Braying Crowds & The Accidental Death of Quiet Music
December 12, 2013 7:08 AM   Subscribe

It's an experience any performer will recognise: providing music that is, however reluctantly so, incidental. What is peculiar to our age is that it is now the lot not only of those who play at parties, in pubs or bars and so on, but of almost any artist at every level of performance, when they play anything too soft to blot out the human voice. The gig-talkers have won. It holds out in pockets here and there, but for the most part, quiet music, as a live affair, is done for.
posted by Grangousier (99 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
It'd be nice if this piece was what it was supposed to be about, but honestly he just goes off on how cellphones, the internet and social media are ruining everything about halfway through, all of the ranting revolving around this theory he proposes:

Thus public space is now space wherein one feels free to behave as if in private. Which means feeling no concern for what others can see and hear.

...which makes no sense unless you define "private space" as either "solitude" or "my friends and family are all assholes," neither of which, as far as I'm aware, are definitions of the term.

I used to go to a lot of shows. I go to less now. I've seen members of bands nearly in tears because the audience wouldn't shut up, but I haven't seen it get any better or worse over the last decade or so. Maybe he goes to more shows than I do, maybe we go to very different shows, or maybe he's talking about a much longer time span than ten years, but a lot of this essay feels like he found a reason to complain about a whole bunch of things and tied them loosely together in a way that allowed this article to be titled something other than "A Rant."
posted by griphus at 7:24 AM on December 12, 2013 [5 favorites]


Is it mere bad manners, or a change in the prevailing culture to which I need to adapt?

Or hearing loss resulting from so many personal stereos played so loudly in so many ears?
posted by alasdair at 7:28 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


With social media comes the unwitting assumption that if we have a thought, any thought, it is essential to express it.

Just nonsense. In fact, the only time I've ever asked someone to be quieter at a concert it was an elderly woman who, without any assistance from social media, was doing one of those familiar monologues to the person next to her that goes 'so I said to her and then she said and then I said and he said and then I told him and then I said and then it's terrible and I said....'. Bores have been doing those since before Facebook.
posted by colie at 7:29 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


I used to go to a lot of shows. I go to less now. I've seen members of bands nearly in tears because the audience wouldn't shut up, but I haven't seen it get any better or worse over the last decade or so.

This has been the case my whole life, and that spans.... a couple decades. I'm sure this complaint has been made since there have been bands and crowds.

It basically amounts to "Why won't the sheeple wake up and pay attention to what I think it is important for them to pay attention to?!?!?!"
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:30 AM on December 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


Crowds are likely much more polite than they used to. Most people these days learn to sit quietly for hours at a time every day (one could argue that it's the main point of mandatory schooling). That wasn't always the case.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 7:34 AM on December 12, 2013


I don't really think this is all that new -- it was a major factor in the creation of the Tiny Desk Concerts a number of years ago. But I also don't think it's a "sheeple" thing, nor do I think it's any less depressing because it isn't new. I do find it baffling and rude when people go to a show and are so noisy that the show essentially can't happen the way the artist wants it to happen. I'm not sure the choice is between "this is awful and it's new" and "this isn't new, therefore it's not awful."

I don't think you have to be doing a "RAR SHEEPLE" thing to say, "Hey, it's a shame you can't go to a Bowerbirds show without a bunch of people turning their backs to the stage and having a loud conversation about work." I have experienced that, and it sucks. I don't necessarily blame social media, but I don't think it helps that at least some of the people at every show are busy finding things to pay attention to other than the performance.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 7:37 AM on December 12, 2013 [7 favorites]


From the liner notes of I Am the Cosmos by Chris Bell, written by his brother David Bell

"Arrangements were made for Chris to fly over in September with Richard Rosebrough. Richard had been instrumental in engineering and drumming on many of Chris' songs, and also an integral part of many of the earliest Ardent recordings."

"They arrived in Italy in mid-September of 1974 and after a holiday of about ten days in Rome and the north of Italy, we ended up at a garden party in the countryside out from Torino. Several Italian industrialists, guests of the party, continually asked Chris to play some songs."

"He complied, and, after finishing one number during which everyone continued to talk, he began playing Joni Mitchell's People's Parties. Singing in English, the Italian guests never understood the return of the insult. However, a teenage son of one of the businessmen got up and left in disgust. He was elated two months later when I presented him with a copy of #1 Record."
posted by larrybob at 7:38 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've seen members of bands nearly in tears because the audience wouldn't shut up

All the musicians I know (including my younger self) are practically in tears of joy if they get a decent crowd to show up in the first place...
posted by colie at 7:38 AM on December 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


I once saw a couple of idiots blather at full shouting volume about the weather, their neighbors, etc, just a few feet in front of the sun ra arkestra. I wanted to murder them to death. But I don't blame Facebook.
posted by Erroneous at 7:39 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I agree that this has always been a problem, and that it has gotten worse in the last few years. But there is on thing that I have noticed that can mitigate the problem. A prominent music venue in my town, which had historically had a lot of gig-talkers, recently moved to a new location. In the old location, the main bar was in the same room as the main stage, but in the new location, the main bar was in an adjacent room with a lounge area. You can still hear the band in the lounge, but it has had the effect of giving the people who are at the show primarily to socialize a place to go and talk without yelling above the band, and left the main stage room to the people who want to hear the music. It hasn't completely solved the problem, but it has helped tremendously.
posted by vibrotronica at 7:41 AM on December 12, 2013 [6 favorites]


We go to shows at the Fillmore pretty often and I'm always amazed at the number of people who talk through the entire fucking show when there's a whole other room right over *there* where they can sit and talk their tongues out (and still hear the music but not see the stage) without bugging those of us who did not pay money to hear them flap their lips for two hours. Makes me miss the Birchmere, where people shut up when the performers were on the stage.
posted by rtha at 7:41 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


Just like with hecklers at comedy shows, I think it's a venue management problem - toss more of the egregious offenders and things would start to change. Some venues are much better about this than others.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


Joanna Newsom, Toronto, 2010. Very quiet, respectful crowd.

Show over. Newsom leaves the stage to uproarious applause. We coax her back out and she agrees to do an encore even though that means she will exceed the venue's curfew.

She begins to sing her song "Baby Birch."

The workers are collecting empty beer bottles and packing away the bars with a bit more force and noise than might be necessary (annoyed at having to stay an extra 10 minutes, I guess).

However.

The song is about 9 or 10 minutes long, and by the second minute the workers have stopped what they are doing and all the humans in the room are watching and listening, absolutely silent and rapt.

It was absolutely amazing.
posted by erlking at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2013 [13 favorites]


...I think it's a venue management problem - toss more of the egregious offenders and things would start to change.

The problem is that, unlike heckling, just talking during an average show is really hard to bring into "egregious" territory. It's annoying as hell, and disruptive when everyone is doing it, but unless you're going around measuring individual speaking voice levels and kicking out everyone above a certain volume, there's not going to be a way to pick someone to eject. With a heckler, you kick out the guy who is yelling at the stage while everyone else is sitting quietly or laughing. With show-talkers, where do you draw the line between "acceptable but annoying" and "disruptive enough to eject"?
posted by griphus at 7:46 AM on December 12, 2013


We have megaphone parties at burner events : You run around the site with your megaphone loudly meeting other people who also brought megaphones, moderately frequent amongst burners. You all arrange to converge on the most pretentious DJ's dance area for the actual megaphone party, maybe you singalong to the dubstep, maybe you talk about how much sexier the previous DJ is, whatever. It's quite sublime, but yeah maybe the default world doesn't require that aspect of burner culture just yet.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:47 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


It basically amounts to "Why won't the sheeple wake up and pay attention to what I think it is important for them to pay attention to?!?!?!"

