Re: [LOOP] handling praise, and Larry's musical ma

[burnett@pobox.com]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 mungenast@earthlink.net wrote:

> Dissect your performance all you want TO YOURSELF or a carefully chosen 
> fellow traveler, but responding to praise by saying "well, it needed 
> work here and here and..." can be misconstrued as a diss to your fans: 
> almost like telling them they have no taste and you don't respect them.

Exactly. I had a friend who would always respond to anyone, whether or not 
he knew them, who came up to him after a show to say "good show", with a 
recitation of every piece of gear that malfunctioned during the show, with 
his clumsy fingering, missed cues, that he hadn't had time to prep the 
visuals correctly, and generally left the unfortunate person with the 
impression that they must have been tone-deaf, blind and stupid to have 
misunderstood just how bad a show they just attended. He's stopped that by 
now, thankfully. 

Personally, I just reply with some variant of "Thanks, I'm glad you liked 
it, and thanks for coming". If they want to talk about details or other 
items, that's great, but almost everyone who approaches me after a show 
just wants to say thanks - oh, and typically ask about some piece of gear, 
but that's a separate topic :).

regards,
Steve B
Phasmatodea     http://www.phasmatodea.net/
Subscape Annex  http://www.subscapeannex.com/