It’s an oft-stated maxim that smartphones and concerts don’t mix. Just ask Bob Dylan, Jack White, and Ghost — all artists who have banned phones at their concerts in recent times. It’s not just the artists though, sometimes audiences themselves are the strictest adherents of the anti-smartphone creed. You don’t have to scroll very far on Facebook to find your finger-wagging boomer uncle proudly displaying a photo of a Led Zeppelin concert captioned “not a cell phone in sight — just people living in the moment.” No shit, Sherlock!
Recently, I got to see Arctic Monkeys live in Vancouver, and I found that phones enhanced the experience rather than destroyed it. Waving a lighter is certainly a nostalgic image, but where there’s fire, there’s smoke — and the guy who decided to spark up a cigarette in the middle of the indoor mosh pit was nobody’s favourite guy. Not to mention, thanks to the incredible camera quality of the rose-gold iPhones all around me, I could actually see the stage whenever the seven foot tall space ranger wrapped in a blanket decided to sway in front of my line of sight.
Plus, my phone lets me take as many pictures of Alex Turner’s incredible hair as I want. Let’s see your uncle’s lighter do that.
Matthew Iddon was born at an exceptionally young age. He aspires to one day become old. He currently resides.
