Smoking, drinking, eating, watching TV etc.while on stage?

[SpondonBassed]

1 hour ago, The Saint said:

Things may be a bit different here in France as we always get fed before the gig, even if it's just a small bar that doesn't do food themselves. They'll buy in a pizza for the band. So no need to eat during the gig, but I wouldn't anyway as it's just plain rude.

As for drink, we always get a free tab but as we all have to drive, we're on water. Being the main vocalist, I see nothing wrong in having a bottle of water on hand. And the same for the rest of the band, as it can get pretty warm here in summer...!

As to TV, can't say we've ever been in a position to watch it during a gig. But we did have a regular gig at a bar that had a 50" TV right above the stage. They insisted on playing YouTube concerts (minus the sound) while we played our set and it annoyed the hell out of me. But they paid us well...!

So one night, our lead guitarist finished a rather splendid solo and the crowd suddenly went ape... Looking at the stage, cheering, clapping and stamping their feet. 

I thought, well if they enjoyed it that much, I'll give him another solo after the next chorus...!

It was then I noticed the bar owner sprinting across the room, diving over the drummer and between our amps, then flapping wildly at the TV trying to turn it off. I glanced up at the screen and found that some wag had got hold of the remote control and switched to a full on porn channel. 

But my man still got his solo in....

Being a bassist, it's no harm to enjoy a bit of slap and tickle now and again...

[Bluewine]

On 2/20/2018 at 10:53, discreet said:

In the 70s we would rehearse stoned, gig stoned and do everything else stoned. The audiences would be stoned, too. In fact most people were stoned, all the time. Or at least that's what it seemed like!

Yeah, I was a young teen at that time and everybody was stoned most of the time. If you weren't stoned you were getting ready to get stoned

 And after that get stoned again.

In retrospect I'd be a lot better bass player and would have went further in life with music had I focused more on studying bass and the music business.

But, I'm 65 now, as I remember it, we had a blast back in the late 60s and early 70s. Seemed like the ladies were a lot cooler ( easy) back then to.

Blue

[discreet]

45 minutes ago, Bluewine said:

In retrospect I'd be a lot better bass player and would have went further in life with music had I focused more on studying bass and the music business.

Agreed. I could also have done with giving up booze about thirty years before I finally did.

[SpondonBassed]

9 hours ago, Bluewine said:

...But, I'm 65 now, as I remember it, we had a blast back in the late 60s and early 70s. Seemed like the ladies were a lot cooler ( easy) back then to.

Blue

I remember a distinct change in attitudes towards me as a male.

It was in my early thirties and it meant that a smile was no longer all I needed to charm the ladies.  If I had kept up the band in my early twenties I might have got more, so to speak, in my thirties and possibly forties but in my fifties, I'm stuffed.  I've taken up bass again but it's a bit too late.  It's a good thing I've never wanted to settle and bring up children.

When, finally, the only admiring looks I would get were from weirdos with dad fads, I grew out my beard and it effectively took me off the market completely.  Life is much more peaceful now.

[Dan Dare]

Smoking, drinking, eating, etc on stage? Would you do the same at work? 

[dmccombe7]

55 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

Smoking, drinking, eating, etc on stage? Would you do the same at work? 

I bet there are some that do.  

Would have to say no tho. Would only drink water on stage these days.

Dave

 

[SpondonBassed]

2 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

Smoking, drinking, eating, etc on stage? Would you do the same at work? 

Are you kidding???

The working lunch is a concept that has insinuated itself into lots of people's lives.  It used to be for promotion hungry middle managers.  It then became acceptable for anyone to eat their lunch at the workplace so that they could catch-up with increasingly tight deadlines!  It's one of the reasons for the Work-Life Balance movement.

I agree that smoking is not now acceptable full stop.

I was a heavy smoker until my early forties.  I used to have an ashtray on my desk until the late eighties.  Then the anti-passive smoking movement took hold and I had to leave my desk to feed my addiction.  Added up, it meant I was being paid for being away from my desk and therefore unavailable for almost an hour each day.  Understandably my colleagues and associates were resentful.

