Essential Gig Etiquette Tips for Concertgoers

It was my great joy to see Ms Rebecca Black live last week when she brought her Salvation tour to London. I’ve been so glad to see her reach her potential, and I bought the ticket mainly to support an indie artist, since I’m really much too old to be heading to the club on a Thursday. [1]

I’ve been going to gigs almost my whole life – my first was when I was six, to see a semi-obscure Ohio band my dad likes, and in a lifetime of concerts I’ve been smiled at by megastars for dancing on front-row chairs and asked if I was OK by jazz singers for being naturally uptight and had happy birthday sung to me by once-in-a-generation talent.[2] I’ve had an open row with the support act whilst they were on stage, shocked somebody by knowing all the words, and met my faves backstage.[3] I’ve run the gamut of concert experiences – from seeing stadium players in intimate spaces, tiny bands never heard of before or since who were excellent, faded celebrities, stars on the rise, singing alongside 90,000 other people, and (of course) experiencing shows on CD or a cinema screen. Please, then, take my first-hand, hard-earned wisdom about gig etiquette and allow us all to enjoy live music for the foreseeable future. Ultimately, I don’t think gigs are a social experience – I think they’re spiritual. I think that at a gig we commune with something greater than ourselves, and therefore we owe it to our fellow worshippers to allow the experience to reach us all.

First, and this is for you not for anybody else: go to a gig by yourself if you want. Nobody will so much as notice if you don’t talk to them, and you will have a much better time by yourself than if you drag somebody who doesn’t want to be there with you, or stress about trying to get rid of a second ticket. Similarly, dress up if you want. I once went to see The Killers in head-to-foot white, with white skinny jeans and bleach blonde hair, and a vintage military jacket Brandon Flowers himself would have loved. Was it a good look? Probably not, and it was before cameraphones were so ubiquitous so I have no way to know. Did anybody give a shit? No. If you want to wear a costume, dress slutty, or be somebody you’re not for a night, a concert is not like a club night – it’s not a social event, you’re there just to have a good time. My favourite concerts have almost all been attended solo, when I didn’t have to worry if somebody else was having a good time and could just transcend reality in my own way.

Be considerate of why and how you are taking photos or videos. I am not saying don’t capture the moment, share with friends, or even record the whole dang thing if you want – I’ve watched plenty of appalling bootleg concert videos in my time, and even downloaded the audio from a few – but is your phone in somebody else’s face? Is your quest for a consistent livestream angle ruining the experience of anybody who paid to be there? Is this supporting the artist or freebooting from them? Are you gonna run your battery down and not be able to get home? Consider the purpose and usage of your pics – is it to stunt on the gram? Is it to share with other fans? Is it improving your own or others’ experiences? Don’t just take a million pics you’ll never look at, send a blurry video to the GC, and piss off every concert attendee by having your phone in the air.

Do you need a drink, or a piss? I once saw a woman at a Springsteen gig / festival who drank all day, through all the opening acts, and passed out about half an hour after Bruce came on stage and had to be carried out. If you need to drink four beers to enjoy something entirely engineered to entertain you, you are an alcoholic, seek help – or at the very least stand at the back and don’t keep pushing past the rest of us to get back to your shitty drunk friends. I love having a few drinks throughout a concert with my friends to chill out and feel good dancing, but only one of us goes to the bar, we pee at the same time to avoid leaving twice, and we make sure we’re not going to miss our own favourite song and discard others’ enjoyment to push back to our seats – and we really only do it if we’re sat, or stood at the back, before all the bodies get pressed in together to get the ‘good’ view. The same is true if you need to leave early or arrive late for some reason – such is life, and that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go, but do think about how your arrival or departure will affect others, and book the kind of ticket that suits the night you want or need to have. If you want to keep coming in and out, you don’t get to be right in the fray of it, and it’s reasonable that people will be pissed off if you push past them to get back to where you were before. Remember – crowds behave like water and your space will be filled by the flow.

Fucking queue if you want something. Want to be on the barrier or by the sound desk? Get there early and wait outside the venue. Buying merch? Hang back of the queue whilst you decide what you want, then wait patiently for your turn. This one is not rocket science. Do not think you’re a ‘real fan’ who gets to push past somebody who, for all you know, took a day off work to wait. You will feel the sharp end of a real fan’s elbow if you try.

