Struggle With The Audience

[LBS-bass]

the problem for some performers: they hear a single criticism and think they have to change something. playing original music requires some amount of commitment and moxie. audience feedback should help, not hurt, the creative process, but some folks are too wrapped up in their little corner of the universe to know how to use feedback, constructive or otherwise.

Oh, this is a gripe I have so often with other players. For the love of God, don't ask the audience if the sound is OK. You're going to get 50 different opinions based on 50 different room locations and everyone's various hearing problems.

I've known bands that retooled and let players go based on negative feedback from one person. Really? In a room with 100 people where 99 of them are smiling and enjoying themselves, you let the one negative opinion change the way you're doing things?

That seems stupid, right? Yet people do it all. the. time.

 

[StayLow]

IMO, the author of the article conflates innovation and exploration with changing to a different, but established, formula.

I can understand why fans would be torqued off if a band did the latter.

A very well established to the point of totally tired formula, executed in a wholly unremarkable and sub-par way in this case. Dude seems very full of himself with all that whining.

Most major switches bands make are not artistic turns, rather the opposite: totally lazy, often with a drugs-first-music-maybe-later attitude, or based purely on label influence and greed. Just because a new, fickle, audience with low standards hops aboard for doesn’t make it less cheap and offensive.

If instead they find a bigger audience and artistic happiness, great. A much lesser audience but artistic happiness? Also great. People who paid for their cars and houses have every right to release their complaint-art too. If your sales outnumber the “likes” a snark gets, you’ll be alright… at least until those new fans move on next week. If they stick with you? Find better things to do than complain!

In the 80’s these pivotal decisions were called “ballads”. Joni Mitchell was practically booed off the stage by the “peace and love” hippies at the Isle Of Wight Fest. It’s nothing new. She handled it well & the world kept turning. Miles, much? It’s a very long list.

 

[BassDad1964]

I blame the internet. As humans we are not ready for limitless information and the never ending opportunity to give our opinion.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

Oh, this is a gripe I have so often with other players. For the love of God, don't ask the audience if the sound is OK. You're going to get 50 different opinions based on 50 different room locations and everyone's various hearing problems.

On a related note: Never ask the audience if you're too loud, especially when nobody has said anything first or given you reason to believe you are. When the question is posed generally, someone will ALWAYS say you're too loud, even if by any reasonable standard you're not. If you're really too loud, somebody from the venue will let you know, or you'll figure it out if everybody's got their fingers in their ears and are screaming in pain. Don't go searching for problems.