Anil? Is that you?
posted by kmz at 7:56 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I'm going to a concert on Sat, and to be honest I have little interest in the band and am going mainly to talk some stuff over with other people who already had tickets. So I guess this makes me part of the problem.

The real question for me is whether a "respectful quiet" policy (similar to the de facto standard at art galleries) would attract more people than it'd put off. Because they wouldn't have my money for a start.
posted by samworm at 8:01 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


An even better excuse to go to a symphony concert, opera or ballet!
posted by ReeMonster at 8:02 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


griphus:...which makes no sense unless you define "private space" as either "solitude" or "my friends and family are all assholes,"
I think he means: "Thus public space is now space wherein one feels ... no concern for what anyone outside your immediate social group can see and hear." If you go to the movies, or a show, with a friend or relative, and your companion was obviously rapt with attention to the performance, you'd probably both quiet down; social pressure works inside your immediate social group. If the two of you feel like chatting, though, you probably would do it; the social pressure from strangers seems to be gone.
...maybe he's talking about a much longer time span than ten years...
Well, yes:
It's the culmination of a tendency that didn't begin this year, or last, or even this century.
posted by Western Infidels at 8:03 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


Why are you paying for a ticket (and tickets are often pretty pricey) to go to a show you have no intention of listening to? That is like buying a movie ticket in order to talk with your friends who are going to a movie. Why not meet these people in a bar or a coffee shop?
posted by erlking at 8:03 AM on December 12, 2013 [16 favorites]


There's a whopping load of glib in that piece, but I think he's onto something. There is something changing about how we use public spaces and I really think that he's right that it has something to do with this bubble of connectivity that we perpetually exist in now.

And I agree with Linda_Holmes, I find it really disturbing when people won't listen to an artist in a venue where there's a reasonable expectation that this isn't intended to be a socializing event, but an artistic event. And I also agree that there's a lot of responsibility on the venue to create and maintain spaces that make that distinction clear to patrons. It's possibly a cause of the problem that some venues have incentives to fail to do this.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:04 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm going to a concert on Sat, and to be honest I have little interest in the band and am going mainly to talk some stuff over with other people who already had tickets. So I guess this makes me part of the problem.

In other words an asshole? If they already had tickets it stands to reason they would rather listen to and enjoy the concert rather than talk things over with someone who isn't even a fan of the band!
posted by ReeMonster at 8:04 AM on December 12, 2013 [11 favorites]


On the one hand, I totally get the frustration.

On the other hand, I wish that more bars would say "We need background music. Let's hire a band!" rather than "We need background music. I'll bring in my mp3 player!"

So basically I'm annoyed when people talk over bands, but at the same time I'm wishing that there were more bands getting hired so that people could talk over them. Any minute now my head is gonna explode.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 8:05 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


@samworm & @ReeMonster: There's also that. If I'm going to drop $50 (or even $15) on a concert ticket, it's going to be for a band or artist I really like. I'm going to want to listen to them. If someone was like "Oh, I'll get tickets and come too!" and then they talked to me while I was trying to enjoy the music, well, I would be very pissed off at that person.
posted by erlking at 8:06 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's also disconcerting to performers to be standing on stage and look out into the audience and see people's faces looking down at their glowing rectangles instead of at the stage.
posted by larrybob at 8:08 AM on December 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


I'm going to a concert on Sat, and to be honest I have little interest in the band and am going mainly to talk some stuff over with other people who already had tickets. So I guess this makes me part of the problem.

Is there a reason why you can't meet up before or after the show? And what happens if they don't really want to spend the whole thing chatting with you, but would prefer to just listen to the music?

If this were a classical music concert (assuming it's not), would you feel fine about talking through the whole thing? Why is folk or rock or pop different?

NB: I'm not talking about the kind of occasional "I love this song!" stuff, but rather actual conversation, with stories and back-and-forth and so on.
posted by rtha at 8:08 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


In the past, I have played instrumental music in restaurants, as background. You get to the point where you are just playing for yourself, trying to play well and keep yourself interested.

But my favorite bit of audience (diner?) feedback was a guy who was there eating alone, and said, loudly, "you make me want to go home and kill myself." Well at least he was listening.
posted by Danf at 8:10 AM on December 12, 2013 [11 favorites]


"So basically I'm annoyed when people talk over bands, but at the same time I'm wishing that there were more bands getting hired so that people could talk over them. Any minute now my head is gonna explode."

I'm not sure what others here are thinking, but bars that don't have separate rooms really aren't like concerts when they have live performers, there shouldn't be an expectation that the entire crowd will not socialize and watch and enjoy the performance. In those situations, it usually works out that people sort themselves by sitting near or far from the performers depending upon their interest, and that sort of works.

The signal is really if you have to buy a ticket to see the artist, or if you're just paying, say, a cover charge. Or nothing at all. If it's the first thing, that's really saying that this is a concert and I'd expect that people not see the performer as providing "incidental music", as the writer describes it, but as the main attraction that they should be respectful about.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:11 AM on December 12, 2013


Well, yes: It's the culmination of a tendency that didn't begin this year, or last, or even this century.

I mean, the timeline of that culmination specifically is what I'm concerned about. I assume it happened during his life at some point -- I assume around the time smart phones because ubiquitous as that seems to be his hobbyhorse-- unless he's feeling vicariously resentful for the concert-goers of the last few centuries.

I'm going to a concert on Sat, and to be honest I have little interest in the band and am going mainly to talk some stuff over with other people who already had tickets. So I guess this makes me part of the problem.

Why would you pick a show as the, ahem, venue in which to do this? That's not a rhetorical question, I see this happen quite a bit and it seems about as wise a choice of place to conduct business as a video arcade or airport tarmac.
posted by griphus at 8:12 AM on December 12, 2013


(Specifically because if the music isn't loud enough for a conversation to revolve around the word "WHAT?!" then you probably shouldn't be talking at all.)
posted by griphus at 8:14 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


You want respect as an artist? You have to alpha dog it.

Stop your set, find the loudest person and start kicking the shit out of them.

If you are a dude and it's a woman who won't shut up get in her face and scream at her (boys shouldn't hit girls). If you are both women, fucking go apeshit on that ass.

Trust me, you will earn a LOT of respect in a short time.
posted by Renoroc at 8:14 AM on December 12, 2013


it seems about as wise a choice of place to conduct business as a video arcade or airport tarmac.

I was at the Warfield once for a show and two guys in front of me spent a really long time discussing their investments and giving each other advice. When I finally leaned forward and asked if they could take it someplace else they looked at me like I was nuts. I mean dudes, why the fuck would you pay $40 to talk about something you could talk about for free someplace else, and not piss people off to boot?
posted by rtha at 8:15 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


Jarvis Cocker's memorable observation that music is "not as central, it's more like a scented candle" seems ever more pertinent.

