Last night I went to a concert by the upcoming Swiss band Pablo Nouvelle. It was a mesmerizing, nostalgia-inducing experience. There was something about the venue, small and snug, and apparently the only music-place you can smoke inside in all of Switzerland. There were exactly so many people to fill the room without it getting crowded and most of them knew one of the band members personally. What hit me the most: There was not a single cellphone-monitor to be seen in the air all night.
I have been an avid concert-visitor for the last 15 years. Concerts have played a crucial role in my youth (at some point, I went to concerts more often than to school). Just like cinema, they provide a frame for immersive disconnection with reality. The dark, crowded dance floor. The lit-up stage. The wall of sound. The sudden jump your heart takes when you hear the first chords of your favorite song.
When smartphones became portable cameras, the dark crowd became a glowing sea of cold light. I remember a guy taping a whole concert of Bon Iver with his phone. It was the thing you’d find on Youtube: shaky, noisy, distorted. It was all the concert was not. It was all bullshit. A waste of time.
A few years back I went to see the great Gil Scott-Heron at Fabrik in Hamburg, shortly before he died. It was a mind-blowing, subtle concert with a tenuous, frail-skinned Gil. Everytime someone would raise his phone to take a picture, Gil would stop singing, point his fingers at the camera and shake his head. The procedure occurred two, three times, until the very last person understood: No taping here. The moment will be gone, vanished like a ghost. No holding back. Like there was no holding back Gil.