Be everywhere now

I don't very often get out to big outdoor concerts, but when we heard that Van Morrison would be opening Bluesfest in Ottawa, his first return to the area in 40-odd years, we bought our tickets the first hour they were offered. Certain music heard at certain times in life just burns itself into the bottom of the brain. Van has a little chunk of grey matter all to himself somewhere to the south of my prefrontal cortex. I've changed in the interim, and no doubt Van has too, but the songs remain fresh as a daisy.

But while my attention was otherwise occupied, the outdoor concert seems to have changed, too. While the audience was always wired up--by the proximity of tens of thousands of co-religionists--now they are also wired up in a more technological sense. We bought our tickets online, where once we would have queued up for hours outside some box office, gabbing with fellow fans. Inside the venue, the pre-concert rain remained unchanged, but many were plugged into iPods under their umbrellas, grooving to unknowable music, and many more were texting their beer orders to friends who drew the short straw for standing in line. Others were calling directions into their cell phones, trying to hook up friends with patches of grass held open for their arrival.

Once fan banners were used to conceal microphones to capture bootleg recordings of favorite artists--now people wave aloft their phones, broadcasting the concert direct to friends at home in streaming video. We were 50 yards from stage with a good view, but people around us were often turned away from the stage to watch the video feed on the big screen. Some were even videoing the video screen--the giant cyberhead of Van eclipsing the little Van laboring onstage. Be Here Now used to be the dictum when Van was last in town. The 21st century version is, apparently, Be Everywhere Now.