I actually avoid going on nights out with certain friends because they spend most of their time chatting to people on their phones rather than conversating with the people they have gone out with.

At one of the most recent gigs I was at there was a girl filming bits of it on her iPad. I could have happily smashed it over her head.

why?

because you don't have an IPad?

she has paid to be there, I get annoyed by old people shuffling around supermarkets, but I don't push them out of the way

THE WORLD CHANGES, either get on, or stop participating.

... and yet, she's not there, she's a bystander, recording it instead of experiencing it, without realising.



Now that doesn't surprise me one little bit. How very dare "old people" with some mobility restriction even momentarily inconvenience such a superior human. It is indeed very benevolent of you to deign not to push them aside, in spite of their total lack of consideration in continuing to exist despite having got slow and old, but then pushing them could be dangerous as it could knock you off your high horse.

Paid to be there but still insisted on half heartedly watching the gig while half heartedly filming a multiple number of random half minute clips while waving a screen in the air.

I have a smart phone but chose to keep it in my pocket to enjoy the gig as it happened.

I could have pi$$ed up her back if I'd wanted to, as you say, I paid to be there.

That's a particularly stupid view. It assumes that all change is positive. Smoking became widespread among the population. Your view point would be don't challenge that as it's just how the world is.

For me, it's all about how things affect other people around you. If you want to film a gig/concert etc whatever that's up to you. I don't see the attraction to it to be honest, bar a short clip or a couple of pictures as memories of the event, but if you want to that's up to you. However whatever you do should have in mind other people. Does your filming of the event affect them?
If you're stood directly behind someone holding an IPad or even just a phone above their head the whole time it can be off-putting and affect your enjoyment of the event, not just the physical object in your sight line but they're usually lit in someway whilst recording too.

For me, recording an event in that manner shows a selfishness and lack of respect for other people around you who've also paid the same as you to watch the same event.

Also, when the artist, in this case, hasn't banned and strictly enforced a policy but has just politely asked people to do something that's so minor as to be unremarkable, it would seem to only be polite to comply.

I think if Kate Bush had performed in a couple of her shows and there was an issue with people overdoing it with cameras and phones, to the detriment of the viewing audience, then I would wholeheartedly back Bush in her request.

However, this is Bush's first concert in nearly 30 years, so she has no idea whether there would have been a problem anyway.

The request from Bush was very polite. But the fact St Kate has made this request means that the venue security and her most devoted fans will treat someone getting out their camera for a couple of snaps as close to a capital offence.

This has brought back the memory of videoing the final match at the Boulevard. I didn't bother with recording any of the game, just the post-match celebrations/commiserations. Whilst filming my mate and his daughter, some jobsworth comes along and tells me "you shouldn't be doing that". My reply was, "so ban me from the ground, see if I care". All this came over on the audio and according to my mate, the geezer just shrugged his shoulders and walked off

Polite request my ar5e.

Of course having security patrol the theatre all those times never created a separation between Bush and her fans at all.

However grouchy LGJM gets, the end result seems on most accounts to have been a spectacularly good eveningAccompanied by music ranging from polyphonic choral harmonies to folksy minstrels, it’s quite stunning, undoubtedly the most ambitious, and genuinely moving, piece of theatrical pop ever seen on a British stage.'"

FA - As I've said, this has never been an issue at ANY concert I've ever been to. The nearest thing to an issue I've seen is the argument between security and a woman because she made a call to a friend and was holding the phone up to give the other person a listen. I couldn't GAF about the woman's phone call, but the argument with security was very off-putting. And no, I wasn't immersed in the concert anyway because I was only there for my wife.

So just out of interest how many concerts have you been to that were spoiled by iPhone and iPad wielders?

Aren't you missing the point? Which is, that a person can not fully immerse themselves in the actual experience of an event, whilst all the time trying to be a recordist of the event. The central issue is people not realising that they are spoiling it FOR THEMSELVES.

Though having read about Kate Bush's concert, it seems to have been as much about theatricals as well as music, i.e. a total experience, and perhaps this is justification that even you would not dispute - you wouldn't deny that a performance of - say - Hamlet would be totally ruined both for camerapeople and the rest of the audience by a forest of waving iPhone screens; why? simply because the staging of such things and especially getting the most out of them is based on the concept of catharsis, and suspension of disbelief - or to put it in lay terms - you have to "get into it". It seems that Kate's gigis plenty of solid theatre as well as music and so this principle would apply.

In answer to your last question, if you waved your camera in the air whilst I was at a recent Ed Sheeran concert, I don't think it would have made much odds to me at all, - but would, to labour the point, interfere with YOUR experience of the gig even if you failed to realise this - but OTOH if you'd done it at Les Mis I'd have prolly taken your phone and stood on it for you.

I don't know how old you are, or how many gigs you've been to, but before the advent of smart phones, etc, the majority of the crowd at most gigs would immerse themselves in the experience; dance, wave their arms, sing along, mosh, wave lighters, whatever.

Now, if you stand at the back of a gig you see before you an ocean of little glowing screens and people fiddling with their devices rather than immersing themselves in the event. So yes, certainly the joint experience of some gigs can be ruined by this weird obsession with getting it on your phone and presumably onto facebook asap for your friends to see how cool you are and what a cool life you lead. Even if the performer is inevitably a tiny dot in the distance and the audio is inaudible and no-one gives a toss.

And what I find astounding is that these people, who may have paid a lot of money for that concert, are watching it ON A TINY SCREEN. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Look at the players walking up the steps at Wembley, so many people desperate to film it and therefore watching it ON A TINY SCREEN, when instead they could have had a much more personal experience, maybe shaken a player's hand, spoken to them, etc. Instead they're gazing at their little screen as the players pass by when the BBC are good enough to film the entire thing in HD for their televisual pleasure.

As for tablets, I'd make it law that anyone taking an ipad or similar to any event to film it should be dragged on stage and have it smashed over their tiny brains and then tossed to packs of ravernous wild dogs. Just because.

I do find it personally annoying when someone points their phone at the stage during the concert in front of me because of the distracting light from the phone itself. Also people who take flash photographs - inclouding from crappy iphone cameras.

Seriously, from 50 yards away you need decent lens to take any kind of good photo, let alone movie footgae. I bet it looks dreadful at home, especially with all the background noise of people talking 'oooh - I love this one' etc.

You can see from their screens that the pictures are wobbly, grainy and just generally sh*te. Surely they are as unwatched as the countless hours of home videos referred to?

Trying to pass this off as some young vs old thing is b*llocks as well. Most of the people I've seen filming concerts aren't kids but older people.

On a side note, my grandad used to take the silent cassette (cine 8 or whatever) movies every time we went on holidays. He insisted on showing us all the next year, which was suitably dull. However, after he died my uncle got a lot put onto video, which was quite cool because the films themselves were short (2-3 minutes). Watching it is actually more like "my childhood to age 10 in about 15 minutes".