More Noise!

Last Saturday night, I was at a gig selling merchandise for a band my husband is in. It was a ticketed sit down gig, and people spent substantial money on dinner and the show. The band started, and the couple in front of me—to put it politely—wouldn't shut up. Everyone else was trying to listen to the band without distractions. Of course, the band was loud (between 95 and 100 dB on my Apple Watch at the back of the room), but the incessant chatter was annoying.

I get it. It may have been a first date, but I’ve been here before—see my newsletter on the building site, almost next door. They were ruining the experience of those around them with their disrespectful, incessant noise.

Many gigs are for dancing, talking, yahooing, and having fun!!! However, performance gigs are different. When people talk loudly at performance gigs, it’s usually later at night and almost always alcohol-driven. But last Saturday night, they’d only just arrived, and unless they had preloaded, they would still be sober. Therefore, using deduction, I put their disrespect down to rudeness. I know, I’ve made lots of assumptions here.

My passive part wanted to let it go, but it was so loud. I did a few testing ‘shhhhings’ from behind, which were ignored, probably because they couldn’t hear my little attempts. However, the penny dropped after 20 minutes when I realised the following:

My mood wasn’t due to their behaviour; it was due to my lack of action.

With this realisation, I walked up so that they could clearly see me and mimed ‘ssshh’ with my finger to my mouth this time. They saw my intent, and looked annoyed.

Here’s what happened. I felt better. And I realised it didn’t matter whether they stopped talking. I felt better because I had acted. Yay me! Then, after about 3 minutes, they were silent. They hung in at the gig for another 20 minutes and then left.

I had nudged the situation in the direction I wanted it to go.

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