If your audience yelled PLAY FREE BIRD non-stop through your show, would you play Free Bird?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

[MrCoffee]

1. Other: Yes, because Free Bird kicks ass, and I wouldn't play any other song.

[NightWatcher]

2. Never play that song

[abq e streeter]

3. Willing to play Stairway to Free Bird on the Water

yeah I know its an old joke but is a slow day.

[old mark]

4. Dude, I fuckin LOVE that song! nt

[conscious evolution]

9. Stairway to Hotel Califreebird

Is a much better song.

[EastTennesseeDem]

5. The two best ways of handling it:

David Cross:
Invites the perpetrator onto the stage and says to the entire audience: "Let's give it up for the one millionth asshole to yell 'Freebird' at a show of mine!'"

Isaac Brock (Lead singer of Modest Mouse):
"I know I have said this before, but the odds of us actually playing Freebird? There are no odds. It is not going to happen. I will start off with the first reason. We have no idea how to play Freebird. The second reason is, in the Love Bug's natural habitat, that would fucking kill him and you wouldn't want that. He is fucking adorable. He is so cute. Thirdly, even if, pick your deity, came down from the heavens or wherever or the hills or wherever the deity lives and blessed us with this vast knowledge of Freebird and we could play it backwards and sing it backwards, we still just wouldn't do it. If this were the Make A Wish Foundation and you were going to die in 20 minutes just long enough to play Freebird, we still wouldn't play it.

Here is the end reason. The end reason is that life is just too fucking short to hear or play Freebird."


I like Freebird, by the way.

[hobbit709]

6. I remember a Johnny Winter show at the Armadillo

He did a set with just him in a chair on stage with an acoustic guitar and playing some old blues.
Some idiot yells out "Rock and roll!"
Johnny just looks up and says "There'll be plenty of rock and roll later, but this is where it came from"

The crowd told idiot to STFU.

[HopeHoops]

7. In 30 years of yelling that at bands, I've had exactly one guy actually play it.

He was pretty good too, but he got about three minutes into it and stopped, "Damn, I forget the changes after that."

For those of you who know older Genesis, there's a tribute band called The Musical Box that is frighteningly close. At the end of a concert, the "Peter Gabriel" asked "What do you want to hear?" - before anyone could yell "Freebird!", someone shouted out "Supper's Ready!" and everyone caught the joke. For those who do NOT know older Genesis, "Supper's Ready" is about 25 minutes long and the band equivalent of "Freebird".

[fizzgig]

8. you should yell for it's raining men instead

bonus points for anyone who gets that

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. I would go the Bill Hicks route, and then have the asshole thrown out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDrgwZsGC9A

[Inchworm]

11. Too funny! I used to fuck with the rednecks

yelling.. PLAY NORMA JEAN!

A few bands caught it.. and a few rednecks got riled.

Both were dealt with accordingly :rofl:

:headbang:

[Dystopian]

12. Yes....

Play it at the beginning so you won't have to listen to them yelling for it....
My son plays metal....and I heard him playing Free Bird next door yesterday. I love it when he sits around playing the old stuff on his accoustic....
I started to knock, but waited and listened until he was done....I've heard it a million times...
But you've got to love what you're playing...so...:shrug:

peace~

[Orsino]

13. My last band used an audience plant...

...a history teacher primed to call for "Free Bird." We (school chaplain, an English teacher and I performing as Padre and the Agnostics) played it, all right. We played the hell out of it, and used it all up, if I do say so myself--the Padre's trombone solo made the song. Made it weep, probably. :7

It was great. Twenty years ago, now.

[no name no slogan]

14. I have actually done that...

My band was doing an "unplugged" gig at a local coffee house. Some wag kept yelling "play FREEBIRD" in between numbers. Little did that jagoff know that we actually KNEW Freebird.

So, eventually, we started playing it. Only the first couple verses, but enough to shut the heckler up.

A few bands I know actually learn how to play Freebird, just for this very situation.

[lizziegrace]

15. I went to a concert where the audience was shouting requests

the artist said that you wouldn't go to a symphony concert and yell requests. The set is, well, set. Then he continued the concert...

[gatorboy]

16. Not even if I was Lynyrd Skynyrd

Maybe even more so then!

[Ikonoklast]

17. Only if I played the accordion.

Then they would get the version with the three-hour solo.