OMFGoodness! The second full moon this month brought with it a crazy unsettled evening at Terrapin Crossroads!

While the show was going on, a woman assaulted a few people in the restaurant, then had some kind of a screaming fit while holed up in the restaurant bathroom, then she was arrested and taken away in an ambulance! The main bathrooms in the restaurant were unavailable for the whole intermission and the line for the two individual bathrooms in the Grate Room was long and slow. I overheard an employee mentioning that he counted 14 cops in addition to medical personnel who showed up to remove one hysterical woman!

Fortunately, people attending the performance in the Grate Room were undisturbed by the commotion in the restaurant. Unfortunately, most of the people attending the performance were totally fucking annoyingly rudely thoughtlessly and obnoxiously disturbed by some of the people attending the performance.

How was the show, you ask? Like most Phil shows these days, it had many great moments -- I'm not a setlist person, so I'm sorry but I don't have one for you. However, much of the greatness of this show was overshadowed, or more accurately, drowned out by 50 or 60 loud, obnoxious, rude, thoughtless, drunk, ASSHOLES, who despite being fortunate enough to obtain tickets to a show in the Main Temple at Deadhead Mecca, yelled over the music through the whole fucking show! I won't go into detail about the woman in the striped shirt (who talked continuously until I loudly asked her and her partner in conversation if they were going to talk through the whole show, then shut up for one song, only to start yelling again when the next song started), but I spent much of the evening moving around trying to find a place where I could exist reasonably comfortably without somebody having a loud conversation within three feet of me. It was im-fucking-possible!

The most frustrating moment of the night was when the band stopped playing for a few seconds and you could hear the 50 or 60 loud, obnoxious, rude, thoughtless, drunk, ASSHOLES carrying on their loud conversations, but not one of them noticed that the rest of the people in the room -- including the performers -- were waiting for them to SHUT THE FUCK UP!

It was immediately clear that the loud, obnoxious, rude, thoughtless, drunk, ASSHOLES were gonna keep yelling to each other, oblivious to or perhaps just not caring about their imposition on the people who paid to actually listen to the show. After a few seconds of waiting in vain, the band launched into a rare, yet under-appreciated and certainly undeserved, Comes A Time. After a minute or two of trying to listen to it over the loud, obnoxious, rude, thoughtless, drunk, ASSHOLES carrying on their loud conversations, I went outside to my car and got my ipod in order to record and document their rudeness. This is what it sounded like:

http://youtu.be/yDvCfHWvUUk

In-fucking-credible!!! It was like that for the whole show. It made it impossible to focus on the music.

It's bad enough that the wonderful bar shows are often tarnished by loud drunks -- you get what you pay for. However in the Grate Room, it's reasonable to expect people to respect their fellow audience members and the performers, by keeping any conversation extremely short, quiet and unobtrusive. I imagine I'm preaching to the choir here, so please don't take offense, but...

If you just want to drink and socialize, please hang out in the restaurant or stay home. Don't waste money on tickets to a show which you won't pay attention to, but which you will RUIN for those who would like to be able to pay attention, by being a loud, obnoxious, rude, thoughtless, drunk, ASSHOLE!

That's how I really feel.

Hopefully it will be better tonight!

Froom the Couch Tour Crew:


Phil Lesh and Friends Ramble
8/31/12
Grate Room, Terrapin Crossroads, San Rafael, CA

Phil Lesh - bass, vocals
Jon Graboff - pedal steel, acoustic guitar, percussion, vocals
Mark Karan - guitar, vocals
Neal Casal - guitar, vocals
Adam MacDougall - keyboards, vocals
Joe Russo - drums



Set One:

Jam >
Here Comes Sunshine (NC)
Mr. Charlie (MK)
Ramble on Rose (NC)
Tennessee Jed (MK)
To Lay Me Down (NC)
This Wheel's On Fire (MK)>
Bertha (MK)


Set Two:

He's Gone (JGr) >
Loser (MK)
Mountain Song (PL) >
Jam >
Playing in the Band (NC)
The Other One (PL?)
Mason's Children
Comes a Time (NC)
Playin' Reprise
Not Fade Away (w/ Marco Benevento)

E: Summer in the City (JGr)


Please feel free to make any corrections (I admit that I guessed on many of the vocals). Just copy-and-paste!

that band break was the time to seriously break out the shhhhhhhhh's! That completely sucks, so sorry to hear....

