotchets (quarter notes to you, Americanos) into two beats and getting themselves ahead of me. I tried to tell them, but the director just shushed me up. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter about little things like that,’ she said. ‘After all, it’s only a bit of fun! Our usual pianist just speeds up with us…’

After half an hour of this I was on the verge of sinking my teeth into the edge of the stage in frustration. That’s amateurism: assuming that because you’re not a professional you don’t have to aim for professional standards, even if you’re working with second- or third-rate materials. Professionalism is getting the details right. Amateurism is not making the effort, or thinking that details aren’t important.

That’s a lesson you can apply to all sorts of endeavours: making music, running a part-time business, writing your novel, blogging and the rest. Even if you work on your project in your garage in the evenings, and it’s never likely to go any further, aim for perfection and get the details right. Be an amateur, but don’t be amateurish.