Ya know what's really doofy?

[Tim2723]

When you're playing in a sports bar, you end the tune at the precise moment the home team scores, and you say "Thank you!! Thank you very much!!"

[John Rosett]

Tim-That's happened to me before, although the bands I'm in rarely play at sports bars.
You can buy a universal remote that will turn off any TV.

[Tim2723]

Yeah, just try that in a sports bar.

I wish they had something to turn off cell phones. We used to play in a place where we were literally standing behind the bar. A young girl sat herself right in front of us and was talking non-stop into her cell phone and was louder than us (if you can imagine that). I bent down and whispered to her "Your phone is coming over the speakers and everyone can hear what you say." That was the end of that. It was pretty doofy, but it worked.

[Matt DeBlass]

I've had both of those happen a few times. Once I even had somebody on their phone ask me if I could quiet down for a minute!
My favorite doofy patron was the drunken lady at the one bar in upstate NY who didn't want to hear Irish music so she kept putting money in the (unplugged) jukebox to try to get something different to play.

[allenhopkins]

I think the night I kinda stopped playing bars was during one of the Olympics, when gymnastics was being broadcast on the big-screen TV. The bartender was considerate enough to turn the sound off during our sets, but the image of some pubescent Romanian girl, in day-glo Spandex, cavorting on the uneven parallel bars was being projected on the wall to our right, and we were playing to the side of everyone's head.

I could put up with getting home at 3 a.m., smelling like an ashtray (this was a while ago), having to unload instruments and PA, with $50 in my pocket (if I was lucky), after playing three sets for people who were interested in sports, and each other, and getting hammered, but not particularly in our music. Did it for years. But that one little epiphany at Muldoon's on a Saturday night sorta convinced me that there are other audiences who might, from time to time, pay attention -- and would give me for an hour's work, what I was getting for six hours portal-to-portal, loading, set-up, take-down, unloading, at a bar.

Now I play a lot for seniors, and sometimes they fall asleep, but I don't care. I bowed out of the "bar scene" before the cell phone era, so missed some of the current rudenesses. And when I go to a bar, and some band's playing, I make it a point to listen and applaud and feed the tip jar. Been there, done that, don' do it no more.

[Tim2723]

But Allen, there's nothing doofy about that.

[journeybear]

I dunno, Tim, I thinks it's really funny, if you can work it into your stage patter somehow. I used to do this every chance I got. Even if it's not applause for me, per se, it's applause, and I'll take it! Then again, I am kind of doofy, so my perception is biased. I think.

Now about cell phones, that's a whole 'nother somethin,' and don't get me started! OK, just one - a couple of nights ago I was lying in bed watching TV, and the woman across the street started up a conversation on her cell, on her porch, and was talking so loudly I could hardly hear the TV. I thought of getting up, going over, and mentioning that not only could *I* hear her, probably everybody on the block could, too, and she might want to think about whether she really wants everyone within earshot to know her business. But I stayed patient, hoping it would blow over soon - don't know if ten minutes qualifies as "soon," but I went for it. Someday, though, I am bound to be in the mood to "enlighten" her. I don't know what it is about cell phones - people seem to just zone in on that conversation and lose track of their surroundings and how they are interacting with others nearby. You would think people would have figured this stuff out by now - they are not a fad, they are not going away, and people need to incorporate some manners into their use.

OK, climbing off the soapbox. Next!

[allenhopkins]

Julia, a friend of mine, says her tactic with those who talk loudly on cell phones in her presence, is to join the conversation. When Mr./Ms. Rude bellows into the phone, "You think I'm gonna stand for that?", Julia says to him/her, "Darn right! You shouldn't!" The person usually looks immediately startled/annoyed, but J just smiles encouragingly, like an old friend who's right there through thick and thin... I guess the Loud Talker usually gets the hint that he/she is involving everyone else in his/her "private" business.

