I posted this in 2017 but its message sadly rings truer than ever.
“This is a place for music lovers. If you want to talk to your friends when the bands are on, please use the other bar.”
The above sign is plastered prominently on the venue door at The Trades in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, one of my favourite small venues.
It’s a welcome sign; I’m one of those gig goers who gets (inwardly) grumpy if people are talking while the band are on. That’s not to say the audience have to be completely silent but I’ve had many a gig spoiled by incessant yawping. Sometimes the chatter doesn’t just take place between songs but rumbles on without pause; a low-level irritant that always manages to make its presence felt, no matter how loud the band. I’ve found myself wondering why people even bother to spend their hard-earned money on tickets when all they really wanted was a good old catch-up which could have taken place in the pub. It doesn’t seem to matter either if the band are playing at tinnitus-inducing levels – those talkers will just up their own volume in order to communicate their crucially important information – latest purchase from Primark, level of drunkenness the night before.
I have on occasion asked talkers to keep it down – if I think I’m not going to end up involved in a fight. If the talkers give you an icy glare and carry on regardless there’s nothing else you can do but slink off and find yourself another spot.
Avoid the back of the room
It’s where you’ll find most of the lurkers and drinkers (and often the guestlisters) and they tend to talk more. I recall one Richard Hawley gig where he alluded several times to the noisy talkers at the back of Shepherd’s Bush Empire while he was playing. And more recently – in 2022 – Lias Saoudi became extremely irritated by talkers at a gig at Brixton Academy and called them out.
Seated versus standing
Do a seated crowd behave any better? Having sat upstairs for many a seated gig, I would venture to say that yes, generally they do – perhaps it’s because this area tends to attract the older fans, who just might talk a bit less, plus being slumped in a chair can put you in a more placid frame of mind. But you might still get talkers – and then you find yourself with no escape. Even the hushed grandeur of the Barbican – where Steve Mason with orchestra performed early 2017 – wasn’t awe-inspiring enough to subdue the couple seated behind me. What started as a bit of between-song banter turned into full-blown drunken blathering right through Mason’s numbers, until the bloke next to me turned round and politely asked them to be quiet. After this my neighbour was assailed by repeated taps on the shoulder and grovelling alcohol-fuelled apologies (almost as bad as the talking, but not quite).
The rules
So maybe it’s time to spell out the rules, like the poster at The Trades. There are some events where silence is part of the experience; the one-day festival I attended a few years ago called SHHH – the quiet music festival is a case in point. Held in a church in London, Howard Monk and friends ran this cozy, delightful event, the whole point of which was that you sat silently when musicians were playing.
Some gig-goers are interacting with live music in a different way. Rather than the artists be the focus of the evening, it’s now about the audience members themselves. The hapless musicians are reduced to mere enablers of a good night out, a bit of background to enhance one’s evening entertainment.
This scenario played out recently when a friend went along to a favourite music-venue pub in London, one where audiences are as a rule most attentive – however this particular night some of the crowd weren’t there primarily to see the band (even though they’d all paid for the privilege). Instead they chatted away animatedly, showing each other highly amusing stuff on their mobiles to the accompaniment of whoops of laughter. An audience member who was there for the actual music implored the chatterers to be quiet, but to no avail. Eventually he exasperatedly asked them to ‘just fucking shut up’ – at which point security revved into action. But they reprimanded the bloke who’d made the sweary request for quiet, rather than the noisy after-work drinkers.
Re-establishing the rules for good-mannered gigging might be a good idea. There are ongoing problems with venues closing; live music needs to retain its stance as an attractive evening out for as many people as possible.
Thoughts and suggestions…