So you’re a twenty-three year old guitar genius whose band is finally making a name for itself, not to mention some money after too many years of subsisting on Top Ramen, PBR, and a prayer. You’re ready to reap the rewards of being fresh and sexy, and harvest the nubile adoration that is yours by virtue of your face-melting musical prowess. The last thing you want to see when you gaze out in the audience is a room full of people who look just like your parents.
But as a middle-aged fan of much younger music, let me school you for a moment on why you might want to welcome those moms and dads into your fan kingdom not just with open arms, but with specific intent.
1.) We yearn not just for tickets, but “premium experiences.” We remember fondly our mosh pit days when all we had was a general admission ticket and a $5 bill for a night’s worth of beer. But that doesn’t mean we won’t occasionally spring for a VIP ticket that allows for a meet n’ greet, a sound check, and a seat in the roped-off area with an unobstructed stage view. Many over-40 fans have enough things. Our things are suffocating us and causing us to seek therapy. What we crave is experience. As long as the record industry is still dicking around with the royalties that, if there were any justice, would be in your pocket, the surest way to a steady revenue stream is to offer some extra cool experiences to people willing to save up for them.
2.) We still, occasionally, buy albums. We have our iPods and we download singles, just like everyone else. But some part of us yearns for that full-body immersion into the album like we had in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when we ripped the plastic wrap off the album or CD and told our parents not to bother us for the next twelve songs, because Lisa and/or Kenny told us it was imperative to hear the album front to back if we really wanted to understand it. If your band will go to the trouble of making an album that is a story, put some thought into your track listing and our journey, we’ll spend the time to hear you out. Once a liner note reader, always a liner note reader.
3.) We are statistically more likely to drink top shelf liquor and less likely to puke it back up on the floor. If your pay at a club is calculated as a percentage of the bar tab, then you need some over-40 people in the crowd to counterbalance those whose main strategy for sticking to a budget is to get their drink on before they go out. We midlife fans are not afraid to pay a little more for an imported beer, when we can afford it, or a drink that is not on the Specials menu.
4.) We’re sharing music with our kids. Speaking of that high schooler, realize that times have changed. It’s not like our parent’s generation, when our grandparents actively hated Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, or even our generation, when our parents simply ignored our music because they were all getting divorced. We are Generation X. We feel real sadness when our kids are old enough to attend concerts without us. We grew up with punk rock and garage metal and the Beastie Boys. There is no music you can throw at us to scare us off.
5.) We are more likely to watch you with our actual eyes, not through a smartphone viewfinder. Maybe that’s not a problem for you. Maybe you don’t mind singing to an audience that appears to be composed entirely of digital screens and the thicket of forearms that hold them aloft.
Barely visible to the left: two members of Bastille at a recent in-store concert at Amoeba Music in Berkeley CA. All other band members obliterated by youthful forearms.
But if you ever want a moment of connection with an audience member who is present in the moment, absorbing and responding to the sound wave that you’ve created in real time, look for gaps in the Field of Screens for the lined face of the forty-something fan who is watching you right back.
Because we save our odious, interminable filming behavior for our kids’ dance recitals.
5.) We’ll render your PR campaign superfluous. Look, most of our Facebook status update relate to politics or our kids’ soccer tournaments. If we have a chance to brag that we were out at a show to see a band that is cresting on the Billboard Top Alternative Albums chart, we will shout it from the digital rooftops. We’ll tell anyone who will listen that we stayed out late to see you play. And we’ll wear the merch we bought with your band name to the grocery store, the PTA meeting, and on our morning run, smugly telling our friends that they have to check out your new album.
The symbiosis couldn’t be more complete if we were sharks and remoras. Which, by the way, would be an awesome album name for you to put on the t-shirt we’ll buy from you. Thanks, and you’re welcome.
Tags: being a very little bit older, fandom, mallory enjoys ‘best of’ albums, music, nancy davis kho
See also: my entire relationship to Sleigh Bells. Also what are you listening to other than Bastille. Tell me. Tell me at once. I MUST KNOW (because I am too tired to see Metz in person).
A little of this, a little of that, a little of the other, but the new Vampire Weekend, Royal Teeth, Lord Huron, Grouplove, Lime Cordiale…and gonna go see Martha Davis and the Motels in December so I have to take a little nostalgia detour.
Would absolutely buy a Sharks and Remoras shirt. Alternately, if someone could locate a lead singer named Ray (girl or guy), they could be Ray and the Remoras, and then this:
Every time I think I can’t agree more with The Toast, up pops another piece to remind me I’m not alone, there are people out there like me,and I might actually NOT hate everyone on the planet.
