The Gig that got my Goat

Last night I went to Plymouth Hippo to watch Irish pop rock band Ash play. I've seen them once before, about 5 years ago and they do put on a really good live show. I enjoyed seeing them this second time but one thing stopped me fully enjoying it: people holding up their digital cameras and mobile phones filming an ENTIRE song.

This filming of gigs is so common (and let's face it, been going on for quite a while now) it has reached the point that when a popular song comes on, the view of the band is distorted my a sudden influx of raised hands, each holding one of these pesky gadgets, then the only way to see the chuffing performance is on somebody else's 1.5 inch squared screen! Which is exactly what these perpetrators are doing! One woman did it during the whole of Straight To You at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds gig, and at an Emmiliana Torrini gig, Emmiliana pleaded with audience members not to take photographs, only half took notice! Where's the respect?

Am I wrong to get miffed at this? If I went to a gig and raised up my Cannon XM2 Digital Video Camera for 3-5mins, would these camera misfits mind, and wouldn't that be illegal? Isn't that taking bootleggin' a bit too far?

Anyway, to get my revenge my aim from now on is to get right to the front of a gig and turn to face the audience, I'm going to wear platform shoes, put on weight to get an especially wide moon face and stare right back into those apertures, wrecking their amateur footage, appearing like Pezuzu, the subliminal demon face in The Exorcist, haunting them out of taking films next time. I urge you all to do the same!