Rule No. 1

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

Saw a couple bands at Union Pool, in Williamsburg, a few nights ago and experienced a first. I'd heard about this kind of thing happening, of course, but I'd never witnessed it. The lead singer of the band that went on before my friend Gabe's band, Ghost Gamblers, got mad at the audience. I guess we weren't clapping enough for him. Instead of thinking, Gee, I guess we have to play better, he started cursing at us. The first sign of trouble came when, in an ill-considered stab at between-song banter, he said, "So, have you guys heard about that mess in Cambridge with the Harvard professor and the cop, and how they had a beer with Obama?" Silence. Of course we'd heard about it. Finally, someone gave a little "Whoo" shout of recognition and a clap. "Oh, one person's heard about it, huh?" the singer responded. Two songs later he said he wouldn't mind if people clapped. One song after that he complained that it's not easy to perform and asked if anyone of us wanted to get up there and try it. Then he told us to fuck off. Then he asked for house music. Then he cursed again. Then he left, the whole while his band just standing there. Horrible.

No matter how badly things are going on in your head when you're on stage, you can't scold and curse out your audience. Think about the Blues Brothers when they played the honky tonk bar. That was a disaster, but instead of getting mad at the audience, they played Rawhide all night and scored.

Ghost Gamblers, by the way, rocked. More on that later.