Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Opener Decorum

I was laughing about “crick dancin’” this morning. You know, the dance that Dan and I stole from River Dancing (the stupidest thing ever along with the stupidest music ever!) where we have our hands on our hips and just let our legs fly around like a couple of drunk Russians? It got me to thankin’ (Oh Lawd! Watch out!) about where it came from and I remembered the night clearly. We were downstairs at a club in Philly waiting …and waiting …and waiting for the opener to shut up.We had to do something to entertain ourselves and thus the dance was born.
Openers serve a purpose, don’t get me wrong. I’ve probably been an opener as many times as I’ve been a headliner. But there’s a right way to open and a wrong way. Number ONE, don’t overstay your welcome. 90% of the crowd did NOT come here to see you, play your set in the amount of time you were given and git the hell off! The longer you play past your time, the more people are going to hate you. That night I think she went at least thirty minutes over and everybody just wanted to kill themselves for coming. Number TWO, and this is for the drummers, don’t break your kit down ON stage! Git it off of the stage as fast as you can and then break it down on the side. Especially if you brought your dumbass Terry Bozzio kit! In most cases, when we have openers, we want the drummers to use my kit so the changeover is even faster, they just bring their snare and cymbals. Number THREE, No encores, unless it is cleared with the headliner. This usually has nothing to do with you blowing them off the stage and everything to do with time restraints. Headliners usually have no ill will towards you and want you to do good, or you wouldn’t be there. The only case I can remember of the headliner fearing the opener was many moons ago when The Fabulous Knobs opened for Maxx Warrior at The Attic in Greenville, NC, which would be about like The J.Geils Band opening for Pantera! (once described to me as sounding like the Vietnam War!) Maxx Warrior gave us half of the light show and half of the power to the PA. Dickheads! God! They sucked!
Anyhoo, there’s your opener lesson. And this was in no way directed at anyone recently, they have all been great. Of course, Jac Cain down at The Pour House runs a pretty tight ship!

5 comments:

Jeff Hart said...

two words:

man-man

http://whassupta.blogspot.com/2006/10/foika-troika.html

Anonymous said...

Maxx Warrior - that's something I don't hear every day.

Secret Service opened for Jesse Bolt at Atlantic Beach once ... half the lights (thank dog) and half the monitors /p.a.

Why do they do that shit? Are they THAT insecure ?

Anonymous said...

If my memory serves me right I remember that you mentioned in one of your blogs a while back that John Hiatt was a bit nervous of having the Yayhoos as opener. I don't blame him ;-)

/Tomas

Anonymous said...

Damn...The Yayhoos and John Hiatt on one ticket? I could've just dropped dead after the show and would've been happy!

I remember "Max Warrior"! HAHAHA!!!

roscoe said...

Oh boy do I ever remember that Philly gig! It wasn't a one time thing for the offending opener either. Oh my goodness!