Don't get me wrong: I still play clubs -- did the "Acoustic Desserts" at Perry Cleaveland's Gridley Inn in Waterloo NY last Thursday -- but they tend to be low-alcohol-content "listening rooms." I'll have a bar gig at the American Hotel in Lima NY on St. Pat's, if precedent is followed, and sometimes I do miss the energy of a real good night in front of a real good bar crowd. But there's so much not to miss. Drunken rockers asking for Lynyrd Skynyrd or Aerosmith, guys being pushed onstage by their friends "'cause he's really good -- just let him sing one song," scuffles and spills and someone knocking over the speakers, playing as LOUD as possible, only to have the crowd talk EVEN LOUDER, hassling with the owner about how many people came in and paid their $5, and how many were "friends" and didn't, etc. etc. Plus I never could resist the free popcorn, and always got a little chunk of popcorn hull stuck next to my larynx at critical points. I think it's for the young, not those of us on Social Security.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Cell phones (we call 'em 'Mobile phones' over here) are a very mixed blessing indeed. Being a non-driver,i use public transport a lot & every time i use PT,there's always at least one person vocalising on their cell phone,& usually loudly at that.
Several months ago,a lady got on the bus that i was travelling on & a few stops later a guy got on & had to sit next to her - rush hour & the bus was crowded. I think that she was in Public Relations or something of that nature as a job. Her phone rang,she answered it & then spent the next 20 minutes or so 'playing to the gallery'. Obviously wanting everybody to know that she was in some 'important' job. The guy who was sitting next to her got really rattled as she was talking so loudly. Just before he got off the bus,he took the lady's phone out of her hand & shouted into the mouthpiece " & the rest of us don't give a ***t !" much to the amusement of many passengers who were equally p****d off. Not the politest thing to do,i agree,but i've thought of worse things.
Getting back to the OP's point - The worse thing that could happen when i was still playing in a band,was the Juke Box thing,but usually they were un-plugged. Many of the clubs that i played in were Pubs that had music,so expecting the audience to be really quiet wasn't on & we simply had to get used to that - we were getting paid,playing as well as we could, so why care !,
Ivan

[Tim2723]

OK, I'll divert to one very doofy cell phone story. This dates back to the earliest days of mobile phones when they were both the size of a building brick and actual status symbols owned only by the affluent or those with very important positions. The 1970s.

My then fiance and I were at our local shopping mall. As we took the escalator up we noticed a well dressed man in his 30's standing nearby talking into his mobile phone. A fairly rare sight and one that attracted attention back then. A while later we came back down, and there was the same man still on his phone. A bit later we passed him yet again. This time I looked very carefully. His phone was a fake. There was a shop in the mall that sold toy cell phones that were no more than hollow boxes. So there he stood trying his best to impress passing strangers in the mall. That's doofy. And more than a little sad, really.

[Ed Goist]

Tim, you should have stopped and introduced yourself. I still have that toy phone. Great fun!

[Schlegel]

You're looking for the worst possible explanation. I prefer to imagine a detective on a stake-out, trying to come up with an excuse for standing around in the same spot. Suddenly, he sees a display in the toy store window....

[journeybear]

In my one trip to Europe (for my brother's wedding in Tuscany), back in 1998, I couldn't get over how many Italian men spent so much time on cell phones. Standing around in squares, walking along sidewalks - I swear, they were strutting and posing, as if it were the ultimate status symbol. Maybe it was, at the time.

I'll tell you what's really doofy, though - making comments over the mike about stuff that either only you can see or understand. Have you ever been at a club and you hear something over the PA and have no idea what the guy is talking about? Well, imagine being that guy, and having no one get what you are saying. And so loudly. And with nowhere to hide once it goes flat. Been there, done that, oh yeah. I had to develop a ready-to-go excuse, something like this: "These are the jokes, folks, Thats why I'm a musician, not a comedian." (Of course, I would have just proved that ... )

[Randi Gormley]

I've always had this crazy desire to take my pad and pencil and follow around people talking on cell phones and take notes. Visibly take notes, that is. Walk behind them, noting what they say ... my excuse could be that I'm writing a book or something and want to get the conversations accurate... I would even ask people to repeat something if I didn't hear it. Sigh. good thing I'm not suicidal.

Four of us were playing at a lady's tea last weekend: just the four of us (guitar, mando, fiddle/banjo and whistle/bodhran) against 75 ladies in a crowded basement dining area. We were against the sliding glass doors in the corner since there was no stage. Even with electronics (we had a single mike and I brought my Kentucky with the pickup in the bridge), we could barely hear ourselves play. Even the ladies in the two tables three feet away talked over us. We had a guest singer (one of the members, who celebrated her 85th birthday with a couple of songs, including Danny Boy and Rose of Tralee) who surprised us by wheeling in her guitar and parking it near where we were sitting ... and eventually got out some sheet music from the case and handed it to our fearless leader. He and I accompanied her as backup, me mostly doing tremolo. At least they fed us, along with our honorarium. Wild times, wild times.

[Rodney Riley]

We had more fun at working by taking our tape measures off our belts, pulling the tape out 4-5 inches and talking to it when company people answered their cell phones.

[Bertram Henze]

...and she might want to think about whether she really wants everyone within earshot to know her business. But I stayed patient, hoping it would blow over soon - don't know if ten minutes qualifies as "soon," but I went for it.

Somehow this reminds me of one night when I was about to fall asleep in my apartment in the Flamboyant Hotel, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil - but it was not to be. I could hear the occupant of the next apartment come home with some woman. The apartments were built symmetrically, so I was kept awake by the woman sighing, moaning and shouting "mais, mais!" (more, more) just behind the thin wall a few feet away. I kinda hoped that they would fall asleep afterwards, instead they started to talk (in Portugese, which I understand only very little - probably a good thing) and talk and talk... I slept on the sofa at the very other end of my apartment that night. This was my first lesson that the one thing you need for survival in Brazil is earplugs.

