Inexplicably, the South Coast Plaza Borders has their music on Sunday afternoon. We were greeted by a room full of intensely studying Asian college kids, some of whom had earplugs in even before we got there. Since virtually all of them were (a) too young, and (b) from another culture, the response was, shall we say, underwhelming. On top of that, the Muzak wouldn't stay off -- we had to keep asking them to kill it, and it would reappear 10 minutes later. It was a pretty big waste of time, but I always say, "A bad day playin' is still better'n a good day watchin' TV". (And certainly better'n waxin' the car!)
A year or two ago, I'd'a been deeply annoyed, probably, but these days I'm pretty confident that we're Good, and the lack of response just felt like their *inability* to respond, not our lack of talent. So, it wasn't really painful, just surreal. What's hard to imagine is who decided that Sunday afternoons was The Time to do that -- both being Insanely Wrong, and bucking the rest-of-stores trend of doing music on Friday and Saturday evenings. I imagine that, even at that store, the vibe is completely different on weekend evenings than on Sunday afternoons.
Clearly, although it was amusing once, I'd rather not repeat the experience, but that store isn't even on the September listing, so there's no danger there. And none of the other gigs are afternoons, either, so hopefully we won't encounter that kind of environment again. And, clearly, we've learned another lesson -- stand staring at the Manager until the Muzak demonstrably goes off. They need to know that if the Muzak don't go off, the Band don't play.
In retrospect, and without the pressure of actually standing there, I think I might have been a bit more aggressive, too. That's easy to say now... At the time, it seemed prudent to be a even swap for the Muzak. Along the lines of a string quartet at a garden party -- just music wafting by. I figured the kids couldn't have more issue with us than they'd already have had with the speakers. At least three of them were wearing earplugs even before we got there. Still, even if I had been *able* to dislodge the kids from their books, I'm not sure that that would be doing any of them a favor. Even kids that would have rather been listening to music were probably aware that what they *ought* to be doing is knuckling down. So I felt better just fading back, and letting them be OK with ignoring me.
Anyway, however a gig goes, it makes for at least one good story. This one yielded two -- the "Day of the Dead" gig itself, and the skimpily-clad college cutie who sat right in front of me and leeeeaaaaned over, multiple times, to get into her book bag -- all while I was trying to play "You've Got a Friend" -- probably the most concentration-challenging song I play. That there was a Test sent by the Devil hisself!
