when there are more people in the band than in the audience?
If not, there should be.
Please share or make up a word for it.
If not, there should be.
Please share or make up a word for it.
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Is there a word for
- Thread starter rocu
- Start date
Not one word but I always called it "playing for candles and ashtrays".
It's called "experience".
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted to get.
Welcome to the music business. Good musicians have all been there at one point or another; the good ones play to a "crowd" of 2 just like it's a crowd of 20,000.
I was in a band where we were playing a small club. Our friends hadn't arrived yet, we were the "headliners" (if you saw the club, you'd know this isn't a brag in this case). Anyway, we had invited a friend to bring his band as the warm up act - he had a decent cover band. He came with his originals band. They were...less than decent. Within 3 songs, the dozen or so audience member were gone; it was just the bartender and us (the second band). Technically, there may have been one more person off stage than onstage, but there were zero paying patrons.
Usually, you try to turn over the band setups between bands, so you don't lose audience members. The bartender encouraged us to do that slowly this time, so people would have a chance to filter IN. A few people did, some of our friends showed up, and we had a somewhat respectable audience for our sets. We got invited back, but were told to bring someone else as a warm up act.
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted to get.
Welcome to the music business. Good musicians have all been there at one point or another; the good ones play to a "crowd" of 2 just like it's a crowd of 20,000.
I was in a band where we were playing a small club. Our friends hadn't arrived yet, we were the "headliners" (if you saw the club, you'd know this isn't a brag in this case). Anyway, we had invited a friend to bring his band as the warm up act - he had a decent cover band. He came with his originals band. They were...less than decent. Within 3 songs, the dozen or so audience member were gone; it was just the bartender and us (the second band). Technically, there may have been one more person off stage than onstage, but there were zero paying patrons.
Usually, you try to turn over the band setups between bands, so you don't lose audience members. The bartender encouraged us to do that slowly this time, so people would have a chance to filter IN. A few people did, some of our friends showed up, and we had a somewhat respectable audience for our sets. We got invited back, but were told to bring someone else as a warm up act.
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It's when the band has a case of "MSS" or "Mustang Sally Syndrome", the song that usually empties a room.
Stage Heavy - sorry, that's two words 
.
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devnulljp
Supporting Member
If you've ever seen Sun Ra, he goes out of his way to make it difficult. I saw him at a music festival, where there were thousands in attendance. I swear if he wasn't told the mechanical limits of the stage, he might have put more people up there than were in the audience. As it was, it was probably 100 people at one point.
That's what i've always called it.
Empties the room of musicians, perhaps. But our totally un-hip crowd still gets up for it.
