When I saw this fantastic thread about stage banter the first thing that popped into my mind was that I saw Man...or Astroman? six times.

Six of the best and most all around entertaining shows I have ever or will ever see.

did i mention they had stage names? singer was "dammit", and keyboard was "TaR" with a little ^ over the a, and it was pronounced like "tear". i didn't have a stage name, didn't want one, so they applied a name that their second drummer had used once when i recorded an old band of his, when he couldn't remember my obscure and virtually unspellable polish last name. but the guy they replaced me with on bass was named "jack daniel scully". heh. you can see a nice picture of dammit and TaR right here... egad, how i lasted a couple weeks in this band i'll never know.

http://www.lastsigh.com/interviews/shadedreality.htm

i'm only sharing this cause it's so fucking embarassing.

There's the stuff that the guy from the Dirty Three says

What does he say?

My old band had our fair share of funny banter and crazy "antics" on stage. This other band we were playing with one night made fun of one of the people in our band being younger, and told us to go back to fucking high school or something lame like that in the parking lot of this venue.

So when we get on stage, were about to play a new untitled song, and our singer goes, "Hey were Cortez, and were all 12 years old. We hate our parents and math teachers! This next song is about how bogus pop tests are! Its called "C+'s are bogus!"

It shut that band up, and from that day forward the song was called "C+'s are bogus!"

ah man, bummer that Mayfair didn't see my Coctails-in-Cincy-on-day-Yow-was-arrested post. A fine memory for me.

If you want to see a GREAT between song banter band, see Lost and Found. It might bother some of you that they're Christian, but their anti-Reagan jokes are especially funny now that he's dead. Honestly though, they basically exist on a series of inside jokes, which they kindly explain between songs. They also have a rock, to which a light switch has been affixed ("Rock On."). They use it to "reboot" if they get off on too great a tangent.

As far as my band, we don't have banter. We plug in our instruments, and start our first song. When that's over with, we just keep playing, extrapolating on the others' musical ideas (or just making a ton of random noise) until we decide, collectively, "okay, we'll start the next one." So we do. Eventually, we finish our set and walk offstage, not having said a single auxiliary word.

I've found that I sound stupid when I try to banter anyway.

hstencil wrote:ah man, bummer that Mayfair didn't see my Coctails-in-Cincy-on-day-Yow-was-arrested post. A fine memory for me.

I do not recall what you are refering to. My brain is a very small brain and only holds like 20 gig of information. Please refresh my memory....

Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs) is said to have enraged a German audience by repeatedly screaming, "I AM THE EASTER BUNNY!" - - - in German. I don't get it, either.

The singer in one of my bands would sometimes holler, "Menschen Opfer" ("Human Sacrifice") when we were onstage in Germany. Same reaction.

Our singer simply spouts whatever comes into his head, turets-style. One of his finest :" This song's for all the under-achievers in the audience" , a wave of amusement-->bemusement-->paranoia swept through the entire crowd , beautiful!
Also "What are you clapping for?, they're rubbish!!" ..........

ah well the Coctails were playing a club date at Sudsy Malone's (that's right, Cincy's own bar/laundromat) after playing the same day on the Lollapalooza second stage. This was the day that Yow got arrested for taking off his pants on the main stage (I wasn't there, but that's what happened, right?). It was on the local news. Anyway, a few of us drove up from L'ville for the Coctails show, and I remember you making some sort of funny jokes about it, but I don't remember whether it was on stage or not. Oh well. Great show, btw (though I think I got a speeding ticket on the way home).