Yep. I have been in performing bands for nearly half a century (since 1966, actually -- none you've ever heard of -- local bar bands for years, and parties and wedding reception-type gigs for the last decade or two). It seems to me that Bennun is right, there has been a change in the relationship between performer and audience that has taken place gradually over that time.

Remember the scene in the movie Blow-Up when David Hemmings stumbles into a warehouse where a band of local rock guys are playing (including Eric Clapton, if I remember correctly), and all of the people that are listening are standing stock-still, staring at the musicians? That really used to be a thing. When I first started practicing with a band (in my parent's garage, natch), people would park their cars up and down the street, sit on the hoods and listen to us trying to work out the changes to whatever was on the radio then. And, oh yeah, we were awful. I literally got the job as bassist because I happened to own an instrument and amp at the time. Half a century later, my playing (and that of my peers) has improved a lot, but at gigs, we might as well be Muzak as far as 99% of the audience is concerned.

Yeah, I know that the band at a birthday party or wedding reception is not the main attraction and that the audience aren't there just to hear us perform. Still, a live band can make an event memorable, given half a chance. That this kind of inattention is a thing at real concerts is just sad.

My own theory is that people have just gotten over-saturated with music and recorded sound in general. Imagine what it must have been like before audio recording was possible -- when the only way to hear music played on instruments was to be physically in a place where a real live person was actually playing the thing -- right then. And when it was done, it was gone. That kind of preciousness is what's really gone forever.
posted by TwoToneRow at 8:16 AM on December 12, 2013 [15 favorites]


You want respect as an artist? You have to alpha dog it.


Or you could try making music that just totally grips people and excites them in ways they didn't realise were possible, as per erlking's story above.

Else why bother? There's already way, way too much landfill hipster music.
posted by colie at 8:19 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


The real question for me is whether a "respectful quiet" policy (similar to the de facto standard at art galleries) would attract more people than it'd put off. Because they wouldn't have my money for a start.

Well, sure. In some places, you might get more people to go to an Ethiopian restaurant if you turned it into a steakhouse, but then there wouldn't be much reason for it to exist. At some point, there's no point in distorting your business model to the point where there's literally no reason for your business to be there. If you're using a live music performance as a place to sit around and talk with a sort of defiant lack of interest in the performance, then recreating that space to better serve a greater number of people like you would mean making it a place for people who don't care about live music, which means (if we're remaining on the business side of things) it would be cheaper to just turn it into an empty warehouse with couches that played music from somebody's iPod. But they probably won't do that, because they probably want to have it be a live music venue.

To me, this is simple social contract stuff. When you buy a ticket to a show, you're agreeing not to disrupt it for other people and to be respectful to the artist, and while you may be legally able to buy a ticket, enter the venue, and spoil it for the people around you, you're not going to persuade me personally (not that you were trying to) that it's not rude. It's really rude. Do it if you want, but it's rude.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 8:19 AM on December 12, 2013 [9 favorites]


...and all of the people that are listening are standing stock-still, staring at the musicians? That really used to be a thing.

It still is, in Brooklyn.

They just do it during shows where the band exhorts people to dance and make noise.
posted by griphus at 8:20 AM on December 12, 2013 [20 favorites]


a band of local rock guys are playing (including Eric Clapton, if I remember correctly)

The Yardbirds, with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

posted by Grangousier at 8:20 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


They just do it during shows where the band exhorts people to dance and make noise.

If you have to tell - in words - your audience to dance and make noise, your music sucks.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:21 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


I feel like the problem of talking over bands at ticketed venues in Austin is getting worse every year. One of the things I notice is that it's worse at standing venues. People still talk at seated venues, but maybe because they're paying more than they would to stand, or because they can only talk to the person next to them on either side without being really loud, or maybe because of seated concert social training, there's more listening and less yakking.

I notice I'm more excited about classical/chamber/early music as a live experience these days and a lot of it is because the audience experience at standing shows here in Austin is so bad. It's like people show up to say they came and not to be present in the moment. The constant connectivity (and the ability to say "HERE NOW" on a bunch of different services) may make it worse, but it's an attitude problem, not a technology problem.
posted by immlass at 8:25 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


It's as if the author had never listened to a live jazz recording. Noise at shows is certainly nothing new.
There's probably only a very short golden moment in any artist or band's career (players of softer music that is) between those times when no one is paying attention at all and when their shows get popular enough for a large noisy crowd.
We've been to those shows, where the entire crowd are fans and reverently respectful, and then the next time they are in town and they've hit the big time the venue is bigger and less intimate and we are ecstatic that they are popular and happy for their success at the same time devastated that we will never again see them up close or hear the soft songs without the background noise.
such is the life of fans of live music.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:27 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


Hey, turns out there's a really good video on youtube of that Joanna Newsom encore I spoke about above! Baby Birch in Toronto (March 13, 2010). (The venue holds 1100, mostly standing, and was pretty much full).

I don't know what is meant by "alpha dog it" but is this an example of someone doing that?
posted by erlking at 8:29 AM on December 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


Looking at it from the classical side: there's this ever-returning outcry against traditional classical concerts as being "too stuffy" and "how dare they expect me to sit quietly and clap at the designated times." And I think it amounts to "how dare they expect me to be quiet and listen" a lot of the time. I am beginning to think that listening to ANYTHING without talking is a skill a lot of people just don't have anymore. (Maybe they never did?) But classical music aside, half the time it seems like young people aren't even paying attention to the music they claim to LIKE.

I have taught Music Appreciation classes before, and the next time I do I won't bother going through the historical sequence of Mozart and Beethoven and all that; I'll just force them to practice listening quietly and attentively, to anything more complex than Katy Perry.
posted by daisystomper at 8:36 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Stop your set, find the loudest person and start kicking the shit out of them.

I was on stage with the Seattle Symphony doing Berlioz's Damnation of Faust when we started hearing a noise like a Star Trek phaser going off in the hall. It was OK-tolerable during the raucous drinking scene, but when the conductor cued the soloists up for the tender love duet, he abruptly dropped his hands and ran off stage. They raised the house lights and spent 20 minutes looking for the source of the sound, which was quiet enough to be hard to hear if everyone in the hall was talking but loud enough to ruin the show.

They finally found it, it was some sort of personal security panic alarm in the purse of an older woman whose hearing had gone to the point where she couldn't hear those frequencies. The acoustics in the hall combined with the very high pitch made the sound incredibly difficult to track down. When it finally shut off, everyone -- audience, symphony, chorus, and soloists -- burst into happy applause.

I don't know if security hauled her out back and beat the crap out of her, but I kind of wanted to. I mean, yes, sympathy / empathy / etc, but TWENTY MINUTES of that noise!!!
posted by KathrynT at 8:38 AM on December 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


I get that people think I'm "an asshole" but I really don't see it. If it was a cello concerto then we wouldn't talk over it, but it isn't. Its a venue with live music that sells tickets but makes most of its money from people buying drinks and chatting.

People like to have background sounds. And something like a drink to hold. Where does the "don't socialise at a music venue" argument end? With two people in an otherwise empty room? Well that's a pretty awkward scenario to many people, even when not taken to its logical ends.

My questions was whether people who want the music to be there as part of the furniture, but don't want to give it their full attention, are bringing in more money (and enabling more musicians) than they're preventing by enabling a system that some people (many people?) dislike and opt out of.

