Welcome to the Future

Tonight Wood and his friend James and I went to see U23D. As you can see from the glasses, this was one hipster affair. (James said that Wood looks very German. And I'm trying to look serious as well, but as you can see, that just doesn't work on my face, and my expression ends up being a smirk more than anything else besides the fact that I am wearing glasses over glasses.) Anyway, it was reasonably cool in a gimmicky kind of way, as are most IMAX experiences.

But I have to ask, is this what our concert experiences will be in the future? I'm a purist when it comes to live music and make it a habit to never go to arena shows as they are not immediate enough for my taste. Give me a club show any day with a spot close enough to the stage that I can see the sweat on the drummer's brow. I also need to be able to cheer 'em on. (Wood and I represented by waiving our "devil's horn" hand signals, and by hooting and hollering, but quickly found by the lack of enthusiasm of our fellow audience members that this wasn't going to be the behaviour du jour.) So I'm stumped that now our heavily mediated arena shows are being made into media that makes these highly orchestrated events feel "more real." Strange.