[Matt DeBlass]

I had to develop a ready-to-go excuse, something like this: "These are the jokes, folks, Thats why I'm a musician, not a comedian." (Of course, I would have just proved that ... )

I've often used the line that "Some musicians do comedy, but I've only got two jokes. One is my singing voice and that was the other one."

[catmandu2]

My biggest complaint about bars (aside from the clientele of course) is the cramped stages and rustic decor in many of them. Last summer, I was gored in the temple by a deer antler that was mounted behind the stage. That sombitch hurt for days.

[allenhopkins]

My biggest complaint about bars (aside from the clientele of course) is the cramped stages and rustic decor in many of them. Last summer, I was gored in the temple by a deer antler that was mounted behind the stage. That sombitch hurt for days.

Paul Geremia talks about a "memorable" gig at a CA coffeehouse, where the stage decor included large ceramic planters suspended in macrame slings. Paul got the tuning peg of his six-string entangled in macrame, leading to a ten-pound planter filled with philodendron and potting soil slipping from its sling, and falling through the top of his twelve-string. But the ambience was, like, groovy...

[TonyP]

geez I love you guys stories! I mean that. You guys have inspired me and given me some great ideas about stage patter, tip jar ideas, and how to deal with doofs. I used several last Fri nite, with great effect. Our doofy problem is we can't settle on a name for the band, and my wife and I had an epiphany that we'd use the tip jar as a "contest" to name the band. Just write your suggestion on a $20 Unfortunately it also opened us up to some rather unflattering things. What we won't do for tips.

I'm really amazed at the latest trend to have the blackberry carbuncles on the side of the head. Lookin' like something out of Star Trek, and then just walking along talking. I can't tell the crazy's from the trendy's.

We were playing our little local restaurant gig when a guy came in late, plopped down, and decided to call his buds. We got treated to a review of us as he was trying to entice his friend to come down and join him. At least it was favorable.

[Tim2723]

Actually Tony, not being able to settle on a band name might not be bad. If you call yourselves by a dozen names you might get extra bookings because the management thinks they're hiring different bands. I can see it now:

"Hey, aren't you guys the Blackberry Carbuncles that were here last month?"

"No. We're called The Star Trek Doofus Convention. You don't know us."

One of the most complimentary cell phone things that happens to us is when somebody really likes our music, dials up their friend, and holds the phone up for them to listen. That's actually pretty cool. On the other hand, we've had hundreds of people record a few seconds of a tune on their phones. I've always wondered what they do with all those tiny snippets of music.

[Matt DeBlass]

I always loved the "live broadcast" via cell phone thing.

Tim will appreciate this one:

Last St. Paddy's day I was doing an all-day gig at a local pub, solo on guitar for the first six hours, then on mandolin with a backing band from 6 to midnight. Obviously over the course of the day I repeated my traditional Irish repertoire several times over, and by 7 or 8 at night we we mixing short sets of acoustic rock and pop songs in with the trad songs. During one of these sets an extremely belligerent lady got right in my face (while I was singing, so it all came through the microphones) and yelled at me to "play some real %$$% Irish music, I came here on %$@^ St. Patrick's Day, I don't want this %#@% I want to hear %$#^% Irish music!!!"

So I finished the song I was on (something by the Beatles I think), and asked her if there was any particular "real Irish" song she wanted to hear.

"Play the Unicorn!"

sigh.

[TonyP]

That's what's been inspiring with this sharing. How you guys seem to turn adversity to either a joke or to your advantage. So, the name thing and using it as a tip jar ploy worked good in that we were able to turn around our inability to come to consensus on a name to a shtick. What we decided on was something like CSN&Y, except we're VPK&G. So, when it was remarked it sounded like a law firm, I've decided to run with it. The musical firm of VPK&G. We preside over weddings, casuals, etc. Holding court, depositions, etc...obviously still in the early stages. And just keep the "contest" going, forever now if that ain't doofy.....

[Tim2723]

I also participate on a popular tin whistle site. One very doofy thing that whistlers do is when they try to describe their 'tonguing' for a certain tune. A group was discussing the proper tonguing for Irish Washer Woman. One member said "I use diddly-diddly-diddly" while another said "I use diddle, diddle, diddly". That actually makes sense to whistle players. I chimed in and said "I tongue it: Be-bop-bo-diddly-bop, be-bop bu-wadda wadda".

I don't participate there much anymore.

[Tim2723]

"Play the Unicorn!"

sigh.

That's a classic! But I got it beat. One St.Pat's we had just finished a request for Amhán Na bhFiann which we sing in a capella two-part harmony in Gaelic. A lady (possibly the same one) came up and asked "When the *^&% are you going to sing an Irish tune?!!

She wanted Mother Machree.