[xmonad] Ncurses and drop-down menus

Hi, I've noticed a rather bizarre interaction between ncmpcpp (using ncurses) and drop down menus in applications such as Firefox, Evince and VLC (hence i don't think it's a specific gtk/qt issue). When playing a track, there is a little progress indicator at the bottom of ncmpcpp. If i have a drop-down menu open in a GUI app (Firefox/Evince/VLC) and the indicator updates, then the menu window disappears. Even if ncmpcpp is not on the same workspace as the GUI app. Since ncmpcpp's progress meter updates about every second, this means i can't use drop down menus while listening to music... It does not happen in fluxbox/openbox or awesome. Has anyone else noticed this / have any ideas how to fix it? Thanks, Matt