[Dixielandjazz] The Audience - Was Front Line Only - peeves

[Nancy Giffin]

From: Steve Barbone <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
[much edited snippet]
I have some pet peeves of my own:
1) The self important musicians in the audience.......
2) Bands that don't play requests of any sort.
3) Musicians that wear a look of "I wish I were somewhere else"........
4) Overly-arranged Dixieland that lacks balls.
5) Bands proclaiming that the warmed-over dance music of the 20s and 30s
was real "jazz" and so repeat it ad nauseaum while waxing eloquently......
6) Bands that insist upon dredging up "obscure" tunes that don't swing......
7) Folks that have a neat compartment, with boundaries and rules for
jazz, and insist that theirs is the only true path and that others must
follow it or be left out of jazz heaven.
8) Etc. ;-) VBG


Hi, Steve,
Under the etc. category, I'd like to add "Musicians who push their
amateur-singer wives and girlfriends on the band and the audience,
unannounced and uninvited, at major festivals." It's not fair to anyone.

This happens all the time, but at the recent Jubilee, I was forced to endure
two painfully-long vocals by the new girlfriend of one of Jubilee's
most-esteemed "featured artists." It was especially frustrating because I
had walked in late just after having left a really great set, half-way
through, so I could catch the tail-end of Allan Vaché in his only set of the
festival with Jim Galloway. (I really enjoy this match-up.) Yet, in that
last half-hour that I did manage to see, I only got to hear Jim and Allan
play two tunes because of this amateur singer using up so much time --
because of the unprofessional move on the part of her boyfriend, the
designated leader of that set.
It's a pet peeve because there are hundreds of professional musicians and
singers who follow standard procedure for acceptance to a festival but who
don't get invited. It's not fair to them since they have to wait, it's not
fair to the musicians who have to backup the singer, and it's not fair to
the audience who came to see one act but unexpectedly got another.

There was a Partridge Family episode that made fun of this idea that, "Love
is not only blind but deaf, too":
Young David Cassidy was in love with a beautiful singer and gets the family
to listen to her as an audition for the band. Now, when HE hears her sing,
there is this beautiful voice on the TV, but then they switch to show what
she sounds like in reality (what the rest of the family hears), it's like
fingernails on the blackboard!!

Funny (if it weren't so common)!