@Gordon Shumway Listen to Carlos Santana speak on the screw face of music. He says when you forget about the audience, and become a part of the music, Allowing your soul to speak through the notes, your soul wants to fly. Like a rocket ship taking off, the face changes and contorts from the g-force, and in music the face changes and contorts from the soul blasting off from the body. In order to make beautiful music, you have to make ugly faces.

I'm sure Carlos Santana was exposed to way more drugs than I have ever seen to come up with an explanation like that, but I can identify with what he was saying. Haven't you ever gotten so far into a song you lost track of time and space? So caught up in the emotion of the music you had that get off my toe look?

I'm not faking it for anyone, I don't care enough about the visual to do so. I have run in at the last minute, sped through everything so I could get out as fast as I could. Didn't help the music by any means because there was no emotion to it and no need for it. I had drunks at a bar telling me I was better than Slash playing Sweet Child of Mine and I wasn't even plugged in, and wouldn't play lead if my life depended on it. Just had a volume control clipped onto my belt, and walked around in the crowd.

On the flip side, I have been playing, usually saxophone, and have gotten so involved in the emotion of the song, and become so shaken by it, we had to take a break so I could regain my composure. If I emote with a sax it is real, with a bass or rhythm guitar, you were watching someone else because it's just notes.

If I made the kind of money that Vengerov made, I don't know if I would come out laughing hysterically, or crying from joy. I know I would be hella emotional when I went to the bank.