Imagine going to a gig, festival or club and being quizzed on how well you know the performers’ music. Imagine being condescended to and treated as if you don’t deserve to be there. Imagine feeling sick from being intimidated, isolated and subject to suspicion about your intentions at the event. Imagine feeling physically unsafe when you’ve gone to watch your favourite artist.
Every person of colour, every woman, transgender, non-binary and queer person, knows exactly what this is like: the assumption that because you’re not the default white male fan, you must be some sort of cultural interloper at a music event. In 2008, the so-called risk-assessment Form 696 formalised racial profiling of music events in London; even though it was officially scrapped in 2017, discrimination against fans of colour still continues: global majority music fans attending indie, rock or metal gigs – anything but rap or R&B – are often greeted with surprise or worse. Women are asked to prove their knowledge of an act to demonstrate their right to be there; worse, sexually assaulted. Societal violence against LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming people doesn’t simply cease when you walk past the box office.
A few men have discovered how this feels as a result of overzealous security at a Last Dinner Party gig at the Engine Shed in Lincoln this weekend. Three men posted on X saying they were “told I might be a pervert cus I’m alone”, “interrogated and searched” and asked what their favourite song by the British rock band was. The venue has apologised and said that it overreacted after security were told about incidents at previous gigs by the band – who have always been vocal about their desire to create safe spaces for all their fans – and that an independent investigation was under way. The band said they had not been consulted on the policies, which did not “reflect our beliefs”, and that they were “appalled and disappointed that anyone was made to feel otherwise”.
The men didn’t deserve to have their night go this way. Equally, the public interest in the story – reported by the Guardian, the Independent, the Mirror, Metro, NME, the BBC, Sky News and more, and widely discussed online – feels entirely disproportionate to the incident. If every time women or minority fans were mistreated at concerts made the headlines, every publication would need dedicated beat reporters.
Awareness around conduct at gigs has never been higher. There are high-profile activist groups such as Safe Gigs for Women; most venues have staff trained in the national Ask for Angela campaign (which was, incidentally, started in Lincolnshire). Especially at DIY level – but not exclusively – it’s the norm to see codes of conduct about respect, tolerance, inclusivity and so on, posted around a venue; more and more musicians have made clear their standards for gig-goers. (Even mosh pits are more inclusive than they once were.) These initiatives have taken off in the past decade during a rise in gender and racial consciousness in music culture, but they’re not new: from the late 80s, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi was admonishing audience members for violent or antisocial behaviour and performed songs about rape so that their male listeners might put themselves in female listeners’ shoes; Kurt Cobain stopped Nirvana shows to shame and expel fans for sexually assaulting others in the crowd and made clear to “sexist, racist, homophobe” listeners that they weren’t welcome in their community; Kathleen Hanna brought “girls to the front” at Bikini Kill shows, a mantra that became a staple of riot grrrl – and famously provoked retaliatory bad behaviour from men outraged by the concept.
These initiatives have undoubtedly improved the experiences of gig-goers. There is relative safety in the knowledge that anyone committing an infraction should be thrown out if reported. They have hopefully encouraged men, too, to think carefully about how they occupy a space and relate to the others in it, and to check their friends if they overstep. But problems persist. There are evident misdeeds, such as unwanted touching or attention; there are also smaller but pernicious ones, like the solo men who spend the entire gig with their ancient digital camera zoomed in on the female singer, taking endless photos that you wonder what on earth they’ll do with later – creepy behaviour that I’ve seen, and talked to female musicians about off-record, more times than you can count. A man recently patronised me at a festival in a way that felt so textbook and predictable, I couldn’t be bothered to argue – but I was the one who had to spend the rest of my day feeling flat.
The Engine Shed shouldn’t have assumed that solo men at the Last Dinner Party show were there with malign intent. The actions of security were well-intentioned – to protect gig-goers whose safety is still not guaranteed – but counterproductive, both on the night and for the unhelpful and distracting discourse the incidents have spawned. Policing gigs is fraught with difficulty – not only in managing what is going on in dark, packed rooms of any size, but also in preserving the free atmosphere that should be a core part of any live music experience. Treating the door as if it is the notoriously exclusive Berlin club Berghain and observing every neighbour as though they’re a threat fosters a culture of distrust and the breakdown of potential community. Audience harmony can really only come from an understanding that everyone present is part of a temporary collective, bound by at least this one thing.
Much as I can imagine that it could be stressful going to a gig alone as a 50-year-old man who might be easily stereotyped, I hope that he understands the necessary state of high alert that women and minority fans experience at most live music events and does his best to mitigate anyone’s need to feel that way. (And that he puts away his fucking camera.) If this bizarre episode in Lincoln has any purpose, let it highlight how absurd it should be for anyone to be treated that way at a gig – but how dismally common it still is, a state of grim acceptance that still doesn’t receive the widespread outrage it should.