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Is there a word for

#101
I was in a roots reggae band about 10 years ago. We played a club in NJ on New Year's Eve one year when the temperature was in the negative single digits. Wendy Williams of TV fame was a DJ in NYC at the time and she was hosting a party in the big room upstairs that was being broadcasted on the radio. My band was playing a party in the smaller room downstairs. Both rooms were decorated for the evening's festivities with colorful streamers and balloons, and happy new year paraphernalia all over the place. When we started playing it was literally for our significant others and the bar tenders. A few people streamed in during the course of the night, but there was never more than a handful of people in the audience. Wendy Williams commented repeatedly on how lame it was. Evidently she wasn't faring any better. Pretty embarrassing for the club. I think they went under soon after. Definitely a bad case of "sparsegig"for all involved.
 
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#103
Clark W said:
I absolutely cannot stand "Wagon Wheel". I sit in with two different bands from time to time, and they can't stand it either. But they always end up playing it anyway because someone requests it. I have heard it more times than any human should have to endure.

And the band I'm in, our new vocalist, who is awesome, said, we should do wagon wheel. I said hell to the no on that one and he laughed. Then he said, okay, only if someone requests it. I replied, you know someone will, they always do. So we have an agreement not to do it unless it's requested.
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Exactly what i was talking about. get over it and put it in regular rotation and let people dance. they don't care about what you like. i wish they did though cause i would play tons of obscure killer tunes
 
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#104
In the late 70's my rock band played a gig that was quite a distance from home, well outside the area in which we had somewhat of a following. When we started playing there were only two people in the audience, a guy and his girlfriend. After about the first set they left and we played to an empty room. We were all bummed, and I started drinking a little too much. Later on I fell on stage but I was glad that only my bandmates were there to see it. :sour:
 
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#105
micguy said:
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.
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The only musician who had 2 girls fanning him with palm leaves.....legendary man and huge band....
 
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#106
rocu said:
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.
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Paid practice.

MicGuy posted something very relevant earlier in this thread ...

<<
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.
>>

Elvin Bishop used to play arenas during his golden era in the 70's when he had hits on the radio like "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" and "Travelin' Shoes". I was in a band that opened for him on the Schlitz Country Scene stage at SummerFest in Milwaukee in the early 80's to a crowd of roughly 5000. A decade or so later, I went to see him play at a 500 seat blues club in my area on a God awful cold Winter night when it was raining cats & dogs and hardly anyone showed up for the show. He absolutely played his @ss off, was sweating and had the unbridled enthusiasm of a new artist getting his first big break. EB showed how you do it that night ... you bring your "A" game no matter what.
 
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#111
It’s called a rehearsal. (As mentioned)

Now we’ll have the comedy portion of the thread.

This young couple is on their honeymoon waiting for their flight. When the wife uses the bathroom an older gentleman comes over to talk to the husband.

“Congratulations on your new marriage! Once I was young and got married. We were both virgins. On our honeymoon night, we both laid down to sleep. But I was feeling frisky and I tapped her on the shoulder and, well we had ourselves quite a performance!

We laid back down to sleep, but I was still feeling frisky, and I tapped on the shoulder, and we had ourselves quite a performance again!

We laid back down to sleep, but I was still feeling frisky, so I tapped her on the shoulder and, well we had ourselves quite a rehearsal!”

The husband reluctantly asked “why is it a rehearsal and not a performance?”

The old man replied, “nobody came!”
 
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#118
Zooberwerx said:
When marketing new venues, we refer to it as "a strong following".

Riis
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lol +1
Not a single person in the audience walked away less than thrilled, or failed to show up at our next gig, or even left the room during our sets! Not a single bored expression! Not one person left without buying a CD!

A lack of witnesses doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
 
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#119
micguy said:
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.
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So 'experience' is the opposite of 'exposure', and they're both the opposite of 'getting paid'.
 
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