''Can we just experience shit as it's happening rather than filming it and watching it next Tuesday?''

So said the frontman of The Hives, Pelle Almqvist playing at the recent Big Day Out in Melbourne, while pleading with the punters to put down their camera phones during a set. In that one statement, Almqvist put eloquently into words what I've been thinking for some time.

Hives frontman Pelle Almqvist performs for the crowd at Big Day Out. Credit:Edwina Pickles

In prehistoric times, when phones weren't smart, you'd go to a rock concert, pull out your Zippo lighter and wave it in time to one of the slower songs, along with everybody else. It was the silent equivalent of a mass serenade - thousands of gas flames blowing in the breeze inside a darkened arena. By clutching a flickering flame aloft we were part of the performance, not simply a spectator. It's thrilling to look around and see people so immersed and lost in the music. There was a deep awareness that this mass of humanity had created something pretty special together.

Now, we pay upwards of $150 a ticket to watch our favourite band on the other side of a plastic screen. Taking still shots is more understandable, but effectively videoing an entire performance of a song is just ludicrous. And as Almqvist said in his onstage rant, ''The sound is going to suck anyway.'' So why do we do it? What's driving us to want to distractedly observe a performance and snap and share its bit parts, rather than experience it in the present?