Last night, we performed at Elysium to an awesome crowd of Nagians and Goths who came to see Voltaire in Austin for the first time. The show went spectacular. We made some new fans and of course, best of all, Voltaire came away from the evening thrilled with Austin too. All in all a tremendous success.

So today, I do what any good marketer does, I search the 'net to find out what folks thought of the show and in particular if anyone wrote about the Brobdingnagian Bards. You never know what you'll find. Sometimes you don't want to know.

Tonight I found a nice mention of a former fan we'd made many years ago. Not really sure if she'd still be called a fan or not. One of her LJ readers responded to say, "This is a secret, but I can't stand those bards."

It makes me ask the question. Why? What is it she doesn't look about us? Mind you, there are a lot of reasons NOT to like us. But what was hers? Does she not like our voices? Hates the sound of the autoharp/recorder/mandolin? Is this from hearing us seven years ago on the South Mall? Or a recent adversion. Is it because I am too aggressive at marketing my band sometimes? Or what? I don't know. It's annoying. But a part of any successful musician, methinks.

Just last night, someone came up to Voltaire glowing and saying, "Wow! Thank you for playing here. You are amazing. And I have to tell you, I was told that you were an asshole. But I saw none of that." On and on, he went raving about him.

Voltaire looked befuddled and said, he didn't know where those ideas came from. And I sure don't either. Voltaire's been nothing short of amazingly kind and friendly for someone supposedly so "evil".

But it happens. I bitched about it in my LJ not too long ago. Now and then, I catch crap from people who've developed an irrational dislike of me. I can only imagine why. Course my imagination is probably worse than the actual reason.

Whatever.

As for the LJ poster, it's hard to tell whether she just didn't care for us that much or whether she actually likes us, but didn't want to say so among friends.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. We are blessed with tens of thousands of fans around world who do enjoy the music we make. That is more important than a few hypocritical asses.

Though it just barely stopped me from being "evil" and replying to the comments of the women... that'd be funny! ;)