I went to the Punch Brothers concert in Dinkelspiel, as hosted by Lively Arts. It was a spectacular performance by five masterful bluegrass musicians. At the end of the show, I gladly and enthusiastically gave them a standing ovation, applauding in hopes of another song or two. They kindly obliged.

At other performances, I have been much less eager to stand, clap, and see an encore, only for the audience to do exactly that. The culture of concerts has evolved to a state where encores are the standard operating procedure. Even though the Punch Brothers qualified for some overtime, they clearly had planned on playing a couple more songs. The bass player left his instrument on stage and the front man joked around about how obvious it was that they had more tunes on the set list.

For great musical groups, the bakers’ dozen model for a performance makes sense. People will always want Yo-Yo Ma to get back on stage and play some more, but the “more” is kept in a reasonable quantity. After eating a delicious dinner and feeling pretty stuffed, there’s always room for a little dessert. A whole second dinner would be uncomfortable, though you still want the sweet garnish before finishing.

Maybe I just have higher expectations and think people should genuinely be moved to stand. Call it the “you can’t resist” threshold. Imagine a survey of the distribution of concerts: it can’t be the case that all are highly above average and deserving of excessive praise. I suppose I could have experienced a sampling biased towards “great” but I don’t think so. When other people start standing and it’s only the peer pressure that’s pulling me out of my chair—then I wasn’t watching an outlier-level of quality.

Besides, if we give undue adulation, the musicians won’t be encouraged to raise their game. Similarly, since all waiters expect tips, the amount of tip usually depends more on the wallet of the customer than it does the service. We need to be honest about the incentives we create (or don’t create). Otherwise, mediocre musicians will be coaxed into thinking they are stellar.

On the other hand, maybe standing ovations are the new applause. For stupendous performances, not only do we ovate but we also clap for ten minutes afterwards, stomping and whistling and yelling. Just like when you give a big tip to an awesome waitress. We’ve simply raised the level of audience expression.

But in my opinion—I’d rather reserve the right to stand. Here’s to sitting when they sucked and jumping up when they rocked.