Anyway, reading these comments I suspect most people here are going to very different venues than the places I'm talking about. We're going to a location first and foremost. The bands they have are people you'll know if you're into music and they'll have records you can buy, but they aren't filling a venue based off that.

The way I see it there are tiers to this.

1) A venue which has a sign saying "live music" and the band have to announce themselves between songs, and most people ignore them. 2) A venue where the band is named in advance and they publish listings, maybe the front half of the crowd are really paying attention and people near the back are talking and propping up the bar. You probably need a ticket. This is the type of place my previous post was about. 3) And then the top tier, where more or less everyone there is an actual fan and is giving the music their full attention. You need a ticket and its probably the most expensive item during your night out.

I think that most people here are talking about (3). Perhaps because they're music fans and take it seriously. There is probably a strong selection bias to the people that will contribute to a post like this.

I'm talking about tiers (1) and (2), and I suspect that is where most of the live music being played on any given night actually sits. And I think that if you tried to enforce the rules of (3) onto (1) and (2) then the people would go elsewhere and that quantity of live music would lessen.
posted by samworm at 8:43 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


Or you could try making music that just totally grips people and excites them in ways they didn't realise were possible, as per erlking's story above.

I don't drop money on shows for artists I'm not interested in, and I don't see why I should have to pay for the privilege of listening to people yammer because they decided they did want to drop money for a show they don't really care about (see the comment earlier from someone doing exactly this). How about if you, the show-goer, just don't go to shows that don't interest you? Go talk to your friends someplace else.
posted by rtha at 8:44 AM on December 12, 2013 [7 favorites]


I've considered the possibility that, rather than the habit being much more prevalent, I have become more sensitive to it. I don't think so, though. If anything, I've become more tolerant of other's foibles over the years.

"I didn't get old! The world is objectively getting worse!"

Next.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 8:47 AM on December 12, 2013 [4 favorites]


I think that most people here are talking about (3).

I'm definitely talking about venues like the second one you describe; I think the author of the post is as well. In venues like the third sort, this isn't really a problem: either the music is far, far louder than even the aggregate mumbling of the crowd, or the social pressure is on people to not speak too much.

The talking issue is in the more casual venues where maybe you drop $10 to see a not-sold-out show.
posted by griphus at 8:49 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you want a quiet crowd, you do well to play house concerts instead of bars. The standard bar setup means the booze+meat market aspect is going to increase your likelihood of loudness and assholes. I don't know if it's gotten worse, but it was pretty bad 15 years ago when I started going to see friends/the husband play. Hardly anyone had a phone, but that didn't make them quieter.

The husband now plays in a separate band that does beer festivals, breweries and bigger bars, and gets a loud crowd but one that is into the more party-friendly stuff they play (especially songs about drinkin'). He plays his own quiet stuff at house concerts or a few local spots where his people come out and want to hear him. But people going out to score/get drunk/party are not looking for quiet music.

He occasionally plays local restaurants but the understanding there is that you are background music, and you should take audience appreciation as a bonus, not the standard. Restaurants are quieter, though, so you can play your low-key stuff more easily.

He's gotten a lot pickier about who he plays with too; if the other bands on the bill are loud/party types, and he's doing his quiet stuff, he won't take the gig, because his crowd won't like them and their crowd won't like him.
posted by emjaybee at 8:49 AM on December 12, 2013


The talking issue is in the more casual venues where maybe you drop $10 to see a not-sold-out show.

In Austin it's a problem at Stubb's (to name a big standing venue) and for two tickets, we're dropping close to a C-note.
posted by immlass at 8:51 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


"Shhh! Listen to the sounds."

-- Jimi Hendrix
posted by clvrmnky at 8:52 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Not a new thing. The wiki article for Low has a fun example of this in the 90's, but is unsourced so if someone here can verify this bit of band mythos that would be great.
During their early career, the band often faced unsympathetic and inattentive audiences in bars and clubs, to which they responded by bucking rock protocol and turning their volume down. The huge dynamic range of Low's early music made it susceptible to background noise and chatter, since many of their songs were very quiet. A performance in 1996 at the South by Southwest festival was overpowered when a Scandinavian hardcore band was booked downstairs.
posted by Winnemac at 8:53 AM on December 12, 2013


What Jimi says. Shush them.
posted by sammyo at 9:01 AM on December 12, 2013


Also, I don't think crowd mumbling will ever be as annoying as:

-The couple having a fight but refusing to leave
-The guy trying, failing and trying again ad infinitum to either crowd-surf, stage-dive or start a pit.
-Anyone who lights a j in a non-smoking venue and then gives the bouncers shit when they get kicked out.
-The drunk teenager singing along off-key to every song, somehow drowning out the actual music.
-That guy. You know, that guy. The one who buys unasked-for drinks for 18-year-old girls.
-The person yelling out non-sequiturs during stage banter.
-Anyone/everyone ahead of you in line for either the bathroom or the merch table.
-The first opening band on a 4-band bill on a Tuesday night.
posted by griphus at 9:01 AM on December 12, 2013 [6 favorites]


Shush them again.
posted by sammyo at 9:01 AM on December 12, 2013


At the Largo in LA the owner/manager comes out before every set and gives the crowd a stern lecture about not taking photos or videos, turning off cellphones, and not talking during the show, and adds that anyone doing any of these things will be asked to leave. The audience always applauds these strictures and by and large keeps to them. They have a bar, but it's in a separate space from the auditorium. If you want to get drinks and chat, you don't do it where people are trying to listen to the music.

It might not work everywhere, but it's proof that even in this Age of the Asshole Audience you can make it work without driving away the paying customers.
posted by yoink at 9:02 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


Get a bunch of others to shush them.
posted by sammyo at 9:02 AM on December 12, 2013


Then and only then, pour the iced drink over their head.
posted by sammyo at 9:02 AM on December 12, 2013


I get that people think I'm "an asshole" but I really don't see it.

Sadly, but kinda by definition, that's what makes you an asshole.
posted by yoink at 9:03 AM on December 12, 2013 [27 favorites]


In venues like the third sort, this isn't really a problem: either the music is far, far louder than even the aggregate mumbling of the crowd, or the social pressure is on people to not speak too much.

I wish. The Warfield and the Fillmore are both #3-type venues and there's an awful lot of "blahblahblahblahlistentomeIpaid$40totalktomyfriendsandannoypeopleblahblahblah."

At the Fillmore one time for a one-guy-and-a-guitar show (Martin Sexton), we were upstairs in the mezzanine and the woman sitting behind me decided that a quiet ballad was a really good moment to start talking about some terrible date she had recently been on. I asked her if she could be quiet. She got all snitty and pointed to people 50 feet away and down on the main floor and said "They're talking!" and I said, yeah, but not right behind me and in my ear. She stopped talking.
posted by rtha at 9:04 AM on December 12, 2013


griphus: I mean, the timeline of that culmination specifically is what I'm concerned about. I assume it happened during his life at some point -- I assume around the time smart phones because ubiquitous as that seems to be his hobbyhorse-- unless he's feeling vicariously resentful for the concert-goers of the last few centuries.
"Not even this century" was 13 years ago. The author is about 45. "Not even this century" was "during his life," but it wasn't Victorian.

The larger social consequences of mobile phones and smartphones are often discussed on MetaFilter, and it seems to me there are always a few commenters who are really touchy about the issue, as if even the meekest criticism of public phone use is a direct attack on their morality and their value as human beings.

