In what seems to be a consistent debate in all forms of life nowadays, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong recently stood against the overuse of smartphones at concerts during a recent Q&A in London.
“Social media can be a very miserable place to be. At our shows I see lot of people holding up cell phones. You can look at a screen at home; you can look at your computer or your phone anywhere.”said Armstrong according to NME. The Bay area rock vet emphasized further that it’s about human contact and being apart of something in the moment. “You can take your picture but let’s have eye contact, let’s have a human experience right now you can’t capture on a cell phone. Why would you want to listen to your favorite song going like this [holds arm in air] when you can just hear it right in front of you? I feel like a little more human contact is good.”
We are all guilty of little bit too much Snapchat or Instagram in any setting sometimes right? How do we control the social media beast within all of us? Well, a pretty controversial and tech product has been introduced at some live events in the last year that may make some of you really happy you don’t have to stare at a screen when you are trying to stare a stage or it may make you very angry that you can’t Facebook Live what you are looking at. Yondr is a tech device that has been the talk of the concert industry in the last year, as it allows users to voluntarily take their phone out of the rock show experience. It’s basically a pouch that locks up your phone while you are at a show. The Yondr pouches were implemented as a mandatory at a string of sold-out shows by comedian Dave Chapelle at Chicago’s Thalia Hall back in January. Surprisingly these are really effective and may change the way people take in a concert.
Our buddies Consequences of Sound interview the Graham Dugoni, founder of the company Yondr.
