I Love Concerts (but I hate concert-goers)

1) Bonnie and Mavis

I went to see Mavis Staples and Bonnie Raitt last week at the Beacon Theater. It was a great show. Bonnie Raitt is a true pro, as mentioned previously. In the last few years, I've decided to try to see live performances of artists I like or love who are getting old. Mavis is up there, Bonnie still has a decade in her, but who knows when I'm going to see her live again. I went to see Van Morisson a few years ago, knowing that eventually he will be become a recluse and die. And I'm happy to say that I saw Levon Helm before he kicked the bucket.


But I digress.


Going to concerts reminds me that I really like music and that there is a world out there that is bigger than my small work-filled grind of a life (no offense to me, I have it better than most). What I dislike the most at concerts, however, are other concert-goers. And the cheaper the seats, the worse these people are. I think it stems from the fact that we are all there in reverence to the performers on stage and nothing else matters out in audience-land; we are one mass bowing down to a higher power, and for a couple of hours, human respect and individuality goes by the wayside. People have no problems telling each other to shut up or stop taking pictures in an aggressive manner of entitlement -- they're in the right of course, because we are all at this concert to focus on the one main event on the stage. Any distraction they receive from another spectator is fair game for insult. And this, I have to say, annoys me very much. For one thing, sometimes I talk to the person I'm with at rock concerts to share in my joy and excitement about a song. Sometimes I take pictures with my iPhone or iPad for a little bit to capture a crappy photo of the stage that is miles away. To me, this is what going to a rock/pop concert is about, enjoying the show and sharing with others. But many people around feel a compulsion to ruin it for me. At the Bonnie Raitt concert, I whipped out my iPad to take a picture, hoping the resolution would be better than on my iPhone. It was, but there was too much light. I tried for a bit, then the woman behind tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the stare of death. I glared back and asked what seemed to be the problem (as if I didn't know). She said that I was blocking her view. I took out the iPad for 30 seconds and that's how long it took for someone's concert-rage to be hurled at me. I looked back at her full of my own concert-rage and told her "I hate people like you at these shows" except it gets drowned out by the song playing below -- which, by the way, is "I'll Take You There," The Staples Singers most popular tune. I felt like the whole experience was ruined because one person decided to get all righteous on me at a critical moment. I felt an internal aggression that made it difficult for me to continue enjoying the song, so I got up and listened from the aisle. Maybe I was in the wrong, but I couldn't get over the fact that we all feel compelled to hate each other at concerts, yet shower the performer with such love. It just seems to run counter to the overall concert experience. As if the fact that I might say something to my boyfriend sitting next to me during the show means that I like the performer a little less than the person who is shushing me (and one-upping me), and therefore that person is RIGHT. Ugh. People. I hate them.


And PS: I've played gigs myself and people have talked during them, and sure, it's annoying, but that's life.


2) This has nothing to do with concerts, but I thought I'd bring it up

Newsflash! American kids are spoiled and over-coddled. This article in the New Yorker reviews a book that talks about all this stuff: parents doing too much for their kids, parents telling their kids that they're special all the time, parents not teaching kids the value of hard work and self-sufficiency, which results in parents feeling exasperated by their kids who can't actually do anything on their own etc. etc. I don't have kids so I can't really say how I'd act as a parent but I really hope that I wouldn't do what I see so many parents do today. Parental failure gets manifested through every bratty, rude and over-confident kid I encounter in the real world, or as real as the upper east side of Manhattan is. Key quote from the article: “Never before have parents been so (mistakenly) convinced that their every move has a ripple effect into their child’s future success.” That's kind of a nicer way of saying: note to parents: you're not that special, either. Another key point in the article is that it seems that parents are looking to get approval from their kids these days, and not the other way around as it once was. Imagine, a world where the children are kings. This is no Truffaut movie of magical youths, think more "Children of The Corn" applied to the entire USA. FEAR. I won't be able to sleep tonight.