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hstencil wrote:I thought I remembered your old band thanking people in-between songs, Mayfair.

There was a special dispensation for simple 'thank you's. Our mothers taught us to always say thank you.... But anything veering toward jokes, anecdotes, bits, skits, or advertising our t-shirts in back was frowned upon.

hmm, maybe the half-forgotten quip about David Yow on the day he was arrested in Cincy was before the set. So long ago...

god, do i love stage banter. not doing it myself, but hearing it. one time last year, though, my band played a show to about ten people, most of whom we knew. between songs, i recited paul stanley's stage banter from this amazingly funny kiss video (from some mid-'80s concert) verbatim. we (as in: the band) thought this was really funny (especially since our songs are mostly really slow and pretty quiet), but no one else- not even the friends who showed up- thought it was funny. they were probably right. we've gotten the same non-response using the misfits' evilive stage banter ("we gotta tune up. we hit these guitars like fuckin' jackhammers", etc).

i hope this thread never dies off...

Russ, the on-stage book-read is a thing of great wonder and wit.

The band I am in is playing our first show this Friday.

We have a punch-clock on stage. We get on stage, punch in our timecards, and pick up our instruments. We then announce the name of our rock group, followed by which public appearance it is (ie. "1st public appearance"). After that we rock really hard, with precisesly timed spaces between songs and absolutely no banter. Upon completion of the set we carefully put down our instruments and clock out.

I think that stage banter, unless done very tastefully (which is so rare that I think I may have only witnessed it a couple times) is totally distracting, a waste of time and only makes a band look silly. I understand that it may be useful during the tuning of an instrument or the adjustment of snares, but these things too can be practiced so that they are done quickly and efficiently. And anyhow, uncomfortable silences are totally great, especially if followed by well performed rock music.

In one of my old bands, whenever we played a show with any group that we were on friendly terms with, we'd take an old simple song of theirs (hopefully one that they weren't going to select for their set) and cover it during our set. Then when we were done with that, and the covered band got their yuks, we would then stump them flat by launching into the first 30 seconds of another song. A fine, fine 1-2 punchline.

In one of my current groups - one set we played at the Bottom Lounge featured a song that has a nice intro by one of our guitar players. We'll call him Larry. This song was placed second in the set. We played with the first song, and when done, Larry began the intro of the second song, and the remaining three of us calmly set our equipment down and lept off of the stage and ran screaming through the audience down to the green room, paused for a chug of beer and then walked back up from behind the stage with fluid nonchalance, picked up our instruments and kicked in behind him.

This was priceless. I highly advise pulling it on a deserving bandmate soon.

michaeltheangryrussian wrote:We have a punch-clock on stage. We get on stage, punch in our timecards, and pick up our instruments...Upon completion of the set we carefully put down our instruments and clock out.

i believe throbbing gristle used to punch in and out at most of their shows, timing them to last exactly 60 minutes. i like this idea.

Mayfair wrote:In my old band we would be fined by the other members if one was to speak into the microphone between songs. $5 was the going rate but that was in the early 90's.

True story.

Yeah, but during "Walking Down the Street," you managed to work around this paradigm and put 50 bands worth of banter into the song itself. Salut!

Faiz

This is a good thread, because I'm stumped when it comes to stage banter. I'm just one guy on stage, and it seems really boring when I have to tune. I've been saying how hard it is for SGs to stay in tune, but my gosh that gets boring. I tried explaining a bit of the origin of the song, but who cares really?

I think I'll just skip it - most of these good ideas are from bands. I can't think of how banter works with a solo performer.

"When I say 'Happy,' you say 'Birthday'"

there's also the classic,

when i say burger, you say king!
burger
king!
burger
king!

last time i saw pedro the lion, i was really impressed by his between song banter. it was really a very open and fluid dialog between him and the audience. nutty fans yelling stuff at him, and him responding in a conversational way. that was pretty cool, i thought.

melt banana was awesome. the fact that she's cute as hell and speaks really japanesey-sounding english doesn't hurt. but her delivery was aces. the story about how their bus broke down was fun. that was it, i think, the key, it was FUN banter.

dy-lon, have you thought about movie quotes? you could say lines from movies but act like they're banter. like while you're tuning, say "i'd piss on a spark plug if i thought it'd help". or "the only things i care about are me, my drums, and you". or dialog from any of the pauly shore movies, my god, that's a veritable goldmine right there.