You can sing without ruining the experience for others – noise does not have to escape your mouth to sing along. You can dance whilst being aware of others’ personal space. Essentially, I’m not saying not to do anything – but be aware that you’re in a public space and other people are trying to have a nice time. It’s not the place to just stand and have a chat with your friend – maybe head to the pub or somebody’s house, or even share a taxi afterwards, if you want to debrief.

It is OK to want to sit down! Even gigs where you would expect all the fun to be in the pit have a great atmosphere in the seats, and often you can even see better. It’s a different experience, but not a sub-par one. When I saw Megan Thee Stallion I sat in the upper tier, along the side . It was me and the younger girls who would have been too young for a raucous party, older or whiter women who wanted to support people throwing ass without doing it themselves (I am too twee to twerk myself, it would appear as parody, but go get ’em if it’s your style of dance), somebody on crutches, and a general assortment of people who looked like they didn’t want to go too crazy. Maybe they had work in the morning, maybe they didn’t drink, maybe they live in a flatshare or with kids and didn’t want to wake anybody up. I don’t know everybody’s story, but I do know that I booked it when pit tickets were still available, and chose to sit down. I had a great view and didn’t have to be jostled all night. Once again I proclaim: you can make a gig into the experience you want. You can mosh or twerk or rock ‘n’ roll dance, you can wait on the barrier and look into the eyes of the artist you like whilst you sing along, you can gaze over the balcony in quiet rapture, you can hold your best friend’s hand and look into their eyes as you scream your favourite words at each other in a transcendental moment, you can lean on the soundmixing booth and write in your journal, you can close your eyes and enjoy the beat and the bass… decide what you will get out of the experience and lean into it. In the case of me at Megan Thee Stallion I enjoy her lyrics and can definitely vibe along, but my style of dancing is much more suited to a rock show than a rap concert, so I was more than happy to sing along from the balcony.

Signs and requests. I am fine with signs, personally – I’ve seen too many reactions to them to dislike them,[4] but I can see why people hate them as they are view-obscuring and attention-seeking. I suppose signs, then, depend on the time, place, and effort gone into them – in big, open-air shows, they are less irritating than in covered arenas, somehow. The culture surrounding the artist is a big player – Swifties hate them and repudiate their usage, but perhaps some of that is because Taylor Swift shows are choreographed and setlisted within an inch of their life.[5] Bruce Springsteen, on the other hand, regularly changes his own setlist, and he and his band are in the lucky position where they can play basically anything together – including b-sides and covers. If you must make a sign, put some effort into it: art skills, jokes, a touch of colour or glitter… make it seem intentional, not a second thought. Don’t just write on the inside of a cereal box in sharpie and expect people to be happy with your work.

[1]For reference, the last time I did this it was for Chappell Roan and it turns out she didn’t really need my help, but I will be able to brag about seeing her first ever UK show for the rest of my life, so that’s neat.

[2] Paul Simon, Mary Coughlan, David Bowie respectively.

[3] At The Hoosiers, Franz Ferdinand, and Lana del Rey concerts, respectively.

[4] Nicola from Girls Aloud absolutely could not help laughing at one that said ‘Chris Moyles is a cunt’, and I think that’s beautiful. I’ve also seen some gleeful Springsteen exchanges with signs.

[5] Sincerely, I got London Boy at my Eras tour show, and that was not a surprise.

On This Topic:

• If you’re not streaming Rebecca Black, you are incorrect.
• I am not the only person to notice this, and I am only talking from the perspective of a gig attendee – others have mentioned what it’s like for musicians.
• This wasn’t it, I can’t find it on youtube, but the setlist doesn’t lie. Gail who? That’s two days after my birthday.

To-Do:

• Text book group so S has the text.
• Find that fucking PDB citation – I’m starting to think I copied it down wrong!
• Pension stuff. Isn’t that fun?

Today’s Culture:

• Lil Nas X also needs your streams – that boy deserves a full career and I for one will likely have Hotbox blasting from my headphones if you see me.
• It has come to my attention that not everybody knows I’m on StoryGraph – follow me here.
• Prepping for my new job is honestly kind of a full-time preoccupation right now, it’s a big role and I’m both excited and keen to do it right.