And when I made it to the Food Court, the stage was set up next to the turtle fountain again, and the House Music was quieter than at Christmas, but still pretty loud -- especially the piercing tambourine sounds. All this despite assurances from the Booking Lady that the stage would be back over by the entrance, and the music would be off. Grrr. But, no real choice -- I dragged the stage back 6 or 8 feet to get out of range of the water spray, and set up anyway.
But really, it's an unacceptable setup. With a cyclical wall of water between me and the main "audience" area, I'm invisible and inaudible half the time. Kinda hard to get any kind of rapport going...
Still, occasionally some people come by and sit at the big planter-box benches over at each side. They still can't hear half the time, but at least they can see me (and me, them). The highlight of the evening was a little pack of Woo Girls (shown). They sat and listened, and requested, and screamed out "Woooo!" at the end of every song. I wished they'd'a stayed longer.
But they were replaced after a while by three high school girls from OCHSA, (and one of them knew Acacia). They also listened, requested, and sang along for some songs, and were also gone too soon, to catch their movie.
About 8 o'clock, an elderly but spry lady came right up to me while I was tuning my guitar and exclaimed, "You've got a pretty tough act to follow!" I said, "Really? Why is that?", and she said, "The guy before you was really good!" I said, genuinely confused, "When was that? I've been here since six." It was her turn to be confused, and it became evident that she was thinking that "the other guy" was more recent than that. She looked pretty embarrassed as she realized that I was the same guy she'd heard earlier and was comparing me to, and she sort of backed off mumbling, and wandered away. Fortunately for me, it's not too hard to play as good as "the other guy", when the other guy is you.
At (only) one point, I had a pretty good crowd going, all seated around the planter-boxes. But that's pretty limited seating, and still too-well covered up by the acoustic onslaught of the fountain. Most of the night, I played for the turtles, and a stony silent response from the rest of the audience. At least the turtles, being stone, have an excuse...
The more it went on, and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got about the pointlessness of the situation -- playing into the wall of white noise. But when I got home and counted the tips -- $72.46 -- I got a little less angry. Apparently, being out in the traffic has some advantages, but I still think I'd prefer to be audible. Not to mention that since The Hat Incident, I'm all paranoid about having people milling around behind me. I'm not wearing the hat anymore, but that feeling of vulnerability won't go away. Who knows what the next joker will want to try?
Still, I'm not exactly prepared to quit playing there altogether (not having any better options), but I'm definitely gonna have to have a little talk with Booking Lady.
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