By: Rob Longert, PepperDigital
A week or so ago, I was able to catch the James Taylor concert at the Nikon Theatre at Jones Beach. If you have never been to the venue, I suggest you check it out. To me there is nothing better than beautiful scenery and great tunes.
Before the JT (he was the original, not the remix) concert, the last concert I attended was Jay-Z at the Izod Center in New Jersey. Obviously there is a difference in genre, age, venue and style of musicians, but I cannot say whether I like one better than the other. I am a man of many tastes when it comes to music. From rap and hip hop, to jazz, rock, folk, and classical, I am up for just about anything.
It was not the gap in music style which stuck out to me but the gap in technology use between the two audiences was extremely evident. Jay-Z’s concert was filled with digital cameras, iPhones, Sidekicks, and camera phones while the James Taylor concert seemed to be lacking any of the above. Could it be that people who like James Taylor don’t particularly appreciate technology? On the surface the answer is no. I like JT and Jay-Z, and love me some good technology and gadgets, but there could be a positive correlation between age and musical preference and technology use.
Most of the audience at the James Taylor concert were baby boomers.
They know that a ton of new technology is out there, and they see their
children using it obsessively, but there just seems to be a hurdle for
a good percentage of them in adopting these new technologies. Cell
phones are no longer a new technology, and it is easy to see that most
generations have adapted their use. They have become a necessity.
Camera phones, on the other hand, still seem like a novelty to many
baby boomers, and they are only used in certain instances.
Maybe it is just that Generation Y
grew up with technology, so we understand it and it is second nature,
but maybe it has to do with the way we view the technology. When
looking at an event through the eyes of a citizen journalist who is
going to post footage, photos, and audio onto MySpace, Facebook, or
YouTube, it is easy to see why they want to use technology that is
available to them. There are basically bragging rights that come along
with posting a video or blog post about something you have seen, and,
at a more basic level, a meaningful event can be documented for years
to come.
If we can spin the idea of using technology to become citizen
journalists for baby boomers, do you think it will have a better chance
of resonating with them?
Check out this video of James Taylor from back in the day… it is classic.
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I think it is tough to compare the technology between a James Taylor and Jay-Z concert because they are such different shows. James Taylor is an old school artist and people go to listen to and appreciate the music. Jay-Z on the other hand is an experience; it is much more than just music. I’ve been to both Ben Folds and Santana concerts and loved them both, but I was quick to pull out the phone for recordings only at Santana. There was so much to capture – much more than a guy sitting at a piano.
I’m curious if your experience would be different if you observed baby boomers at a different type of show. I was fortune enough to make it to a Celtics games earlier this year and I noticed many boomers pulling out technology to capture the historic run in their own way (sorry for the cheap Boston plug). So maybe this type of show was better suited to them.
I think younger folks like us just attend more venues where technology is prevalent, so maybe the key is to find ways to technologically innovate classics like James Taylor.
I can agree with you on some fronts there Doug, but can’t believe you threw in the Boston reference… I am surprised you didn’t mention that James Taylor lives in Mass.
I think that part of the experience of going to a James Taylor concert was how JT engaged the crowd. He spoke to us like we were in a small venue, and really was able to connect with his audience.
There are a ton of variables which could’ve contributed to my observation, and I don’t think choosing one will do anyone justice.
Thanks for the comment!
Hey Doug,
Thanks so much for the comment. Rob and I have been discussing his concert experience back and forth for a few days, and I think that part of it, surely, is generation gap related. On the other hand, you’re absolutely right that it has to do with venue.
I attend pro wrestling shows. I also love Paul Simon concerts. My behavior at one might be completely different than the other.
(I saw some people trying to dance to Paul Simon songs at Boston University, by the way…Paul Simon is music you can sing to, but not necessarily music you can look cool dancing to….)
Rob, you make good points about the creativity a stripping away of those “capturable moments” Doug refers to creates a different, almost reverent atmosphere, where the fact that it’s James Taylor and a big crowd dwindles away, and it seems as if he’s talking about “what a wonderful, wonderful world it would be,” almost one-on-one.
This means, then, that atmosphere is everything, age argument aside. And multi-media, cross-platform approaches aren’t always the right fit. Sometimes, it’s getting back to the physical world, mediating our experience through the face-to-face (the handshake Howard referred to in the comments to this recent post.
James Taylor has the legal right to deprive the general public of access to his private, intellectual property, but the exercise of that right won’t make his music popular. The technological environment in which his music became popular wasn’t technically retarded, just slightly more primitive, measured against modern standards of reach and miniaturization.
Access to technology for the recording and distribution of a live event isn’t what separates Gen Y from us BBs. It isn’t Constitutional law, which only protects private citizens from public (federal governmental) policy. It’s probably something like popular contempt in a given audience for paparazzi, A&R men, and the long tradition of pirates/bootleggers/counterfeiters whose presence at a concert of sacred music degrades the communal experience of Art. In this, and most any) context, Art is what happens when a private description of subjective experience resonates powerfully in a majority of breasts exposed to it.
