has anyone ever seen her live? What a snobby bitch! She has a beautiful voice but damn. Telling the audience (at the MIddle East!) that they were too loud, that in Canada they asked people to be quiet and they listened and she wanted to "remind people there was a bar upstairs"

I mean, way to insult your audience lady! Unreal!

Plus she's got a stupid name!

Was it just her and a guitar? Was the chatter at a level where it was competing with her or distracting the attentive members of the audience?

this does not surprise me.

I don't have a problem with what she did. It annoys me when people talk during slow acoustic songs. I wish more artists would do this.

Saw her open for Dungen last Friday. I barely paid her any attention, but she did have that nice, ubiquitous A. Mann-Cat Power-like sound. Not exactly my bag, but she was friendly enough to the audience. She probably knew she was going to be upstaged by the power & lore of Dungen.

I think it really depends on how loud the crowd is. An artist shouldn't assume that they're capable of wowing 200 people into stunned silence for an hour.

Examples from my experience:

Lou Barlow, opening for the Decemberists and playing boring, boring songs. The crowd gave him about 15 minutes to prove he could not suck, after which it was difficult to even hear the music. I think that's fair.

Joseph Arthur, the only solo acoustic act at a Katrina benefit show, went on about 2.5 hours in. People got restless after a couple songs and talked more than they would if they hadn't been standing so long. He wisely did not scold them.

EDIT: my spelling's not what it used to be.

Good cases, Aaron. If the act is headlining and possibly the only act on the bill, I think it's a different story. This was the case when I saw Tim Reynolds solo show back in 2000. If people played to see him play (or at least made an effort to get into the club), why the hell were they talking five minutes into the performance? Why didn't they just leave?

she was opening for Dungen. Frankly, people weren't there to see her. YOu could easily hear her up front

This is also a reason why I like venues like Mercury Lounge and Piano's, for the simple fact that they have a separate room for people mingling and another for people watching the show. One room venues like the former Brownies, etc. are always a little frustrating since there always seems to be a big fat girl standing behind you talking about how boys don't come on to her.

Or about how many times they've seen the band. "Yeah, well this is my only time, so shut the fuck up." I hate those people.

Yeah, I saw her open for Dungen, too. I'd forgotten about that, honestly. Horrible, horrible pairing.

And she was like Cat Power in more than just her sound. Tons of false starts and barely audible mumbling into the mic. She seemed really sweet, though. The crowd was half polite/half ignoring her.

edit: She said she was sick.

yeh, unlike jesse "whine whine whine" malin.

I saw that show at Neumo's and the same thing went down. I felt bad for her, honestly. I thought her songs were really incredible and you could barely hear them over all the drunk hipsters.

I feel like I might be the odd man out in this discussion though since I also thought that Dungen was pretty lame. I love that record but the show was just anemic. I mean, the guy plays all the instruments on the record but he plays tambourine on stage. What the hell is that?

I remember when I saw Pedro The Lion a few years ago downstairs at the Middle East and near the end the band left and it was just him and an acoustic guitar. So he's playing along and people near the upper bar were talking sort of loud and a shushing war broke out between everyone.

SHUSH WAR!

two notes

i saw pedro the lion at Hamilton College. Everyone was quiet. Even when he broke a string and we had to wait for it to be re-strung we were quiet while he did a Q&A with the audience. he was opening for Low.

i saw The Bales Of Hey (solo acoustic act) open for Built To Spill very recently at Water St Music Hall in Rochester. The place is very big, a seperate mingling room, but people still went up front and talked. the sound at the venue was great so it didn't bother me or the guy. but what irked me was the people right up front, practically inches away for the guy, had a conversation with their backs turned. i mean, sheesh. that's a bit rude.

bort

In Canada, we were very quiet for her the other night. Mostly. Me and my boy Lew were snickering in the back, though, because we were having fun. No one else was.

I saw her open for dungen and felt really bad for her because the crowd was being obnoxiously rude, particularly two annoying girls in the corner. She asked the crowd if she should start a song over because the girls were being so loud. I definitely didn't get any arrogance or rudeness from her, though.

Seattleite?