Adam Schatz is a musician, writer, record producer and human being. His band Landlady has three records out and another on the way. He most recently produced Allegra Krieger’s album The Joys of Forgetting and has successfully cooked pad thai, soup dumplings and bagels since the pandemic began. He has a monthly Patreon page and that is currently his only monthly income, isn’t that cool? His favorite new hobby is getting emailed by coffee shops he’s been to once. Find him on Twitter here and hear Landlady here.
(Photo credit: Sasha Arutyunova.)
Buckle up, knuckleheads, it’s time for another edition of Problem Solving with Adam Schatz, where I tackle the music industry’s most solvable problems. This month’s conundrum is one of opposition. In the live music space, two things must often coexist that disparately oppose each other. A versus B, two letters enter, one letter leaves. We are of course talking about
A: The music.
B: The bar.
It’s tough to pick which one truly outranks the other. Music (A), of course, makes life worth living, an unconditionally evolving element of our species’ journey, the assembly of sound waves into melody, implemented with rhythm, contorted into textures… I’m tearing up just attempting to fathom the scope of how music has affected my life.
The bar (B), of course, is a necessary evil. I call it evil because even though the goof juice makes my legs more limber when I do the lindy hop, you gotta remember that alcohol is poison and it kinda sorta only works when you drink just the right amount, and that amount changes day-to-day, depending on what you ate, how sad you are, or how sad you are about what you ate.
But Lord Live Nation in His infinite wisdom decreed atop Mount Buyout that there’s actually no way to turn a profit on a night of music without the serving of drinks. The Lord dareth you to thinketh of a better solution, and if ye shall not cometh up with one, he shall taketh away your drink tickeths (well liquor only).
And so it shall be, and has always been, since 2000 BC when the first tenor Uggarotti gave a recital in the TD Banknorth Sandstone Cliff somewhere in one of the C markets of Mesopotamia, and a loud patron asked the bartender, “What have on tap??” before they got tapped on the head by a big wooden club.
The bar is ubiquitous at a live show, and most of the time it’s not too much of a bother. Most of the time. And yet. There’s one offense I cannot humor any longer. I have to speak up. The issue I’m addressing today of course is:
When A Bartender Wails On A Cocktail Shaker During A Tender Musical Moment
We’ve all been there. I know I have. I’m watching a show at a club and the band ran out of ideas so they’re playing quietly for a change, just to see if maybe dynamics actually are a good idea, just like the bassist’s dad shouted at them from the front row at the start of the set. And it’s working! A little bit of tenderness goes a long way, and I’m finally feeling a good feeling again after I ate the wrong thing for lunch and it made me sad. But right when the quiet sounds are finding their sweet spot, an unwelcome accompanist joins the band. I’m of course talking about the bartender putting their quads, biceps and core into the shaking of the cocktail shaker.
CACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKA sing along if you know the words!
Every single time this happens while I’m observing a moment of gentler music, I think it’s the funniest thing ever. But on stage, the feeling differs. To even get on that stage you’ve got to believe in yourself to a delusional degree. On stage, within you is a subconscious cheerleader (who funnily enough gets nicer and meaner when you drink alcohol) who is hyping you up, generating enough self worth to at least convince you that yes your words should get into that microphone, where they’ll take a short trip from the speakers into the ears of people who definitely want to hear them. For this moment in the rock & roll utopia, you are the top priority. You are the center of the musical universe, and nothing, NOBODY is going to get in the way of—
CACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKACHUNKA
And just like that, one person blows the whole thing. An ill-timed soul needed a mixed drink in that moment of your expressive vulnerability, and their need rocketed to the top of the priority list. You’d be better off being a cube in their glass than the person on the stage rhyming “life” with “knife,” probably. Hit the showers. Try again tomorrow.
Heartbreaking, I know. Sure, cocktails are fun. They’re fun in the way that paying $18 for something that’s there one minute and gone the next is “fun.” But we seem to forget that no bartender at a rock show is ever going to make a really good one. These poor folks have to hear live music every night and then have someone’s hot breath bark, “Negroni!” into their ear. They can’t possibly be expected to nail the cocktail of your dreams in the middle of a show.
“But Adam,” you might be saying, “you were just waxing on about the majesty of music, and now you’re saying that same thing is making these bartenders’ lives a chore?” Yes! Even the 1/1000th time when the music is really good, it’s still being talked over by Joe Finance who’s standing at the bar using his “inside voice” to explain to Brian Hedgefund about how the gains they’re getting in the crypto market actually share a lot spiritual parallels with the gains they’re getting at the gym, and then talking about their favorite cold plunge podcast.
Yes, A must tolerate B, and vice versa. The bar is here to stay, but perhaps we can enact some cures for the loudest offender it creates.
Solutions for When The Bartender Loudly Shakes the Cocktail Shaker During a Quiet Song:
- After anyone orders a cocktail, the PA cuts out, spotlight hits the bartender, fog machine starts to roll — cocktail shaker solo performance. The show resumes after the drink is paid for.
- The bar can only serve silent beverages. This technology exists but is being kept secret by the cultural illuminati, so that their ice doesn’t make disruptive noises during their meetings about which predatory celebrities they’re going to allow a soft reentry into the public space. (Congratulations, Win Butler!)
- If you order a cocktail at a show, the bartender puts it in the shaker and then leads you to a sensory deprivation tank, where you can shake shake shake to your hearts’ content. These tanks will be paid for by the credit cards left behind by people who forgot to close their tabs.
- A new beverage tier will be made available at the bar, called The Live Nation 360 Deal, where you go into the coat closet, take two shots of tequila, then spin around and if you don’t throw up you get your coat back and a free coaster. This attractive option should reduce the cocktail orders by 90% and will be paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts.
- A video of Nicole Kidman walking through an empty rock club plays before the show asking everyone to order cocktails only in between sets. Because of the setting, Kidman should probably look like her character from the film Destroyer who we all know looks like a musician after the drive from Denver to Salt Lake City on four hours of sleep.
And those are just the ideas I had all month to come up with! If you have your own suggestions for how to fight the incessant din of the cocktail shaker during a ballad, I advise you to start your own column. It really helps.
Until next time,
Adam