I don’t know Jay-Z at all, but James Taylor’s music is Art in a way that’s remarkably personal, private and intimate in ways that are more important than intellectual property law, and more meaningful than we presently see.
I think Rob’s question leads directly to The Key to the future of information and entertainment in this new century. Technological evolution, the definition of privacy, intellectual property law, public access, and the concept of private ownership; all of these things are elements in a changing lock on a door to a portal that will be passed. What we sacrifice in passing remains to be seen.
Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow delivers a wonderful speech near the end of Inherit the Wind, suggesting that every significant hightech advancement is adopted in exchange for something of value that’s surrendered. Jerry Mander says similar things.
Scott, there’s a lot to be said in your last point, to be sure, about what is lost as old technologies become outmoded. And I’m not referring here simply to the love of previous technologies. There’s some degree of romanticism in the photojournalism instructor I had who made us do everything with chemicals and by hand, even though digital photography was in the future of most of the PJ students I knew. Likewise, there’s something admirable about the ham radio operators I know, or the people who love to still hang on to their vinyls or VHS.
But it’s more than that…There really is always a trade-off, and I think that’s likewise a reason why one technology does not just replace previous ones. There are compelling reasons why people will still read a book or physical magazine or newspaper rather than an eBook or mobile news alerts. And likewise there are reasons that there will still be places in our culture that people do not feel the desire, or perhaps might even be resistant to, inundating with camera phones.
By the way, your points about context should not be disregarded, either. A Gen Y crowd probably won’t have their iPhones out en masse for a baptism, funeral, etc., and cell phone use is frowned on in court and in movie theaters for a reason. We may have found ways for media to become even more private and portable, but that doesn’t mean we want it everywhere…
Sam, I mean to get up-to-speed with “technological determinism”, but Wall*E provides a fascinatingly converged vision of generational metamorphosis in context of platform revision.
It’s also very moving and tremendous fun.
Scott,
I love the quote you chose from Inherit the Wind, and it certainly resonates when it comes to the topic we are discussing.
To me, it comes down to the lenses through which we look at the world, which could be impacted by where and when we were born.
I view both concerts as art in their own respect, but as you said, “James Taylor’s music is Art in a way that’s remarkably personal, private and intimate.”
Jay Z is all about marketing to the masses. From dating a superstar like Beyonce to being partial owner of the New Jersey Nets, he never misses a beat or a chance to market his brand. From that perspective, the presence of iPhones, cameras, etc… only helps his brand rather than take away from it.
All of the YouTube vids coming out of the concert will inspire Jay-Z fans to seek out his new album, buy t-shirts, and attend his next concert so they can be part of his “legacy” and have “the t-shirt” to prove it. Speaking of t-shirts, can you believe they were selling them at the James Taylor concert for $45?
Now that we have picked up on this, it will be interesting to look at the trends coming out of reunion tours as well as new releases.
Scott, you’re now the third person to recommend that film to me, so there’s no way to avoid it (not that I would want to). But, “technological determinism” is just meant as a way to sum up the idea that technology creates change. I’m squarely from the school that believes it’s the cultural uses of technologies that transforms society, however. In short, no technology is useful unless there’s a need already in place that the technology somehow helps fill…
As for your points, Rob, Jay-Z’s act is one, then, that is about the experience with less emphasis on the music itself, perhaps. It’s about proving you were there, wearing your “Jay-Z-ness,” and about buying into (literally) a “lifestyle brand,” as the buzzword is (or perhaps was, I’m not sure).
On the other hand, James Taylor is perhaps equally about the experience, but that experience places more emphasis on the musical performance, as the central element of the event.
Rob,
I have a couple of heroes, Rod Serling and David Milch, whose beliefs fly directly in the face of conventional wisdom; that art and popularity are antithetical.
Both of heroes have loads of proof that socially relevant, biting and insightful Art can acquire a robust and loyal international audience…and both, like you, encounter resistance from the C-suite.
I’m here primarily to listen, but I had to offer an argument to the suspicion that dotage makes for wasted promotional opportunities.
45 bucks a pop?! Where’s my guitar.
Scott,
We’re very much on the same page, about popularity and art not being antithetical. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m a populist, that the most broadly popular thing is therefore the most artistic. Sometimes, the most broadly popular thing (using an “impressions” model, irrespective of the intensity of the interest) picks up on its radar the “lowest-common-denominator” media most often.
Rather, I think it’s true that each thing has to be measured according to the genre it’s in (a slippery slope, of course) or what it’s intending to be (hence some question here about whether Jay-Z and James Taylor concerts are apples and oranges), as well as what sort of audience it’s trying to reach.
There are reasons to buy the JT concert DVD when it becomes available, and there are reasons the Jay-Z phenomenon exists. I think we aren’t talking about apples and oranges so much as the horse&cart approach to predicting success by a formula. The C-suite wants ironclad guarantees of ROI that Art won’t make, so what tends to be reach mass market distribution channels is the hedged bet-product that conforms to formulae, and formularized copies of wildcat Art as defined by the disengaged.