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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Jaimie Vernon" <bullseyecanada@hotmail.com> |
| Subject | Re: Proper Rock Show Behavior |
| Date | Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:54:53 -0400 |
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At Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:50:21 Michael wrote:
>Just last night a guy seated 10 yards from me kept yelling for "Southern
>Cross". At the end of every song "play Southern Cross".
>
>I politely said (into the mic for all to hear), "thanks, but I'm sorry we
>don't know Southern Cross". This apparently was the wrong answer.
>
>I usually don't go back and forth like this, but I finally had to ask
>(again on mic) "sir, what is your obsession with Southern Cross? I'm
>really sorry we can't help you, but we don't know that song." The guy
>started yelling out the chords and the words - finally I just offered for
>him to come up and play and sing it for everyone. He passed.
>
>I guess I didn't handle this correctly, but we were exasperated
>(spelling?). Just another night at the local dives - LOL.
The bone du contention in Canada is for cover bands being asked to perform
Tragically Hip songs (who are redneck Gods here and whose appeal is beyond
anyone who is an ACTUAL musician).
During my cover days in the '90s we were asked at least once a night to
perform something from this band (whose material was verbotten amongst all
our band members) so the response was one of four things:
1) "We have an agreement with the Tragically Hip that they've asked us not
to perform their songs because they lose money everytime we do." [it leaves
audience members scratching their heads as they're not sure if it's a true
statement or not]
2) "We will perform a Tragically Hip song the next time they play one of
ours." [which causes the audience to laugh, allowing us to spontaneously
dive into a DIFFERENT song by a different band].
3) "We played one earlier, sir, sorry you weren't here earlier to hear it.
If there's time later we'll try and squeeze it in, but for now the club
requires that we keep playing the rest of our set." [we could only hope that
the requestor wasn't in the room right from the beginning of the
night....and that they don't come to us at the end of the night STILL
demanding we play the song...especially if we finished the set early]
4) "Never heard of The Tragically Hip. Are they a new act?" [this works
better than saying you don't know a particular song...]
Jaimie Vernon,
President, Bullseye Records
"Not Suing Our Customers Since 1985!!"
http://www.bullseyecanada.com
Author, Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia
http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Pop_Encyclopedia/
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