All I want is for you to start on time, don’t play a 30-minute “jam” version of a b-side from your crappiest album, and a seat to sit in . Please keep the rowdy drunks confined to the bar in the back of the venue, and I will pay OUT THE NOSE FOR THIS EXPERIENCE. Because yes, we paid $132 for two $45 tickets to see this show (H8U TICKETMASTER), but we’re also paying $15/hour for a sitter and your musical wankery is going to cost me at least $7.50.
(Also, real talk, the only artists I still buy on CD the day they’re released are Mark Lanegan and Ani DiFranco.)
Agreed. I just want to sit down. And I always bring ear plugs now. 🙁
As I read this, my Pandora transitioned from Bauhaus to Tegan & Sara to Bouncing Souls. I’m probably closest in age to the last, but I’ll still pay to see all of them, extra $ if I can get someone to bring me drinks at a seat. Not a fan of House of Blues, but their setup works well for this. Downstairs for the wee ones, upstairs in the loge for the oldies.
Which House of Blues are you thinking of?
I was under the impression that they did the “identical build” thing. Specifically, Orlando. 1st floor is pretty open, bar opposite the stage. Upstairs is another bar at the back, a loge w/seating and drink service around the inside edge of the opening to 1st floor, open standing outside of that.
That was a terrible visual, did it make sense? Here’s the floorplan.
Cool. I’ve only ever been to Chicago’s. That looks like what I remember, but it’s been years.
This probably makes me a dirty millennial, but I actually don’t mind the phone pictures/videos/snapchat thing. I’m not one to record the whole concert, but I like having a few cool pictures to flip through later or being able to share that one slow jam or whatever with a friend who can’t be there? I guess I don’t understand why people rail against it so much.
A few photos or even a song is one thing. Basking in the glow of your neighbor’s phone in a dark club or having your view of the stage obliterated by forearms FOR THE ENTIRE FREAKING CONCERT is something else entirely.
I definitely take a few pictures when the show starts too, and I wouldn’t mind the filming if it was discrete or short-lived. It’s the amateur filmmakers who are recording the entire gig and blocking the band from view that makes me nuts. I took that Bastille shot that’s running with the piece – no one behind the first four rows could actually see the band. That’s when it crosses a line for me. (Or as my teen said to her friend who was with us: “We have to get Mom out of here. She’s gonna blow.”)
Some people definitely take it WAY too far.
I watched the youtube stream of coachella and when phoenix came on, the lead singer came down into the crowd and people in the crowd held their recording phones literally less than 10cm from his face. If I was him I would have SNAPPED and punched someone because SO RUDE.
Take 3 photos of each act, maximum, then put it the fuck away, guys.
Perfect timing, as I have three shows/club nights lined up for myself this week. And I am very excited to see King Krule, who is young enough to be my son.
Yes! Especially #5.
Awww, this makes me glad I’m going home to see my parents soon. (Their favorite vacation is going to see Gov’t Mule at a resort in Jamaica for five days.)
I like the way your parents roll.
I mean, I’m not really middle aged (29.75) and I don’t want to have to stand for 4 hours waiting through 2 only okay bands until the main act comes on.
Yes to the top-shelfier liquor neat. Yes yes yes. Especially in a dive where I don’t want a hangover from the way no one has cleaned a filter or beer line in 3 years.
One of the best shows I saw last year was EMA at the local basement type venue (it really does feel like a vintage kind of 60s rec room– remember those, oh my fellow olds?) with my son, who is in his mid-twenties. I buy music. I buy albums. I will travel to see shows and I will spend money while I’m there. And if I look into the audience and see another 50-something face, I’m delighted. I’ve never stopped listening to music or being thrilled with discovery when somebody manages to ring a whole set of changes on established forms, or makes something new entirely. Thanks for this article: one thing I do know is that when the lights went up at that EMA show, I realized that there were a number of other people there who were well into the gray-haired years. We’re out here and we did indeed grow up on Sonic Youth and the Pixies; we were the 30-something Nirvana fans. We’re still around, earplugs firmly in place, perhaps not dancing quite so much, but we’re hanging on.
I loved this. See you at the next Premium Experience, Nancy. For me, that’s Nick Cave at the Warfield in SF. I haven’t started the PR campaign because the tickets are a gift for my dude, but trust me, as soon as he opens the envelope every fucking person on every social media site I use is going to know about it. Consider this comment a soft launch to the Facebook blitz to come. YOU GUYS I’M GOING TO NICK CAVE!!!
That show is going to be GREAT but I can’t even think where I’m gonna be in January, let alone July. I will cock my head like a spaniel on Christmas day to see if I can pick up your dude’s shrieking in the air over the Bay Area after he opens the gift.