This article isn't so very fixated on smartphones. It's not so very focused on mobile phones of any description. It's sort of telling that the article brings up so many factors that explicitly predate the smartphone -- the social impacts of mobile phones (as telephones), many-channel-television, the user-directed torrent of the internet, and social media -- but your reaction is "smart phones ... seems to be his hobbyhorse." The article doesn't even contain the word "smartphone." Smartphones can of course play a role in all those things but aren't actually necessary for any of them, either.
posted by Western Infidels at 9:23 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Hey, turns out there's a really good video on youtube of that Joanna Newsom encore

Posted up there by a fan who says he or she recorded the entire show for everyone's benefit... ironically, many people on here would be berating this fan for either annoying them with the light from their phone screen or for not being sufficiently 'in the moment' enough...
posted by colie at 9:23 AM on December 12, 2013 [5 favorites]


As I posted this, I suppose I should have an opinion.

The worst thing isn't so much the talking, per se, but the ignoring. There is a certain kind of performance - the kind I'm interested in - that isn't so much defined by people doing stuff as people directing their attention to the same spot. When that happens, something extraordinary happens, even if what they're directing their attention towards is an apparantly empty space (c.f. Samuel Beckett's later work) or cinema or objectively bad. What's magical is the coincidence of their attention. And it really needs to be an overwhelming majority of the audience participating in that coincident direction of attention.

This isn't something that happens in all performance situations. It's not something that can be expected to happen, or that is even appropriate everywhere. But when it does happen, you have something extraordinary.

The thing that's changed, to my mind, is that there are now likely to be a large enough percentage of the audience anywhere who are unwilling to pay attention, which means that it's less and less likely that there will be the necessary critical mass in order to achieve take-off. This is a shame.

I've worked with people who have gone out of their way to cajole, police, negotiate with and intimidate an audience to get this quality of attention, and it's more and more difficult to get even from a sympathetic audience who are predisposed to that sort of thing.

It's very odd. If you do pay the attention, you get so much back. You can get background music from a radio, have more comfortable conversations in a bar and drink better beer more cheaply pretty much anywhere. I have no idea what people think they're getting out of a performance if they ignore the performance.

(For a long time, the fundamental particle of London gig audiences has been middle-aged men clutching plastic pint-glasses of overpriced and gassy lager who stand with their backs to the band and talk loudly about other gigs they've seen. Or at the very least, stood with their backs to. This is even true for bands who you wouldn't think appealed to middle-aged lager drinkers.)
posted by Grangousier at 9:24 AM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


Although I will say, the Union Chapel can be wonderfully attentive. Perhaps it's because it's an actual church, and that triggers some kind of primal good behaviour in people.
posted by Grangousier at 9:25 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


I might be a bit cranky but I think it should be totally legal to shiv unrepentant gigtalkers.
posted by entropicamericana at 9:28 AM on December 12, 2013 [5 favorites]


Makes me miss the Birchmere, where people shut up when the performers were on the stage.

That's because there's a card on every table telling the patrons to be quiet while the musicians are playing. The folk club where I occasionally perform has a similar policy. It's nice.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:29 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


Or you could always just involve the audience.



Note: may require becoming the unstable and reclusive singer of a rarely-performing cult band with a committed following. Your mileage may vary. Offer not valid in Kentucky.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:29 AM on December 12, 2013


Why are you paying for a ticket (and tickets are often pretty pricey) to go to a show you have no intention of listening to? That is like buying a movie ticket in order to talk with your friends who are going to a movie. Why not meet these people in a bar or a coffee shop?

99% of concerts I have been to, the band actually playing is probably the event that takes the least amount of time. You get there in time to get a decent spot, you grab a drink, socialize and stuff, wait for the opening act, which can take an hour just to get to that. The opening band plays for what, 30 minutes? Then there's something like another 30 minutes to one hour of waiting for the band you paid to see to come out. And sometimes they take a break in the middle of their set.

There is a ton of time to talk and catch up with people at a show when the music is not even playing. And maybe while the band is on you might even have a bit of fun. But let's just call this guy an asshole instead.
posted by Hoopo at 9:48 AM on December 12, 2013


-Anyone who lights a j in a non-smoking venue and then gives the bouncers shit when they get kicked out.

Not everyone can remember the rules when visiting a fancy city. My apologies to everyone at Bowlive 2012 on the night Alice Smith performed, for being that dude. She was the whole reason I drove all that way and I only saw her for 30 seconds after sneaking back in (taking off my hat to go incognito and walking back in the front door). But hey, that bouncer was a dick.


I suspect that the biggest factor in this problem is alcohol. Booze increases vocal volume exponentially. Well maybe alcohol and apathy.

If you're an acoustic musician, you might as well skip Pittsburgh. It's gotten bad lately. The Wood Brothers, for example. Killer acoustic duo. Played progressively larger venues on each trip to town. They skipped us on their last tour despite having a packed house at the Rex Theater previously. At that show, when their opener Clay Cook, came out to sing with them, he begged everyone to stop talking so they could hear the band perform. That silence lasted most of the next song, but not all of it. It's a damn shame.
posted by GrapeApiary at 9:50 AM on December 12, 2013


What's magical is the coincidence of their [the crowd's] attention. And it really needs to be an overwhelming majority of the audience participating...This isn't something that happens in all performance situations. It's not something that can be expected to happen, or that is even appropriate everywhere. But when it does happen, you have something extraordinary.

yes.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:20 AM on December 12, 2013


Nothing new, indeed.
In my specialty, Early/Renaissance/Baroque music, most of the smaller (<12) pieces were *intended* to be talked over. They were typically played in private homes or small taverns for amusement of the performers (usually members of an extended family or friendship circle), or as accompaniment to other events such as large meals, plays, social dancing and religious rituals. Performing them in large halls in front of silent audiences (themselves a 19th century class-marker invention to distinguish "high culture" from "popular entertainment") is not period performance! Most of our early instruments, with the exceptions of brass and some reeds (I'm yelling at you, krummhorns!), don't carry across distance or a lot of bodies without amplification.
I actually appreciate the audience using electronics - if they're not paying attention, it gives them something to do that doesn't much affect my playing. It also means more people will hear/see my work, at no outreach effort to me or my ensemble. Yay!
This is timely for me as it is carolling season, and most of the bookings are as background flavor for passers-by, rather than staged concerts. Some of my ensemble partners are really annoyed by this, but perhaps because I'm rather introverted, I like NOT being the focus of silent attention. As an info junkie, I like most of the audience interactivity. People are curious and have so many questions. Sure, they're repetitive, but all the better for witty, if practiced, answers.
posted by Dreidl at 10:29 AM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


99% of movie-nights I have been to, the movie actually playing is probably the event that takes the least amount of time. You get there in time to find parking, to buy tickets and to get a decent seat, you spend time in the long, slow-moving concessions line, socialize and stuff, wait for the trailers and ads. Those play for what, 30 minutes?

There is a ton of time to talk and catch up with people at a movie when the film is not even playing. And maybe while the film is on you might even have a bit of fun. But let's just call this guy an asshole instead.
posted by erlking at 10:32 AM on December 12, 2013


It is interesting to read that the idea of silent audiences for music are to an extent tied up with 19th century 'high culture' class markers... and now that we have amplification, really, how much pop/rock music is honestly not robust enough to survive even constant chatter from the plebs in the peanut gallery?

