Stopping people filming on their phones at gigs? No No No!

This admiring stuff going around about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their “pre-emptive strike” against people with camera phones at gigs - what’s all that about then? Oh what, the punters have dared to offend the performers by … er, wanting to photograph or film them? On stage. During a public performance. Right, how truly awful of them. Such bare-faced rudeness. This puts me in mind of those idiot-performers who “shush” the audience, complaining if people so much as whisper during one of their precious songs. As I’ve said on this blog several times previously, there’s already far too much of this self-aggrandising band behaviour doing the rounds. Don’t talk. Don't photograph. Don’t film. Wait and wait until we’re ready to go on stage. Don’t stand there, stand here. All clap now. Cheer the drummer/keyboardist/technical staff. Laugh at our unfunny stories. Whoop when we say whoop. On and on. And, of course, the big one: make sure you buy our stuff from the merch table afterwards … They’re not all like this of course, but why should we collude with the YYY’s haute grandeur? At gigs I personally wield my battered old iPhone whenever I feel like it. Yep, that’s WHENEVER I DAMN WELL FEEL LIKE IT. Got that! So yes, I’ll probably snap the band's ugly mugs for the gig scrapbook back home and I might even record a quick video (or two!) if I can be bothered to hold the phone out straight for a few minutes. I reckon bands should be glad they’ve actually got people who want to go to see them (often paying a fair bit of money to do so). I don’t think they should be grouching about people’s - perfectly understandable - behaviour. And I don’t think we, the audience/commentariat, should be applauding the over-controlling behaviour of the bands. So all those who agree with me shout: “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” But only when I say so …