The Music Police

Like many people I have always been a music lover. Live bands, concerts, and musical recordings have been woven into the fabric of my life. I know what I like, and I know when to be open about something I don't quite like either. You gotta respect creation.

Now that I am married to a professional musician and master of the guitar, I have even more exposure to live performance opportunities. I now take notice of the behavior of people in the crowd, and have seen absolute involvement by adoring fans, to pure rudeness by ignorant young people. I am sensitive to clapping and the respectful acknowledgment of the musician in the room working and entertaining the crowd. So I like to extend the courtesy to other situations where I am around a musicians performance.


Unfortunately during our past stay in Cape May, we came across two very bad examples of people doing their "musical act." The first was during our dinner at a local pub in town that happened to be serving food late. The bartender warned us that the guy playing the music was loud and to sit over in the booths. Did not bode well. His guitar was completely out of tune! He kept stopping and saying he was tuning the guitar, and then the guitar still sounded the same. Gosh mister, how about getting some guitar lessons and learning the basics? Certainly don't ruin the patrons dinner.

Along with a totally off putting grating strumming style he was doing a horrible Bob Dylan imitation. This guy was difficult to clap for, but we did it to be respectful. Sadly all of his songs droned on in the same manner, and then horror of horrors, he added the harmonica. Ugh! This noise could have ruined our dinner. Luckily we can laugh about
the wrongness of it all. The second disturbance was a duo performing at an outdoor mall. It was 'American Idol meets karaoke Dolly Parton on steroids.' I really did not want to be accosted by this music while enjoying a beautiful sunny day. Once again we were eating at an outdoor cafe and unable to get away from this horrible ho-down!

Both acts at one point did a Beatles song and they each in their own terrible style, ripped the fab four's perfection to shreds! We wondered should there be 'Music Police' to say cease and desist immediately!?? Maybe we could hand this type of musical act a ticket. At least a warning for disturbing the public air ways. Just bloody awful!