I eventually gave it up successfully.

Personally, I never felt comfortable taking a meal break without putting down my work and going away from it.  I wouldn't do it then, I don't even think about it now.  I don't really see the stage being any different.  It is a workspace after all.

Edited February 27, 2018 by SpondonBassed

[EliasMooseblaster]

28 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

Personally, I never felt comfortable taking a meal break without putting down my work and going away from it.  I wouldn't do it then, I don't even think about it now.  I don't really see the stage being any different.  It is a workspace after all.

I've always been astonished by how many of my colleagues seem content to eat lunch at their desks. Never found it enjoyable myself - the staggering thing is that most of them are still looking at their screens rather than their food!

[discreet]

4 minutes ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

I've always been astonished by how many of my colleagues seem content to eat lunch at their desks. 

This would have been laughed at in the 70s. Everyone left the building for an hour for lunch. Quite normal when unions were strong. We have lost much and today's workers don't even know it. Current propaganda tells us the 70s were a socialist nightmare, but they most certainly were not. Proper pay and working conditions - now gone.

[Barking Spiders]

14 hours ago, discreet said:

Agreed. I could also have done with giving up booze about thirty years before I finally did.

With you there. I calculates that had I been teetotal I could've owned my house outright about eight years ago. I no longer see any of my beer buddies of the last 25-30 years and I  look back thinking what a bluddy waste of money and time drinking is. I have a couple of Jack Daniels or so a week but that's it. Think I've spent more time honing my bass playing over the last year than I did throughout my entire 20s and 30s. Back then I was a bit of a poser with front I guess.

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited February 25, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[seashell]

I've never smoked and I wouldn't encourage anyone else to. But I have to say, the old cigarette in the headstock thing used to look soooo cool.  

Personally, I would not drink on stage (unless water if I was singing), and couldn't even imagine the thought of eating on stage! I like to perform on an empty stomach.  I like that lean and hungry feeling .. helps me get in the zone! 

[discreet]

36 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

...what a bluddy waste of money and time drinking is...

It's the waste of time that hurts most. And what's more, you knew it. But as usual when negative thoughts arose, it was time for another drink. When I finally gave up it wasn't the physical addiction I found hard to deal with - that's just a habit like any other - it was the forty years' worth of questionable behaviour and terrible choices that came flying out of the booze-locked box where I'd been keeping them, into the cold light of day. So now it's a case of not wasting what time I have left and avoid things like... spending too long online, for example...

D'OH!! 

[casapete]

18 minutes ago, seashell said:

Personally, I would not drink on stage (unless water if I was singing), and couldn't even imagine the thought of eating on stage! I like to perform on an empty stomach.  I like that lean and hungry feeling .. helps me get in the zone! 

Isn't it funny that if you go back to the 70's and beyond, having a bottle of water onstage was mostly considered unnecessary,

even by singers. You just got up there and did it. (waits for deluge of YouTube clips showing vocalists drinking now...)

The recent fad for not being able to leave the house without a bottle of water to hand has no doubt had something to do

with this?

( For the record, I do have a bottle of water onstage, but only for those times when my crap voice is in danger of

packing in altogether.)

 

[seashell]

2 minutes ago, casapete said:

( For the record, I do have a bottle of water onstage, but only for those times when my crap voice is in danger of

packing in altogether.)

 

That's the reason right there. I too have a crap voice which tends to crack up and pack in for no apparent reason! 

I agree things do go in fads. When I went to dancing classes as a kid, we were not allowed to drink anything during lessons - even in rest breaks - because it was thought that drinking cold water when your body was hot would give you stomach cramps (or some such reason - I can't really remember). Now of course teachers stress the importance of hydration during strenuous exercise!

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

I've always been astonished by how many of my colleagues seem content to eat lunch at their desks. Never found it enjoyable myself - the staggering thing is that most of them are still looking at their screens rather than their food!

