Don't you hate open Mic nights at Coffee Houses?

[Koch Ebola]

I stop playing open Mike nights at coffee houses a long time ago. While you play, you hear the cash register, the coffee making machine, people talking their cell phones and laughing it up with their friends. Here is a sample....
https://soundcloud.com/user-890005066/well-have-to-wait-until-we-get-married

[Wilms]

1. It's not a concert, is it?

And the recording is awful. That doesn't help. Sounds like the mic is in the audience and is overloading. Surely the artist can come up with something better to post on the World Wide Web, no?

[rjsquirrel]

2. Wait that's why you hate them?

They're the most entry level of entry level gigs. You are assumed lame until you can make people pay attention and stop making noise.

And if every musician blanched at the sound of people talking, drinking, and making money there would be no popular music. Music is not always made to be listened to exclusively or even attentively. Ask anyone in a bar band, even a very good and successful one. Those cash registers are the sound of the club making money, which means you make money. Distract away, bartender.

I mean fine for you that you stopped playing at them, but was that because you had a load of paying gigs from confirmed fans willing to pay money to silently appreciate your talent?

Or more likely, if you were playing at them and not moving beyond them, was it because you really aren't that good?

Weird post. I didn't think there were many more open mic nights anymore. The genre of music most associated with them has dwindled to a tiny sliver of the market.

[dogknob]

6. Right? A 40's-style cutting contest would have this person running to hide under mommy's bed n/t

[randr]

3. It is a sign of the times

I can no longer go out to local concerts because of the numbers of people who are chatting over the performance.
It is like the people who spend all day in chat rooms can't stop chatting when together in public.

[rjsquirrel]

4. Dude

It's not new. As a former bar musician let me reiterate that if most music depended on concert hall levels of attention there would be no pop music industry. No blues. No rock. No country. And thus no sensitive poet type singer songwriters who wish for audiences to hang on their every word and no coffeehouses.

Because worse than people chatting is no people paying.

You're free and unproven entertainment at an open mic. No one owes you their univided attention.

[randr]

5. So right you are

Generally speaking. Every now and then I have experienced a concert/performance where the artist stunned everyone silent.
Recently at a Melodians performance the lead singer started talking in a quiet voice about the drive over the mountains to the venue.
The rather raucous crowd, Halloween party, hushed so that every work the man spoke was heard.
The level of respect was noted by all.