Jack Loftus addresses what many consider to be an obnoxious modern concert phenomena in a not so bleak light. A nice new perspective... Personally, as a music blogger, I sometimes loathe my own need to record and document shows. Though at least I'm doing something with that content. I'd feel much better about this shift in the modern concert experience if I knew everyone else was doing the same.
The Modern Concert
"Some of my friends malign the appearance of cellphone photographers at concerts, saying their presence somehow cheapens the experience—perhaps not for them, the concert aficionado, per say, but for the person whose eyes are glued to the LCD screen and not the artists on stage.
But I don't know. These cameraphone zombies are spreading content to places it might not otherwise have been even a few years ago and that's a pretty powerful, important thing even if the sharer is missing half the show because they can't decide whether 'Toaster' encapsulates the band's effort more perfectly than 'Inkwell.'
Viewed in more optimistic light, this Modern Concert has played itself out in far more meaningful ways in places like Egypt and Tunisia, where the Modern Revolution made life impossible for oppressive dictators and gave the people a much louder, much more efficient voice—disconnected Internet attempts be damned.
The practice can certainly be abused, of course—thank you very little, girl who had to take six Blackberry flash-assisted photos before things were 'just right'—but that's the case with everything.
For whatever it's worth, the scope of humanity's newfound hyper-connectivity all came together for me with this silly photo. Maybe you've had a similar experience, if not at a concert then a speech or rally or sporting event. Whatever it was, it was an event where you too realized just how connected we've become in such a short amount of time.
In any case, the Modern Concert. Rock on."
(Continued... The Modern Concert)
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