I’ve noticed a seeming explosion in individuals recording snippets of gigs/concerts on their mobile phones or digital cameras. That’s all well and good except if you have to stand behind the person. It’s great paying anything upwards of $120 to see a little blurry screen with one of my favourite artists on it. It might even make sense if the quality of recordings etc made them useful mementoes. Incessant photo taking at gigs perplexes me too, especially with bigger artists. How many pictures of Bono/Justin/Ne-Yo/Brucie can I find online? It’s different I suppose if you’re getting a picture taken with the artist but a pic of them on stage, what’s the bloody point? Maybe I’m just getting old.
I can do without the idiots smoking dope around me. That’s basically why I quit going to concerts.
Here that’s a rarity now because smoking is barred in any place of work. Although on Sunday night at Manu Chao because it was in a big tent there was alot of dope smokage going on.
I was going to pick one of these but I just can’t; I hate them both so much.
Drunks and people making out. How do you have the money to blow $150 on festival tickets and then get so hammered that you’re (female) squatting beside a tree (so everyone can see your business) at 3:00 in the afternoon? Or guys passed out before the sun goes down.
Couples making out are even worse. One kiss during an appropriate song, I’ve got no problem with that. Full-out, tongues buried in their throats is rude and awkward to everyone else there. And I may not keep my elbows quite so close to my body if I’m getting pushed into you by the people behind me.
I can do without the ads for the band’s e-commerce site on the screens during the intermission. And any cellphone use, period.
I can handle the dope smoking though…saw my first concert at Winterland. 
Truthfully, I could do without the mandatory encore. Just play all your songs in your regular set. Then, if it’s a decent concert, we can leave. If it’s an absolutely amazing concert, come back out. But I’m tired of standing around for too long waiting for the band to come back out and play the three hits they haven’t played yet.
The one really drunk, really loud, really enthusiastic fan. Knows every lyric, and probably every inflection, but chooses to SCREAM along rather than sing, jumping and flailing his drunken arms in a tightly packed space. He’s not trying to be an asshole, but for him, nothing else exists in that room except him and the band, and it shows.
People getting out of their seats and standing so I can’t see the orchestra.
Michael Bolton.
You win.
Hell is other people. A concert is worse. It’s other people between me and the artist I came to see / hear.
I had this situation when I went to see Prince at one of his recent London gigs. He was some way through a cute medley of ballads - just him, his piano and his falsetto - and as he started ‘Condition of the Heart’ which has an excruciatingly delicate introduction, some drunken tuneless slattern started ‘singing’ directly behind me… she owes me the air-fare to Minneapolis…
Lame opening acts.
Stupid people all around me.
Any sort of “crowd participation” stunt.
Too much security.
Overpriced tickets.
Prerecorded backing tracks/lip-synching.
Excessive use of giant video screens.
Too long. I don’t want to see even my favoritest band in the whole wide world play for more than an hour.
Long, slow songs have no place in live concerts.
…and on the other side of the coin, when playing, I don’t want:
Some doof sticking his camera phone in my face.
Some doof smoking and blowing it in my face.
Moshing that bothers people who don’t want to mosh.
The soundman to say anything to me other than “Sure, no problem”.
I went and saw Machine Head last week.
Only complants i have was the 3 open bands that where on before the main band
And get punched in the back of the head from some random wanker in the mosh pit who lost his spot up the front and almost fell over.
Oh and paying $5.50 for a beer and it was only cheap beer aswell. Also they had a 2 drinks at a time purchase limit.
The person with the cell phone who apparently paid $250 for tickets so she can call everyone she every met in her life and scream “Guess where I am?”
You know how sometimes the band will just absolutely rock the house with a powerful, energetic and amazing performance of a song – people are dancing, screaming, grinning at one another, and you can feel the waves of adulation sweeping from the audience to the stage, and the whole room feels unified in this collective experience? And then the next song the band trots out is some agonizingly slow, listless ballad with worn-out lyrics that inevitably rhyme “baby” with “crazy?” That. I hate that.
Also, when the guy in front of me forgets he’s holding a plastic cup of beer and inadvertantly dumps it on any part of me.
Hell, even if he’s not drunk or screaming, the guy who loudly sings along to the music in a small club should be thrown out on his ass. We’ve paid to hear the lead singer perform, not some random (often tone-deaf) dude.
This applies to general seating-type shows:
- While I can appreciate the fact that you’re a big fan of the band, do you really think it’s fair to secure the first 2 rows of seats by removing almost every piece of clothing that you have on to “save” seats? Yup, there you are, almost nude, with a string of your clothing taking up almost two whole rows.
Here’s one of your shoes! And look, a sock right next to it! I can see why you’re shivering, your coat’s 10 seats away from you. And hey, I found your purse! It’s even better to see your loser friends finally showing up 3 songs into the set; thank Og that you preserved the sanctity of their seating arrangements with the ferocity of a rabid mother wolverine.
- When seated at a dinner show, it’s the epitome of fandom applying enough perfume to approximate a whorehouse in distress. We all know how badly you want to bang the lead singer, but don’t you think you’ll have better luck just going backstage, and giving him your famous Naked Meat Girl imitation?
The fact that you managed to taint everyone else’s meal with your industrial-strength-odor-du-jour is of course the least of your worries. Never mind that the bass player’s eyes are watering enough so that he can no longer see the set list.
Pushing and trying to mosh when there isn’t enough room. It just results in piles of people who can barely breathe, let alone pump their fists when it’s time for it in the song. Just forget about moshing already!
On the plus side, when it’s this packed, when you lose your footing you don’t fall down as there is less than a foot between you and the next body!
Whistlers. Clap, cheer or do whatever you want, as long as it isn’t during a song, but why do you have to express your appreciation by piercing the eardrums of everybody in the next five rows? Are you trying to get the band to invite you onstage and give you a ten-minute whistling solo or something? Hey, dipshit, it’s really painful!