Concert rings in good vibe without phones
Jack White’s ban on devices brings back euphoria of ‘be here now’ era
No phones allowed. That was the one request Jack White had during his show Thursday, Aug. 16, in San Francisco. Patrons could either leave them outside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium or put them in a locked bag — created by a 4-year-old San Francisco startup called Yondr — that they could carry with them but could only access outside the hall. (So if a concertgoer had to check in with the babysitter, they could.)
The idea is rooted in a simple concept that is increasingly hard to achieve in an era when we check our phones 80 times a day: Be here now.
And for the nearly two-hour concert, most of the crowd soaked in the moment. Those who survived without a reach for the unreachable were rewarded with a different kind of euphoria. The kind they felt back in 1998, when phones had cords.
“I loved it,” said Dan Hirsch, 50, of Mill Valley, after the show. “You could escape for two hours without thinking about it. It was like how life used to be.”
The idea is catching on, as musicians including Childish Gambino, Bruno Mars, the Lumineers and Ariana Grande and comedians Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle are among the more than 300 artists who have worked with Yondr to create
phone-free shows.
Yet White’s simple request has certainly been harder to live by since the iPhone entered the world in 2007. Since then, the sea of hands in the air at a concert haven’t been clapping — they’ve been gripping a phone. Filming something. Anything. Often, poorly. Then posting it. Or letting it clog the phone’s storage space for years.
And if the song was boring, well, then it’s time to tune out of the show to check Twitter. Or ESPN.
But that vibe vanished Thursday. People talked to each other before the show and between sets. They didn’t stare at their phones in the bathroom. Only a handful went to the phone-permitted zones near the bar.
During his encore Thursday, White took advantage of having his audience’s rapt attention to implore them to clap along. “C’mon,” he said. “You don’t have your hands full tonight.”
They listened. When White closed the show with his anthemic “Seven Nation Army,” there wasn’t a sea of cameras in the air, there was a sea of waving hands. Many were holding cups of beer. For a moment, it was 1998 again.
You’d think this ban would hit digital natives the hardest, as their generation doesn’t remember a world where they couldn’t pack a highquality recording device into their pocket. A 2015 survey by Ticketfly found that 31 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds who attend live music shows say they’re on their device for half the show. Only 15 percent said they don’t spark up their phone during a concert. But several said they were OK with enjoying photos of the show on White’s Instagram page. The tradeoff was worth it.
“I didn’t realize how great it would be to not have people putting their phones in front of my face all the time,” said Lexi Kookootsedes, 23, of Fairfax.
And there wasn’t a huge logjam to unlock phones and return the Yondr bags on the way out the door. It was just like returning 3-D glasses after a movie.
“The reason people go to experience live music is to be swept up into a shared mood,” Yondr founder Graham Dugoni told The Chronicle this week. He believes that collective mood — that invisible, shared connection between performer and the audience — changes as soon as somebody in the crowd whips out their phone. “What that does is create a little paper cut. That energy leaves the room and doesn’t come back.”
At least for this one night, that energy stayed in the room.
But as one bartender working Thursday cautioned, “This is great to see. But this crowd is a little older. You wouldn’t want to try this at an EDM show. Those people would go crazy without their phones.”