How Richard Pryor Can Show Your Band How To Deal With A Hostile Crowd

I came across an old video of Richard Pryor dealing with an audience being hecklers and just talkin' shit to one of the masters of Stand-Up Comedy of all time. Pryor knew how to get right into it with the crowd and come up with material, literally on the fly while being heckled.

I find a lot of musicians aren't really great with crowds and just play their asses off. That's all fine and good but you need to connect with the crowd. That doesn't mean you have to start swearing and getting on people who think your band is having a bad night. What you need to do is tell stories about your band and really dig
into the next song if they didn't like the last one.

Even if it takes writing out a script on how to entertain your crowd, do it. It may not seem spontaneous,but even Pryor and greats like Johnny Carson used a script and adlibbed on the fly to really juice up their audience. Go back into your band's story and look at old articles, photos and stories from hellish nights on stage, to maybe ones where the band's equipment went down, or even got stolen, or dealing with not so nice agents who were "kinda connected" to not so nice people.

You can always make stories onstage and really entertain your crowds, as well as being the great musicians you are. So watch this little blurb on Pryor dealing with a little nastiness from his crowd, and just winning them over period.