Enough with musicians and their stupid encores

By: Jhong Dizon
By: Jhong Dizon

You have had a great time dining out. Awesome drinks. Tasty food. And that Crème Brûlée you ordered for dessert sounds amazing. But wait. Oh, the waiter has just left the dining area, shut off the lights, and she refuses to come back unless you stand up, clap, and scream for more. What an asshole, right?  So why do we put up with this shut from musicians?

Seriously, when Springsteen, Taylor Swift, or Snoop finishes their main set, do they stay just off stage and listen intently to make sure the crowd is making enough noise for them to come out? Hell no, they are coming back no matter what – because you paid way too much money for them to. So can we please stop wasting our time with this charade?

The Cure once played a show with five encores…FIVE!  You know how annoying it is to sit through the 8 minutes of credits of a Marvel movie to get to the 20 seconds of bonus movie at the end?  Now do that 5 times just to hear “Love Song”.  Insane.

My hope is that everyone who does any sort of business with Cure frontman Robert Smith continually leaves before the job is done unless Smith applauds them.  I can just see Smith on his patio clapping over and over for his landscaper to please come back and finish mowing the lawn.

You know who didn’t do encores?  Elvis.  Hence the phrase, “Elvis has left the building” – which was used to alert fans that Elvis already played his hits and would not be wasting everyone’s time by making them beg and scream for more.

So yeah, other performers, please, be like Elvis and stop being such jerks to your fans.