Bjork Not Only One Saying “Shhhh”
September 4th, 2007 by jeff
As a musician who performs fairly often in a band that is not terribly well-known (yet), I’ve gotten used to things like bar managers who complain about lack of alcohol sales, people who promise to show up but don’t (I have a system for this I’ll reveal at some later date), sound that goes wrong, drunk people and loading out around drunk people at 2:30am.
I take no offense at any of the above and, frankly, barely notice it, except when said drunk people refuse to move when I’m carrying a 70-pound amplifier and I have to shout curse words at them for them to get the point. But, I digress.
One thing every musician is used to (and I assume virtually every performer of any kind) is noise before, during and after you play a song. In most situations, audiences are generally well behaved, but getting them to be quiet is another story. Playing rock and roll means inviting a crowd that is there to make noise and be rowdy. It comes with the territory. But, what about those moments when you are in the middle of something quiet, maybe even poignant and little Miss Cell Phone is giving directions to her friend at decibels far greater than the band is producing?
Jeff Tweedy from Wilco (see, I told you he’s silently judging you), for one, doesn’t care for it.
At his Boulder Theater show last February, Tweedy was quite vocal about his displeasure with the talky crowd. To be honest, the concert chitchat wasn’t all that obtrusive or loud, but as Tweedy made a stink about it, he created a prominent rift in the audience that shifted the attention away from the stage.
“People don’t generally talk that much at movies, and that’s not even a real person up there performing,” Tweedy said of his last visit to Boulder. “It wasn’t the typical crowd. They’re usually quiet. But there are different environments where it’s hard for people to be quiet, and when you introduce alcohol to the mix, it makes it more difficult for people to keep their mouths shut.”
It brings up an interesting argument, one that had the Boulder crowd polarized after Tweedy’s visit. One side of the coin: Silence is golden. Why pay money for a concert and then not pay any attention? The other side of the coin: Deal with the noise. This is rock ‘n’ roll, and a rock club is hardly a place of worship, meant to be quiet and meditative.
It’s obvious which side Tweedy is on.
“I don’t understand why people spend money to see something and then talk through it,” he said. “I don’t know how I handled it that night in Boulder, but since that tour I have another way of handling that environment. I think it’s strange. I don’t think I’ll ever get completely comfortable with it.”
While that is rather un-rock and roll of Tweedy, I get what he’s saying. Often, the only way to shut a crowd up is to drown them out. If you can imagine that most people at Wilco shows actually know the songs than you can guess how it is at local shows where, conservatively, less than a quarter of those in attendance have a clue what you are playing unless it’s a cover of a popular song.
It makes for a tough environment if you want to do anything that doesn’t knock people over. Trying to do a ballad or a pretty pop song can be tricky if not impossible.
Tody Castillo, a great local singer/songwriter, performed at our CD release party in July. He performed as a solo acoustic artist and was terrific, yet the crowd wasn’t just restless. At times, they were downright rude, stopping the chatter just long enough to clap when they realized there was dead silence in the club after he finished a song.
Back in March, he talked to the Houston Press about the difficulties of playing quietly around loud people.
[Castillo] freely admits that he used to be one of those who were frightened not to rock. “That’s what I used to do when I first started,” he says. “You get up there on stage and you think you have to go balls-out from the first note to the last.”
[…]
“Your second song has to be as loud as the first one and so on and on until the last, and it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s boring, man; I got real tired of it. So now I come out and say, ‘Okay I’m gonna do my waltz now; I hope you like it.’ And it’s weird. You can hear the space in the club and you just hope people won’t walk out.”
It’s part of the toughening up process of playing music. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for a stand up comedian to deal with hecklers. Once, years ago, I did a gig where someone yelled “you suck” and was serious. We had to restrain our overzealous drummer who wanted to wrap a cymbal stand around the guy’s head. Generally, people are pretty kind in their responses if not always silent in between.
I sometimes envy jazz musicians because their fans seem so well trained. I’m not talking about the three piece that sits in the back of the party playing quiet cocktail songs. I’m talking about jazz bands who play in clubs for audiences who like jazz. They stay quiet in the quiet parts and they clap after individual solos. It’s like really good football fans that know to go nuts when the opposing offense is calling signals but make it so quiet in the stadium you could hear a cricket when their team needs to concentrate.
I’m sure jazz musicians get it too, particularly when they aren’t in a jazz club. As performers, we all do and I’m used to it, but it sure would be nice if, on occasion, the silence was as deafening as the applause.
Since a lot of the artists I like play at a low volume, this is a real pet peeve of mine. I just wish the audiences would behave more appropriately based on the music. If the band is ear-splitting, then chatter away, but when it’s more of low volume or acoustic thing - shut up! I didn’t pay a cover charge to hear the audience chit chat.
Sad to say I think it is a shift in society. I have a devil of a time getting the audience at my students concert to be quiet and I’m not just talking about the kids themselves.
Even worse however is going to the Hobby Center of Jones Hall and having people carry on conversations with no consideration for those around them. People are so used to watching things in their home where they can talk whenever they want that it has spilled into places where they shouldn’t be talking whenever they want. The fact that it has spilled all the way over to rock and roll is telling to me.