THE ART OF THE INTRO

Did you know that the magical, mystical sorcerer named Jayson (the guy who made our logo), has a blog too?  Well, yesterday, he posted something that made me giggle a bit:  Rules of Rock (For Bands).

1. Don’t yell at the audience because they’re not sufficiently into whatever you’re doing. Maybe we’d be moving more if you rocked more. Maybe we’ve been on our feet all day and it’s Tuesday night and you should be glad we’re here at all. This is only acceptable for certain genres. If you are one of the opening bands and start doing this, you can fuck right off.

2. Don’t lecture or sermonize. Tell us how much you like us, how happy you are to see us, that there is some stuff for sale in the back and what the next one is. That’s it.

3. Play your cover. You went into the studio and recorded some covers. Then you sold them to us. Now play them. It’s not our fault that you did this. It’s not our fault that Zep and the Stooges wrote great songs. What is your fault is getting all offended when the crowd yells ‘1970!’ or whatever.

4. Play your hit. None of us care that the biggest song you ever wrote was 5 albums ago. Or 30 years ago. Or whatever. We don’t care that you think the new stuff is better. If it was that much better there’d be another hit, right? Play your hit.

5. If you’re doing the fake encore, now is the time for 3 and/or 4.

To all of the above, I say amen.  But there’s something else that always bugs me at shows….INTRO MUSIC.  When a band comes on stage to the sound of pre-taped music…that, to me, is a pretty good sign that these people need to get the fuck over themselves.  Very few bands are actually worthy of that dark, eerie stuff with the smoke machines going.  And if they are, they should consider themselves above all that and just COME OUT.  I much prefer it when the band just starts playing and the singer comes out last, welcomed by massive pandemonium.  That rules.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just a grump when it comes to that stuff.  If someone came out to the Animaniacs theme song or something, I might think that was funny.

Thoughts?

-Elise