Concertgoers nowadays are more used to seeing phones up in the air rather than horns, and Scott Ian is none too pleased about that. He was recently interviewed by Examiner and was asked about footage from Anthrax shows and even his Spoken Words tour coming up online:
Call me crazy, but I’m one of those crazy artists that thinks you shouldn’t give your content away for free. I know that’s a crazy way to think these days but I come from the old school. Where you used to buy albums and videos. And I still do, I still buy my music and dvds. So I feel like if I have enough respect to do that, then everyone should have enough respect to do that.
I think it’s idiotic. I think the fact that someone would come to a show, spend the money to come to the show, and stand there holding their freakin phone over their head for 90 minutes is pathetic. It completely defeats the purpose of coming to a live show. I think it’s a joke. I’ve seen Bruce Dickinson go off on audience members for doing that. Granted he’s in Iron Maiden and they’re big enough to say that to their audience, but I think it’s idiotic and I don’t understand that mindset at all. You’re standing at a live show and you’re watching it through a screen on your phone.
It’s one thing to to record part of a song from the show, but to do it at something like the Speaking Words tour seems even more rude since it’s more candid. Lots of people are likely guilty of having used their phone to record once or twice, but you shouldn’t be sitting or standing in the best possible view of the band for the sole purpose of recording the whole show. Also, that comment about Bruce Dickinson calling people out at shows? Bruce has been doing that as early as 1998 as you can see in the video below, well before 10 year-olds were walking around with iPhones.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/WlGfXo2ycvE[/youtube]
