You have to have a tremendous need to perform in order take the chances that you must take in front of an audience--really what it amounts to is that you have to prefer to bomb than not to perform at all--

Personally, I get excited by an audience, even a hostile audience--for me, the worst performance situation is no audience or a non-audience, that is, a group of people who are not really there to be entertained--like just to eat dinner, or to view the body or something like that...

But sometimes, your material just isn't right for the crowd--years ago, I was in a trio--we played at a private party in Palo Alto, we played for fifteen minutes, and were told to stop, because the host's girlfriend wanted to dance to her Rolling Stones records--we got payed though!!