I recently had the opportunity to see Jim James of My Morning Jacket promoting his solo album. The show was phenomenal, and the audience remained captivated throughout its entirety. James switched from guitar to saxophone, dancing around the stage as his mane of hair billowed in the wind.
Impressed by the performance, I went digging deeper for more background information about the band. I was reading an in-depth article Paste magazine published interviewing James when I stumbled across a quote that stuck out to me.
"We try and make our fans understand that we're fans of music too, and the one thing technology cannot kill is the live music experience," James said in the article.
It's true. Technology has infiltrated nearly every aspect of face-to-face communication today. I know because I'm guilty of it. Breaking conversation to answer texts, scroll through Twitter, check for Facebook updates, make a ridiculous expression to return a Snapchat -- I've done it all.
A few days later I was looking through Twitter (the irony), and there it was again. Comedian Sammy Rhodes tweeted, "Just had a nice romantic date with my wife where we drank wine and stared deeply into each other's iPhones."
Humorous, but true. This rift in communication is everywhere. We know it and have accepted the fact that we're probably not going to put an end to it any time soon.
One of the only instances that has remained immune from the zombies we become any time an iPhone is involved is when we are at live music venues.
"People love to wax on about Springsteen or Zeppelin. To me, those are moments in time where it's proven that it's OK if 15,000 people come out to an arena to see someone play because the music is awesome," James said. "To me, that just makes the experience that much more massive and communal. For everyone to be singing 'Born to Run' in unison is crazy energy."
I'll say it again: it's so true. It doesn't matter if it's Beyonce or The Beach Boys; there is a microcosmic community that forms during a live show with a type of communication that can't be interrupted.
Unless you're that one guy at a concert who clearly got dragged along and doesn't want to be there, all eyes are glued to the stage. Dialogues "using music as a shared reference point," as James said, are created between performers and the audience, or between audience members.
Phones are usually only pulled out to preserve the moment by photographing or videoing. Other than that, diverting attention to check something on your cell phone really has no place at a concert because those in attendance have no desire to.
We should preserve this aspect of live music that usually goes unappreciated, and in the mean time work toward giving people in our daily lives the same kind of undivided attention we give performers.
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