I was playing a bar in Erie PA about 1991. We were big at that club so people knew to get there early. On a random Friday night there was a guy with a horrible Hawaiian shirt and his dowdy, mousey wife sitting at the first table directly in front of the stage left speaker. That was also the side of the stage I was on. About 4 songs in he yelled up that it was too loud. T turned to the guys with my hands up in a "hold on" gesture and said to him "You got here an hour before we started. When you got here EVERY table in the room was empty. You picked THAT table in front of the PA and you didn't make the correlation between distance from a speaker and volume? You have somebody cut your food for you, don't you?" Everybody laughed at both the joke and the guy at the table. About 3 songs later he yelled something else really stupid up at me. I smiled and said "Buddy, you do NOT want my complete attention." and we finished the set. Midway through the second set he interrupted again and yelled "Hey what do you do for your real job? I KNOW it isn't music." Again, smiling, I said "You're right. Most of the time I am downtown lining up guys to bang your wife (I didn't say bang but had to here)." He immediately stood up and started to come toward the stage. Our security guy, a LARGE former cop and general badass, stepped in front of him and said "Bad idea. Sit down and let the band buy you and your wife a drink." He didn't say another word.

The next night? Yep. He was right back at that same table. (With a different ugly Hawaiian shirt.) I got the feeling he liked the attention. At the end of the night he came to the front of the stage and waved up to us and said "You guys must work really hard at this because you are really good! When are you here again?" I made sure it was ME who addressed him and said "You can actually be a part of making that happen. Tell Angie (the owner) you liked what you heard and you will be back whenever we play." Shook his hand and they left.

People tend to see that 3 sets of 60 minutes each and not seem to grasp that it takes time to learn the music, or see the mountain of PA and individual gear that we lug in and out. And that doesn't take into account the individual practice time. If you do it right, it is absolutely real work.