miranda lambert

At the last big concert I went to, the woman next to me was recording videos, uploading them to Instagram Stories, and then playing them back immediately – with the volume so loud that I could hear them over the music.

At the Metro for Yo La Tengo, there were these two dudes not too far away from me having a very loud conversation about bands they'd seen, which kept getting louder and louder and overpowering the more hushed songs YLT was playing. Multiple people, both kindly and very directly, asked them to shut up or move somewhere else, but each time one of the dudes launched into this "we paid for our ticket, we can do whatever the fuck we want" tirade. They never shut up for the rest of the show. A few people went to go alert venue staff, but none ever showed up to deal with them. It was obnoxious.

I just think there is a not insignificant percentage of people that think buying entry to an event allows them to do whatever the fuck they want while in attendance and it's not fair for entertainers to suggest or request otherwise.

there’s a tension at the heart of all these concerts now — & this was stated explicitly by the fans in question i believe — where the attitude easily becomes “well i spent the equivalent of a month’s rent/mortgage on these tickets (or flights and hotel and tickets) so i’m gonna do whatever i want.” just one more way ticketmaster is ruining the live experience!

i’m sure what these women were doing was far from egregious and they just happened to catch her wrath that night. i routinely see ppl facetiming friends during shows, live streaming themselves singing along on IG etc … there’s no rules out there anymore. miranda, as we’ve talked about recently in other contexts, is a traditionalist in many ways, especially when it comes to performing, touring etc and what that means to the identity of the musician. her support from radio, nashville et al has waxed and waned over time but she’s always had her shows — she says this either explicitly or in so many words on stage (or has when i’ve seen her) & i do think for an old school country person like her there is something sacrosanct about the idea of showing up in your tour bus with your band and putting on a great show. now, vegas is explicitly not that, in various ways, but that’s still the mentality she brings to her live shows, i imagine

one thing i’d say in defense of these women is that each artist has their own attitude towards phone behavior during concerts these days. some want to lock everyone’s phones away in pouches, others encourage facetiming a friend who can’t be there but loves xyz song. most artists are somewhere in between ofc… maybe there’s a point in the show where everyone is asked to take their phones out and take their selfies so as to not disrupt the rest of the concert. i personally think what the women were doing was annoying given the song, but based on what i’ve seen both from fans & artists at other shows it would be hard to say it was even out of the ordinary much less over the line

Agree that the context (artist, song, venue) is important, and to some degree, fans just need to be more self-aware and thoughtful; I take photos and short videos at every show I attend, but I always try to do so discreetly and at an appropriate moments. The loud assholes at quiet shows thing will likely always be a thing, unfortunately. I don't know to what extent policing obnoxious behavior is appropriate, but what morrisp shared would have set me off. There are obviously big generational shifts here, too, and Lambert is decidedly of the previous generation (and maybe even the one before it, at heart).

"Excuse me, Mr. MacKaye. I paid five dollars for this ticket. I should be allowed to dance as violently as I please."

I've actually noticed more people keeping their phones away lately, tbh.

Is Miranda OK with fans leaving to use the bathroom? To go to the bar?

I went to see Crowded House a few months back, and there was this one guy standing when other people were sitting (new song) and telling him to sit, too. He was pissed, kind of the opposite of that Yo La story: "I paid good money for my seat, because this is my favorite band, and if I want to stand and enjoy myself and show my appreciation, I am going to do it!"

Anyway, here's Harry Styes stopping a show for a pregnant fan to go use the bathroom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXpvoad6aA

Miranda demands everyone hold onto the their beer cups in case they need to pee.

i think what set her off here was the timing of the photo op with “tin man” which is one of the most personal and crushing songs in her discography. i think she took that as an affront, like either these ppl are not “real” fans or are at best not paying much attention to the show or connecting w it emotionally

I can't imagine someone doing this stuff at, say, a stand-up comedy gig and expect to not be called out

I should add that at the actual most recent concert I attended (a few weeks ago) – which was also a "big concert," in that it was at an outdoor theater – one of the performers saw someone FaceTiming from the front row, asked for the phone, and sung a few verses directly to the person at the other end, before carefully handing it back. So attitudes def. differ (this was a performer at a different level/point in her career than Miranda).

I've seen both Springsteen and St. Vincent down a fan's drink.

I went to see Crowded House a few months back, and there was this one guy standing when other people were sitting (new song) and telling him to sit, too. He was pissed, kind of the opposite of that Yo La story: "I paid good money for my seat, because this is my favorite band, and if I want to stand and enjoy myself and show my appreciation, I am going to do it!"

