What happened is that the organizer agreed to book me during our initial phone call, so she hadn't seen my brochure... and she was not completely fluent in English... and I identified myself as a "musician" rather than a "singer"... and they made a point of involving the kids that day because a magician was coming... and so it goes.

We all survived. I threw away my set list and faked my way through some children's songs, letting the kids come up front to lead the singing (because I barely knew the songs) and muddling around a bit to find chords. I also let kids do the strumming for a few songs, which seemed to go over well. But it was still clearly a disappointment for the audience, many of whom kept asking if I would do tricks, and many of whom left early.   

Also, pretty much everybody there was East Indian and the older people weren't really relating to my prepared songs anyway; actually the organizer explained the gist of the song in Punjabi between songs. I'm thinking that I may need to do some racial profiling of my own - if the main appeal of my act is the nostalgia/familiarity of old songs, then maybe seniors who are immigrants from other cultures are not an appropriate audience.

Oh well, it's nice to get my first disaster out of the way. I actually tried to invoke my "satisfaction guaranteed" policy myself and only accept bus fare, but the organizer insisted that it had gone well and insisted on paying me.

But yesterday's gig (different yesterday now) made up for it all. I played at a nursing home where I picked up a cold - even hostile - vibe from the audience when getting started. By the end of the hour I really felt like I had won them over. This was confirmed later by a staff member who told me that they were often disappointed with entertainers, and often got complaints, but that the people had just loved me. Got another booking for next month too!

Rick, I find it interesting that you say "An agent I worked for...". Don't they work for you?

Cheers,

Marion

PS: "POS"?