There was a movement and a change when the the band used to play the slow song. The one you’d all been waiting for, desperately hoping it hasn’t been missed off the playlist while knowing it couldn’t have been. The lights might dim a little further; the sound of the flints adding an unexpected percussive element. The music swelled and in that moment the audience was united. One.
And then, just as the record was replaced by the CD, the humble flame was replaced. It was attacked by fire restrictions, anti-smoking messages and modernity. Those moments haven’t changed - the music still swells, the feeling in the air changes and strangers share the ultimate moment of bliss at that riff and those lyrics happening live. Now. Just a few feet away.
It certainly takes some of the romance away from those performances, but it adds something else. The glow from the audience is still created during those key moments, but now it is mobile phones and digital cameras rather than an open flame. The kicker is that it’s not just a shared experience in that moment but something that is now captured, recorded and stored to be relived later - smaller and at lower quality - but available.
It’s said that on a scale of online audience participation, for every 1 person who creates, 10 people actively interact and 100 people just observe. That doesn’t work out when you consider that at a gig, at least 30% of the audience are taking multiple photos if not videoing parts of the performance.
There’s a hell of a lot of media out there that people take home, put on a hard drive and NEVER DO ANYTHING WITH EVER AGAIN. This is galling - there are terabytes, easily GOOGLEBYTES, of experiences wasting away. It’s cheap (and often even free) to upload and share, even if it’s just on Facebook. On a hard drive, media is as useful as an art collection locked in a safe or a book never read. It should be viewed and enjoyed - we have an amazing vehicle for this..
Put it online. Tag it, make it machine indexable, accessible and usable. Connect with people. Open up. Will you please stop hoarding?
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