we were invited to play a set for a cocktail party for a workshop of university summer session executives (one of our members, sally, is a former summer session exec and a former president of the association). They had a great sound system: vocal and instrument mikes for five of us, controlled by an engineer--who agreed to tape our set.

old friends came up to talk to Sally in the middle of a song, and stood there talking to her while we were trying to get another going. we could see we weren't getting much attention, but we didn't know why until we got the tapes: our mikes were omnidirectional and picked up the cocktail party conversation as clearly as the music. --seed