Joe:

Sorry to hear -- that awful phenomenon has got to stop -- I've experienced it (not to th edegree to which you describe, but yeah . . . I feel for ya , brothah.

Dummo what the realistic solution to it is other than voice your voice . . . and maybe a delicate & friendly reminder from the band that the space is small, voices/converstions carry more than ya think and to respective music and those came to do hear the music . . . I dunno, I'm sure good Phil could express it the most diplomatically and articulately tha anyboy else . . . doesn't hurt either that his voice carry the most weight. But it's his joint . . . perhaps just playing and leaving up to us to sort it out right-like is the way -- who knows.

Folks, it's the music that bring us/these things together. Conversaion and jabbering can be accomplished anywhere else!

Joe, I am with you 150% on this. It really only takes a few bad apples to push it over the edge, then it seems if the talking reaches some sort of critical mass other folks think its ok to talk loudly too. It is bad at many shows these days but it is downright painful for those of us who really want to commune with the music.

I always wonder what is so important to talk about that people feel the need to talk through the whole show. I mean they have the chance to socialize before the show, at set break, and after if they want. There were some older gentlemen in front of me last night who talked though the WHOLE bird song. They were nice enough to talk quietly, unlike many others, but one guy in particular couldn't stop talking to his buddies... I mean what was so important they needed to discuss it right then. I know they could barely have been listening the music, and they seemed like pretty passionate heads as I've seen these guys at a number of the shows. I may make a few asides or comments to my wife or buddies or whoever I'm there with but if I have deep thoughts about the music or whatever I will wait to set break or after the show.

But at least those guys had the decency to speak quietly rather than yell over the music like many do. They mostly tend to congregate towards the back of the room but it is so small you can literally hear everything

Joe:

I too feel your pain. The crowds at TXR are consistently the worst I've ever experienced. Don't be shy about asking the talkers to keep it down. I wish more people would stand up to the talkers and let them know that their behavior is not acceptable.

I always try be polite at first because sometimes people just don't realise they are being loud. BUT.... if they don't cooperate after a polite request then I'm in favor of the "by any means necessary" approach.

Yes, let us all together kindly police the talkers! Maybe we can see some change...

"Kindly" is the operative word here!

When I finally asked the woman in the striped shirt if she was going to talk through the whole show, it was only after a number of people and I had very kindly and politely asked her to keep it down, which she agreed to do but didn't. Needless to say, she wasn't pleased to be shushed. While momentarily appealing, the any means necessary approach mentioned by Jake Blues, isn't necessarily the most productive way. When it comes to asking people not to talk, the carrot beats the stick.

I posted my rant out of frustration but also in hopes a dialogue might start in which the community clarifies its values regarding talking at concerts. Many behaviors which are commonly tolerated in local venues (like smoking pot indoors and recording with smartphones) are against official policy at TXR. Remarkably, the word is out, and people respect these rules at TXR in ways they don't in larger, less intimate and more corporate venues.

I don't advocate a cold austere environment in which people can't be themselves. A quick quiet comment to a friend standing next to you, an involuntary hoot or holler, or even singing along, as the audience sometimes does quite beautifully, doesn't bother me a bit. However, hearing a loud conversation back and forth over the music makes me want to crawl out of my skin!

Nobody wants to ask somebody to please be quiet any more than somebody wants to be asked to please be quiet. Ideally, not talking during shows would be an official policy, which would be gently enforced by management instead of patrons, as it is in serious jazz clubs. If it was official policy, I'm sure the word would spread quickly and people would respect and perhaps even embrace it.

Well said...

This conversation cracks me up a bit because I really enjoyed the Comes a Time from outside (ticketless) and it sounded great. I'm definately on board with the no loud talking. No talking policy is rediculous but people need to realize that the Grate Room is small so they need to keep their voices down. I love XRoads