Posted on 09/04/2014 4:38:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s not often I get to cite Peter Frampton. Hell, it’s not often anyone gets to cite Peter Frampton anymore. His massive album “Frampton Comes Alive” was before my time, yet my ears are intimately familiar with the songs on it. “Baby, I Love Your Way” was a staple of junior high dances and couples skates, until such things were replaced by dry humping. So it’s nothing personal when I write that I don’t get much occasion to write about Frampton, he’s just mostly before my time.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still things we can learn from the master of the TalkBox.
At a concert in Indiana this year, Frampton grabbed a fan’s smartphone and threw it because the fan wouldn’t stop filming the show. You might think that’s rude or diva-esque, but Frampton has a point.
In the era of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., etc., etc., there’s barely a moment people aren’t documenting in some form or another. How many friends do you know who post pictures of their every meal? Or every outfit their kid wears? Every concert they attend?
We, as a society, have become so obsessed with documenting and sharing our lives that we’re running risk of missing the living of them part.
I wouldn’t have thought about this topic again had I not had the "Today Show" on in the background Labor Day morning. They had Maroon 5 performing a concert, and I looked up and saw the crowd in front of the stage. Well, I didn’t see the crowd, I saw a sea of smartphones and iPads filming the show. Hundreds of people staring at a small screen to make sure they were framing it properly, meanwhile they’re missing the actual show they’re hoping to capture for eterntity.
I don’t know how many of those videos made it to some social network somewhere, but I do know this: their quality is undoubtedly awful.
Your phone or iPad takes perfectly fine video if you’re in a quiet place, no wind, and you aren’t moving very much. What they don’t do is take anything watchable or listenable in a crowd where people are bopping around and screaming. But that didn’t stop these people from missing a show they were clearly excited about seeing because they were so focused on capturing it.
I’ve seen this many times recently. I went and saw Paul McCartney last year in DC. It was an amazing show. It also filled up the memory of many attendee’s phones because they spent large chunks of it taking video of the bright blurry stage from which noise was blasting. I guarantee none of those videos are watchable, none of the sound is listenable, but they couldn’t stop themselves.
Perhaps the lure of rubbing the noses of their friends and followers who weren’t there in the fact that they were was too great, or maybe they just weren’t smart enough to notice they were missing what they were filming. Whatever the case, they missed it.
Frampton asked, “It's like, why can't you just come to the concert and just live and enjoy the moment?” Good question.
Is it that we’ve become so narcissistic as a society that “if I don’t tweet it, it didn’t happen”? Is this who we’ve always been and are only now enabled to manifest our narcissism because of social media? Have we always been a nation of Kardashians simply waiting for the Kardashians themselves to set us free?
I don’t know why it is, I just know that it is.
Whatever it is, if you’re doing it, you’re missing your life.
I’d bet dollars to donuts that 99 percent of those people who hold their devices over their heads to capture every moment of an event never watch that video, or watch 20 seconds of it, realize it’s awful and delete it. The moment no longer lives on their phone, and it never fully lived in their head.
There’s a simple solution – pay attention to events as they’re happening. If it’s a concert or large event, there is a high quality video of it online already. The day after that McCartney concert I found a website that had live performances, in HD with sound through the soundboard, of every song he did that night, in order. Did it matter that they weren’t THE performances I saw? Of course not. But I saw those performances, and those other clips take me right back to that moment.
It’s time to put down the phones and tablets; it’s time to experience life again. You don’t need shaky, Blair Witch quality video with audio of the people around you butchering your favorite song – live it and remember it.
THEN brag about it on social media to make everyone jealous.
Good point. A city bus can be the most boring place in the world until somebody raises their voice. Then the zombies come to life all at once, cameras up, hoping for their youtube moment.
Over the Labor Day weekend in 1992 -- back when the SciFi channel was somewhat new and fairly watchable -- they had a "Prisoner Marathon." You know, all 17 episodes of the iconic 1960's show starring and directed by Patrick McGoohan -- showing sequentially over and over all week end long.
Well, I set up the VCR to record each episode as I watched them with the purpose of filtering out the commercials that showed up seemingly after every 5 minutes of actual story-line.
Yes, I babysat that VCR and came out with a stack VHS's all purged of any the commercials. Couch potato all weekend. Broke away long enough to flip a few burgers for everyone else. Pissed away he entire weekend.
