Louts

Went to see Joe Jackson last night, playing at the lovely Orpheum Theatre in downtown L.A. Great show. I'm a longtime Joe Jackson fan, and although I saw him once before, it was during his Night Music tour in late '94, and the show was, let's say, idiosyncratic. Last night's show was more straightforward, even with a stripped-down three-piece band (no electric guitar!), and with one roiling exception, I had a great time.

The louts behind me. Or let's go ahead and call them The Louts. Because of course they are entirely representative of their kind, so let's go ahead and generalize.

You know exactly who I'm talking about. Those two assaholics, two rows behind, for whom enjoying a concert means shouting out their stupidity to the world, top volume, from first moment to last. Because of course it's important that we all be made to realize just how stupid they really are.

No, my best guess is the obvious one: that these guys are convinced that they're The Greatest Joe Jackson Fans Of All Time, and that they must proclaim their superiority at every moment so that all we Lesser Fans (who barely deserve even that paltry title) will be made to feel our wretched inferiority. One of The Louts, during the show, did in fact shout out "YEAH, JOE! WAKE THESE PEOPLE UP!" Which made absolutely no sense, because the crowd was in fact on the rowdy side all the way through.

After all, this was a Joe Jackson show, and Joe came out of post-punk Britain along with Elvis Costello when they were both competing for the title Angriest Young Man. Listen to the crowd in Joe's 1980 live recordings and you can hear particularly well that he's used to a lively crowd. Even so, last night he had to say "Okay, calm down" at one point. So it's not like the rest of us were asleep. In fact, it may be true that the fact that it was a loud crowd just meant that The Louts had to be that much louder. After all, how were they to establish their superiority as Joe Jackson True Fans if they weren't, you know, louder than everyone else? That is how you establish your superiority, right? By being louder than the other guy? I mean, everybody understands that, right?

For a while, I tried to give The Louts the benefit of the doubt. I said to myself, "Maybe it's like they're in church and, you know, testifying." So I ignored it for a while, but it just kept going on. (Then at one point, when Joe began a slow, quiet song, they had the temerity to start shushing the rest of us.) Eventually, though, it started to reach absurd heights. They started whistling to songs. Loudly. And singing along, sometimes deliberately badly. And of course loudly. (Sometimes they actually sang reasonably well, which is why I can say they were deliberately singing badly. And loudly.)

As my friend Buffie said after the show, "Sometimes I just wish I had my own personal taser."

I wonder: are these guys just idiots, or is there yet another level of idiotic vanity at play? After all, this was the last stop on Joe Jackson's U.S. tour, so I suppose there was a fair chance the show was being recorded. Were these guys trying to get on the album? Is that why they consistently picked the quietest moments of the show to bellow the loudest? Are they those idiots who jump behind newscasters and cavort maniacally?

Listen, Louts of the world. There's a difference between enjoying a show, between whistling and cheering, and being an obnoxious lout. It's not a subtle difference, either, it's a big stinkin' difference that most adults understand perfectly well. But then, that's the operative word, isn't it? Last night's Louts, who were not young, are nonetheless children, whining for attention like any three year old. And as anyone should understand, you just don't bring three year olds to an indoor rock concert.