I felt a bit weird buying tickets to a show eight months in advance, but I figured that’s approximately how much time it will take me to find a babysitter and adjust to the idea of staying out past 9 PM on a weeknight.
My Facebook post about the recently announced Nick Cave show in Detroit in July was, “Fact: The earlier you can buy tickets for a concert, the more expensive they will be.” I will not be going to see Nick Cave (but probably will fork over the money to see The Pixies in February).
I’m seeing the Pixies in February! C’mon! Everybody’s doing it! (Screamed like Will Ferrell in the streaking scene in Old School.)
Here’s another! My friend’s dad had something come up, so his daughter and I got his tickets for Cream’s Madison Square Gardens reunion show, and it was this sea of middle-aged dudes wearing baseball caps and us, SHRIEKING HAPPILY.
Dying to see Beware of Mr. Baker, I understand he broke the documentary maker’s nose with his cane.
Love this! It reminds me of when I saw King Tuff at the New Parish last year & some kid complimented me for hanging at the front. Listen baby boy, I was holding my own at shows before you were even born so stuff it.
A lot of the bands I used to go and see in my teens are coming back – last month I saw Skid Row and Ugly Kid Joe! And i was in the front row, ears ringing for three days as I was right next to the monitor, and yes I took photos! I did have a bit of a moment of clarity as they belted out ‘Youth Gone Wild’ and I just thought ‘no boys, no, we’re not.’ My best friend and I have been going to gigs and festivals together for the last 20 years and we’re still doing it. These days we take airbeds in the tent for camping though, and we won’t go anywhere that doesn’t have decent toilets and facilities.
Hey, what about us middle-aged musicians? We’ve actually learned how to play… uh, for the most part.
The worst thing about being a young musician nowadays is that even if you get some impetus, there’s never going to be enough money to get you off that touring-and-sleeping-on-people’s-couches level, and probably no back end to the touring by means of record sales. So as good as you may be now, we’ll never know how great you might be when you do learn how to play, because you’ll have to go get a job or move back in with your parents or something. Young music is cute, though they really seem to be trying to recreate rather than create, more often than not, and we may never know if they ever will have anything real to say.
I don’t know. Seem like for every interesting middle-aged musician, there’s four old dudes living out their teen fantasies in a shitty Rolling Stones cover band. I definitely agree with you on the latter point.
(Well, I did mean middle aged musicians who make record or used to. Of their own music.)
Um the best rock music has always been made by young people who don’t know how to play. In rock, your technical prowess means much less than your ability to just be bad ass. Didn’t punk rock teach people that? This is late 70s wisdom, nothing new, come on now.
I’m 29 and I feel ancient at some of the shows I go to nowadays, it looks like the average audience age is a decade younger than me! Well done, youths, for finding excellent music at the appropriate age. But yes, please. put your damn phones away.
we are also more responsible and more likely to write reasoned, thoughtful concert and album reviews online to well connected places and thus help them.
Nice list. I hope some of the right people read this.
we are also more responsible and more likely to write reasoned, thoughtful concert and album reviews online to well connected places and thus help them.
Nice list. I hope some of the right people read this.
Hi, a note from a bit farther back on the RnR spectrum. While I find a lot of alt FM a bit annoying and the lack of true oldies stations sinful. I was brought up on Elvis, The Brothers, The Drifters, The Five Satins and Bill Haley and the Comets. I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and two weeks later sold my soul to The Rolling Stones. Lived through the Psychedelic Era and emerged unscathed except for occasional space outs. Once I blogged that Rock and Roll ended for me in 1967. No, it was closer to 1975. I like my oldies. I also listen to Gaslight Anthem, The Dropkick Murphies and am discovering Natalie Dawn and Aimee Mann. One last thing your imagery of four blonds passing around a lighted lip gloss and tromboning menus strikes home. Three years back I got bifocals. I have since gone back and had a pair of glasses made for reading and one for distance. They both have identical frames, yes it’s a male thing, and go through the dance finding the right pair. It doesn’t help when you’re trying to impress a potential date.
Perfect timing – I went to see Alabama Shakes last night and the one thing that struck me was the crowd which was mostly middle aged and I’m talking 40’s and 50’s. The younger crowd stood four deep in front of the stage with their phones held high but the rest of the audience either stood behind them (no phones out except for the occasional picture taking) or sat with drinks in hand enjoying Brittany’s amazing voice. After the show I went to the merch table for the opener Clear Plastic Masks – met the band, bought the LP and had a wonderful conversation with the lead singer Andrew. It was very refreshing because unlike some younger musicians who brush off older fans, Andrew genuinely embraced his older audience.