 

1 hour ago, discreet said:

This would have been laughed at in the 70s. Everyone left the building for an hour for lunch. Quite normal when unions were strong. We have lost much and today's workers don't even know it. Current propaganda tells us the 70s were a socialist nightmare, but they most certainly were not. Proper pay and working conditions - now gone.

At a lot of places where I have worked there is essentially nothing to do during your lunch break other than eat your lunch which takes all of 10 minutes. Because of where the workplace was, if you did decide to go out somewhere worthwhile it generally took so long to get there that you would only have a few minutes to do whatever it was you were going to do. For me lunchtime if I wasn't actually busy with work was wasted time. Personally I'd far rather work through my "lunch break" and leave an hour earlier. In effect what usually happened was that I would be so busy that working through lunch meant I could leave at 6.30 rather than 7.30 in the evening. Luckily I was on paid overtime so working through my lunch was another hour at time and a quarter.  

The best place I worked at was less than 5 minutes walk from where I lived so I would go home at lunchtime and catch up on TV I had recorded the previous evening.

[Staggering on]

5 minutes ago, casapete said:

Isn't it funny that if you go back to the 70's and beyond, having a bottle of water onstage was mostly considered unnecessary,

even by singers. You just got up there and did it. (waits for deluge of YouTube clips showing vocalists drinking now...)

The recent fad for not being able to leave the house without a bottle of water to hand has no doubt had something to do

with this?

( For the record, I do have a bottle of water onstage, but only for those times when my crap voice is in danger of

packing in altogether.)

 

I agree, you're not going to drop from dehydration on stage(or anywhere else probably) and having a sip of water every few minutes is totally unnecessary for most of us but seems to be "the thing to do" these days.Most people use commercial bottles of water and I think marketing has more to do with it than necessity, the same as energy drinks.Even here in Canada where water is abundant and cheap I can't believe how many people buy cases of water for use at home as well as other places.Depending on what is on sale here water can be more expensive than gasoline(petrol) in some situations...crazy!

I have a drink of water between sets sometimes but not on stage unless I really need it due to throat problems,I do a few vocals and backups.

[Barking Spiders]

4 minutes ago, discreet said:

It's the waste of time that hurts most. And what's more, you knew it. But as usual when negative thoughts arose, it was time for another drink. When I finally gave up it wasn't the physical addiction I found hard to deal with - that's just a habit like any other - it was the forty years' worth of questionable behaviour and terrible choices that came flying out of the booze-locked box where I'd been keeping them, into the cold light of day. So now it's a case of not wasting what time I have left and avoid things like... spending too long online, for example...

D'OH!! 

Sure thing, esp in my 20s-early 30s, the waste of time and who I spent that time with when I could've been doing something more worthwhile. I made some bad , bad choices including two disastrous marriages that cost time and a shedload of money. I gigged in quite a few  bands but was never committed enough to put the effort in to make a go of it and more than once I'd go on stage half cut or a tad stoned. In retrospect I'd say I was probably a bit of a git.

[discreet]

32 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

Sure thing, esp in my 20s-early 30s, the waste of time and who I spent that time with when I could've been doing something more worthwhile. I made some bad , bad choices including two disastrous marriages that cost time and a shedload of money. I gigged in quite a few  bands but was never committed enough to put the effort in to make a go of it and more than once I'd go on stage half cut or a tad stoned. In retrospect I'd say I was probably a bit of a git.

Only one disastrous marriage here, but plenty of disastrous relationships, so I can sympathise. When I was fourteen I'd already decided I wanted to be a professional bass player/producer/musician - and that happened, sporadically and with varying degrees of success, over the following forty years or so - despite my doing everything I could to wreck my own chances. Booze and drugs makes being your own worst enemy a lot, lot easier. See my upcoming new book, Coping with Disappointment. 

[SpondonBassed]

2 hours ago, discreet said:

This would have been laughed at in the 70s. Everyone left the building for an hour for lunch. Quite normal when unions were strong. We have lost much and today's workers don't even know it. Current propaganda tells us the 70s were a socialist nightmare, but they most certainly were not. Proper pay and working conditions - now gone.

