onstage during the 23rd Annual Race To Erase MS Gala at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on April 15, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California.
Gene Simmons doesn’t open his mouth only to stick out his reptilian tongue.
Often, he opens it to offer opinions on all sorts of aspects of human life.
As reported by Loudwire, in a recent appearance on the “Do You Know Jack?” radio show, Kiss front man Simmons mused on the subject of people who spend their whole time at concerts filming on their phones.
“Technology, of course, has made everything less emotional,” he said. “You know, when you get back home and look at your cell phone and the video there, and you go, ‘Oh, I don’t remember that from the concert!’ Well, of course you don’t, ’cause you were too busy texting or looking at your cell phone.”
It can be a real displeasure — if you’re me, at least — to sit next to someone at a concert who spends the whole time filming it, including panning to you as you sing/dance/sit there wishing that the halfwit next to you would just stop filming. The last time it happened, I may have mouthed an obscenity or two.
Simmons was reacting to the recently obtained Apple patent that would block your iPhone from recording video at concerts.
He said that when Kiss started out, there were no cell phones, and venues would even take away your camera if you walked in with one.
“So, in a lot of ways,” he said, “the concert experience, especially with Kiss, was real — it was emotional, it was deep. You know, people would pass out and cry. It was very emotional.”
Wait, was he talking about Kiss concerts, you might wonder. It seems he was.
His point, though, has a context that extends beyond just concerts. Is there a way in which technology has made music itself less emotional, because there’s so much of it?
Thanks to technology are we all living in our own personal elevators, with muzak to accompany us, as we rise or fall through life?
There’s still something remarkable about the fact that so many of the performers that sell out huge stadiums rose to fame long before the iPhone came along.
A scroll down the list of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time sees U2, The Rolling Stones, Roger Waters and AC/DC taking the first four places.
Are performers like these truly the only ones who still make people feel?