is a singer!"

How many times have we heard this? How many times has it killed a good mood?

I'm not saying that I hate singing or there should be no singing in surf music or anything like that.

What I'm saying is that it's kinda funny how often people will come up to me after a show or inbetween sets and say all these nice things followed by a "BUT... have you ever thought of adding a singer?"

I guess people just don't get it. So I say, sir, there are a million bands out there with singers and not having one makes us different. Or, ma'am, we learned a long time ago that we couldn't play guitar and sing at the same time without annoying people; so we decided to just play guitar.

Anybody else run into the same phenomenon? What do you tell people? I'm getting tired of saying the same thing over and over again!

Paul The Pyronaut

it's not just surf music where you have 'nonbelievers' in the power of instrumentals.

i was in this crazy instrumental trio. we were into nutty time signature changes, using gobs of effects, and playing long. multi-faceted songs. every show we played, like clockwork, someone would say afterward 'you guys were okay/good, but where are the vocals?'

we even tried at one point to put some lyrics to our songs, but they were pretty complex and didn't have verses or choruses you could put words to. we tried out a few singers, but they couldn't quite figure it out either.

when we'd play bars, and you'd get your older customer/regular expecting a typical bar cover band, we'd nearly get beer bottles thrown at us along with obnoxious calls for us to 'shut up and sing something' or 'play some jethro tull/skynyrd/AC/DC"

so we'd crank the amps and play with the fury of hell.

David Byrne is a genius.

JakeDobner
David Byrne is a genius.

Jake, we seem to agree on more things than I thought!

that quote is brilliant.

Rules to live by #314:
"When in Italy, if the menu says something's grilled, don't assume it is."

https://www.facebook.com/The-Malbehavers-286429584796173/

I can't even begin to count the number of occurances of this statement by an audience member. In fact, if I don't hear it, I take notice

Jake, that's the funniest story I've heard in a while
You seemed to handle it really well. I think I would have gotten incredibly harsh with the guy

Ryan
The Secret Samurai Website
The Secret Samurai on Facebook

The one instrumental band I was in way back when, we had a mic w/stand to introduce every third or fourth song. We had this one punk that kept harassing us that we need a singer. After 4 or 5 rounds of this, he came
up to the front of the stage to give us another dose. With that and me finally getting ticked off, I plucked Mr. Kool Man by his collar and shoulder of his shirt, and yanked him up onto the stage, and gave him the mic and told him to sing, with me grinning from ear to ear . As long as I live, I will never ever forget the expression on Mr. Hot Shot.... ..........

.......make the Mos' of it,
.....choose the 'rite stuff!
.........owner of 9 Mosrites
proud owner and documented:
1963 "The Ventures" Model s/n# 0038
http://www.vintagerock4.com
www.mosriteforum.com

always there is some drunk coming up yelling " hey, when are you gonna sing something?" i use to tell them that they are welcome up and sing something..but noone ever does

The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry - it just gets dirtier.

www.myspace.com/tumbleweedofsurf

JakeDobner
Yeah, we got that, but my story beats all other stories.

We are at a gig and this guy keeps trying to talk to me inbetween songs. I blow him off, I'm really dickish to people who try to talk to me inbetween songs. He keeps asking if we are going to sing. Then after the show he comes up and says you guys would be amazing if you have inspiration lyrics. And urged us to play at his church. Due to the cold reaction he got he assumed none of us were religious. All of us were formally religious but have since got a healthy dose of agnosticism. He won't leave us alone. And then he starts telling me specifically that I am really special. Then he says that "my kind" has a spot in heaven. We are all really confused at this point. He then says "well, you are Jewish right". I'm not Jewish. So this guy is telling me that because I was Jewish that I'd go to hell because I believed in a different religion. I then tell him he is barking up the wrong tree and was offensive. He then grabs a girl, who was really cute, and brings her up and starts telling me how special I was and that I give off a special aura. I then leave backstage where he can't follow and go to the van. Then this guy gets back to the van area and I was in a location where he couldn't see me but I could see him. And I managed to stay away from him the rest of the night.

Jake,

You can solve problems like this with one word.... "SECURITY!!!!!!"

That's weird...

Why just last night 3 girls sitting at a table by themselves send the waitress up with a napkin that has these words written on it: "we wanna hear S.O.S. by ABBA"....our guitar player, Bill, says..."i don't think we can do that....can we?" I'm thinking he's insane for even entertaining the thought!! but...we aim to please so....we decide in between songs that we CANNOT do the song. Period. After a couple more instros, one of the girls comes to the band and pleads with us to play "S.O.S." as she's dropping some $ in the tip jar....now i'm thinking we're being tricked by someone....a good friend of mine, guitarist Fred Sampson, plays in an ABBA tribute band that travels the world doing "SOS" and i'm thinking he's sitting out there somewhere and got those girls to request that tune as a joke.....I'm like, "Fred, where are you?" no response....back to the girl standing there, she's really pleading with us to do it "just this one time PLEASE!!" Like we're going to ruin her night if we don't....sorry lady....we don't know that song. She's bummed and returrns to her friends just as a guy walks up and drops some $ in the tip jar and asks for "Knockin' On Heavens Door"......"c'mon, you guys can sing ONE song can't you?" We're like, yeah, but not that one and we've been hired NOT TO SING!!! "OK he says....do it as an instrumental" Arrrggghhh. This all happened in between tunes!! We used to have one mic to introduce tunes but not anymore since we play outside near the beach and there's NO sound system......so no sound system and no mic and we still get requests to "sing something"! All that bantor gave me time to make adjustments on my new Fender '63 RI reverb tank!! It's all good.

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587