Sometimes, ironically enough, the image sticks with you long after you’ve resisted all the urges that make you want to go out and kill. The best part in this case being that no device—cellphone, camcorder, digital SLR, or circa-1800 camera obscura—is needed to recall the memory of one guy wrecking it for everyone at Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

It was a night that would have made Miranda Lambert totally fucking apoplectic.

But before we get to that, let’s rewind a bit.

In 2013, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds returned to Vancouver after an absence of nearly two decades. It wasn’t so much a show as an event, Cave having avoided Lotusland—but not Seattle—since walking offstage mid-set in 1994 during a Lollapalooza appearance at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds.

According to popular local lore, the Australian icon had gotten pissed when someone in the crowd pelted him mid-song with a (take your pick): pack of Longbeach Menthol cigarettes; spare Feit Sydney shoe; half-empty bottle of Yellowtail; or jumbo shrimp that evidently wasn’t fit for the barbie.

In 2013, all was suddenly forgiven, Cave not only returning to Vancouver with his mighty Bad Seeds, but playing the intimate Vogue when he could have filled the more expansive Orpheum. Right off the top—the symphonic stunner “Jubilee Street” came just two songs in—the set was a mix of gold-leaf classics (“Deanna”, “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”, “Red Right Hand”) and revelatory deep cuts (“Jack the Ripper”). The night was transcendent.

And it was also maddening.

Plunked in the middle of the mosh pit was a guy with an SLR camera, which he fired up the second Cave hit the stage. And didn’t turn off until the final encore. When Cave jumped into the audience at one point, said amateur filmmaker turned the camera on himself, grinning like a drunk simpleton while the singer surfed the enraptured faithful’s hands behind him.

It wasn’t just annoying—it was fucking disruptive, hence this line in the Straight’s review: “It was almost enough to make you feel sorry for the AV Club concert cretin in the pit at stage left who spent the entire fucking night studiously filming every second of the concert, to the considerable outrage of everyone around him. Here’s hoping you enjoy your glorified YouTube footage, you inconsiderate shit stain, because you missed one hell of a show.”

Sometimes you’ll write something and wonder “Did I go too far?” (Actually, that only happened once, but whatever.) Here, some readers felt that was the case. But most didn’t. Among the article’s best Facebook comments was: “We all cheered when that guy’s camera finally died halfway through the show. And then the motherfucker popped in a fresh battery.”

Even though the memory of the Nick Cave concert cretin still makes us totally fucking irate, let’s move on to Miranda Lambert, who deserves some kind of medal for calling it like it is. 

The veteran country singer recently outraged T-Mobile subscribers across America for actually stopping a Las Vegas show mid-song to call out a group of fans. The reason? They were watching the concert through their phones—in this case, trying to set up the perfect group selfie while Lambert sang the ballad “Tin Man”.

The singer’s chastising went like this: “I’m gonna stop right here for a sec. These girls are worried about their selfie and not listening to the song. It’s pissing me off a little bit. I don’t like it.”

She then motioned to the selfie squad to put their phones down. Almost immediately, other fans reportedly began walking out in protest, no doubt filming themselves doing so. Within hours, the shitstorm had started; a TikTok clip of the moment was posted with hashtags like #narcissist.

Popular opinion in the comments section of the clip was summed up by this observation from the shitkicker section of the peanut gallery: “She could have finished her song and just said some blanket statement like, ‘let’s try to be in the moment and stay off our phones.’”

And you know what? Fuck that shit.

Lambert shouldn’t have just stopped the show—she should have gone full “Axl Rose in St. Louis” and jumped into the crowd to take care of things herself. Or tapped her inner Rob Halford by kung-fu kicking the offending phone into the cheap seats (with the caveat that cheap seats probably don’t exist in Las Vegas).

The argument for taking selfies, shooting an endless succession of photos, or filming an entire concert on a Mamiya Leaf Credo 80MP Digital Back SLR (complete with lighting rig) goes something like this: “Fans have paid their money, so they have the right to do whatever they want.”

The first part of that might be true—except where the guest lists, radio contests, and free-tickets-in-a-Wheaties-box come into play.

As for being able to do whatever you want, that’s a little more complicated.

Assuming you aren’t talking Scott Weiland in Velvet Revolver, or GG Allin after a long extra-hot night at Curry in a Hurry, your sole job as an entertainer is to ensure fans leave your show happy. And no one’s happy standing next to someone who’s spending large swaths of the evening trying to capture their best duck face for Instagram. Or filming 90 minutes they’ll put up on YouTube, and then never watch again.

Some artists—Tool, Jack White, Adele, and Madonna—have taken to banning cellphones altogether at their concerts (you put your phone in a bag that’s hermetically sealed upon entering the venue, and you get it back at the end of the show).

There are those who’ll argue that’s treating fans like children. Which, ironically enough, is what Lambert was accused of doing in Vegas.

Here’s a suggestion: make a short list of your favourite personal memories. And then ask yourself, “How were those memories captured?”—the answer likely not being, “While watching them on a screen.”

Which is to say, Miranda Lambert was right.

And so was Nick Cave when, headlining the Orpheum in 2017, he invited half the audience onstage during a swaggering “Stagger Lee” and then, mid-song, told a guy filming the whole thing to put his fucking cellphone away and enjoy the moment. As images go, it was a great one, no digital footage required.