[Dixielandjazz] The Chicken Dance & Other Requests

[Steve Barbone]

I thingkwe just about all agree that the client calls the shots. However,
that doesn't mean a band must do everything some members of the audience
request. Like one comes up and says, "you are too loud, turn it down." Then
another comes up and says "you are too soft, ramp it up."

Or one says play the Chicken Dance and another says play a line dance and
another says play Mustang Sally etc. etc., ad nauseum.

If you bend to all such requests, you end up like the changeling Martian in
The Martian Chronicles.   (Dead from trying to please everyone)

You pick your spots. What the original post about the Chicken Dance says, is
that you can substitute a Dixieland song and get kids 5 to 10 years old in
elementary school dancing to it. (as well as the principal)

Same is true for many requests. Like you can play Hello Dolly or Mame, or
Caberet, or New York, New York for a line dance etc.

This coming Saturday, we are playing the annual Duck Races on Goose Creek in
West Chester PA. Rotary Club dumps numbered plastic ducks into a stream.
Folks buy Ducks. Winners get some cash or prizes. Rotary club makes money.
Families come out etc.

We play "That's A Plenty" as the Ducks float down river, or other such
lively tune, instead of a request for "Float Me Down That Old Green River"
or other more fitting tunes that the audience won't get.

It is the audience as an entity that you must satisfy. Not everyone in it
because you can't please everyone, but you can please most. And sometimes
the client will be wrong in determining volume and/or songs and so you have
to make that determination yourself. Happened to us last Thursday, Client
said tone it down, audience said play with loud energy. Guess which we did?
And guess who just got the gig again next year? <grin> (High profile party
by a Charity, thanking major donors to their association)

It ain't what you do, it's how you do it, or something like that. <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

PS To Bob Ringwald. The reason we get so many requests for Chicken Dances,
Line Dances,  etc., is that we play a wide variety of venues/audiences many
of which are used to the tunes they request and want to participate in the
program. We substitute Dixieland for their requests and get them to
participate that way. Works every time. Folks old and young at these events
want to be a part of the action and so we oblige them via Dixieland.