Comments on: Shut Up, The Band Is Playing

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 13:59:39 +0000

Sadly becoming far too obvious and common at many music events now.

A friend of mine was at a festival a few years back and just turned round to said noisy b*ggers and said along the lines of: I paid my money to hear the band, not you chatting…

By: Ian Almond

Ian Almond — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 20:28:13 +0000

I am afraid this problem is endemic through out society, every one feels they have the right to endlessly talk and exercise their addiction to mobile phones and fewer and fewer people have the ability to concentrate on anything beyond five minutes. Hence the dumbing down of TV, film and Music.
At the last gig I went to it is not only the endless talking but the constant need to be up and down getting one pint after another as if getting pissed is more important than watching the band.
I’m afraid that we will have to get used to the fact that for many is that gigs are simply a back drop for a night out with mates and the venues obviously have a financial interesting in selling as much alcohol as possible.

By: Duncan Mawson

Duncan Mawson — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 06:01:48 +0000

It’s interesting that you mention pub covers bands, as I think this is partly to blame for the increased crowd noise at gigs in recent years.

People are so used to having loud music in the “background” on their night out that some cannot distinguish between a pub gig and a paid for gig anymore. It can be very frustrating at times.

By: Temple Stark

Temple Stark — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 20:03:56 +0000

Bands after 20 minutes or so have a right to 1) Stop playing 2) Get security to remove people. Why were neither of these steps taken? This takes NOTHING away from your point, which is completely valid – people need to shut up when there’s something else going on. To do so at a high volume means they were either drunk or didn’t care about anyone else or the band; both are reasons to be removed from the premises.

By: Tim Hall

Tim Hall — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 18:33:14 +0000

I’ve been to a few gigs where performers have asked people to shut up. Last one was at a jjazz gig.

By: Chuk

Chuk — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 18:28:13 +0000

I hate that kind of thing and it happened again when I was at a show the weekend before last — someone standing right behind me, talking so fast I could hardly believe she could get that many words out per minute and I don’t know how she managed to breathe. Loud enough that I could hear her through my earplugs which are usually pretty good at cutting crowd noise.
I was at a show (admittedly in a room with crappy acoustics) last year and the crowd was so loud during the first opener that she actually commented on it a couple of times, I would have been a lot ruder about it if I were her.