dance like nobody is watching

[reverancepavane]

Rule One: When the majority of your loyal and devoted followers are committed pagans, don't decide to have a gig on the same weekend as the National Wiccan Conference, unless you are actually playing in the same city as the conference. And preferably at the conference. Rule Two: Make sure that the music of the support band is roughly compatible with the expectations of the audience. And your own expectations. When you keep on gossiping during their act people might take that as a hint. Rule Three: Dancing on carpet is no fun. Shocking. But no fun. As you might have guessed the gig at the Queens Arms last night was a bit of a let down. Which is a pity. Both Akoustic Odyssey and Spiral Dance are good bands. It's just, apart from people reasonably directly connected to the bands, there was less than a dozen attendees to the gig. And they were regulars from the Spiral side. I assume the 3 attendees from the Odyssey side were also regulars (I believe one was a partner and the other two friends of the partner). Akoustic Odyssey do some excellent classical guitar and jazz guitar pieces. They are really really good.* However it's the sort of music that is more commonly found in a concert hall or other dedicated performance venue than in the back room of a pub. They are really something you need to go see at a venue were people are less inclined to talk whilst they are playing. They fully lost the attention of the audience (the majority of which were Spiral and fans) about halfway through. When people in the front row find their conversation more interesting than the music, it must be very dispiriting. And this sort of music is something you have to actively listen to in order to fully appreciate it. Very difficult when people are trying to talk over the music. The blight continued for Spiral's gig. With most of the core people being absent the audience response was lacklustre and the energy low. People got self-conscious dancing when almost no one else was (as opposed to normal Adelaide gigs where everyone is dancing and there is lots of energy feeding back into the band), and disappeared back to their seats. There was no one to really spark good energy off of (the only other dancers were unknown to me [and thus tend to avoid the mad dancing thing in their midst]) or had problems, so it was an uphill battle to even get Burning Times working properly. [At least it wasn't the worst BT. That happened when someone tried to steal the energy to work his own nefarious ends. The circle collapsed mid-song as everyone scattered. The band was flabbergasted. Very bad energy.**] All in all a pretty bland live show, for something that is normally full of juice. And nobody fun to dance with either.*** <pout> And carpet is really bad for dancing on! Rumour has it that there is all sorts of politics involved, but nobody ever listens to Insidious Serpentine anyway. The sound was good (which is probably going to end up being one of the eventual problems), so it wasn't the worst gig I've been to this year (that was the Brillig /Voltaire gig where the band got so demoralised by the bad sound they almost collapsed halfway through the show; and definitely drowned their sorrows afterwards). Anyway, the next local gig is 5th November at the Wheaty. Should be a lot better. Good sound, and if we move a few tables, room to dance, provided you don't mind dodging pillars. However they are also doing the Flerieu Folk Festival (22nd-24th October) for those less transport-challenged than I am. * Sorry shadow_5tails, but I only just thought you might like it whilst typing that sentence, so I didn't grab an extra one for you. "Next time, Gadget. Next time." ** Used in choreography terms, rather than physicist terms. Which is related to fluffy-bunny pagan terms, but not in the way that they think. *** I'm told it's possible to bring your own, but that just raises all sorts of other rather insolvable problems.