Got back from today's pirate invasion of the Northern California Renaissance Faire. The folks there were pretty happy to see us. Jack and I wandered the faire, playing sea chanteys and bantering with the visitors. It was a heck of a lot of fun, with two exceptions (which ultimately were quite amusing.)
There was one incident when a confection vendor and one of the "taverns" asked us to stay awhile and play some chanteys (Jack on the guitar and vocals and me on the bodhran.) No problem - we played and sang a handful of songs and more and more people were hanging around and buying the food and drink, so the vendors were happy. Then, a woman who had been selling ocarinas approached us and told us that we were interfering with her sales, since no one could hear her play the ocarina. Now by "play", if she meant making random noises not connected in any way with actual music, then she was accurate about what she was doing. We thought briefly about telling her that she had a better chance of luring people to buy a musical instrument with actual music than random noises, but decided it wasn't worth it and moved on. I'm sure the other vendors weren't too happy with her...
And at another shop, I was reminded of how many people out there erroneously think that playing a drum is "easy". I was doing a wee bit of shopping and Jack was strumming his guitar outside. One of the employees, a woman in her 50's, grabbed a couple of drums and started beating on them. She asked Jack if he would play a song so that she could accompany him. He proceeded to play and she started "playing" the drums, with her eyes closed and swaying her head. She was kind of able to play the basic beat, but couldn't decide the sequence of the drum hits, so she basically hit them randomly. And she couldn't maintain the beat for more than 20 or 30 seconds (which is fairly typical for a non-drummer.) I gritted my teeth through this and at the end, she asked Jack if he'd come back later so that she could accompany him again. He said something non-committal and we got out of there as fast as we could. Now, I'm not trying to be a musician-snob, but I was told by someone wiser than me that nothing messes up a song worse than an inept drummer and not to even think of playing in public until I could do a good job of it. I've talked with too many people who think that all they have to do is buy a drum and practice a couple of times and they're ready to go. It doesn't work that way...
