It's interesting to hear what a performer thinks of his audience.
Usually it's
the other way around. Usually it's the audience talking about the performers,
so hearing Tom talk about what he thinks of the audience is fascinating.
I wonder how different audiences of today are, 27 years later...
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JIM LADD:
"How do you perceive audiences and how they've changed. Do you like
the audiences of today better than they were five years ago?"
TON JOHNSTON:
"Mostly they're kind of the same in a way. My only comments are the
thing I mentioned before about not being too heavily critical. Not just
with us, I mean anybody I don't care who it is, you know? If they're
good, they're good. If they're bad they're bad you know? If you get off,
you get off. If you don't, you don't. But like, rather than to go there
with the attitude that well they got to show me what they can do, and if
I'm going to have a good time they're going to have to work their ass
off to make me do it."
"The idea, the attitude of going into a show is that, I'm coming down
here to have a good time and I'll probably enjoy this group or I
wouldn't come in the first place, you know, I wouldn't even bother to
buy the ticket. So go, have a good time. Do whatever you want to do but
don't get too loose and blow it like they do in outside gigs too much
which is a shame."
"I think that out of all the audiences we play for, the East Coast
and Europe are similar in that through the whole set they'll be pretty
quiet and politely clap after each song. And then at the end of the set
they'll give you a really heavy ovation and an encore."
"On the West Coast, especially in the old days when we played at the
Chateau and all that kind of stuff, they went bananas through the whole
thing. It didn't matter what was going on. People were hanging from the
rafters and getting drunk, going crazy the whole time."
"And we still run into that occasionally on the West Coast and a few
other spots in the Midwest. But audiences change geographically how they
respond, how they react."
JIM LADD:
"What do you prefer? What audience do you prefer?"
TOM JOHNSTON:
"I like an audience that gets up and lets you know they're doin' it.
And that they're enjoying your music and gettin' off. An audience that
sits there and politely claps after each tune is fine and I appreciate
it if they're listening to the music because they really want to listen
to it which I had it explained to me once in Georgia where the crowd sat
through the whole thing just didn't even budge, man. We thought geez,
we're not gettin' 'em off at all. And then at the end I talked to...
they gave us an incredible ovation and an encore and I asked some of the
people, I made a point of asking them. I said that's really weird man,
how come you act that way? And they said well because we want to get
into the music and let you know that we are listening to it. We don't
want to be up jumping around like we're not paying attention. Well I
said that's a twist. I never heard that one before. Because to me when
people are up jumping around that probably might be happening and I'd
never consider it. To me when I see them up jumping around that means
we're working. I mean it's getting them off and we're having a rapport
with them."
JIM LADD:
"See to me as one who's mostly in the audience, when I go and see an
audience up jumping around I think they're not listening. I came here
to listen to this group see what they do hear their music. But you enjoy
the party atmosphere."
TOM JOHNSTON:
"Well the reason is it all comes back to what I said before about
music being physical. If you're really enjoying yourself and getting
off... Like when I used to go and listen to groups if I really got off
on them I was up and messin' around because it really made me feel that
good. Or other times I just sat there in awe and it made me get off...,
I wouldn't be up jumping around but I'd still be getting chills up and
down my back and really, really getting off on what I heard. It depends
on the individual and how they express themselves."
Tomorrow: The final installment! Tom & Pat talk more about audiences and stardom.
Rick
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