What if you performed a concert and the crowd refused to watch?
It’s not as far-fetched as it seems. As more and more concertgoers fiddle with cell phone cameras and fidget with BlackBerrys, some say mobile technology is ruining the concert experience.
“It’s extraordinarily irritating,” said Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. “All these people holding up these horrid little squares of bright light.”
“It drives me crazy,” said singer Steve Earle. “They have their use, but there’s definitely a price to pay.”
It’s not just a case of cranky Baby Boomers griping about the young and the restless. Plenty of younger artists and fans also are getting fed up with the tech intrusion.
“As a performer, it’s frustrating to look out and see a sea of cell phones instead of faces,” says Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. “There’s definitely a problem where people are so busy documenting the moment that they forget to just live in the moment.”
Of course, pop concerts were awash in distractions long before the cell phone. In the early ’60s, shrieking girls made it impossible to hear the Beatles perform. In the ’90s, mosh pits made going to concerts a contact sport.
“You never expect 100 percent of people’s attention,” rapper Ice Cube says. “You learn to take 80 percent.”
But the levels seem to be rapidly shrinking thanks to “microboredom,” a term invented by — who else — a cell phone company to convince people they need to escape reality with their mobile gadgets.
At concerts, microboredom usually means fans snapping dozens of photos of the band, the crowd and the stage lights. The ultimate disconnect comes when they take pictures of the pictures on the video screen.
“Everyone has this strange archiving addiction now,” Canadian singer Feist says. “It’s like they’re trying to pin a butterfly to a corkboard.
“To me, a gig isn’t supposed to be for posterity. It’s supposed to be a bunch of people tossed together in a room, making a mood, and then it’s over. You can’t see the world through a viewfinder.”
But the existential crisis isn’t confined to photography. To some fans, a concert isn’t a concert until they’ve text-messaged their buddies about it.
“It’s a really interesting trend — instead of clapping, they’re blogging,” said Michael Stipe, poking fun at the tech-addicted crowd at R.E.M.’s recent show at March’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
But not all musicians regard mobile technology as a buzz kill. When cell phone use exploded in the late ’90s, bands had fans wave them in the air to create a million-points-of-light effect. Suddenly, flicking your Bic was passe.
Later, as text-messaging flourished, groups asked concertgoers to post messages on video screens. Today, some artists embrace the tech boom as a potential career boost.
“My bottom line is communication,” English rocker Billy Bragg says. “If they want to capture a photo of me and send it to a friend who can’t be at the gig, I don’t have a problem with that.”
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