My Advice? Don't "Clap for the Wolfman"

 ~  In the Land of the Blind, the Man with One Eye Can Only See Half the Band.  ~

                I never totally understood why I wasn’t a music guy in high school.  Some of my friends were, and these were smart guys, creative guys, interesting guys.  They were “into” music.  Why wasn’t I? 

                Everyone likes music.  It calms the savage beast.  It puts babies to sleep.  It makes us feel alive in the same way that sex and bungee jumping do (and there aren’t too many rock-musically-transmitted diseases…at least not yet, though the Tea Party laboratories are working on it). 

                I may have discovered the answer last week at the Georgia Theatre, a recently-restored, downtown Athens, Georgia music venue that can just as easily accommodate adult comfort levels for a New Orleans jazz show or a dulcimer band as it can speed-metal head-banging teenagers.  And the answer is so Holden Caulfield.  The answer---Musicians are really freaking needy.  It all feels pretty damn phony by now. 

                They crave applause.  Sure, I’ll grant that all performers need adulation.  But, at least stage actors aren’t able to milk the audience with stupid tricks in the middle of a play unless it’s written into the script.  Musicians do tricks all the time.  And they’re the same tricks now that they were in 1972.  They still work.  And musicians know this.

                I understand why the audience claps at the end of a song.  I understand why the audience claps at the end of a particularly impressive individual musical feat, like a wicked five-minute drum solo with flying drum sticks.  That applause is simply due appreciation for a job well done.  That makes sense.  The other crap that musicians do for applause doesn’t.  Such as:

1) Saying the name of the city.  “We’re so happy to be here in Cleveland.”  “He said Cleveland.  We’re in Cleveland.  Rock on!”  Are we supposed to be impressed that a lead singer can read a map?  Four-year-olds can read a map.  Well-trained chimpanzees can read a map.  But every time that the band mentions the name of the city where you and they are at that moment, the crowd goes wild.  It’s ridiculous.

2) Mentioning the name of a popular music festival or TV program.  “We just got back from Bonnaroo/Lollapalooza/Farm Aid/appearance on ‘The Tonight Show’.”  “Hey, I’ve heard of that music festival/TV program.  I should applaud.”  I wish I’d been at Woodstock as much as the next guy.  I did, believe it or not, attend one of the early Lollapalooza concerts, and it was pretty good (granted I was young, wasted and The Beastie Boys and Cyprus Hill were there).  Even so, the collectively-agreed-upon lie of togetherness works better in song than in-between songs.  That pretend moment of shared intimacy wears thin when it’s just the band naming a music festival that the audience has heard of.  I also like pork chops.  “If he talks about pork chops, I’m gonna go nuts.”

3) Talking about sex or drugs.  “What’s up, Seattle?  I just got high and then slept with a midget.”  APPLAUSE.  Whether it’s in song or in-between, every mention of drugs gets applause.  Most sexual allusions, sexual metaphors, or just simulations of sex on-stage draw applause, too.  Yeah, we get it, rock & roll is all about breaking the rules, even now.  But, that was a hell of a lot more true in the 60s or in some moldy, dank dive bar when you were playing to a crowd of seven, well before you teamed up with Ticketmaster and decided to charge me thirty bucks to hear you make drug references and sexual allusions.

4) Mentioning their home town.  “What’s up, Portland?  We’re Fish Stick Soufflé.  We’re from Buffalo, New York.”  APPLAUSE.  This applause is a slight risk for the band.  Sometimes only the people FROM Buffalo will clap.  Other times everyone will.  Or, sometimes only the people who have been to Buffalo or have some vague connection to that awful city will clap.  The riotous applause isn’t as guaranteed with this trick as it is with the others.  But, it’s a given that someone will clap.  It will still feed the humongous, childish egos of the musicians. 

 5) Simply asking, in rock & roll voice, how the audience is doing.  “What’s up, Orlando?  We’re Rhinoceros Pyramid.  We’re from Tyler, Texas.”  Hold for applause.  The singer lowers her voice to a gravely, rock octave and asks, “So, how are you all doing tonight?”  We don’t tell her how we’re doing.  We don’t launch into a psychiatric run-down of our feelings.  Nobody ever says, “Uh, I’m okay, but I could be better.  I’d say that I’m fair.”  We just clap.  It’s as if the band doesn’t even care how we’re doing and only wants our money and applause. 

6) The shared delusion of the pretend end-of-the-show walk-off, but so obviously expected that they planned a song, massive ego trip that IS the encore.  “Oh, you clapped for five minutes straight while we pretended to be done.  Of course, we were just standing right off-stage, right behind the curtain, feeding off your love and were planning to come back on and do the song that you’ve been waiting an hour and twenty minutes to hear.”  And they always act like it’s a joyful pain in their asses to do the encore.  The encore is so standard that it’s like a six dollar beer, a poorly-fitting tee-shirt with the band name, or an opening act that you’ve never heard of.  We know that there is going to be an encore.  They know that there is going to be an encore.  But they still have to act like it was your loving adoration and towering lifestyle envy, presented in the form of smacking the palms of your hands together at a rapid pace to produce noise that DREW them back onstage, sort of against their will, but not really, sort of obligatorily, but not really, sort of spontaneously, but not really. 

7) Giving it up for ourselves.  “Now, give it up for yourselves.  Before you were clapping for us, but now, for this brief moment in time, clap for yourselves.  And don’t think about how you’re really still clapping for us.”  Unbelievable, and yet commonplace.  

                There are more.  I was going to add a few others to this list: when the singer warbles his or her voice and holds a note longer than most, when the singer names the individual band members and tells us what instruments they play (even though the spotlight operator, their Facebook page and the tiny spurt of music that the bassist plays when the singer tells us that his name is Dave pretty much accomplishes the same thing), and asking us to clap for the people who work at the venue.  That one really burns my toast.  “We’re Blueberry Orgasm.  You’ve been a great crowd.  Thank you for doing everything we told you to do.  Give it up for the guys who just herded you into this building with two hundred people you don’t know, made you put a wristband on your right arm instead of your left, as if that matters at all, and THEN had the gall to charge you six bucks for a Miller Lite.”  Yeah, let’s clap for them.  They deserve it. 

                I know it’s only rock & roll, and I don’t like a lot of it.