Call for ban on phones at gigs
Iwas so pleased to read the news that Cherry Bar in Melbourne is moving towards banning cellphones at gigs. I hope the move is so successful that every other venue in Oz follows suit.
Then, I hope it catches on in Godzone and we can all get on with enjoying music without having our view blocked by people holding up phones to take crappy footage of a show they’ll never watch – all the while ruining the show for those of us standing behind them.
Have you been to a gig lately? Have you seen the number of people who seem intent on watching the whole show through a two-inch screen instead of enjoying it in full RL (real life), RGB colour, in four dimensions? It’s the real deal, baby.
The distraction of half the crowd filming does little more than pollute the event. It makes it hard to see past people’s phones and that’s before you even get to the light pollution, which is much less cute than it was in the 1980s when men and women with perms held up ciggie lighters while rockers with perms sang meaningful power ballads. No – it’s not cute like that at all. Cherry Bar’s position comes on the heels of performers like Jack White and Kendrick Lamar who have moved toward banning phones at their gigs. For these guys, I believe it’s about the experience of the gig but also about the copyright of their intellectual property, which people who upload poor footage to YouTube seem to care little about.
For hard working musos, one of the last real cash cows in an industry reinventing itself is touring and they feel that people being able to watch the show on YouTube might cut into the number of people wanting to fork out for a ticket.
Remember these guys used to be able to sell albums to make a buck. Then Spotify came along and started making good money on behalf of the musicians – all the while paying monkey-artists in peanuts.
I suspect the position we find ourselves in is just the pointy end of the cultural stick. Hopefully, if this is just the beginning, we will see some change to convince people that a life lived through a phone isn’t a life lived at all.
Maybe, just maybe, we are seeing people starting to kick back against these digital collars, which we’ve all voluntarily put around our necks.
Perhaps we’re getting to a point where we can all stop using these devices to validate our existence. While we are banning them at gigs let’s extend that ban. Let’s ban ‘em in art galleries. Ban ‘em in museums. Ban ‘em at restaurants where people spend more time photographing their food than eating it.
And ban the damn things at bars where I’m sure people used to sit around telling lies and interacting with other humans. These days a portion sit around staring mindlessly at a screen, watching what some schmuck’s doing on the other side of the world while real life plays out all around them.
These things were meant to set us free – but they’re making us slaves. Vive la Cherry Bar and the start of its revolution.
While we’re talking about hard working musicians, don’t forget handsome Marlon Williams’ new album Make Way For Love came out this week. You can listen to it on Spotify if you want to give Spotify some money – otherwise grab it on vinyl at one of our great record shops around town.