Can’t say I’m a Pearl Jam fan. But when Robert McDonald posted about the band recently, I felt moved to comment (here, given his blog does not allow comments).

McDonald saw Pearl Jam, who he described as, “a tight, well-practiced band that was mostly just having fun playing, coupled with good acoustics and work on the soundboard.”

All throughout the show, hundreds of digital cameras or mobile phones were taking pictures of the stage. At one point I counted, and in our section about 1 in 20 folks at any time were taking a picture. A few folks seemed to be consistently taking photos the entire time. This is extraordinarily odd if you think about it. Given the distance between most fans and the stage, and the dim lighting, most of these pictures will be a blurry mess. Moreover, one could easily find a better picture of Eddie Vedder on the web.

He gives two reasons for this. Profound: the magical thrill and emotional resonance of the Pearl Jam gig (or whatever it is) in front of you. The shallow: people proving they managed to get tickets to the gig.

I don’t entirely agree the latter is so shallow. That ephemeral moment, that magic of seeing a band perform live is coming into focus as the centre of many music makers’ activities. Blame it on the twin factors of declining record sales, and the merch. and gig (oh, ad licensing too) based replacement economy. That live experience is the thing, but how to capture it? It’s such a fleeting moment.

Photos and audio were par for the course for years. Cameras are cheaper now, video’s replaced audio, and it’s so easy to share those pics. Why’s the guy taking 50 photos, probably because as McDonald said, “most of these pictures will be a blurry mess.” At such a bad signal to noise ratio, dude’s just trying to up his/her chance of taking a decent one.

Speaking of which, check my pics of Justin Townes Earle, Jamie Lidell, and The Herd at my flickr page.