Don't forget; most firms had their own in-house catering too.  The food was usually better than at home.  The catering staff were employees just the same as everyone else and lunchtime was a chance to catch up socially.  That and the weekly queue at the pay hatch were conducive to team building and the staff bonding generally.

Of course with social media, we need none of that nonsense now.

During the eighties I was a gun for hire in the civil aviation industry.  I'd take sub-contracts as a mechanic and later as a technical author via agencies.  I got to see how many firms worked.  It was in this period that large companies actively sought to sell off the catering responsibilities to contractors.  One by one the canteens got populated by firms who really cared only to be paid.  That and the elimination of weekly pay made the workplace seem cold.

I loved the seventies.  I was eight when they started.  You could get away with stuff that would get you jailed these days and it was regarded as going through a phase and you could learn from it.  Kids aren't allowed that now.  Zero tolerance is everywhere.

Yet, nothing really changes, cosmically speaking.

[dmccombe7]

2 hours ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

I've always been astonished by how many of my colleagues seem content to eat lunch at their desks. Never found it enjoyable myself - the staggering thing is that most of them are still looking at their screens rather than their food!

We went from standard recognised breaks to working as required thru lunch time and then on to eating lunch at my desk until 2 of us moved into the Branch Manager and Assistant Branch Managers roles where we introduced a large mahogany dining table to the library section of the office. That was our lunch table and everyone working in the office would stop at 12:30 - 13:15 hrs every day unless a breakdown occurred. It was one of the best things we ever did in the office to return to a time when breaks were set and it removed you from the workplace. We agreed no talking shop at lunchtime either. To be fair there were only 6-10 staff left at this point. It broke the working day up and helped relieve stress of work a little. 

We still took our coffee at desk most of the time thru the day.

Dave

[dmccombe7]

5 minutes ago, discreet said:

See my upcoming new book, Coping with Disappointment. 

Book sounds as tho it could be a good read. Keep us informed when and where we can buy.

Dave

[lurksalot]

3 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Book sounds as tho it could be a good read. Keep us informed when and where we can buy.

Dave

You can't have one Dave , he tells you how to handle that in chapter 2

[discreet]

7 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

I loved the seventies.  I was eight when they started.  You could get away with stuff that would get you jailed these days and it was regarded as going through a phase and you could learn from it.  Kids aren't allowed that now.  Zero tolerance is everywhere. Yet, nothing really changes, cosmically speaking.

That's so true. There was no 'Health and Safety'. Only 'Health and Efficiency'.  With my peers, we learned a lot about human behaviour and acquired important practical skills by deliberately putting ourselves in danger on a regular basis. Which in retrospect was a good thing and something I'd definitely recommend - for other people's kids. However, my blood runs cold when I think of my own son being in some of those situations. Normal parental anxiety (just like my own parents had) I suppose... 

[SpondonBassed]

57 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

At a lot of places where I have worked there is essentially nothing to do during your lunch break other than eat your lunch which takes all of 10 minutes. Because of where the workplace was, if you did decide to go out somewhere worthwhile it generally took so long to get there that you would only have a few minutes to do whatever it was you were going to do. For me lunchtime if I wasn't actually busy with work was wasted time. Personally I'd far rather work through my "lunch break" and leave an hour earlier. In effect what usually happened was that I would be so busy that working through lunch meant I could leave at 6.30 rather than 7.30 in the evening. Luckily I was on paid overtime so working through my lunch was another hour at time and a quarter.  

The best place I worked at was less than 5 minutes walk from where I lived so I would go home at lunchtime and catch up on TV I had recorded the previous evening.

The best place I worked was at the old British Aerospace factory in Kingston upon Thames.

It's been knocked down now and all you will see is high density housing.  When I was there in 1988, they had a twenty four hour canteen with main meals served in the middle of each of the three shifts.  It was known far and wide for its high standards so it got used to capacity all of the time I was there, even on nights.

That's made me a bit sad.  We'll never see that sort of employer ever again.