Hello Mudcatters,

Interested to know people's feelings about the following.

I end up performing a lot of pubs. In the Irish pubs I always getting the usual requests for "The Unicorn", "Irish Eyes", etc., requests. I know how to handle them.

Inevitably there come requests such as the time when a young woman came trapsing up to the stage and asked me, "Can you play that song where we all yell, 'You Bitch, You Slut, you Whore!". She was refering to "Seven Drunken Nights". Seems that in the past few years people have taken to (enouraged by some performers) to shouting this in the song in the lyrics:

When I called my wife -
"Hey Wife!"
(the crowd starts roaring You Bitch, You Slut, You Whore)

I told the young woman I don't perform the song. When she asked why, I said precisely because people shout out that nonsense. That a rather humorous song becomes a song where abuse is made gfun of. She walked away disgruntled. She just didn't get it.

At the odd times that I give in to perform the song I inform the audience that if people start singing those lyrics I would stop the song (and have).

My question is . . . Why do people want to hear such songs?

Why is it that more and more people want to hear songs such as "Where The Fuck Is Alice?", and every such song that sometimes ends up being just crass, disgusting, full of nonsense swearing? And why do some performers feed into this nonsense? (it makes it harder foir the rest of us trying to perform good songs).

Is it sexual repression on the part of the audience? Are audiences becoming more stupid, crass and ignorant? is it the musician's fault?

For music that never dies,

Len Wallace