This is a tricky aspect of concert etiquette. I feel like it should be technically ok to stand if you want to stand... but at the same time, I'd feel hella self-conscious standing up if no one around me was doing it, and it's better if there's a critical mass of other standers.

I agree. But this was one of those crowds that stands for the old songs then sits for the new then stands then sits, back and forth, depending on the song, which I get but which is also kinda lame. It was starting to bug me, that's for sure. By the time they got this guy to sit down the song was over, and everyone stood up again for the next song, anyway.

Yeah that is lame

I mean, I don't blame that guy much. I get wanting to be excited, that said, his answer there was almost verbatim answer we got from the two spinners in the aisle behind us at Dead and Co. who kept smacking us in the back of the head while they danced and spun around.

For sure never be making contact with anyone unless it's a pit situation (even there, I accidentally elbowed the woman in front of me in the head at a Pavement show, and was absolutely mortified)

There are any number of things I'd expect to encounter at a Dead & Co (etc.) show that would drive me nuts, from the music on down.

i do think for an old school country person like her there is something sacrosanct about the idea of showing up in your tour bus with your band and putting on a great show.

It's a Vegas residency...

Does she have Willie Nelson's old tour bus parked outside of the MGM Grand to keep that authentic feeling?

Getting dressed down by the artist is hardly the worst thing that can happen to you at a Country show in Vegas.

There are any number of things I'd expect to encounter at a Dead & Co (etc.) show that would drive me nuts, from the music on down.

Yeah, I expected this, but it was a good example as to what we were talking about...

miranda hardly even dressed down those fans! she never raised her voice. she stopped the song, said she was a little pissed, motioned at the fans to please stop, said all she wanted to do was sing country music, basically remaining upbeat and respectful the entire time, and restarted the song. all in the course of 30 or 40 seconds. i can't imagine a fan being angry about that, no matter what they paid for a ticket.

cohost Sunny Hostin said that she's "going to take as many selfies as I want if I paid $757 for tickets,"

sunny hostin is a wealthy woman who lives in new york city. has she ever been to the theater? or the opera? 'cause you damn well can't take selfies there, and i'm going to take a wild guess that the average show on broadway or at the met costs more than miranda lambert in vegas.

fans who just want to stand up and dance, on the other hand, should be allowed, and encouraged, to do so at all times, unless they're being assholes.

At the theatre and stuff they generally do tell you to at least silence your phones, and often to turn them off entirely so they don't mess with mics (supposedly), but you're right, it would pretty funny to see someone stand up and take a selfie in the middle of a performance of "Hamilton" or something. When I saw Springsteen on Broadway they told everyone to just put their phones away or risk getting kicked out, but that at the end of the show Bruce would come back out and basically let people take as many photos as they wanted.

It's a Vegas residency...

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, July 24, 2023 3:50 PM (two hours ago)

did the following six words in my post -- "now, vegas is explicitly not that" -- render in invisible ink on your screen, or did you purposefully leave them out of your quote in order to pick a fight about nothing? cuz it seems like the latter! the next question would be... why?

to be fair, there's a difference between attending a show where the crowd needs to remain quiet to allow for spoken words (like stand-up comedy or Broadway) vs. a country/rock concert, where the crowd can sing along, shout, buzz even during the quiet times, etc.

i love Miranda and think she should do what she wants, but i also think probably the best move here would've been to ignore them. the best move at a concert - *esp* a loud concert - is usually to ignore if at all possible.

with regard to what cuz said, she was polite enough about it, but still, i would feel humiliated and, later, angry, and i think this woman is reasonable to feel that way.

i say all this as an old man who definitely sees concert crowds going in a very bad, self-absorbed/entitled direction.

xp - I just thought you gotta understand, she's an old school road dawg country tradition blah blah blah was silly given the context. She's a pop country superstar two decades into her career playing a Vegas residency. She can have whatever standards she wants for her audience but traditionalism has nothing to do with those standards.

But stages (and audiences) as big as Vegas' have always been a part of the country tradition: they want big audiences and they don't mind being as cornball about wooing them as possible. This is a genre of rhinestones and teased-up hair, etc. as much as it is about smaller gestures.

At the Metro for Yo La Tengo, there were these two dudes not too far away from me having a very loud conversation about bands they'd seen, which kept getting louder and louder and overpowering the more hushed songs YLT was playing. Multiple people, both kindly and very directly, asked them to shut up or move somewhere else, but each time one of the dudes launched into this "we paid for our ticket, we can do whatever the fuck we want" tirade. They never shut up for the rest of the show. A few people went to go alert venue staff, but none ever showed up to deal with them. It was obnoxious.

