ONE OF the many classy things about last weekend's Leonard Cohen concerts was that, while the band played a whole succession of "encores" at the end, there was no attempt to suggest any of them were spontaneous, writes Frank McNally.
Nothing quite spoils a live music event like the charade whereby a band leaves the stage pretending to be finished for the night, and the audience, pretending to believe it, begs for more until the band relents and comes back on, feigning surprise and gratitude, to play a few "extra" songs - before waving goodbye again, only for the whole sham to begin anew.
This pantomime will typically be played out two or three times before the lighting engineer mercifully draws a halt to it, exercising his God-like powers by triggering the house lights and saying: "Let there be an end to the concert." Of course, it was the lighting man's failure to do so on the earlier occasions that provided the cue for the obliging audience to demand the right number of encores, as dictated by the song-list.
For once he does his thing, people always leave the venue without protest, no matter how shamelessly sycophantic they were being towards the band before the lights came up. I have never yet been in an audience that overruled the lighting-man.
It would be as shocking as if, at the end of Sunday Mass, the priest said: "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" - and a devout member of the congregation shouted "More!" The fact that musical encores are now like free gifts from the supermarket - you know they're factored into the bill and it's not just that the manager likes you - is a result of decades of applause inflation at live musical (and theatrical) events.
A curtain-call used to have be earned by something special. Now, even standing ovations are so common that the more self-conscious members of an audience often suffer from performance pressure come the end of a show.
Don't tell me you have never attended a concert or a play that was only all right, and then found yourself applauding more vigorously than the performance deserved. You already feel like you're overdoing it. But then, suddenly, the man beside you is standing up and saying things like "Bravo!" (this would be in the theatre, obviously). Then a few others join him. And even though it's still more comfortable for you to remain seated, it is now not nearly as comfortable as it was a moment before.
You're hoping the standers will be shamed into sitting down again. Instead, they achieve critical mass. And now, suddenly, you're the eccentric one for remaining in your seat. Rather than risk which, you get up - sheep-like - and join them.
Seriously: it's not just me who's done that, is it?
AS IT happens, one of the few genuine encore situations I have witnessed at a recent rock gig was the Leonard Cohen tribute concert at the Point a while back.
Maybe it was because of the large, all-star cast - from Nick Cave to Jarvis Cocker (and they were just the Cs) - competing for attention. Or maybe the light engineer had fallen ill during the show. Whatever the reason, the concert went on for more than four hours, until well after midnight; at which stage it was clear the performers were making it up as they went along. The audience was like a hamster on a treadmill by then. Conditioned to demand "more" until the lights came up, we kept doing so, and the acts kept coming back.
It was an unusual form of torture, especially if you were hoping to catch the last bus home to Leixlip. The thing was, people were afraid to leave early in case they missed the show-stopper, literally or metaphorically. But there was weariness in the applause before the end.
Given the age of the star performer, a repeat of that in Kilmainham at the weekend was unlikely (though he did play for nearly three hours). And given the age of his audience, the usual end-of-concert courtship routine would have been especially embarrassing. But with the same impeccable taste that was obvious throughout, Cohen did not pretend the show was over until it really was.
True, he sauntered off the stage a few times in the latter half of the night. But he came back almost immediately, before fans could seriously prostate themselves. The "encores" were every bit as polished as the rest of the show.
And insofar as the audience had anything to do with their performance, it was as the female partner in one of those formal dance routines that inspire several of Cohen's songs. It felt like we were being danced to the end of love, perhaps in a concert hall in Vienna.
The affection towards the old guy was genuine. It didn't hurt to know that we were contributing to his new retirement fund after the last one got misappropriated by his ex-manager while Cohen was distracted by becoming a Buddhist monk. (Question: What's the sound of one hand clapping? Answer: A rock manager with her other hand in the till.) On the contrary, it felt like a good cause.
The standing ovation at the end was for a whole career as well as for the concert. It was nice to mean it for a change.