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Rules for Open Stage ?


Headbanger

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I have enough of those folks, that show up at Open Stage and think they are the center of the universe.

 

They play without listening to the rest of the guys, too loud and too {censored}.

 

It's not the skills missing, it's the ability to play WITH and FOR people ! :mad:

 

No wonder they don't play in any band.

 

It's bad for business, good players come less often, and people don't show up to listen anymore... :(

 

Do you have experience with rules, with someone taking care of what happens on stage ?

Any tricks to attract good and nonpsycho players ?

 

The girls are completely missing !! :(:mad::freak:

 

Please help save our Open Stage Thursday !

 

Thanks. :)

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Oh brother , I know just what you are saying ! In the US we call it "open jam". I used to go to a great one but a loud mouthed singer/guitarist took control and make it an open jam starring himself. The person who ran the jam had to limit the number of people on stage and made everyone sign up for certain time slots and limited it to acoustic only. Needless to say the loud mouth could not stand sitting at the bar listening to others play and he soon stopped coming around.They are the same way in a band situation as you discovered.

As for your psycho,

1-someone has to be "in charge" and tell him when to sit down and shut up.

2-have a sign in sheet for time slots (give the good slots to better team players)

3-turn his mic off

4-get some girls to sing soft ballads and everyone stare at him when he gets loud (very effective)

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I feel your pain...

 

My acoustic trip runs an open-mic/acoustic showcase on Thursdays also. We took it over when the music store that originally sponsored it decided to quit. When they were still running it, it was mostly a showcase for their friends, with newer talent banished to the last part of the evening. Although my trio got pretty choice spots, we all thought it was unfair.

 

When we took over (a 'bloodless coup' - not really, no one else was going to administer it), we started up a sign-up sheet with definitive rules.

 

Rule 1) three songs/15 minutes (whichever comes first) for the first rotation of the list.

 

Rule 2) if there's time after the first rotation of the list, each performer can do one or two more songs, depending on the time and the number of performers.

 

Rule 3) we supply the mics (mine), the PA (the bar's) and the soundguy (me). The performers supply whatever they want to bring to the stage, provided it isn't attitude. Also, when time's up, then time's UP. Since I'm on the board, I can cut the whole house out if necessary.

 

This has been working very nicely for months. This past Thursday was the first problem I've had, and that was a performer had a little too much to drink (a LITTLE???), went quickly into a third song on the second rotation, though we'd announced that it was a two-song max. I even let him finish the third song, but told him when I was onstage to set up for the next performer that it was only a two-song max, so he got pissy and attitudinal. I told him that he didn't have to play if he didn't want to be fair with the rest of the performers. He was thrown out a little bit later for being belligerent.

 

It's fun, but one of the big problems is shutting the crowd up so they can actually HEAR the performers. I've found the worst offenders are...the other musicians. They can get pissed if someone makes a bunch of noise while they're performing, but will yell across the room when someone else is onstage.

 

Perhaps some externally-motivated falsetto might well be applied...:thu:

 

peace,

Tim from Jersey

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