The well-behaved and uptight crowd spoilt it for JESSICA RAJANDRAN at Coldplay’s amazing concert in Singapore recently.

 

Ten of us went to see Coldplay when they were in Singapore on July 10. Two of us had gone to see them perform at Earl’s Court, London in December and the same two had gone to see them when they came last to Singapore.

 

But we weren’t the only out-of-stationers. Among the neighbours, fans travelled from Indonesia and Thailand for its only Southeast Asian stop on their Twisted Logic world tour.

 

For a Monday night show, the stadium was packed to its ears — 10 000 people came on a Monday night!

 

The show was amazing — strobe lights, a projection screen occasionally flashing larger-than-life shots of the band members, an LED countdown, big yellow balls filled with confetti, Chris Martin’s antics.

 

 

But it seems like lots of people paid a lot of money to just sit down and watch the show looking all prim and proper. The crowd at the Indoor Stadium was so well-behaved it bordered on annoying. Some of us wanted to stand and dance — because, you know, this is a concert after all. But noooooo…

 

It made me wonder about crowd dynamics — perfect way to ruin something fun by theorising over it, some might think. But this is interesting. Really!

 

1. Convergence theory holds that crowd behaviour is not a product of the crowd itself, but is carried into the crowd by particular individuals. What this means is that people who wish to act in a certain way come together to form crowds of like-minded individuals.

 

Ok. So we were all there to watch Coldplay — that seems reasonably like-minded. And to sing and dance along with Martin — although this was not so like-minded. In fact, Martin seemed to be the only livewire in the arena. He was all over the place — running towards his seated fans, hurtling about or just lying on the stage singing. He was like a contagious germ, fun to watch, like a Tasmanian Devil in slow-mo that doesn’t wreck anything.

 

2. Contagion theory states that crowds cause people to act in a certain way. Shielded by the anonymity of a crowd, people abandon personal responsibility and surrender to the contagious emotions of the crowd.

 

This works, if the contagious emotion in question was lazy peacefulness. It was all nice and harmless. People were obviously conscious of their personal responsibility.

 

The people who yelled “Encore, Encore!” didn’t manage to influence the rest to join in their chants.

 

Nor did the people in the mosh pit try to help this lone dude surf. He just hovered in the air for a moment so we figured no one knew what to do next.

 

It was either he didn’t know what to do when he got up there or the crowd just didn’t know what to do with him.

 

There were some slightly more interesting people, though — such as the ones holding up the Italian flag, since it was the day after Italy won the World Cup; and there was this odd girl waving a blue umbrella over her head to some of the songs.

 

3. Turner and Killian developed the Emergent-norm theory of crowd dynamics. They concede that social behaviour is never entirely predictable, but neither are crowds irrational. If similar interests draw people together, distinctive patterns of behaviour may emerge in the crowd itself.

 

If one person at a rock concert holds up a lit cigarette lighter to signal praise for the performers, and others follow suit. This theory points out that people in a crowd take on different roles.

 

Some step forward as leaders; others become lieutenants, rank-and-file followers, inactive bystanders or even opponents.

 

There didn’t seem to be such military organisation at the Coldplay show. All they were interested in was waving their hands in the air, like they just don’t care.

 

Another annoying incident happened when a companion and I stood up because we were rather excited — duh. But a woman from the top row told the usher to ask us to sit down. Wokay. So we did. For a few minutes. Then we stood up again — we couldn’t help ourselves — and she went to get the usher to make us sit down again. This time the usher ignored her. We were curious to know why she even bothered coming.

 

One of us got told by a guy to stop clapping because it was making his ear hurt! He didn’t seem to be having fun himself, considering the fact that he was busy sending text messages throughout.

 

Some people even walked out before the end of the concert. We assume that they didn’t know that there’s usually an encore, maybe they’re just worried about getting out of the parking lot without getting stuck in the after-show traffic, or maybe they just wanted to get out to smoke, since the arena is a no-smoking zone.

 

Despite all that, the concert was amazing. Once the projection screen lit up with a countdown and the Square One Music came on with Chris’s silhouette, people were excited.

 

Chris ad-libbed in Got Put A Smile... singing ... God let us tour the Far East... He also quipped that Till Kingdom Come was about waiting for your favourite band to return, making reference to their first joint-gig with Travis in Singapore, back when people only came to hear Travis songs and Yellow.

 

He slipped in a reference to the Backstreet Boys mid-song too. They sang Ring of Fire as a tribute to Johnny Cash and then there were the big yellow confetti-filled balloons that bounced about the crowd during Yellow.

 

The highlight of course was Martin running up to the back for In My Place to sing to the crowd.

 

There were some foreigners who managed to get past security and jumped over the barriers, to get a closer view of Martin.

 

Well, obviously I’m not trying to imply that we should all have beer baths or throw bras onstage to have fun at concerts, and we certainly weren’t trying to advocate riots and rebellion. But it would really help if people were courteous enough to appreciate concert culture.

 

There really was a lot of fun, too bad for the people who didn’t bother to get out of the fresh-out-of-work mode or the people who have been inundated through years of brainwashing to be reticent and uptight.

 

http://www.nst.com.my

He was all over the place — running towards his seated fans, hurtling about or just lying on the stage singing. He was like a contagious germ, fun to watch, like a Tasmanian Devil in slow-mo that doesn’t wreck anything.

:laugh4: awwww, typical Chris! :nice:

I thought the crowd was amazing! Or maybe it was because I was standing in the free-standing area, but Chris said so too!

 

I think it is quite... let's just say it is not very nice of the reporter to throw in her biased opinion of Singaporeans:

or the people who have been inundated through years of brainwashing to be reticent and uptight.

... especially when my friends and I (both true-blue Singaporeans) sang and screamed and flailed around, losing our voices at the end of the concert, and entirely enjoyed ourselves.

 

Not a very fair report, considering she decided to go for a SEAT instead of the free-standing, which sold out way later than the others. Also, from what I saw, the people by the side all were standing! I think that (local) newspaper reports mentioned that people were prevented from leaving their seats due to security issues, and I felt sorry for these people.

 

But standing up? There should be no issue on that at the Indoor Stadium, and I think that either the reporter was extremely unlucky to have encountered such problems, or she went to a different concert.

 

 

On the encore cries, the standing people were screaming it. On singing and dancing along, we were all doing that. The dancing part might not be so obvious because the entire crowd surged forward the second the screen lit up with the countdown.

 

There didn’t seem to be such military organisation at the Coldplay show. All they were interested in was waving their hands in the air, like they just don’t care.

I would be taking offence at little things and not waving my hands in the air like crazy if I didn't care.

Hmmm... I was feeling sorry for the reporter until I heard the second side of the story... :stunned: :thinking:

 

Thanks for the article!