An Object Lesson

It's been a long night and I've not really moved. The creeping paralysis of cabbie necrosis is starting to spread. I need to get my head out of the building exhaust-fuel cloud, so here it is.
Tonight's blog will serve as an object lesson. Wednesday night I happened to stumble across the town in the pursuit inebriation. And now you might think that alcohol was the central focus of my night, and you'd be right, but what I found instead was indignation.

I found myself in a bar called Zebulon. The name alone was reason enough to stop in. How often do you get a chance to get trashed at the last minute bullshittery of a hack sci-fi writer? This is not about the bar, but instead about the band inside the bar. What I saw was not for the faint of heart. No sir, what I saw was pure, unadulterated suffering made music and loosed upon the stage like the scat of some disaffected beast. All it took was two keyboards and a guitar, some mousse too.

Now this wasn't the resurrection of new wave. This was unidentifiable. I'm sure there were genre conventions in play that could have aided me in my musical nomenclature; but I didn't care. This band in the span of one song managed to alienate the one audience member who counted: me. This is not to say that I'm of any particular import, no. In this case I'm just the common man off the street, perhaps a little better versed than some, but nothing special.

Now I wasn't alone in being nonplussed by the music, most of the bar seemed more engrossed in their own conversations, and the band seemed fine with it. Did I mention that this song seemed to their encore? They ended their set and simply walked off to talk to some friends as though they just arrived. A few words overheard were spoken about the set, complimentary in only the way that a friend awkwardly pressured to give a glowing review of a terrible demo can give. But this here is the central issue. The band didn't set out to out play the ambiance of the room, they set out to be background. They were in essence elevator music.

Live performance is about the interplay between the band and the audience. Even a half-way bad show can be saved if the audience simply responds. Why go out, why play if the band has no intention of present? This band was there, they played their instruments what what I can only assume to be a certain proficiency and they left no impression.