[Slowhand] FW: Nick @ Birchmere

[Bob Tasker]

I just picked this up from the Nick Lowe list, & seems appropriate to many
of the shows being reviewed just now.

My own fave from April's show @ Newcastle was the hard-of-thinking woman
who, filled with beer courtesy of her hard-of-thinking husband (oh look:
EC's doing a Dominos tune for the first time in 34 years - I'll go for the
beer"), decided to wait through all the clapping & stage resetting until the
lights went DOWN for the encore before going to jetison the ale - naturally
she was back soon - I guess there wasn't much of a queue :)

Cheers,
Bob



> JUST ONE REQUEST
> Going to a concert? Don't Play the Fool.
> By David Segal
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, July 20, 2004; Page C01
> 
> Nick Lowe has just finished 90 minutes of solo music at the 
> Birchmere, a set that included all of his best-known songs -- 
> except one. The silver-haired daddy of British pop hasn't 
> played "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding," 
> a track that he wrote and that helped make Elvis Costello 
> famous in the 1970s. So everybody knows what's coming when 
> Lowe returns to the stage for an encore. He strums the 
> opening chords and a ripple of delight rolls through the room.
> 
> Then stops. A man in a striped shirt has wobbled up to the 
> stage, a hand-drawn sign in one hand, a drink in the other. 
> He edges so close to the spotlight that Lowe has no choice 
> but to ask what he wants. "Zmmmuphhmen," comes the reply. Or 
> something like that. Lowe looks baffled.
> 
> "What?" he asks, politely.
> 
> "Zmmmuphhmen!" There's a Web address on the sign, and Lowe 
> gamely tries to read it out loud. By now, whatever spell had 
> mesmerized this room is gone, replaced by confusion, which is 
> soon replaced by rage. All at once, fans realize what has 
> happened. Their joy has been killed -- at least for the 
> moment -- by a Concert Fool.
> 
> There is no escaping the Concert Fool. He (and every once in awhile,
> she) is the chronic carbuncle on the butt of rock, an 
> inflammation that makes it hard to really get comfortable. 
> The Concert Fool is either unglued by music, or drunk, or 
> unaware of the invisible line that separates civilization 
> from anarchy. Or aware of the line but past caring about it. 
> Mostly, the Concert Fool is having a great time because these 
> guys rawwwwk and because it's a concert and up top, dude. 
> Rock and roll!
> 
> Ultimately, the Concert Fool is confused. He believes that 
> the rules of courtesy have been suspended during showtime, 
> which isn't exactly true. Though it's not entirely false, 
> either. At a typical rock concert, you get far more leash 
> than you do at, say, the theater or the symphony. The Concert 
> Fool, however, misconstrues limited license for an excuse to 
> vomit on your girlfriend's pants.
> 
> Decorum at a rock concert is actually venue-dependent; what 
> will fly at the 9:30 club, where bands skew loud and young, 
> will get you tossed from the Birchmere, where the acts are 
> generally quieter and pitched to adults. You need to sit down 
> and zip it at the Birchmere and halls like it, which seems 
> proper for a singer like Nick Lowe, whose distored-amp days 
> are well behind him. But even at 9:30 -- as well as the Black 
> Cat, MCI Center, Merriweather Post and other venues -- you 
> need a set of manners, even if those manners fall somewhere 
> between the standards of decency for a baseball game and the 
> standards of decency for a kegger. Most fans settle 
> comfortably within that fairly broad range, finding a way to 
> exult in the show without thrashing the collective buzz.
> 
> The Concert Fool, on the other hand, finds inventive ways to annoy. 
> A wide variety stalk the nation's pop venues, and during my 
> years as a pop-music critic, I've seen them all. So here's a 
> field guide to what's out there -- a taxonomy, if you will, 
> of show-going morons. 
> Avoid them if you can.
> 
> The Singer wants the world to know he's got a great voice. So 
> he sings. Really, really loud, during the lulls, during the shrieks. 
> All the time. Fans of James Mercer met a prime example of 
> this genus of Concert Fool last year at Iota, when Mercer, 
> the lead singer of the Shins, closed a showcase for the 
> Seattle label Sub Pop. Toward the end of his set, Mercer 
> played "New Slang," his most popular tune, but suddenly you 
