Fans Say the Darndest Things: Old Dude Edition

As a performer, one seeks audience feedback during and after the gig to gauge success. The ego, however one might wish to detach from it, keeps tabs on the types of comments one receives. Random cute guy talking to me on the break while buying a CD? Niiiice. Woman praising my original music and asking for tips on developing her own style? Great! All too often, however, there are the old dudes.

While the use of a politically incorrect term such as "old dude" is bound to upset many of my loyal readers, I assure you it is the best way to describe anyone several decades my senior, often with a Santa Claus beard and belly to match, who enjoys an enormous mismatch between his self-concept as a hip chick magnet and his external appearance and, most likely, vocation.

Case #1. It's 11 pm and I am sitting outside a club on a bench on a break in Monterey, saving my voice and my feet for the next set and reviewing a sheaf of lyrics. I'm dressed to the nines. Out of the corner of my eye I spy a scrawny 60+-year-old man with a straggly white beard, very ZZ Top, and a white afro to match. He is sitting not on a Harley Davidson, but the next best thing: a bicycle with a banana seat and three-foot high chrome handlebars. After a few minutes, he rolls over to me.

"Excuse me. Would you like to smoke a bowl with me?" he kindly offers. "Ah, no. That's about the last thing I would like to do," I reply. "I'm a singer, gotta save the voice." As if smoking a bowl with this exemplar of arrested development would be top on my list at any other occasion. When I go in for the next set, I tell the other singer about it and say, "I guess I still got the magic!" "You're #$%@ irresistible!" she agrees, laughing.

Case #2. Again, on a break at a fancy corporate gig, a well dressed 70-year-old man with his shirt inexplicably open to his waist corners me and begins praising the show. We make small talk for a few minutes, and then he hits me with this zinger: "I've been admiring your child-bearing hips." "That's an AWFUL line," I say, for once reacting honestly rather than trying to laugh it off. What I don't say is what makes it so bad: The implied skipping forward 27 million steps to the impossibility of my bearing children for this dude. As I turn to leave he grabs my hand and won't let it go. He kisses it and says, "Will you forgive me my awful line?" "Gotta get back on stage," I say as I turn to run away. Again, I share this interaction with the other singer. "Wow, you get all the good ones," she says.

I post this as a public service, not to offend any old dudes out there, but merely to remind them to ask themselves before speaking to that performing artist they so admire: Am I 20 or more years older than she is? Is she dressed for a special event while I look like I've been gathering cans? Is there food caught in my abundant facial hair? Do most well dressed women react favorably to my offers to smoke pot with them on the street? Will I make comments on any of her womanly bits within the first five minutes of conversation?

If you've answered yes to any of these questions, be kind to a performer and stuff it.