The Curmudgeon: Shut Up and Listen

When I interviewed Brittany Howard for last month’s cover story on the Alabama Shakes, she told me, “Nothing pisses me off more than when people talk through a quiet song.” Amen, sister.

It would seem an obvious point that a music concert is first and foremost an auditory experience, that all those people have gathered in one place to hear the music coming from the stage. It should be equally obvious that to properly hear that music, all competing sounds must be suppressed.

And yet for a sizable minority of audiences, the music from the stage is less important than the chance to chat with their seatmates about the most inane topics imaginable. For them, the music that they paid $20 or $40 or $60 to hear is no more important than the TV set playing an inaudible basketball game in a noisy sports bar. If the band is playing a quiet song, they talk in normal voices. If the band plays a loud song, they shout to make themselves heard to the person next to them—and to everyone else within several yards of them. “Don’t listen to the band,” they seem to be saying; “listen to me—I’m more important.”

Let us be clear: these people are the enemies of music. Like ticket scalpers, RIAA lawyers, Chinese censors, Ticketmaster executives, right-wing preachers, urban zoning commissions and country-radio programmers, they diminish our enjoyment of popular song. Most of us can agree on the problem, but what are we to do about it? As evils in the world go, this is a very mild case and doesn’t justify a legal response. What it demands is a response from the majority of concert-goers.

The problem, however, is that the people who don’t talk during shows are by nature polite and respectful and thus loath to confront anyone. The folks most likely to brush aside the usual courtesies are the ones who are already doing the yakking. Thus it has always been throughout history: the reluctance of the good allows the bad to flourish.

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So get over it. Don’t wait for someone else to do it; do it yourself. After all, it’s your ticket money that’s being wasted by the chatterbox asshole behind you. Here, let me give you a step-by-step guide:

Step One: Give them a break. If the show is just starting, let them make the transition from talking to settling down, being quiet and paying attention. If they say just a sentence every five minutes, let it slide. If they sing along to a song, that’s fine. If they talk between songs, that’s cool.

Step Two: But if it becomes clear that they intend to carry on a conversation during show, turn around and glare at them until you catch their eye. Often that’s enough—they’ll get the message.

Step Three: If they remain oblivious to the people around them, politely ask them, “Will you please not talk during the music?” In the majority of cases, they’re genuinely unaware that they’re bothering people. They’ll usually apologize and desist.

Step Four: If they continue, repeat the question less politely: “Will you PLEASE STOP TALKING?” They may make a face and mutter something under their breath, but most people will shut up at that point.

Step Five: If they continue after that, alcohol is usually involved and you have to be even more forceful: “Hey, buddy, I’m trying to listen to the music here! What’s your fucking problem?”

Step Six: If even that doesn’t work, resist the temptation to punch the person in the mouth. There’s no reason you should get thrown out of the show or go to jail because someone else is being a jerk. Find someone who works at the venue and ask them to intervene. If they seem reluctant to confront your drunken antagonist, ask for a refund of your ticket money; that will usually spur them into action.

I’ve been following these steps for years and 90 percent of the time they work. There’s always that 10 percent when the talkers are too obstinate and the venue employees too timid. But that’s a pretty good success rate, and I’m always surprised by how many of the people sitting around me come up later and thank me for confronting the talker. That’s nice, but why should I always be the only one who does something? Shouldn’t every music lover help out to make sure we can all hear the performers on stage?

For some reason Neil Young fans are the worst. Every Neil Young show I’ve ever attended I’ve had to battle the yakkers around me just to hear him sing. During one show at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland, I was trying to hear Young’s acoustic set over a couple of twentysomethings talking about the party they attended the week before. When I leaned over and said, “Will you please not talk during the music?” the little hippie girl said, “No rules, man.”

That’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Of course there are rules. I couldn’t drink her beer or take her seat or spit in her face or kick her in the leg just because I felt like it. And she shouldn’t prevent me from hearing the concert just because she felt like talking. Here’s a perfect example of the difference between libertarians (or anarchists) and democrats (or socialists). The first camp believes it’s more important for the one person to be able to talk whenever he wants than it is for the nine people around him to hear the concert. The second camp believes the reverse.