> could barely hear the guy. A Singer had chimed in -- eyes 
> closed, shot glass hoisted -- at a volume loud enough to 
> drown out the man everyone had paid to hear.
> 
> The Reckless Smoker -- a cigarette is a dangerous weapon 
> around people packed together tight. At a Guided by Voices 
> show in New York -- before that glorious smoking ban went 
> into effect -- fans were so jammed one night at a club called 
> Tramps that you had to applaud with your hands above your 
> head. This didn't stop a guy behind me from lighting up -- 
> and then singeing some unlucky fan standing in front of him. 
> "Sorry, man," the Smoker said. No doubt this made the burn 
> victim feel a whole lot better.
> 
> The Angler -- They arrived late, and they don't want to stand 
> in the back. So the Anglers connive to get close to the 
> stage, which is tricky -- and rude -- at a show that's sold 
> out. The most inventive Angler I've seen waited till right 
> before the first song and pretended to be on the verge of 
> vomiting as he waded toward the lip of the stage. People 
> leapt out of his way. When he got to the front, he just smiled.
> 
> More recently, at a Bob Dylan show, a woman murmured "That's 
> my husband" as she nudged her way to a place at a forward 
> section on the floor of the 9:30 club. She slipped an arm 
> around a tall man and smiled as if greeting her mate. Which 
> he wasn't. The man gave her a confounded look and a polite 
> brushoff. Why she thought this would work is a mystery, but I 
> had the sense it wasn't the first time she'd tried the 
> gambit. In this instance she retreated,
> muttering: "What a jerk."
> 
> The Requestaholic -- They came for one song, and they're 
> going to hear that song if it kills them. Which it nearly did 
> at a couple of Bruce Springsteen's solo shows during his 
> "Ghost of Tom Joad" tour in 1996. The Boss asked fans at the 
> outset not to shout for tunes, and in those cities where the 
> Requestaholics wouldn't stop, Springsteen threatened to ask 
> fans nearby to take matters into their own hands.
> 
> For performers, you can imagine the frustration, especially 
> at a show for an album like "Joad," which was somber and 
> low-key. Anyway, most set-lists are cooked up well before a 
> tour hits the road, so shouting is nearly always pointless. 
> It's just annoying. One of the few things I remember about 
> the Steve Earle show at the 9:30 two years ago is a twit who 
> screamed "Jackalope Eye!" at least 25 times over the course 
> of the show. Earle tried to shut him up by doing a belittling 
> impersonation of him. But the true Requestaholic won't let a 
> little humiliation get in the way.
> 
> "Jackalope Eye!" he screamed during the very next break.
> 
> The Talker -- The bane of nearly every show. A shocking 
> number of ticket buyers regard rock concerts as ideal moments 
> to catch up with friends. I can remember a pair of women 
> nattering through a My Morning Jacket concert, a guy flirting 
> shamelessly with a mini- skirted damsel at a Peaches show, a 
> half-dozen drinkers at Iota who didn't seem to realize that a 
> band was in the room. The most stupefying Talker I've seen 
> was at a Melissa Etheridge show at the Warner Theatre, a 
> woman who called a friend on her cell phone just as Etheridge 
> hit the stage.
> 
> "I'm at the show! Yeah, Melissa just came on! Yeah! Can you hear me? 
> What? Can you hear her? What?" There were murderous stares 
> from everyone in her vicinity -- and then verbal threats -- 
> but it didn't matter. The dedicated Talker doesn't care.
> 
> The Stander -- Ordinarily, this is not a big deal. But if 
> everyone else is sitting, it can lead to violence. At a Peter 
> Gabriel show at MCI Center, one Stander, a thirtyish woman in 
> jeans, had the misfortune of blocking the view of a true 
> Concert Fool (see Grabber,
> below) who slapped her rear end when she refused to have a 
> seat. She ran for the cops, and he hustled out of that 
> section of the arena, presumably to watch the show from another seat.
> 
> The Grabber -- One who grabs. See above.
> 
> That's the list. If you recognize yourself in any of these 
> categories, let me ask a favor on behalf of everyone else who 
> loves live music: Stay home and wait for the DVD.
> 
> Even if there won't be a DVD.
> 
> Pretty please? 
> 
> 
> 
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