A couple of years later, you could buy the entire series now in DVD for ~$18 at Price Club, that became Costco.
Ya think I ever watched those VHS's? Nope.
Do I remember a wasted holiday 22 years later? Yes, I do.
Did I learn from that experience a little bit about the value of one's time - and the potential for wasting it chasing media and entertainment under the guise of preserving such things for future generations? Yes, I did.
That said, last month I got to see Gordon Lightfoot perform again in Norwalk, CT on the old High School stage. It occurred to me that the last time I had seen him perform, it was 26 yeas ago.
I was 3 rows from the front, dead center sitting with my wife. When he played "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," I recorded a ~45 second slice of it to send to my son up at UCONN because, it is his favorite song.
My boy wasn't even born yet, the last time I saw Gordon Lightfoot in concert, but for a 76-year old standing up there and giving it his best for 2 hours, one realizes why Lightfoot is such a musical treasure.
Lived the moment. Shared the moment.
All things in moderation ....
FReegards!
About a month or two ago a black bear walked by the patio where I was working, following some predetermined path I guess. Came within 20 feet or so. I had no camera, no cell phone, no nothing, but I did have a metal chair that I was ready to use for defense. But the bear didn’t even glance in my direction.
“Frampton Comes Alive” and “Fly Like an Eagle”
about 76 or 77? I had just moved to IL and I didn’t have to buy the 45 of Fly Like an Eagle (or Night Moves) because WLS played those two songs every half hour. I hated those songs after awhile.
I love them now. Great memories.
Last concert I went to I saw very few phones. Most phones came out when the headliner came down into the audience and sang directly to one fan. Plenty of opportunities for a close up shot when he did that. I think a lot of us had seen a concert on YouTube that had abysmal audience reaction due to everyone in the audience filming. Some of the best performer/audience energy I’ve experienced since the early 90’s.
I LOVED that program!
And I confess, I have done similar things.
Americans seem intent on recording so many aspects of their life in the hopes of catching a magic moment on film that will make it all so memorable.
We used to experience life, recording the magic moments in our heads and occasionally memorializing them with film or photo.
The old way was so much better!
Agree, but I don’t think I want to go without electricity. After taking a direct hit from a hurricane, I was without electricity, gas, and water for nearly two months... and it was pretty miserable.
But I sure find myself wistfully pondering back to those times before the internet, satellite/cable-tv, cell-phones, and the like. The different “tone” life used to have, in terms of the culture, the day-to-day living, the way people used to interact with one another. I used to drive my grandfather to the barber shop, hardware stores, feed stores, and such, and observe all the social interplay. The whole texture of things. I’ve really begun to fully comprehend how extinct that peculiar element has become, and how much I miss it.
Nowadays, I look to when I recently went to get an oil change, and see seven people in the waiting area, all wearing dark clothing, riddled in tattoos, and staring blankly into the smartphones in their hands, totally immersed. All seven of them. Like raggedy zombies. Just seemed so bleak and depressing. It’s such a bizarre cultural change.
A long time ago in my younger days I had a thing for getting souveniers everywhere I went....everywhere - just little knickknacks. I eventually realized that I was missing out on the site itself when I was busy shopping. So now I will buy a bookend - or bookend useable object on large trips/first visits, maybe a book - but otherwise just enjoy the time and the location.
I likely take too many photos, but that’s partly because it is a minor hobby (framing the shot, lighting, etc) and not because I’m trying to “capture the moment”.
We don’t have a functional VCR but my spouse insits on holding on to a ton of SLP off air tapes that are 20 years old. The plan was to convert them to DVD via a standalone player recorder. I wound up getting stuck with it. I tried to teach the spouse but it was to no avail. I was glad when the VCR died. The DVD-R died later.
They haven’t been touched in years. There are no plans to get another VCR.
I would love to see him in concert. The first time I ever heard The Wreck on the radio I was memsmerized. I love everything about that song. I have been on The Saratoga when it was rolling eleven degrees to either side which is amazing on a ship of that size. Waves breaking in the hanger deck and spray coming over the flight deck. The tip of the bow almost going under the crest of the waves. A lot of the guys were turning green and puking but I was having a ball. It was a peak experience.
(Just Kidding! Or, am I?)
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Life is just what continues to happen while you are busy taking Selfies.
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