Last concert I went to had teen girls actually screaming throughout...
posted by colie at 10:36 AM on December 12, 2013


After reading above about how Low deliberately turned their music down to make it harder for people to talk over, I now know why Lambchop played so quietly at the Great American last year. Their audience was pretty quiet anyway, but I was sitting near the back with a sprained ankle and could barely even hear the band.

I nearly accidentally-on-purpose knocked a phone out of a guy's hand at a Squeeze show at the Fillmore because I thought he was texting, but I got a better look at his screen and saw he was reading about Deptford, where they're from. So that was sweet.

But I really loathe going to shows anywhere these days because sososo many people are holding their phones aloft, or constantly checking their screens. You do NOT NEED TO KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS RIGHT NOW.
posted by vickyverky at 10:48 AM on December 12, 2013


Quiet is the new loud. Where do you go when you're already on eleven? Exactly.
posted by colie at 10:50 AM on December 12, 2013


Attention from the crowd is something that is earned by the artist, not owed by the audience. There is nothing quite so magical as starting a song in a noisy room, and realizing by the end that everyone has fallen silent.

That being said, people who ruin the experience of those around them by being thoughtlessly loud should be dragged into the street and shot.
posted by sarastro at 10:56 AM on December 12, 2013


This has been going on forever, the highly dynamic band I once was in had loud highs and really quiet lows. The loud parts we called the "shut them up parts"
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:01 AM on December 12, 2013


Depends on the artist? I was at the Mint in LA last Saturday for Jonathan Richman. The place was packed. The bar is not far away from the stage, tables to the side, floor in front of the stage - all packed. Super respectful audience. Sure, there were the phone-videoing folks, but that was about the only wrinkle. People loved Jonathan. What shocked me, is that I was rather expecting a slightly older crowd who grew up on Modern Lovers, but actually... I was one of the oldest people there. Most were in their 20's and 30's. These were not just hipsters name checking. They knew all the songs. Maybe because they loved Jonathan Richman.

Meanwhile, there are a ton of live jazz recordings, where people talk, and it becomes part of the atmosphere, and I don't find myself tiring of the recordings, indeed, they add something to it. Some of the spontaneous yells in reaction to the music, people saying stuff and so on, just is so infectious, and you can hear how it spurs on the musicians. A great example I came across recently is this little gem: The Early Thelonious Monk - where part of the appeal is absolutely the audience sound, including talking. You can practically see the smoke and the glasses.

And that's not getting into the whole Satie/Cage/Eno 'music as furniture' ideas.

There's music like this, and then there's music where the audience is quiet. Nothing new under the sun - says this old man.
posted by VikingSword at 11:01 AM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


And it's really fun to watch an ambivalent crowd to busy gabbing with each other to be slowly sucked into your set till they are totally blown away screaming and cheering at the end. It's just another facet of a live show. It's a challenge, win.
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:03 AM on December 12, 2013


It's funny that Low was mentioned upthread. I've seen them several times and on each occasion I was totally amazed that during the quieter moments you could have heard a pin drop. The crowd really self-policed to the point where anyone trying to be chatty was shamed into shutting up. Same thing with Godspeed You! Black Emporer...they were incredibly loud, but during the quiet sections the audience was rapt and silent.
posted by nevercalm at 11:06 AM on December 12, 2013


99% of movie-nights

This doesn't work, like, at all. What point are you trying to make? Here's mine: he might go to a concert he's not interested in because there are many, and sometimes lengthy, opportunities to talk with the people he's going with. Like, even sitting at a table, or at the bar, having drinks or even food, because concert venues often have this. Because socializing is kind of expected in a lot of them. And this can all be done even without talking through the actual show.

The movies? Not so much. But still--honestly, you've never gone on a date to a movie you're not at all interested in? Did you remain silent before and after the movie? In the concession stand? During the previews? Was the evening entirely about the movie, or was it maybe just a reason to get together and go out?
posted by Hoopo at 11:32 AM on December 12, 2013


It isn't just the talking though.

In the past year, I have been to three shows that stick out prominently in my mind where someone not only was incredibly disruptive, but refused to stop after being asked.

Nick Cave at the Chicago Theater: We were really excited about this show. We had invested in some excellent loge seats, paid to take the train to Chicago, got a nice hotel. Mr. Mustachio had never seen Nick Cave live before.
Unfortunately, the woman in the seat next to him spent the entire show screaming as if she were being murdered. Occasionally, she would pause during quiet songs to shout "WHOOP! WHOOP! " as if she were at an ICP show. When asked to be quieter in her appreciation (of the sound of her own screeching) she responded belligerently.

Winnipeg Folk Festival, Texas musician workshop with Hayes Carl, The Flatlanders, Matt the Electrician, and Robert Ellis: I am practically delirious from excellent music and sleep deprivation. The bill is incredible, all of the people are amazing, gifted musicians and songwriters. I am transported, by the music and the beautiful weather and general good vibes. I am in tears, it is all so good. Three girls sit next to me and one of them begins talking VERY LOUDLY ABOUT OMG HER TRIP TO ICELAND I WENT TO ICELAND AND MY JOB AND MY BOYFIREND AND SCHOOL O.M.G. Several people ask her to be quieter or to continue her conversation elsewhere. She seems to abide at first, then the volume rises again. Multiple. Times.

The Savages, First Avenue: I was skeptical about this band at first, but this show is very enjoyable. Sleek. Powerful. Women rocking, nothing twee. A group comes in, and one woman is yelling loudly to her friends about her job, occasionally bothering some stragers to take her picture, and yelling and yelling and yelling about bullshit bullshit who cares. My friend asks her to be quieter because we wanted to hear the music and she flies into a RAGE. HOW DARE YOU FUCK YOU


Now, all of these people could argue that hey paid for a ticket, that this is rock and roll no rules woooooo, but they all not only ruined the experience of everyone in their vicintity, when asked to mitigate their behavior so that
people could enjoy the show, they not only refused to do so but reacted with hostility to the very idea that someone might want to go to a show to hear a performer and not the sound of their own fucking voice.
posted by louche mustachio at 11:44 AM on December 12, 2013 [12 favorites]


Two of those were relatively loud shows. One was a venue known for having especially respectful audiences.

And I am not a person who is uaware of the atmosphere of concerts - one of the incidents was at a large club where I worked for many years.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:04 PM on December 12, 2013


People suck.
Drunk People suck.
Entitled People suck.
Give a drunk person a reason to feel entitled : "I paid for a ticket!" and you get exponential suckage.

Bands can, however, create their own culture. they can be out in front of this and be proactive with their fans and with any given audience, and with the venue and its security. If they care. there are venues here in seattle that I avoid because they just aren't suited to the way i like to enjoy a show. I hate sitting down (unless it's jazz) and i'd rather the bar area were separate from the stage area. I skip many bands i like if i know the venue or suspect the crowd is going to take away from my enjoyment.

I can remember going to Phish shows in the earlier days (i say this because I don't know if it's the same scene) and the band would typically end the first set with an a cappella number. the crowd would shush and shush and low and behold within a few minutes you could hear a pin drop, at least until the first big moment when the cheers would begin again.
posted by OHenryPacey at 12:09 PM on December 12, 2013


-The drunk teenager singing along off-key to every song, somehow drowning out the actual music.

