Something Bothering Me About Smartphones
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I saw it at the Fleetwood Mac concert in Los Angeles last Summer, and I noticed it at The Beatles Tribute last Monday. People slipping their hands in their coats and pockets and fingering their smartphones, the illuminated screens being readily apparent in the darkness. Whether they were only checking their to-do lists, or actually recording the events is as best a suspicion... There was one guy two rows behind me who was openly using his smartphone last Monday, and I thought about calling the ushers, however, a few moments later, he had left. Earlier that evening, there was somebody else who was warned to put away their phone, else be ejected from the show. All my life, I've been a dweeb. I've always considered doing the right thing and reporting these kinds of incidents at the risk of "not being cool", or being mistaken for doing so. What do you think? Would you report them?
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Audley's Piano:
I saw it at the Fleetwood Mac concert in Los Angeles last Summer, and I noticed it at The Beatles Tribute last Monday. People slipping their hands in their coats and pockets and fingering their smartphones, the illuminated screens being readily apparent in the darkness. Whether they were only checking their to-do lists, or actually recording the events is as best a suspicion... There was one guy two rows behind me who was openly using his smartphone last Monday, and I thought about calling the ushers, however, a few moments later, he had left. Earlier that evening, there was somebody else who was warned to put away their phone, else be ejected from the show. All my life, I've been a dweeb. I've always considered doing the right thing and reporting these kinds of incidents at the risk of "not being cool", or being mistaken for doing so. What do you think? Would you report them?
There are still people who care about audience recordings?
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seventieslord:
Audley's Piano:
I saw it at the Fleetwood Mac concert in Los Angeles last Summer, and I noticed it at The Beatles Tribute last Monday. People slipping their hands in their coats and pockets and fingering their smartphones, the illuminated screens being readily apparent in the darkness. Whether they were only checking their to-do lists, or actually recording the events is as best a suspicion... There was one guy two rows behind me who was openly using his smartphone last Monday, and I thought about calling the ushers, however, a few moments later, he had left. Earlier that evening, there was somebody else who was warned to put away their phone, else be ejected from the show. All my life, I've been a dweeb. I've always considered doing the right thing and reporting these kinds of incidents at the risk of "not being cool", or being mistaken for doing so. What do you think? Would you report them?
There are still people who care about audience recordings?
In my experience over the last few years, these bands don't much care about policing people making recordings anymore. They know the quality is bound to be crappy, and many of them (like Pearl Jam and Peter Gabriel) have gone further and offered good-quality recordings to buy online, sometimes for every show of the tour. I had the good fortune to be in the third row for Elton John recently, and almost everybody was openly taking photos and video at times (including me). Elton didn't seem bothered and didn't say a word about it.
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Roger Waters has gone on record about people using smartphones at his concerts, saying he doesn't understand how someone could be watching his concert and fiddling with their phone at the same time. Probably the dumbest use of a smartphone I've ever seen was at the concert Paul did at The Joint in Las Vegas in 2009. There was Paul, live onstage, not 100 feet away, and some douche in front of me was taking pictures of the video screen instead. I just wanted to scream at him! The only thing to do is ban all cellphones at concerts, but I think people would just not go if they tried to do that. Yes, it's out of control, but the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.
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I don't really understand why people do anything else with their smartphones at concerts besides take pictures. I guess they might be tweeting, but it's not really that important. I'm not a fan of eating during a concert; too distracting, not to mention messy and inconvenient. I might get one drink right before the show, but I really don't ever get up in the middle of a show and leave the performance, the way I've seen so many people do during "C Moon."
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When I last saw Paul in Liverpool, Xmas 12, there was a guy in the row infront of me, and he spent the WHOLE concert looking through his mobile. I don't understand these people. You could possibly argue that he hasn't seen Paul live, as he just watched it on a poor quality TV.
