Re: German audiences (WAS site specific looping)

[Louie Angulo <louie.angulo@googlemail.com>]

Mark i hear you;-))
Just to give you an example: I recently got hired to play at a summer party,just playing by myself with acoustic guitar doing some looping etc. i started playing as the sun went down at around 20.45 and by 22.30 the guys that hired me started stressing me out to turn it down as i was playing because of the neighbours.Now im im playing acoustic stuff that many people now with the mixers volume at around 3 for an audience of about 120 outside in an open garden with great beer,wine,food,smell of home grown everywhere,fire,everybody talking in a good mood cheering up and even the church bells ringing...can it really be annoying loud?
So i asked the audience if i was being loud and there was a big scream of NOOOOOO!!!! then i asked the guys that hired me if somebody had complained and they said no,but they wanted to avoid it.Then i said as far as i know you are allowed once a year at least in Germany to play and make noise till 24.00hrs. and i know this because i had a birthday party and i had to make sure it was not going to get ruined by some old fart calling the cops on me.
So then i stopped playing and went for a beer and people came and said why i had stopped.After explaining they went to the guys and said i should keep playing so then they came back(it was after midnight) and said if i could play more.Then i said but i though it was too loud;-)

Another experience in Switzerland:Im playing at a music festival called honky tonk in the middle of Luzern City at a bar with an Irish trio.acoustic bass,acoustic guitar and Cajon.We started at around 20.45 and by around 22.00 there is a guy in front uf us swinging some sort of loundness tester device in front of us.The bar owner runs through the crowd in fornt of the stage in  complete panic and screams "turn it down now"!! now is typical here that the atmosphere at 20.00hrs. when you start playing is more like a obituary,but as the audiences get fed their dose of booze i swear to you that the crowd was louder than we were!
After the guy with the mesurement device was gone,the bar owner came and apologized to us but said he didnt want to get fined and said now you can turn i t up;-))
Even funnier here is seeing so called "heavy rock bands" playing at perfect CD levels;-)) do you know how ridiculous that sounds?
Then again during football season,religious carnavals like "fast nacht",summer festivals,church bells,october fest festivals,wine festivals and everything else that is organized by big agencies is not a problem..i ask myself are people being pre conditioned?

moral of the story: this just aint no place for rock n roll man;-))

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 9:34 AM, mark francombe <mark@markfrancombe.com> wrote:

One slightly controversial comment I have after watching these clips of Nadia again, that brings back the fear into me.. is... (donning fire retardant spider-man costume) What is with these German audiances? Nadia has almost packed up and gone home and put her feet up in front of the fire with a good book, before they start to react? Are they crazy, or maybe stunned?

(Actually THIS is the controversial comment) When I used to play in germany, We often got this reaction, absolute silence during songs, minimal applause inbetween.. till the end, then.. after we had left the stage and thinking "God, they hated us", they would go CRAZY demanding 3 or 4 encores.. What is that...?
It would put me in a bad mood during the show and had NO idea that they were enjoying it?

Is this normal, directed at the german LDer,s Rainer etc?

I think manly it because germans really listen, and listen hard (I think Stockhausen said this at a lecture I attended - is he German? I think so.. that the rest of Europe has to learn to listen!!!) and as such, maybe they are more absorbed, and it takes some time to snap out of it?

If thats it, then its a compliment I guess.. still very off-putting. (and before anyone jumps at me for being generalistic, or god forbid, rascist.. Im just reporting what I promise was the case for me... never saw it anywhere else - except perhaps one strange gig in Scotland, on April fools day, when the audience played a trick on us by NEVER applauding once.. ha ha! very fucking funny...

Mark

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