From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V3 #168 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Thursday, August 12 1999 Volume 03 : Number 168 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- Re: singing (and dancing) at concerts ["The Bearded One" Subject: Re: singing (and dancing) at concerts Angie asked (a while ago, while I was gone): >any feelings on Susan's feelings on fans singing along during concerts? I come late to this, actually after it is all over. You all remember that question? As usual, I'm in the minority, kind of. I was at a Catie Curtis show and without being asked, she said people often ask if it is OK to dance at her shows. With her Catie grin she said hell yes. And if the people behind you can't see, they can get up and dance too. My sentiments exactly. Actually, I think it would be nice to dance off to the side or at the back. But I know some folks are annoyed, even then, to have bodies bobbing around within their field of peripheral vision. (I DIDN"T COME TO WATCH YOU DANCE!!! or watch you bob your head around or listen to your tapping feet or be annoyed by your playing drums on you leg) Ditto for singing. Can you imagine going to Woodstock and NOT singing? Come now. Was it quiet at Falcon Ridge and Newport? I go to shows to enjoy the mood of being there. Part of my enjoyment includes getting into the music. OK I'll try to "sing" very quietly and to myself or go outside and belt it out. Perhaps I should move to was it Finland? No one ever did answer the actual question: >any feelings on SUSAN's feelings on fans singing along during concerts? Here's to hoping she agrees with Catie and tells you all to shut up and sing if you can't hear :-) Keep believing, "The Bearded One" HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at songs.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 07:34:22 -0700 From: "Ron Rosen" Subject: Re: singing (and dancing) at concerts The Bearded One wrote: >Here's to hoping she agrees with Catie and tells you all to shut up and >sing if you can't hear :-) Obviously a performer is free to encourage her audience to act in any way the performer would like. Then it's up to the audience members to decide if they like that kind of show. If I like to hear Susan's voice and I like to see Susan when she performs, then I probably will not like it if her shows start to become sing-a-long/dance-a-long events. (I have been a swing and ballroom dancer for more than a decade so I don't have anything against dancing. At Susan's request, I demonstrated the cha cha at one of her shows a couple years back. I would never think of getting up and dancing at a Susan show because it would distract the audience and I would consider it selfish on my part.) If certain types of behavior by one or two or a minority of people annoyed a whole audience, it would not seem to be in the performer's interest to encourage or allow it, because in the end, people may lose interest in going to the shows. When you go to see Springsteen or the Stones, there is a great possibility that everyone in front of you will be standing the whole show, so if you want to see, you'll have to stand too. That comes with the territory, and if you don't like it, you can stop going to those kinds of shows. If Susan's shows became something I didn't like, I would likely stop going. (Although I would certainly tell her in advance that it was becoming a problem.) It would seem to be in any performer's interest to make their shows as enjoyable as possible for the vast majority of their fans. Since I joined this list about a year ago, there have been a couple of posts which, in effect, had the following theme: "I want to do something or have something done at a show just because I want it done, and I'm asking if it's ok because at some level I understand that everyone or even most people might not like it." I suggest that people who want to indulge in things that they understand might annoy a performer or large chunk of the audience think twice, and realize that you can indulge yourself at other times in other ways. When you are part of an audience, you have to give up something in the interest of the experience of the whole group. If you don't want to do that, as one singer said to me when I tried to follow up on a joke, "Go get your own show!!" HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at songs.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 09:24:40 -0400 From: "J. Katherine Rossner" Subject: Re: singing (and dancing) at concerts Does it have to be so black-and-white, all one way or all the other? I love to sing along--when it's appropriate; and many of the artists I like have some songs with choruses to which the audience is encouraged to sing along. (Greg Greenway, one of my very favorites, even has a couple of songs for which he divides the audience into sections when he's performing solo, and has us do the different parts of what his backup singers do at other concerts!) I can't at the moment think of a Susan song to which I'd sing loudly--maybe the chorus to "Great Out There"?--but there are certainly some which I would never consider joining in because they're so obviously solos: "Sorry About Jesus" and "Old Mistake" come to mind. Then there are a few where I might mouth the words softly. For that matter, as far as the noise level goes--even at concerts where the audience is encouraged to sing loudly, and most do, I've *never* heard them drown out the performer. Except on those "very obviously solo" songs, I'm only bothered by the person next to me singing softly if that person is obviously off-key or has the words wrong. I don't dance, but I *love* watching other members of the audience dance--as long as it's at the side or back, where it doesn't interfere with my view of the performer. Katherine Rossner Ye knowe ek, that in forme of speche is chaunge Withinne a thousand yere, and wordes tho That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem, and yit they spake hem so. - Chaucer, "Troilus and Criseyde" HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at songs.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V3 #168 ******************************* --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message