honestly, i see this kind of shit like twice a year. when you're an obscure musician/band playing in small venues, you wind up playing for some pretty vacant crowds. it's super disheartening. on top of that, there's always alcohol. always. the two together tend to create scenes like this lol

i was almost involved in such a scene. so occasionally you wind up playing shows with bigger names in the scene, they'll bring in a lot more patrons than usual. problem is, they only come to see that band. so we were doing our set one night, there were maybe 100 people on the premises but the only people on the floor were close friends/family of the members of the band. the bar was situated right across the room from the stage and it was really well lit, so we could see all the people sitting there even with the stage lights in our eyes. half the people in attendance were there, completely ignoring us. the other half were hanging out outside smoking and chatting.

now, we're used to this shit. we've played loads of shows like this before, it's standard fare when you don't have a lot of fans and shit. our vocalist was hammered, though, and something about being able to actually see the people doing their best to talk over the music hit him hard and he had an emotional breakdown on stage. it was pretty ugly lol. the rest of us just kind of stood there awkwardly staring at our feet while he shouted and ranted about supporting local music.

surprisingly enough, it worked out for him. we were pretty much done with our set, so we get to see anyone hop onto the floor or anything, but we stuck around afterwards and a lot of people approached us to clap him on the back in support. gained a handful of pity followers on Facebook lol