People who "shussh" at gigs

I'm a shusher.

Call me old fashioned, but I really don't like hearing people at concerts having "I hate my boss/boyfriend/girlfriend/life etc" *shouting* conversations after I've paid €60 for a ticket. You wouldn't do it in the cinema, so why do it at a concert?

(Key word here being shouting - it's not fun to listen to people shout at the best of times, let alone at a time when you're trying to enjoy yourself. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves though )

I'm not a shusher but I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, especially in last night's Sigur Rós situation. Some music has to be heard with no background noise...

If you want silence, hire the band privately?
How about if you want to talk then don't go to the gig?


Seriously, you paid the same amount as eveyone else to be there. Why would you want to miss the gig by talking the whole time?

What annoys me more are people who ignore the support act and talk loudly over them while up at the very front saving their spot for when the main band come on. Who they'll probably talk during aswell.

The fact is sigur ros has a lot of orchestral work in it. You wouldnt scream and shout at an orchestra either. Yell all you like between songs but not during.

I thought it was amazing at the pause in the song that the above poster mentioned that practically everyone coped on what was happening, didnt think it was the end of the song and just held their breath except for that one F***ing idiot.

If you're so Idiotic that you cant cop the band is using silence then you probably do need to be told to shut the F*** up via shushing or a quick twist of the neck. Sadly the latter is illegal.

Its not the first gig I've been at with shushers (that would have been Slint(and if you thought the sigur ros crowd were strange then the Slint crowd were just plain weird)) so it didnt bother me much and I still enjoyed the best concert ever.

faceman wrote:

I dont really like sigur ros and i wasnt there but it sounds like they werent very loud tho if ppl were asking others to "sshhhhhhh"??

I get worried if i go to a concert and ya have to tell someone to be quiet so u can enjoy the music. Look at christy moore, thats just a dude n a guitar, never been at one of his gigs where u had to tell someone to shut up!

They were as loud as they needed to be. They have moments of silence and quieter sounds which makes up the songs. If they turned everything up to 11 the song would be destroyed.

As for Christy Moore, no one talks at his shows because if they do, he's the one who tells them in no uncertain terms to shut the **** up. He's famous for hating mindless chatter disrupting a gig.

Smurfpiss wrote:

Im sorry but i cant stand people who talk loudly at gigs. or idiots who ring their friends and say "YEAH IM AT THE DAMIEN RICE GIG! WHAT?"

Oh god! You've just reminded me of something I experienced a while back....

I was at a very small, intimate gig when the girl beside me decides to ring her friend and tell her all about it. Unfortunately for her (and all around her), the conversation consisted of "HELLO? WHERE ARE YOU? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! HELLO? WHERE ARE YOU? HELLO?"

A little distracting, I think you'll agree. Shushing wouldn't have been enough in her case; something along the lines of scalding would have been more appropriate! :mad:

ergo wrote:

seated gigs mid-week in Vicar St; these are the only ones around where it's guaranteed silence and respect in my opinion

Definitely. Went to see Josh Ritter there, absolutely fantastic, and everyone was there to appreciate his music. Vicar Street's a great venue, the bar(s) is(are) completely separate, if you want to have a drink and a chat you can do it without upsetting anyone else. Everywhere else, the bar is either in the venue (the Ambassador, Whelan's), or it's somewhere where there's nowhere to sit, you basically have to go back to the main venue (the Point, the Olympia to an extent)

I play and go to a lot of gigs around dublin and it is my understanding that if the artist is good enough and interesting enough to hold the attention of the crowd for the whole set then they wont have this problem of talkng,shushing etc... I myself have played gigs where there are people talkng the whole way through our set, so what can you do? I think from this point of view it's the responsibility of the band to interact with the crowd and put on a good show and floor the audience with a great performance, Some nights a band can do it and other nights they can't and that's the difference between pro's and amateurs. I'd like to point out to any frames fans that this isnt the first time Glen Hansard has had problems with the crowd talking throughout a gig,My friend was at a frames gig in vicar st a few years ago were hansard told the crowd if they came to have a chat they could step outside, on the flipside i have been at reasonably quiet acoustic gigs such as Bob Dylan, Rod y Gab, Tommy Emanuel, Tom Bresh and you could hear a pin drop in what were all fairly big venues, but then again these acts all have big loyal followings. I suppose the challenge as a young/upcoming musician is to capture the crowd and make the morons who usually talk stop talking, face forward and listen to you and at the end of the gig they'll run up and shake your hand and buy your demo

gracehopper wrote:

I play and go to a lot of gigs around dublin and it is my understanding that if the artist is good enough and interesting enough to hold the attention of the crowd for the whole set then they wont have this problem of talkng,shushing etc...

That's all well and good if you assume that the entire audience actually cares about music. Bands that are just breaking out into the big league attract a lot of people who just go to the gigs to say they were there. Sigur Rós was a prime example of that. The music is good enough and interesting enough to hold people's attention, it has been the previous five times they've played here and was this time. Only this time there were a load of knob ends who probably only went because they heard Chris Martin likes them.