Dear CFA, especially the people in charge of making the rules:
I recently attended the Otis Taylor show at the Crowell Concert Hall. The music was great. Towards the end, it felt so good, that I just had to stand up and move my body around a little bit. This is actually a natural reaction that many humans have when they are listening to music.
To my dismay, I was instructed to return to my seat. How absurd! Otis Taylor plays the BLUES!! The blues is about letting loose! At a blues show you can stand, you can sit, you can do the hokey pokey, you can do whatever you want to do!
I do not know why the people of Crowell Concert Hall have decided that humans must remain sedentary while listening to music. Could it be that I was blocking some seated person’s view? No, I was standing against the wall, well out of the way. Was I creating a fire hazard of some kind? No, in fact standing people can evacuate much more quickly!
The only explanation is that the people at Crowell Concert Hall are very very serious about Decorum and Propriety. They believe there is a proper way to behave at a show: seated, not moving your head or shoulders too much, and certainly not hooting nor hollering.
Well, bullshit. If those are the rules for Crowell, then don’t put on blues shows. And If you want to put on blues shows, then please, out of respect for the rowdy and irreverent blues tradition, kindly stand up. I can only hope that Mr. Taylor wasn’t too offended by all the motionless lumps of flesh he had to endure as his audience.
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