Am I the only one that says "Thank you, good night!" after every song?

Try it, people love it.

the singer in my old band (now does his own really cool solo thing) used to tell the story of each song before we played it. i've heard a lot of bands doing this over the years but alex really did spin a good yarn.

one of the tales was about the saskatchewan natives and the beauty of their land (i'm certain it was about his ex though...). he ended up sending it to the saskatchewan society who thought it was fucking ace, but being a middle class white englishman from tonbridge wells who had never visited canada let alone the saskatchewan plains, they wouldn't publish it.

shame really because it was REALLY good.



as a shameless plug, check out his stuff at http://www.unlabel.net/ and look for 'songs of my lap'. it's proper good.

knives wrote:

"We've just come back from a tour of the states......Chelmsley Wood estate, Castle Vale estate...." - They're very working class areas of Birmingham. I dont know if you say "estate" in America (and mean the same thing), but basically it's a bunch of council houses. You probably dont know what the council is either but oh well.

i just choked on my cereal. i live in birmingham and play in a band this has just been knicked for my own on stage banter routines. what band is it you play in mate?

I'm in The Batteries. And please, feel free to nick it. After the 20th time it starts to turn your stomach.

I know a girl called Ellie who told me she knew a bloke in a band called Knives (and I think she said he works in Tempest), would that be you? If so, it's a small and perculiar world.

Angus Jung wrote:

placeholder wrote:...but as I've said over and over, funny stage banter is one of my favorite things...

Why do you say things over and over?

-I'm fat

-Peter Hook

-Stage banter

This is your own form of stage banter, maybe.

Fuck that. Placeholder can say whatever the fuck he wants, Angus.

That shit's good. Quit being the fucking cop.

for the band I normally say hello, say who we are and where we're from, thank whoever invited us, tell the crowd about cd's and records and then play. sometimes (see:often) the audience dont really deserve that, if we are to take the example of last night's indie haircut hell bar, which we cleared within 5 minutes.

for the electronic stuff I do I normally say hello explain the piece I'm about to play and then play.

I'm no good at banter.

When I was 18 my band played a show on the day that they announced that Phil Hartman died so I dedicated our set to him.
I think it might have been that band's first show.

Let me preface this by saying that the band I'm talking about wouldn't let me have a mic for shows because of the things that come out of my mouth.

We were playing a show two years ago on the day that Johnny Cash and John Ritter died. I convinced them to let me have a mic so I could say a few words about Johnny Cash dying. They agreed.

Two songs into the set, I announced to the crowd that I wanted to say a few words about the great artist we lost on that day. I spoke for five minutes about what a great man he was, what a genius and influence he was to us all, how he was the greatest American artist of our time. People were screaming from the audience, "Johnny Cash! Whoa!" Then I said something to the effect of, "What? No, fuck that redneck cocksucker! I'm talking about Jack Tripper, man!"

Mind you, this is Texas.

Cue boos, hisses and beer bottles throw at my fucking skull.

Yeah, it was our last show.

In about '97, i tagged along with some friends to see "Mr T Experience". The singer, 'Dr. Frank' i believe he was called, introduced EVERY song with "this is a song about a girl, GO!", then immediately launch straight into it.

I thought that was excellent.

Don't talk so much between songs. And no question and answer sessions. They are incredibly hubristic.