By Kirstin Piening
I went to watch one of my favourite bands play recently. The music couldn’t be faulted, but it was one of the worst gigs I have ever been to. Why? During the last song one female decided it was appropriate to get up on to stage and start taking selfies of herself and the lead singer while he was still playing. She then proceeded to film the audience as further narcissistic evidence of her antics, and shout loudly to her friends in the front few rows about how ‘crazy’ and ‘wild’ she was being.
Quite simply, the quality and success of a gig is dependant on the people who are there. No matter if the band plays better than the opening night of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, if you are surrounded by dickheads the gig is going to suck. There are a few rules of gig
etiquette you can do to avoid being said dickhead, therefore relieving yourself of the wrath of every person in your vicinity.
First and foremost, don’t get up on stage and act like a twat. People didn’t pay to see you dance around, so don’t force people to have to watch it. ‘Selfie girl’, who inspired this article, will forever go down in my mind as one of the worst people ever to live (probably somewhere between slow walkers and Stalin), so please don’t follow suit and end up on the collective gig-goers blacklist.
Please don’t mosh excessively around people who clearly do not want to be moshed. Especially at a gig that isn’t the type to even warrant moshing. I don’t personally understand the concept, but if you get your kicks from slamming in to other people to music, by all means go ahead. However, when you ricochet off someone, bashing in to me so I fall on to the sticky, beer-coated floor, shit will definitely go down.
On a side note to beer-coated floors, drinks are for drinking, not for throwing. You are not a toddler throwing a tantrum and no one wants beer in his or her hair.
Less potentially dangerous than rouge moshers, but arguably more infuriating, is filming the entire show on your Iphone. Next time, before you do this at a gig, please just stop and think, ‘will I actually ever watch this video again?’ I guarantee the answer will be in the ‘very probably not’ to ‘hell no’ range. The video you are painstakingly recording is going to be of terrible quality, because, lets face it, you are not a professional photographer, and your Iphone isn’t a real camera. It will probably be shaky, out of focus and you won’t even be able to hear the band because of the obnoxious couple next to you who have loud pointless conversations the whole way through. Which brings me quite nicely on to my next ‘don’t’…
Do not talk at gigs. Or rather, do not have entire conversations that are completely off topic (i.e. not directly concerning the band playing) all the way through a gig. Short quiet exchanges are perfectly fine, a quick catch up while the band retune or otherwise faff around is more than ok. However, there is a time and a place to have a significant, in depth conversation about your family drama/cat/significant other, but that time is not next to me, and the place is definitely not in the middle of a show.
Probably the biggest “don’t” among festival-goers is pushing all the way to the front, when people have spent probably several hours waiting to stand where you are trying to get, three minutes before the show starts. There isn’t really anything excusable about this, just don’t do it. If you barge through loads and loads of people then they will all hate you, especially if you then talk all the way through the gig, film it on your Iphone, and jump up on stage and take selfies with the lead singer.
Honourable mentions: giant backpacks, PDA’s, texting/tweeting throughout, and being so miserable you bring down the partay mood for everyone else.
Comments