How sad. At what point did we decide that if you can’t do something at a professionaly level, you shouldn’t do it? Go to any kindergarten or 1st grade class and you will find 30 or so kids singing joyfully and loudly. Gather 30 adults and you have to ply them with booze to get them to sing. At some point we loose that enthusiasm and say “I can’t sing.”
Imagine how many other things we wouldn’t do if we applied the same standards. What if we said, we would do nothing for pleasure, unless we were able to do it at the professional level? There would be no tennis, golf, pick-up basketball, no billiards. And yet, so many of us want to make music. We hum along to the radio. We sing in the shower. Please, don’t destroy the music in the souls of others, just because you have lost it.
OK, so in reality I’m sorta indifferent to the whole thing, but that was fun. Enjoy the rest of your bitch session.
Haven’t been guilty of it myself (I can almost play “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder, and that is the extent of my musical talent), but I’ve rather enjoyed crossing paths with amateur musicians while traveling. It brings people together, and after a few beers they all sound OK.
However, if you really want to avoid these people, may I suggest staying in a) YHAs, rather than independent backpackers, and b) large hostels with multiple common areas (one of which usually turns into a quiet room)?
At the point where you’re inflicting your lack of talent on an unsuspecting public. I suspect you’d say the same thing about a troop of 30 kindergarteners screeching Barney songs in the lobby of your hotel.
Wow, I totally didn’t meet these guitar-guys when I stayed in hostels in Europe. I feel so deprived now. Although I do fondly recall going for french fries at McDonalds in the middle of the night with a German girl, an Australian guy, and Northern Irish guy, and a New Zealander girl from my hostel while in Dublin. Hostels: they’re a cross-cultural exchange for the young and poor.
I’ve sort of been guilty. Not in a hostel though, at ski condos. My brother an I go skiing several times a year and always bring our guitars. He lives in NY and I live in TX, so we don’t get to play together a whole lot. When we meet at the slopes, we jam, swap riffs, work out new covers, etc. Never thought anything of it, until we were at Copper Mt. in December and halfway through our jam we heard what sounded like our next door neighbor pounding on the wall. I would’ve preferred a knock on the door so we would could see if playing more quietly was the goal, stopping completely, what. We quieted down and stopped about a half hour later.
So the next day when we got back from skiing, some dickhead had put their ‘do not disturb’ sign on out door, and our condo had not been cleaned. Meanwhile we were expecting company for dinner and had to clean the place ourselves. We suspected the neighbors, so we played long and loud the rest of the time. I hope we were right. I personally hate inappropriate noise, but always make an effort to talk to the offenders before retaliating.
I plead guilty to being one of those guitar guys. I basically just get a lot of personal enjoyment from playing-- and it did help a little with chicks.
I’m worried that you’re setting your standards impossibly high…whaddaya do when you want a little background music at dinnertime? Fly in the Vienna Philharmonic and set them up in the breakfast nook?
Hey, I gots no problem with nice background music, and I’ve even been known to drop a couple hundred bucks to go see a musician I like, or a musical, or an opera. But there are also times when music (particularly poorly played music) can be damned intrusive. I don’t want to listen to some James Taylor-wannabe massacring “Fire and Rain” in the lobby of a hotel at the end of a long day.
And c’mon, you’ve gotta admit, a couple of the singers hit some clunker notes in the chorus of “The Weight”.
The offense comes in assuming that other people want to hear you, when you haven’t asked them – or worse, just firing it up with no consideration at all of your surroundings.
I play the piano and sing – both fairly well, I’m told, but certainly not on a professional level. But I would never presume to just start playing/singing in an environment where other people can hear me, unless they’ve asked me to play/sing or I’ve asked if they mind. And even then, I’ll play/sing something I’ve at least practiced enough (in private and/or for critique among friends) that it’s tolerable and maybe even a little pleasant.
Yes, I know it’s a subjective thing, but I think the “guitar goons” usually go beyond the pale in their awfulness and inconsideration.
I learned to perform in front of friends and strangers at all kinds of places over the years. Looking back I am sure plenty of people suffered through my learning process. The thing is, it was a learning process. Now, fifteen years later, I book about a hundred solo dates a year and supplement my income quite well from people who are willing to pay to hear me play my guitar, blow my harp, tap my tambourine and sing. I rarely play at personal gatherings unless people ask me to. Not because I am above playing for free at a party, but because there is always someone like the people in this thread that think I am on some kind of ego trip or trying to get a leg up on the ladies. I love my music. I have become fairly good at it at the relatively small expense of some people not enjoying it. If I had never had the guts or been afraid that someone might not like me, I would have never developed the wonderful gift that my music is to me and a handful of fans here in the land of rock n roll. Rock on wanna be juke box heroes !!
Not in a hostel, but I had to live with someone like this for an entire year in college. Ike, maybe you’ll think my standards are high, but after eight months of:
And she’s buy-
And she’s-
And-
And-
And she’s buying the stair-
And-
“I’m trying to study!”
And-
And she’s
We come from-
We come from the land of-
We-
We-
We come from-
“shut up already!”
We come-
We come from the land of the-
We-
And she’s buy-
And-
And she’s-
When the levee-
When the-
When the-
When the lev-
When the levee breaks-
When-
When-
“It’s 2 in the fucking morning!”
When the levee-
When-
When the-
Hey, Hey mom-
all fucking day long, audible throughout the entire floor I was ready to brain anybody who even looked at a guitar in my presence. And the guy honestly believed that the problem had nothing to do with the quantity or quality of his playing, but that we were all just a bunch philistines jealous that he could play (in his mind) his cool Ovation. The biggest concession we ever managed to get from him was to limit it to before 1am.
When his guitar broke (by his own hand: he threw a tantrum when his computer ‘cheated’ at a game, and flung his chair backward where it landed on the guitar), I quietly and solemnly went to my bedroom, where I then proceeded to do the dance of joy.
