Over the weekend I went to see the “Barenaked Ladies” (BNL) concert at the enmax center. Which explains my title, which hopefully was not too shocking and makes sense now! Its funny how they must have originally created that name to shock and grab the attention of a large audience. Unfortunalty they would always be held back by this invisible band that we can refer to as the Canadian nationality. But that is not really my point, I just wanted to point out how their name is not so shocking anymore and really just understood. I am sure that when you first read my title, you most likely thought of the band…not sure what other options you went through first…haha…anyways…Their name is no longer shocking because we are now somewhat de-sensitized to this type of humour.
So as I am sitting there way up in section HH, second last row, I had a great view of not only the performance but of the entire crowd. It was so interesting to watch which groups I would say roughly 3500 hundred people there, they were all still concerned about how others were behaving and did not want to act differently. A boy sitting next to me (don’t worry I won’t mention your name Mark) was just having a blast! He was dancing in his seat, acting out all of the words to the songs but he would not stand up. I am thinking to myself he personally would most likely have more fun if he was standing up rocking out, but he wouldn’t and it was because nobody else was. He would only have been noticed by the 25 immediate people surrounding us but still that was not enough to get him up out of his seat.
Along these same lines, I tried to picture what the show would have been like if it had just been me and my 3 friends at the show. Something tells me that it would not have been the same!
For starters BNL would not have been interested in performing for 4 University students and not only due to the fact that they would make less then 160$, which would be in no way profitable, but there would be no motive for them. Our reactions, dancing, clapping and whistling would not be gratifing enough for them to really put on a good show.
Second of all I don’t the 4 of us would have had much fun in a huge empty hockey arena watching a show that is meant for a crowd of at least 5000 people. I think that in a way watching other people clap and whistle encourages us to do the same and in a way justifies our behaviour aswell. And back to my friend who wishes to remain anonymous, would he have wanted to rock out with just us 3 around him? I doubt that he would have been as interested or as provoked to dance if there was no one around pretending to ignore his somewhat strange behaviour in comparison to the social norms at that specific time.
PS> Any guesses as to what BNL did on the day of festivus??
I thought that they put on a great concert. I haven’t really listened to BNL since their Born on a Pirate Ship album, but their really new stuff sounds pretty good. They really know how to get the crowd excited. I think that people acting a certain way because of certain social norms is exactly what they try to play around with — how do they get people to stop being so sefl-conscious and feel comfortable letting loose.
p.s. we ended up getting to go on the floor for free!
Personally I think the answer could be found in a more basic theory than social norms. Lets go all the way back to basic animalistic nature and consider the “mob mentality” or “group mentality”. Think about how a bird can be very eratic and skittish when on its own and procedes to arbitrarily do what it pleases when it pleases. But then notice what happens when it becomes part of a bigger group? ever notice how when one bird changes direction all birds do so in that same direction near simultaneously? The same goes for schools of fish or herds of cattle. Now I don’t believe in some sort of sub-liminal or subconscious telepathic connections between separate living entities, but I would think it is safe to say that there are some underlying natural habbits and understandings that influence groups of organisms… And a mob of people in that sense is no different than a school of fish. They may act completely differently when single and on their own, but once all together their actions and reactions become very synchronized. In the case of the concert, it seems out of place not to get excited, to sing along, and to have that butterfly feeling. Think about it…
And BNL was an amazing concert!
Well I don’t care if you got to go down to the floor for free! You are mean and cruel! Anyways, how did your movie blog treat you? Did you find some similarities between it and the concert?….deep..I know.