Willis

In general, I think the shouting out at shows has to be reigned in — it’s getting out of control. Of course there’s a spectrum of appropriateness, but shouts also seem to beget more shouts, and there’s often an unfortunate snowball effect after the first few hollers.

The posters who are expressing support for the guy who asked for Doug’s guitar to be turned up are doing so because they agree with the shouter. I’m not saying the guy wasn’t right, and I’m not making this point to start a debate about levels and acoustics and the quality of the CD recordings they were selling after the show. But just like other shouters, this shouter was making the moment about HIM and HIS seating location and HIS opinion and HIS experience and HIS audophilia. On basis of principle, it’s no different than shouting out commentary or persistent requests or professions of love or most anything else you’re likely to hear at a show, barring anything vulgar or cruel, of course.

Lucinda responded to the balcony shouter, which was entirely her choice and/or automatic emotional response. Her response, coupled with the effect of her accidental reading of the Time Out review, seemed to cause her insecurities to start creeping to the surface of the show. (One of her responses to the balcony shout was: “I don’t want to get another bad review.”)

So, while the “turn it up” shout wasn’t as inherently cringe-inducing as the guy who shouted “be good or be gone” to Lucinda after she killed the first performance of Unsuffer Me, or the lady behind me who shouted out about Steve Earle’s comb-over, it still constituted an audience member shouting out his own personal statement to a theater full of people who didn’t pay $65 to hear him say anything.

As it’s been mentioned here, a lot of us feel that performers have responsibilities to their audiences, and that they sometimes need to look past small imperfections for the sake of the larger experience. (The irony being that stopping a song 2/3 of the way through and getting upset about it usually detracts from the quality of the show rather than improving it.) But audience members also have a set of generally accepted and understood responsibilities (though sometimes it seems like only a few of us actually try to follow them). Along with turning off our cell phones and not holding our cameras over our heads to block the views of people behind us, how about we make a good faith effort to keep the soliloquies to a minimum?

Just saying….