Talking at shows

I went to see Joanna Newsome at the Trinity Center in Bristol. A bit of a strange venue (looks like a church on the outside, but a club on the inside, and doesn't have a proper bar), but Joanna's performance was spectacular: to get up on stage, play harp and sing, on the first night of a tour seems terrifying to me, but she pulled it off without a hitch. (I'd like to point out that, being human, she probably made some mistakes, but they weren't noticable).

Supporting her were White Magic (arrived to late to see them, unfortunately), and Six Organs of Admittance. Six Organs sounded familiar, however, I couldn't really hear them. This was, partially, the fault of the PA being about a third of the required size, but mostly due to the fact that everybody was talking.

As you can probably guess (look at the title of this post!), this really pissed me off. Not only was I annoyed that I couldn't hear this band (fair enough, I'd not gone to see them), but I was mostly annoyed that people didn't have the respect to listen to this band. I might have been a bit less pissed if there had been a breaking in the roar of the audience when the band came on, but I could see that the band weren't getting any interest from the audience, who'd clearly just come to see the headline act, and weren't even interested in seeing if the support act was any good.

Please, if you don't want to see the support acts, stay away! Phone the venue, ask them what time the headline act is going to come on (and they'll always be about the same time at the same venues), and don't arrive until then. Go to a bar if you feel the need to drink, stay home and smoke pot if you need to get high, but please don't turn up at the venue, and ruin any chance of anyone enjoying the support act by talking, loudly, to your friends. Let people who want to hear the support acts listen, and perhaps find something new and interesting to listen to.