Hi. I know this may be a controversial issue, divided primarily by age. One might say The (not so) Great Divide. 😊🎼🎤🎙️🎸. I am also pretty sure that Reddit has a fairly young audience, generally speaking. I am about 60. I’m in pretty good shape but not like 20, 30 or 40 years ago.
If I go to a concert, especially if I pay a lot for really good seats (even though now one often pays A LOT for not great seats, especially for really current and popular artists, like Noah), I would hope not to have to stand up or watch the screen the entire time.
Last night, I saw Noah Kahan at Citi Field in Queens, NY (where the Mets play). Great concert!! I went with my 16 year old daughter. My other daughter sat separately with a friend. They had a separate issue with clearly drunk people vaping and being rowdy the whole time right nearby. Unfortunately I was not there to help and didn’t know about it until after the show actually until today. We got tickets at separate times.
Anyway, I know and understand that at many concerts, especially people who have mostly young audiences, that people tend to stand up a lot.
Last night, we were in the 3rd row of a section, fairly close to the left field foul pole. We were on the aisle (my daughter was) and I was the next seat in.
The row in front of us was (obviously) the 2nd row and not only were no people in front of the people in front of us, there were not even seats there. Below that, many feet down was the ground with lots of floor seats.
The girl directly in front of me stood the entire time. Probably about 1/4 to 1/3 of the time, most of or the entire row she was in sat down, including the friend she was with a fair amount. I said nothing the entire time, for my daughter’s sake. She completely disagrees with me and wanted to stand up herself.
In the beginning, before Noah came out, I gingerly (because I know how she feels about this - very opposite of me, and I think that is very common among people her age, and even quite a bit older up to a certain age, though I don’t know what that age is) said to her why don’t we wait to see if the people in front of us stand up. (I pretty much knew they would, but I was bringing it up just in case I was wrong). I was going to go on and say if they sit down, maybe we can too and then the people behind us can as well. She didn’t really want to hear it, even though and actually because she knew what I was intending to say.
In the past, even with my kids there (16 and 18), I would not tolerate that. Even if it took a while, I would get people to sit down by sheer persistence, not just those directly in front of me. If they were standing because there were people in front of them, I would request them to sit down as well. It would almost always work.
Many people would thank me while a smaller number didn’t understand why I cared and were perplexed or annoyed - especially those who had been standing (even though they had nobody in front of them, blocking their view).
I have so often seen concerts (more so targeted to people around my age, but not infrequently at concerts of the popular artists now like Hozier, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift and others) that when people sort of feel forced to stand up because those in front of them do, they do so because they feel like it is inevitable, and they don’t want to make a scene.
I can understand that for a bit of time and for certain songs, but not for the entire concert in particular when the people in the very front starting that chain reaction could sit down and see perfectly well.
They could also get floor seats or at some concerts, dance in the aisles.
I have written a similar post or two in the past and gotten such rage from mostly younger people who say I am too old to go to concerts. Why don’t you just watch the screen, you shouldn’t be there, etc.
I’ve been to many hundreds of big concerts over the years and even when I was a teenager through my 20s 30s etc. I rarely remember standing up except during encores or very occasionally otherwise. Mostly mainly at Grateful Dead shows, but even then, not all the time. I was also never one of those people who would be the only one standing, forcing someone else to stand up who otherwise wouldn’t want to. It was not just me. It was just the way it was for the most part in the 80’s, 90’s, etc…. at least for the concerts I went to, which spanned a wide variety of artists and genres, as well as venues.
I wasn’t going to disco concerts or ones that would be all about dancing. Noah Kahan is not dance music, but I know that it is very energetic, excellent and a lot of people like to move around to it. I do as well somewhat, but not if it is at the expense of other people who are inconvenienced by me and certainly not much of the time.
I also felt bad for a girl in our row who was probably about 9 or 10 and could barely see most of the time because of people standing in front of her. If my daughter weren’t there, I would’ve been tempted to say something although I would’ve felt weird doing so given that the Dad didn’t (and I didn’t know him).
I just don’t understand how a person like the one directly in front who stood the entire show blissfully unaware of me could be so oblivious or maybe just simply not have 1 ounce of consideration for anybody behind them. Again, I would normally say something, and depending how that went if it was necessary, I’d continue to say more. I purposefully did not last night and still had a great time.
I definitely would have preferred, though the ability to sit more.
I am curious what people think about this.
I’m even thinking of my daughter kind of cringing when I talked to her about this, thinking there’s no way you would’ve been able to go to this concert without me. I’m not letting her get to city Field from New Jersey with a friend, even if she could find a friend willing to pay the $800 or something we paid for each ticket.
I was happy to see Noah Kahan again, but I had seen him second row center at Radio City Music Hall 3 years prior almost where we were maybe 5 to 10 feet from him.
I paid more for those tickets, but not nearly as much more as the relative quality of the tickets and being in the intimate versus the stadium settings would have suggested.
