Last night The Long-Suffering Wife and I (and our niece) went to a concert. With one odd exception (which of course, will be the one I rant about at length) it was a wonderful evening.
The venue was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. It’s truly an exceptional place to go to a concert. Aside from its iconic architectural status (designed by Frank Gehry), it is acoustically nearly perfect. The primary concert program tenant there is the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It’s a relatively small room, only 2,265 seats, so there literally is not a bad seat in the house. There are even tiers of seats behind the stage as well as in front and on the sides. We’ll have to get tickets for those seats sometime.
I’ve been there before with my daughter to hear classical organ music. (There’s a monstrously huge pipe organ built in with a pipe structure that’s as much fine art as it is functional.) It was The Long-Suffering Wife’s first trip there. The headlining artist was her absolute favorite, Phil Vassar.
While the Disney Concert Hall has hosted a wide variety of artists, it seemed that this was the first time that a country-western artist had performed there. It was fun to see the staff in their black and white semi-formal wear interacting with the country fans in cowboy hats, boots, T-shirts, and so on. It was an interesting intersection of diverse segments of society.
We’ve seen Phil Vassar several times before, including in some fairly small venues. We both love his music, and his shows are even better. He puts on an extremely fun, energetic, sing-along show, not only with his hits, but also mixing in some unconventional (but no less fun) tunes. Last night this included “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” from The Proclaimers, “Stay” by Maurice Williams and made a #1 hit by the Four Seasons, and “Summer Nights” from “Grease.”
The short version — we would both highly recommend you go see a Phil Vassar concert when he comes to your area.
The one oddity that stuck out like a sore thumb to me was the concert hall policy regarding photography, and the aggressive and inconsistent enforcement of it by the ushers and staff. To be blunt, what planet and what decade are these people living in? (I’m betting the ushers just have a job to do and get fired if they’re not hopping, so it’s some set of senior managers that I think are totally out of touch.)
We were told when we entered that no photography would be allowed in the theater. Right. Standard disclaimer. Blah, blah, blah.
Then they actually started jumping all over folks for taking pictures with their cell phones. We were there early and in our seats twenty minutes or more before the first opening act started. We saw dozens of people (taking selfies and pictures of the empty stage) get politely told that they really meant it, NO PHOTOGRAPHY! The couple sitting next to us said that he had been told that if they didn’t obey they would be kicked out of the concert.
REALLY??
I understand that they want to protect their music and images, so they don’t want videos and recordings on the internet. I’m sure that it’s much less a problem with the tuxedo and evening gown crowd that are there to see the LA Phil. But to a mainstream concert crowd at a country, rock, pop, or other concert? Surely you can’t be serious.
Thirty years ago, it was a big deal. More importantly, it was orders of magnitude easier to enforce. Cameras used film, recordings used cassettes, and you bought your music on “record albums.” If you were cutting edge, you might be buying those new-fangled “compact discs.” Because the photography and recording bans were easy to enforce, the only things that survive today (aside from all of the “official” stuff) are a few really bad Instamatic photos and some really crappy bootleg recordings. (Except for the Grateful Dead concerts. They were pioneers.)
That’s changed. 100%. 360 degrees. It’s a whole new universe out there and it’s been that way for going on ten years. Now it’s a sure bet that 99.999% of the folks in the room have a smart phone that can take pictures, record sound, and probably record HD video. It’s totally unrealistic to try to enforce a “no photography” policy.
Even worse, the people we saw getting warned were not recording any music. They were taking pictures of the really neat concert hall and the empty stage. Most were taking selfies of themselves and their friends in the really neat concert hall. I would love to hear the justification for trying to ban those kinds of pictures. Really, I’m serious, if you work for the Disney Concert Hall or LA Philharmonic, let me know.
Because the artists on stage had nothing to do with that policy. Phil Vassar actually opened his show by walking out on stage with a cell phone, taking pictures of the audience. He repeatedly throughout his concert, while singing, was down at the front of the stage, posing with fans who were taking pictures and video of the concert. Ditto (to a slightly lesser extent) with the two opening acts.
I haven’t been to a concert in years where a total ban on photos was in effect. If I try to bring in a professional camera and a huge telephoto lens, I’ll get turned away. No problem. Ditto if I have a tripod. Ditto if I whipped out a high-end HD video camera, even though they’re quite small enough to smuggle in these days. I get that the artists (or at least their management companies) don’t want unauthorized professional recordings and photos taken. That’s how they make their money. I get it, I agree, no problem.
But amateur, jumpy, lousy audio cellphone video? Selfies to put up on FaceBook or Instagram to say, “Hey, I’m at the concert!”? Grainy and blurry cellphone pictures taken at maximum digital zoom in extreme lighting conditions?
Aside from the simple and obvious fact that it’s flat out impossible to enforce such a ban, there’s no reasonable or logical reason to do so. None of those images or recordings are reducing your income or revenue. Not a dime. But harassing and pissing off your fans? THAT will reduce your revenue.
Do those up and coming opening acts (or even the well-established headliners) want their music “stolen” by people who are going to reduce their sales? No, obviously not. But that’s not what’s happening. The amount of revenue lost because someone got a copy of a cellphone video from a concert and didn’t spend 99¢ to download the song from Amazon has got to be infinitesimal.
Do those up and coming opening acts (or even the well-established headliners) want hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of fans posting concert pictures on social media and going off on how great the concerts were? Do they want “buzz” as new fans stumble on them? You bet your ass they do. That’s better than gold these days. (Check out social media or official web pages for almost any artist – most encourage fans to take pictures.)
So why would anyone in their right minds ever have a “no photos” policy, let alone try to enforce one?
Which leads to the final point that made the policy unreasonable. The folks who got there early and were taking pictures were warned by the staff. The folks who got there fifteen minutes later, just before the opening act, never got a word said to them. Throughout all three acts, particularly the Phil Vassar concert, I would estimate that easily 30% to 40% of the audience were taking pictures and video. Not a word was said to any of them, nor should there have been. Obviously.
So why jump all over folks who happened to be the first ones in? I get it, they were easy to spot and the ushers weren’t busy. If you’re the manager who really has a bug up your ass about this policy, that’s when you’re going to have your staff doing token enforcement. But to totally, 100% abandon that token enforcement as soon as the place started to fill up? That’s just random harassment. It’s totally unjustified.
Did I record video on my cellphone last night? No, I didn’t. I’ve done it at dozens of other concerts over the years, including previous Phil Vassar concerts. Last night was about enjoying the concert and making sure that Ronnie enjoyed it, not about me getting so-so recordings of it.
Did I take pictures on my cellphone last night? Not really. There was no need, I’ve got pictures of the concert hall from when I’ve been there before (and been a “scofflaw”).
But I did take this picture near the end of the concert, just to thumb my nose a bit at this stupid policy. See that reddish blob in the center? That’s Phil Vassar!
Trust me.
(I actually like this picture as an abstract image. It contains everything and nothing, simultaneously.)
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 