The Decemberists do this for The Chimbley Sweep. It’s all well and good until you take your dad along and his poor all knees won’t allow him jump up as quickly as the rest of the crowd when the time arises.
I always thought “get down” meant “get on the dance floor” for a dance number, or more generally to get in the groove of the music. I never encountered this crouching thing.
In general I’m pretty cold on the concept of “audience participation”, unless it’s initiated by the audience. I’ve been at a couple of concerts where the artist(s) directed the audience to chime in at certain well-known bits of the song, sometimes dividing the audience into two or more groups to do different bits. When they get a muted response, indicating that people are only singing because they have been asked to and because the artist will look stupid if they don’t, it’s positively cringeworthy. Honestly, if it’s a much-loved chorus and the crowd want to join in, they will do so without being told to.
I forget what band at a festival forced me to do this, lest I leave myself vulnerable to the ire of the band and my fellow concertgoers, but I was really pissed off about it. I’m pretty sure I did some loud complaining when we were all uncomfortably down in the squatting position.
I was thinking this. I think if a band I was watching “ordered” the audience the crouch down, I’d either give them the finger, or stage a walk-out, depending on my mood.
Confidence Man at Great Escape most recently. It was great fun. T
It works well when a gig warrants it and fortunately never been a part of one that just fell flat on it’s arse.
there’s a live DVD my pal showed me where they’re trying to get the crowd to sit down but a few guys stay standing so the slipknot bloke with the long nose goes out into the crowd to forcibly try and sit people down, it’s hilarious
They did this at Reading around 2000/2001. Me and a few friends seem to be the only people who remained upright and ended up getting a load of stick from the 18 year old metallers around us. Ironically they didnt appreciate our non-conformist attitude.