Hey, at least they like the band.
posted by ersatz at 2:33 PM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


This doesn't work, like, at all. What point are you trying to make? Here's mine: he might go to a concert he's not interested in because there are many, and sometimes lengthy, opportunities to talk with the people he's going with. Like, even sitting at a table, or at the bar, having drinks or even food, because concert venues often have this. Because socializing is kind of expected in a lot of them. And this can all be done even without talking through the actual show.

The movies? Not so much. But still--honestly, you've never gone on a date to a movie you're not at all interested in? Did you remain silent before and after the movie? In the concession stand? During the previews? Was the evening entirely about the movie, or was it maybe just a reason to get together and go out?


Of course it works that way. On movie nights, you chat during all the non-movie parts of your night. You talk in concession line, before the film, etc. Who doesn't? Where did you get the idea I meant otherwise? The important thing: you shut up when the movie is playing. If you are not enjoying a movie and you start loudly talking (not whispering), you are an asshole. You are disrupting the experience of those around you. You should leave the theatre if you are no longer interested in watching the movie.

This is the exact same - the exact same - as a concert-night. You absolutely can talk and drink and whoop it up when waiting for the band to come on, during the interval between opener and headliner, etc. Again, that is normal. But, once the band starts to play, you need to be quiet. If you are distracting people around you who have paid money to enjoy a concert, you are being a selfish asshole and you should remove yourself from the venue.
posted by erlking at 2:35 PM on December 12, 2013


The Savages, First Avenue

A friend of mine saw them here in Austin and IIRC they had one of those "please be here and present in the moment with the music, no cameras and recorders, please" kind of signs, which would make this even worse. I'm not really into them, but apparently the friends who went said it was one of the best shows they saw all year. So that's a real shame. (Not that the other two incidents louche mustachio relates are any better.)
posted by immlass at 3:12 PM on December 12, 2013


louche mustachio, your anecdotes reminded me of when I saw Nick Cave at First Avenue over 20 years ago, and someone in the mezzanine level on the side of the stage was throwing ice at the stage. One of the members of the band threw a beer bottle at the person and it shattered on the railing. Hopefully no innocent bystanders were injured.
posted by larrybob at 3:13 PM on December 12, 2013


I think I've reached a point where I'm able to admit to myself that I find 99% of live music events (qua music events) utterly boring. I still feel an obligation to bounce around in my little area or gaze on absorbedly or whatever appreciative posture is called for, but for the most part I'm only there because somebody else wants to be there and I want to be with them, or, occasionally, in tribute to a younger self who would've thought it was important for whatever reason. But basically I'd rather stay home and listen to records. And probably something campy at that...
posted by batfish at 4:26 PM on December 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


well, this thread has cleared up a mystery for me - why lemmy feels it necessary for motorhead to play at 130db

yeah, talk over that, motherfuckers
posted by pyramid termite at 5:01 PM on December 12, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've heard the NY Phil a few times and saw the NYCB(allet) once. I like that people are quiet there, they know they're there to hear, not to be heard.

The I got a few tickets to a few nights of the Salzburg Music Festival. Man, those people really know how to shut the fuck now.*

Now I'm spoiled and think the NY Phil crowd is noisy.

----

* Funny story, the GF felt like she had to cough and was so afraid of coughing during the music that she got up to walk out the door (we were right by it) and they wouldn't let her back in; she felt horrible she missed half of it.
posted by Brian Puccio at 7:15 PM on December 12, 2013


I have two experiences with crowd-members not respecting performers:


In maybe 2007, went to see Keith Jarrett Trio in UCLA. Keith is notoriously strict about audience behavior. He supposedly once had cough drops handed out to the audience before some winter performance so that nobody would cough while he played. We didn't get that treatment, but we did get a friendly but direct request from the announcer not to take any photos of the artists.

The show was great. The band stood and bowed for us at the end. One guy in the front of the balcony leans over the edge and takes a flash photo of the group. Keith looks directly at him, and points his finger sternly, clearly pissed. The band leaves the stage.

We cheered and cheered, hoping for an encore, and they were gracious enough to come back out.


Earlier this year, at a music festival in Monterey, CA, Modest Mouse was the headliner. They aren't a band I would specifically go to see, but I like their music and I was all set to enjoy their show. Their sound was WAY too loud and poorly mixed, but it was still a great performance.

About 2/3 through the show, Isaac, the lead singer, quiets down the band and starts talking to the audience. He's saying how great it is that we're all connected or something, and yadda yadda, wouldn't it be great if we could all just fall silent for a few moments. What a great idea! So he repeats it to make sure everyone's onboard and starts to count down. When he gives the word, EVERYONE falls silent. In about 0.5 seconds, my ASMR response starts to kick in and then "WHOOOOO"... Some girl way in the back stole the moment.

Not to give up so easily, Isaac makes some comments playing it off and then says we should try again. This time he makes absolutely sure we all hear him before he starts the countdown. When he gives the signal, it happens again. Everybody and everything falls silent. It's amazing.

But it only lasts about a second.

Some girl again. Maybe the same one. Maybe someone else. They just couldn't hold it in.

Anyway, it didn't ruin the concert. But it took away from 1,000 people what could have been an amazing shared experience. Instead of a story about an amazing moment of human connection, I get one about some drunk asshole who couldn't control herself for a few measly seconds.


I tend to agree with TwoToneRow about the causes. Music is everywhere now in some peoples' lives. And it's cheap, too, if you choose it to be. I'm reminded of that scene near the end of Almost Famous where William, the main character, finally gets home, puts his headphones on, and plays a record. And that's it. He's not reading, talking, or doing anything else. He's just enjoying the music. I think most people don't know how to do that.
posted by cman at 8:18 PM on December 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


I read this article yesterday and then went to a show last night.

It was a CD release show for a local band at a very popular ~250 capacity venue. There was a 3-band bill; the 2nd band was a loud, psych/blues/rock band, but the headliner was much softer, a 5-piece band fronted with an acoustic guitar, and a few songs played solo. Apart from it being his CD release show, he's very talented and sounded great -- when you could hear him over the crowd noise, despite the fact that the crowd had thinned out by the time he took the stage, leaving maybe 50 people in the room.

Mind you, the bar at this venue is in the room adjoining the one with the stage, plus there is a whole additional bar downstairs. Maybe most offensive person was the girl from the second band standing five feet from the stage and having an obliviously loud conversation during the whole first half of the guy's set. Her band was loud enough to drown everything out, but this guy's wasn't, and apparently she felt it was ok to carry on during his set like nothing else was happening.

Then there was a couple behind me having a conversation of which I could quote every word -- this one girl is such a big fan of Radiohead, but she has so many sides to her, like she really loves Radiohead, but sometimes she also listens to Katie Perry -- and then another two over my other shoulder that would not stop talking at full volume even as the band left the stage and the frontman played a final encore by himself. I recognized one of them and know that she is a "music journalist," and I could hear her telling her friend about some cool events she got access to and this guy she was dating and blah blah blah.

It was so blatant that another guy standing near me, who I know is a good friend of the headliner and also a friend of hers, stepped between her and her friend, as if to say "Hint hint, please stop talking," at which they chuckled, hushed up for a second, and then when he walked away immediately resumed their conversation at the same level. And the whole time they're standing not 15 feet from the stage in a not-crowded venue.

