Her wobbly stance on chatting
Because I'm almost positive that Neko Case is a daily reader of this page, I'm going to use up today's post by calling her out on something. In her recent interview in Pitchfork, she goes off:
I went to see Lucinda Williams in Vancouver and there was this Australian woman opening the show. Nobody had ever heard of her and she was all right, but there were people talking and she just started bitching them out like, "I can't believe you're talking! You don't love music!" I thought, "These people just paid to get into your show and they came to see Lucinda Williams, so if they're gonna talk a little bit, fucking get over it." It would kill me if people felt like that at my show. A live show is one of the last holdouts of a thing that makes you feel a part of a community, where you'll go and maybe meet your future wife or boyfriend, or you're taking your sister to her first show. These are the things that you remember later in your life. So bands shouldn't come and act like, "You're here to stand and be quiet while we do our thing and it's fucking important!" That shit is laughable, arrogant, and stupid.If her account of "this Australian woman"'s reaction to the talkers is accurate, it is kind of unnecessary, especially when you're the opening act. It is pretty arrogant to expect a hushed, awed audience in just about any place where they're selling beer. But still, it's annoying when people come to a show and spend the entire time talking. If you're going to talk at a show, go to the back at least.
But I'm getting distracted from the calling-out. Back in 2000, when I was obsessed with Furnace Room Lullaby, I went to Iota with Susan (still my roommate then) to see Neko. And at several points during the show, she was getting really snappy with some people talking in the crowd, telling them in no uncertain terms to shut the hell up. At one point, she even changed the first line in "Furnace Room Lullaby" from "At night all I hear is your heart" to "At night all I hear...is people talking" and casting a nasty glare at the conversationists.
Now, six years is a good long time, so maybe Neko's grown and become more understanding of concert-goers. But I couldn't help but be pretty amazed that she's so nastily denouncing a habit she used to practice.
5 comments:
oh, I thought you were gonna call her out for going to see Lucinda Williams. ;)
It does kinda suck to go to a quiet show and hear people talking the entire time, but then again, I think it's worse to be shouted down by the artist you paid to go see.
...and even worse when you're shouted down by the artist you didn't pay to go see.
true dat. This remindes me of a story a friend of mine told me about seeing a show in Louisville (can't remember who or where it was), but right before the show started, people were minding their own affairs and talking and stuff, and the proprietor of the place came on the mic to introduce the artist, but not before telling the audience to shutup and say "This is why we don't get any good shows in Louisville - because we are KNOWN as a town that talks through shows". Huh?! "Known"?! What a great start to an evening out.
Reid, I'm going to have to call you out. 1) Neko was the headliner that night, not the opener. 2) She was mainly annoyed because you kept shouting at her to play Freebird.
1) Oh, I remember well that Neko was the headliner, mainly because I remember that it was the glorious Kelly Hogan who opened the show. But Neko's rant doesn't have a whole lot to do with opener vs. headliner. She was just getting bitchy that people were talking when she was trying to play, and it's not that I really blame her (if they were going to talk, they shouldn't have been standing right by the stage), but I do think that it's funny that she's all high and mighty about grousing about audience chatter when she's done the same thing herself.
2) I wasn't yelling out for "Freebird"; I was yelling out for "Red Barchetta".
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