Encores, standing ovations, "We don't know any more tunes" and all that..

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds

Standing ovations with people begging....musicians getting bored with the game of bluff....what is to be done? Try George Bernard Shaw's solution from 1885:

"One cannot help pondering whether [the audience's] consciences ever ask them why they permit themselves to do at a concert what they would not do elsewhere.  Imagine the sincere encorist consuming a bath bun and asking the confectioner to give him another for nothing because the first was  so nice. [...] The simplest [remedy] would be to send round the hat, with an announcement that as soon as the singer's terms for one song had been collected, the encore would be complied with. [...] Beggars in broadcloth inside a theatre are not a whit more respectable morally than beggars in rags outside." 

The plate above doesn't have enough in it yet, right?