Is there a word for

[interp]

Empties the room of musicians, perhaps. But our totally un-hip crowd still gets up for it.

People here in Germany still LOVE this song. But we go out of our way to play a wildly improvisational and crazy-ass version. And we play it completely differently every time, just to keep us from going insane.

 

[interp]

Malaudience. ADS [audience deficiency syndrome].

 

[4dog]

"Paid rehearsel'

you wanna hope anyway

 

[interp]

I was in a band that was booked to do a regular gig at a large bar (300+ capacity). Four sets, 10 pm to 2 am.
The first night there were about 10 patrons during the first set, maybe 15 more during the second set. We thought “oh shite.”
While we were taking a break between the second and third sets the swing shift at the steel mill down the street got off work. The place was filled to capacity during the third and fourth sets. And so on every night.

 

[andrus108]

Rehear-gig, gig-earsal, gig-tice, venuecheck. Those come to mind immediately, I might come up with more bizarre words later :-D

 

[yodedude2]

"Paid rehearsel'

you get paid? sweet

 

[Bunk McNulty]

Billy Gibbons tells a story from the early days of ZZ Top:

"One of our very first gigs in a small East Texas town was not well promoted. At least, that was our conclusion. After the band loaded in and the curtain opened, we realized there was exactly one paying customer in the audience. We kind of made the best of it playing through the first set, took a break and bought him a Coke and then went on to perform for the remainder of the night. It wasn't exactly a catastrophe but it certainly stands as legendary."

 

[40Hz]

Backloaded.

 

[bolophonic]

A successful metal gig.

Hey now...

 

[TeamScorpioRI]

Paid Practice

We went through this last weekend. There was an equal ratio of band members to audience members.

 

[40Hz]

One of my bands once played three sets to a completely empty room back in the 70s. Didn’t matter. We went all out. The owner paid us for toughing it out. We considered it a successful gig.

Afterwards we dubbed that night: The Void.

 

[Mike Sorr]

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.

Sparsegig. “Yeah, it’s looking a little sparsegig tonight”.

 

[PWRL]

It happened to me, once. There was one guy, who promptly pulled up a chair right in front of us. He had half a fifth of Wild Turkey in his coat and was really disappointed that we didn't know any Aerosmith. We did play him 3 or 4 AC/DC songs, though.
To be fair, a freak blizzard kicked up after we got there. We normally pulled a good crowd.

 

[Nashrakh]

If you play to an empty room its code word is "exposure".

 

[RustyAxe]

When marketing new venues, we refer to it as "a strong following".
Riis

Now that's funny, right there!

 

[micguy]

The word you are looking for is "typical" as in "Yeah, we had the typical crowd." ;-)

Interesting Factoid: I read that there were only seven people at The Police's first official gig. That is counting girlfriends.

If they were all girlfriends, than that's either awkward, or....a great audience to play for.

 

[dadglasser]

Polybandousnofandosity! (poly-banous-no-fan-dosity).

 

[Colin Cunliffe]

How about a HOLLOW performance

 

[Judge Nickels]

One time back in the day my original band played a show 3 hours away on a Tuesday. We were playing after another out of town band in the small room of a well known venue. Neither band has a draw in this town and after the first band plays and immediately leaves, we're playing to two bartenders and the doorguy.

We smiled at each other and fired it up. We blasted the hell out of that empty room for the sheer fun of it. After the 2nd song, the bartenders brought us up an unsolicited round of shots. By the 4th song, they had called the talent buyer who came down to watch the 2nd half of our set.

This guy proceeded to book us into choice opening slots on Friday nights in the big room for the next few years.

The word is 'opportunity'.

 

[40Hz]

The word is 'opportunity'.

Good men all of you for doing that!

Chance favors the prepared, as the saying goes. Don’t see it as a disappointment. Use it as an opportunity to excel.