It was really aggravating and I really don't get it. The band was quiet enough that you could've communicated to someone next to you by whispering in their ear if you really had to, not to mention going downstairs or in the next room if you just wanted to chat, but these people for some reason had to stand in front of the stage and yammer. If I had been the performer I would've lost it.
posted by ludwig_van at 6:47 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


I make music that is particularly quiet by nature, and so slow-moving that I once played a gig where, after I'd been playing for forty-five minutes, the host asked if I'd be starting soon. Of course, I'm usually playing at galleries and other milling-about places, so there's a challenge inherent in tuning my music to the room, and sometimes, the party gets so loud that I just descend into long sonic-massage drones, barely audible in the overall aural miasma.

I take an anti-rockstar posture, usually tucking my gear and my corpus into some distant corner where I can hide, and lately, there's been a strange increase in the number of people who seek me out and want to talk to me about this, that, the other, and synthesizers, or about some nonsense about quantum mechanics and new age metaphysics and how everything is made of music and blappity blap blah

If music made reality, I'd be using to to erase you from my proximity.

I've actually had to remove gear from my live rig to tone these contacts down, because god forbid I play a theremin without stopping everything to give a demo on the magical instrument that no one's ever seen before unless, of course, they heard about it on NPR. Gah. In the art scene, too, there will always be that one guy who, seeing me building music with knobs and a tablet, will come over to browbeat me into admitting that, "Well, this synthesizer stuff is nifty and all, but you really just can't beat the depth and nuance of "real" instruments."

"Umm, well, you're hearing sound, which is pretty much the nature of 'real'," I say.

"Well, you know what I mean."

Yes I do, you traditionalist prat, I think, but I just smile and turn up the wave-folding clipping until their sensitive ears transmit too much dissonance for them to take and they flee for the wine box. Playing music with non-traditional instrumentation invites a bit of this, of course, though one would hope people would wait until you're obviously finished before landing on you. My mother does say that watching me play ambient music is a bit like watching someone doing accounting work, so I should probably be more forgiving.

It's just frustrating because the quiet music I make is really just the sonic equivalent of pushing rocks around and raking grooves into cool white sand, and I make it because I love it, and because, almost forty years ago, Eno turned my idea of what music was upside-down. When I started out, I had the perfect formula, which was to do hit and run gigs in the parking garages in my area, just setting up in an obscure corner and letting the waves ring out, finding the resonance and gorgeous return of echo in the place. Hardly anyone heard as they parked and made their way around, but I'm certain some did.

There's probably something unbearably arrogant about all that, but I've been finding more and more audiences with a cultivated taste for music that seems to do nothing, and for quite a long time. I will never make a living at it, and I've been happy enough to merely cover the cost of my equipment and materials, and that's okay.

The very last gig I played was nirvana in that regard, in that a regional synth collective that I belong to booked a tiny club in Baltimore for a two day event, and as our kickoff time was approaching, we all looked around at the empty club and the one "audience" member, a 94 year-old woman who was the mother of one of the performers and who, amusingly, sat through the whole evening with her fingers cartoonishly jammed into her ears, and shrugged.

"Do you think anyone's likely to show up if we hold off a bit?"

"I dunno. I tell you one thing, though—if no one comes, I'm going to do an entire set based on one sample of Sarah Vaughan singing Gershwin with a bunch of audio-rate modulation."

The organizer laughed a sort of bitter gallows laugh, we kicked off after waiting a fruitless half hour, and when my turn came, I sat in a mostly empty club in Baltimore, free of chatter, distraction, and interruptions, and did an entire set based on one sample of Sarah Vaughan singing Gershwin with a bunch of audio-rate modulation, and it was good, too.


If you like that sort of thing.
posted by sonascope at 7:03 AM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Stop your set, find the loudest person and start kicking the shit out of them.

If you are a dude and it's a woman who won't shut up get in her face and scream at her (boys shouldn't hit girls). If you are both women, fucking go apeshit on that ass.

I don't know if security hauled her out back and beat the crap out of her, but I kind of wanted to.

I might be a bit cranky but I think it should be totally legal to shiv unrepentant gigtalkers.

That being said, people who ruin the experience of those around them by being thoughtlessly loud should be dragged into the street and shot.


I also get pissed off when performances are thoughtlessly interrupted by others (citation: people repeatedly texting at eye level during last night's opening of The Hobbit), but can we do this better? Threats of ultraviolence tend to harsh my haterade buzz.

posted by nicodine at 11:48 AM on December 13, 2013


colie: Last concert I went to had teen girls actually screaming throughout...

It is sobering to think that it is now nearly 50 years since the Beatles stopped playing live. A Hard Days Night and the other concert footage give a fairly good idea of what things were like, but it was even more intense if you were acutely in amongst the screamers. You could only barely make out what was being played most of the time. It was all very exciting for an eight-year-old, but it pissed my big brother off royally, he actually wanted to listen.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 1:50 PM on December 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


"Last concert I went to had teen girls actually screaming throughout..."

Me, too. In my case, though, it might have had something to do with the werewolf attack.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:58 PM on December 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


Threats of ultraviolence tend to harsh my haterade buzz.

In these threads about phones/talking at gigs on here and other sites, I've noticed that ultraviolent fantasies abound...

I think it might be connected with the contradiction at the centre of all rock/pop concerts, which is roughly that the audience are obliged to be communing in a kind of dionysiac release, but simultaneously worshipping the ego of the 'stars' on the stage who are uniquely talented and special (despite the fact that usually they're not).

All of the men in the audience want to be the sexgod man on the stage (or the sexual partner of the less common female on stage), but instead must attempt to satisfy themselves by channeling that impossible desire and its concomitant rage into their assiduous vetting and deep understanding of the skills and 'moment-making' abilities of the performers. As this massive effort of concentration and sublimation is now substituting for their entire sexual ego, it's not surprising that challenges to its dominance are met with pathological violent rage.

(Cue everyone telling me how they 'just like to hear the music', but this may not fully explain the violent fantasies or how they are commonplace and acceptable in these threads, or why people don't write similar things like, say, how they'd like to rip Obama's head off and stab him for sending drones, or something.)
posted by colie at 2:00 AM on December 14, 2013


why people don't write similar things like, say, how they'd like to ...

Presumably because they don't want visits from men wearing sunglasses and dark suits?

Good job beanplating, really, it's some of the finest I've ever seen on MetaFilter, but the explanation is really just that it is extreme frustration expressed in hyperbole.
posted by entropicamericana at 9:06 AM on December 14, 2013 [2 favorites]


But violent language/deep psychotic rage against Obama (although I don't mean necessarily directly expressed threats that might get you arrested) is pretty common on forums outside of MF - didn't the Republicans actually get into trouble about some logo with cross-hairs on him or similar?

The way he stirs up these emotions in idiot Tea Party/gun nut people is worthy of psychoanalytic investigation. Similarly, why do some young men take rock music and their appreciation of it so seriously? Sure, we all want to just hear the music, but the language in which that gets expressed seems often way disproportionate to the scale of the problem, so I stand by the point (I like beanplating anyway). :-)
posted by colie at 10:29 AM on December 14, 2013


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