Getting stage trite ... Morrissey. Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty
Rufus Wainwright does it brilliantly. Jarvis Cocker too. Bob Dylan doesn't indulge; neither does PJ Harvey. Rumour has it that Brian Wilson and Mick Jagger use an autocue for theirs.
We're talking onstage banter: that stuff that happens between songs and is crucial, for me at least, to the pleasure of a gig as the music itself.
A run-of-the-mill gig can be utterly transformed by the band's witty asides, just as a great performance can be undermined by sour carping. Witness Morrissey, a former mercurial master, now reduced to whingeing about how Radio 1 didn't play his last single.
As far as I am aware, no none has ever said anything amusing from a stadium stage - except, perhaps, Keith Richard who quipped "Ah, Twickers" at the Stones' Twickenham gig last summer. Maybe you had to be there, but in three syllables, he fused everything that is ridiculous and sublime about the continued existence of the Stones.
More intimate gigs are where the magic of banter happens best. Apart from their clever songs, wife-and-husband duo The Handsome Family regularly have their audience in stitches with their self-deprecating, morbid asides. Shellac conduct Q and A's at their gigs, with surreal answers to stupid questions a speciality. Long-defunct punkas Kenickie were so good at talking, their singer Lauren Laverne went on to become a DJ.
The Raconteurs, sadly, don't live up to the name. In his White Stripes guise, Jack White has a great script, but it's a script all the same. Ditto The Flaming Lips. Wayne Coyne deserves to usurp Bono as rock's foremost force for good, but his schtick has grown slightly stale. (And what on earth does "This song is not a rebel song. This song is Sunday Bloody Sunday" actually mean?)
Although heckles deserve their own arena, probably the most famous bit of banter is an exchange that took place at the Manchster Free Trade Hall in 1965. "Judas!" shouted a man in the crowd. "I don't believe you!" Dylan came back, enigmatically.
Sometimes, silence is golden. There are precious few artists with any mystique left these days, and I would not want them to shatter it by garbling something naff between songs. I'm talking about Jason Pierce of Spiritualized who recently toured solo, as reserved as ever. I don't want Mark Lanegan's aura shattered by any inane chirping.
Would you rather mystique, or mateyness? What's the funniest thing you've ever heard between songs? Do tell.
