At 12:40 PM -0500 on 3/17/99, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Case in point: Last night I went to see a free gig in town by the V-Roys,
>who I thought were a great bar band, though they were batting about .500 on
>decent songs. But the crowd was a really roadhouse-country-rock-lovin'
>bunch, who wanted their roots as loud and straight-up and danceable as
>possible.
>
>Nothing wrong with that, of course. Since we don't get much of the
>V-Roys brand of twang this far north, I haven't seen a gathering like
>that at most shows here, and it was fun. But I was very doubtful about
>how eclectic that audience's tastes probably were.
But, Carl, aren't you extrapolating from an admittedly anomalous
situation? I have yet to see the V-Roys (I really wish I'd caught them
a week or two ago; I got my dates mixed up) but I do like their CDs.
Anyway, this is all thinking out loud here, but it sounds like there
are two anomalies here: A twang band comes to town, and it has to meet
the needs of a crowd that gets very little of that kind of music. Maybe
they batted .500 because they had to bend a little to satisfy that
crowd. And maybe the crowd wanted their roots loud, straight-up, and
danceable because few bands like that come up that way, and if the
V-Roys were there, it was more important to the crowd to get what it
needed than to get what the V-Roys are best at doing. And maybe that
crowd went home and the next day listened to Pet Sounds and Thriller
and Minnie the Moocher and The Planets and Viva Terlingua. Maybe they
just don't have the screaming need we do to talk about our eclecticism.
You're probably closer than I am, of course, Carl, but I've seen that
sort of situation back in Boston, including the audience members who
didn't know much about the band but who knew what the band could do for
'em. Sometimes it worked out; sometimes it didn't...
Bob