At one YLT show I saw there — May 31, 1997 — it seemed like most of the audience was carrying on conversations among themselves, nearly drowning out the mostly-quiet set. More people were talking than were irritated by it, and while YLT were visibly frustrated, they didn’t address it (though they would’ve been justified in doing so).

When I saw Pete Townshend in 1997 the audience was similarly acting as if they were at a party where Townshend happened to be providing the background music…even though tickets were $95 (very expensive for the time). At one point, Townshend moved over to a keyboard and put on a headset mic. He was telling his soundperson that he couldn’t hear himself and then said, “Of course, it could be because of this fucking audience,” then immediately said, “Sorry.”

He’d mellowed a bit since the ‘70s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PixnWVee75Y

This is an interesting discussion that goes way beyond the Miranda Lambert incident and probably merits its own thread. Someone mentioned upthread that artists are actually interacting with fans who are facetiming their friends or doing IG live...that is super intriguing to me. Both the pros and cons, and how it impacts fan expectations at shows, etc. It is probably just an evolution to artists crowd surfing and going out into their audiences, which have generated some of my most memorable concert-going experiences (e.g., I once helped lift Tim Harrington into the air after he'd climbed into a garbage can at Pitchfork). But the old man in me thinks all of this needs to be artist-initiated and on their terms.

yeah, different acts are going to have different ideas about fan boundaries. Like when I saw a Soundgarden/Voivod show in 91, Chris Cornell walked across the crowd on our hands and shoulders, whereas when I saw Slayer in 1988 they would punch or kick anyone who tried to stage dive, including the singer from the opening act.

man jeff tweedy used to be super bitchy with fans. i saw a couple walk up in front of the stage at a theater show and try to take a selfie with him in the background and he tried to kick them and said he doesn't appreciate being treated like an animal at the zoo. at a different show some dude stood up and clapped along with a really quiet part and tweedy absolutely berated him after the song. i think he punched a dude who ran on stage one time

There was a clip of Steve Lacey stomping on a phone someone threw on stage

I mean anything thrown on stage / toward the artist is a different story

at a different show some dude stood up and clapped along with a really quiet part and tweedy absolutely berated him after the song.

I've never seen him berate an individual fan, but I've seen Tweedy/Wilco a couple of times and he definitely has a bug up his ass about people clapping along with his songs. It throws him off.

When I saw him live last month or so he told a funny story about playing a festival in Iceland recently and constantly getting recognized across the island. He said on his last day he went to the Blue Lagoon to relax and people kept coming up to him asking for selfies. He (half) joked that if he is in his bathing suit, that's a sign you really shouldn't ask him for a selfie.

I saw Tweedy get super pissy at a late '90s/early '00s show. The theater was only half full and he got in trouble with the venue management for smoking on stage.

ok enough of this jeff tweedy digression
you don’t gotta to go home but you can’t stay here etc

Relevant as to precedent, your honor.

But it does seem unfair to lump Lambert in with whiny guys like him. Apart from this I don't think I've ever heard drama about her audience relations.

if i didn’t say anything you nerds would drone on abt tweedy for a week so consider it precautionary <3

just me over here tapping the sign real friendly-like

ok enough of this jeff tweedy digression

thank you

Audience members have been throwing things on stages as long as there have been stages, and stage crashing is not a new phenomenon, but this recent cluster of incidents feels like a game of stuntlike one-upmanship, designed to go viral. Disrupting a celebrity — inserting yourself into their narrative — may now be the ultimate concert souvenir.

For fans whose primary engagement with culture is virtual — this feels particularly true post-pandemic, when polite concertgoing wasn’t an option — the sense of a performer as a human is less firm. And demonstrating this kind of proximity to a famous person is a logical next step of the evolution from autographs to selfies. The stars are no longer out of reach; they are backdrops. There was a flash of this in the recent kerfuffle at a Miranda Lambert concert, where the singer chided some women in the crowd for taking photos of themselves while she was singing. (At least those phones weren’t airborne.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/arts/music/crowds-throwing-objects-at-musicians.html

https://musicrow.com/2023/11/breaking-miranda-lambert-jon-randall-partner-with-big-loud-to-launch-big-loud-texas/

I'm not surprised by her politics, but ugh what a lousy bill to be on.

What the hell @mirandalambert ???

I thought you were one of the good ones. #hugedisappointment pic.twitter.com/pQDpNSIjFa

— Just Jeff (@AttorneyJeff) November 13, 2023

wasn't / isn't she romantically involved with a cop?

NARRATOR: She's never been one of the Good Ones.

Or, rather, it's foolish to expect political consistency from these people.

That Kid Rock/Aldean bill might as well be called the Double Down Picnic.

Nelly really sticking out there.