Okay, I have really had it. This is officially now a mission.
I went to a concert last night - Lily Allen - a very fun, upbeat, poppy show with music that makes you really want to dance (half the crowd was 14, but that's a different story - like I didn't feel old enough at concerts already). However, as is the case nowadays at every show I go to, every inch of primo floor space was occupied by these fucking morons with their phones in the air. So not only is there no room to dance, but also the real heart and soul of the audience - the floor crowd - is one solid, unmoving mass of idiots who aren't engaging with the music in any visible way, and only seem to be there to take a photo. A shitty, tiny, grainy photo that they may open up their phone and show to their co-workers tomorrow. Or put on their fucking MySpace page with 800 other tiny, grainy, shitty photos.
These people are ruining concerts for those of us who are there to enjoy the music, dance, and have a good time. And engage with the performer! I felt so bad for poor Lily, who was putting on a great show only to be faced by this sea of people standing there with one arm up in the air like Michael Jackson, but not even saying "HOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Someone I was with tried for a second to compare it to holding up a lighter,, but holding up a lighter was all about engaging with the performance, not trying to cut out a tiny piece of its heart and put in a jar to take home.
I won't even go into the twisted postmodern statement of going to a live show for the sole purpose of bagging a non-live relic. There's some Walter Benjamin to be applied, I'm sure.
Oh and off, the topic, whatever happened to skanking??? All this ska-infused music and not one Jerry Dammers in the whole place. Not only do people not dance, they don't even seem to know how to dance anymore. I remeber going to The Toasters or The Specials not even 15 years ago and it would look like a fucking Two Tone convention.
But I digress. Who's with me on this camera phone business? I seriously think it should be like cell phones in the movies - a serious anti-social crime that results in the bvoos and glares of your fellow audience mebers.
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1 comment:
I am in total agreement! I haven't had the experience of being surrounded by that many camera phones at a show, but I know it happens. How awful.
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