Hello! This is a long one. tldr: COME TO MY SHOW ON SUNDAY AND I WILL NOT HERD YOU LIKE CATTLE.
Ok. Last Wednesday I got the great experience of seeing one of my favorite childhood bands play live for the first time. The show was fantastic and gave me a ton of ideas for how to be a better performer. Adam, the lead singer, told stories in beautiful poetic language in the middle of certain songs while the band played behind him. The band was tight and communicated well on stage. What stood out most, actually, was that they didn’t grab me at the beginning - when Adam first walked out he looked lackluster and unimpressive to me. But by the end he had somehow captured me, and I spent the second half of the concert wondering how. My conclusion: he made sure I got to know him damn well in those two hours. And that’s a pretty tough thing to do, let alone in a large arena.
That was my overall reaction AFTER the show. It wasn’t all great though, as anyone who follows my Instagram account knows.
BEFORE the show was the “meet and greet”, with all the promise of an intimate memorable experience and all the delivery of the FedEx plane in Cast Away.
So in the 3 hours between that and the show (yup, they kicked us out for 3 hours), I drafted an email to you lovely people complete with swearing, snark, and a life lesson. Here it is:
Dearest Schockscribers,
Today I stepped out of my comfort zone and spontaneously went to a Counting Crows concert, courtesy of a friend. To be honest, I didn’t really care that much about seeing them live, but these were VIP tickets, complete with a “meet and greet”. Damn! A free opportunity to hang out with one of my big teenage influences? Please and thank you!
Turns out I have very different understanding of the word “meet” than Live Nation. According to them, it’s watching the band do 10 minutes of sound check from 10 rows back while not interacting with them at all, and then being herded into a single file line while the band poses against a wall to take 3 second mugshot pictures with each fan, and then being told to leave until show time.
DA FUQ??
Now, I didn’t pay for this shit so I’m endlessly grateful for whatever I got. But everyone else there did pay for it, and on their behalf I’m pretty pissed off. These people paid for the privilege of being merely in the presence of the band briefly?? I’m sorry, but this is celebrity worship culture to a degree I find disgusting.
AND Adam Duritz, the lead singer (who is generally a very good dude), didn’t even greet us during the sound check. I WANT MY GREET DAMNIT.
It’s not about gratitude - to me, gratitude is still ultimately selfish. “Im grateful to my fans because without them I’d be nothing” basically means “I love you cuz you give me stuff.”
It’s about treating other people like people. Nobody feels good being herded. Nobody feels good being ignored. Nobody wants to be treated like a nuisance, and nobody wants to feel like a burden. And NOBODY WANTS TO PAY FOR THOSE THINGS.
Now this is the part for future me and future you: Everything becomes routine with time, and I understand that the first audience feels very different than the 500th. But for an audience member, it often IS the first time, and this first time totally sucked.
So how do we avoid the feeling of routine that leads to treating people badly? I actually learned this by teaching. See, as a teacher you have two options:
(1) learn to see the world through your students’ eyes on command
OR
2) be a shit teacher.
You can be the most grateful performer of all time and still treat your fans badly. The only way to avoid it is to be able to see your interactions through their eyes. And if you can do that, you don’t really have to worry because it can NEVER become routine.
All this is to simply say: COME TO MY SHOW ON SUNDAY AND I WILL NOT HERD YOU LIKE CATTLE.
Kthanksbi.
~Schockedoutofheaven
PS we are now officially beginning the contest for best signature submission. My favorite so far is "The Hunt For Red Schocktober." Beat it :)