I have been to many different venues and the rules are always different. How can this be the case? The rules during concerts are so all over the place, I never know if I can even bring a pack of gum! For example, the Palladium or the El Rey (among other places) forbid chewing gum at the entrance, and if I understand that picking up the gum on the floor can probably be a pain in the ass for people who clean afterward, when I see the mess left on the floor after a show, gum should be the least of their worries. Some rules are so bizarre they don’t have rational explanations.
Probably, the worst of all these venues with rules is Whisky A Go-Go on the Sunset Strip. Each time I have been there (and it didn’t happen very often) it was almost empty, the strip has become a sort of museum despite a current attempt to revive it, and the security guards have always been on my back! What? No pictures, no videos, you don’t want any publicity for your forgotten hole? I can confirm that the band I was seeing was totally okay with videos, they actually desperately wanted publicity, but the venue was against it for some stupid reasons. There is never anyone interesting playing this venue, they live on their past fame, and if Jim Morrison has played there in the 60s, it’s now almost dead.
Pictures and videos rules are so inconsistent that I can’t make sense of these rules. Sure, certain artists don’t want any pictures to be taken, but I don’t understand the venue making up stupid rules!! Don’t they want people to talk about them on Facebook, Twitter and music blogs? The Observatory in Orange County is another venue which gave me a hard time with pictures. The security guards were total assholes, they were pointing their flashlights on people using their phones to take pictures and then were jumping on them to snatch the phones! What kind of insane rule is that? I saw Jenny Lewis there, and she has always been cool with pictures… Venues have to live with their time, it’s YouTube era and any footage shot in a venue is excellent publicity for them and the artist, how is this hard to understand? How can artists think for a minute that the bad videos shot on iPhones will compete with their official recordings?
I go to the Fonda all the time, and the rules have been all over the place. Sometimes, they barely check my bag, another time they made me throw away chapstick, contact lens solution, and a pen! What were they afraid of? That I was about to attack someone with my sharpie? It couldn’t have been a request of the band, it doesn’t make sense.
But the tougher security I have ever experienced was at the Vex, they did a deep body search, a woman even palpated me under the bra. I know they are a punk venue and are probably afraid of knives/drug hidden in the most peculiar places, but it was extreme and unnecessary.
Furthermore, some rules are trespassed all the time: I have managed to sneak a camera a few times when it wasn’t allowed, and I don’t see why venues make some ‘no crowd surfing, no moshing’ signs as they are never respected where I go.
Rules at concerts are most of the time stupid and don’t have anything to do with security… if venues were really concerned with security they would limit the number of drinks per people for example, drunk people always behave stupidly and dangerously,… but beers and drinks bring them too much money for them to limit their consumption.
It’s about time venues decide about their concert rules and stick to them instead of making them up each time. They can’t be taken seriously with such fluctuating nonsense. Nobody has ever been hurt with a water bottle, so I want to be able to bring my own water bottle, plus I am adult and has never thrown up my gum on the floor, so leave my pack of Extra alone. There is no law against taking a camera into a concert, there are no official laws behind the signs that you see at concerts, they are just made up rules, and rules exist to be broken.