The unbearable weight of stadium silence

COLUMN | ISSUE FIVE | PUORO O AOTEAROA / LOCAL MUSIC

Written by Luke Fisher (he/him) | @lukefish7__ | Sports Columnist

This piece is set to be a bit of a boomer-esque grumble, so I thought I’d bring in the big guns. The other day, I messaged my dad (he’s very tech-savvy) asking him what he thought about music at live sports events. Having heard him consistently moan about it throughout most of my childhood, his response was somewhat predictable:

“Shit, except for Bumble belting out Sweet Caroline.”

Bumble is an English cricket commentator renowned for his dulcet Yorkshire tones, recently used on radio to describe the reaction to one of his particularly thunderous ‘sit-down jobs’ from the lady in the stall next door. But that’s not the point. When I was younger, I used to dismiss my old man’s complaints as the mindless mutterings of someone the world was slowly leaving behind. Now I’m beginning to agree with him.

While I’ll have already alienated most of the audience with yet another nod to cricket, many of you remaining will be more familiar with phrases like ‘dopamine-maxxing’ and ‘brainrot’. Obviously, social media has been designed to make neurotransmitters ping for yonks. But, in my eyes, it has only really come into its prime in the past several years - and right under our noses.

It first started happening around the turn of the decade: Reddit ‘am I the arsehole’ stories read out by a clunky text-to-speech generator with subtitles overlaid on sped-up Minecraft parkour gameplay. Or GTA car ramp gameplay (please hit the jump, please, please, please). Or soap cutting. Or Subway Surfers. All examples of highly stimulating b-roll are designed to hold our attention as we become more and more tempted to scroll away.

We knew. On every post, there were several comments asking a variation of the same question: why did the parkour lowkey make me lock in? I won’t pretend I wasn’t part of that – my attention span is as short as the next guy's, but something I’ve tried to do is keep other, sacred, parts of my life from intersecting with the brainrot. 

I take some pride in knowing that, despite my proclivity for short-form, dopamine-trigger-enriched slop, I can still sit down and watch an 80 minute game of rugby or a 90 minute game of football. Hell, even four hours of cricket. However, I've begun to realise my beloved separation of powers has been melting away. Because the same every-lever-must-be-pulled-to-keep-dopamine-pinging-at-all-times approach has been obnoxiously taking over sports for decades.

It started (arguably) in the mid-20th century as occasional organ-playing at baseball games. Now, stadium speakers have gone to war with the ebbs and flows of the traditional arena experience. The mere possibility of a lull is unthinkable – like driving in silence. 

Of course, sport is an entertainment product. Of course, some music adds to the atmosphere. But do we really need Darude's - ‘Sandstorm’ bashing its way through our wax-filled ear canals at every break in play? 

And it's not just the music keeping fans’ dopamine receptors firing at all cylinders. Does every boundary hit – something that happens almost fifty times per match – in the Indian Premier League need to be followed by massive bursts of flame and some scantily-clad Caucasian cheerleading? 

I went to the first day of the new OFC Pro League football competition a few months ago and will never forget watching the pyrotechnics go off when a team won a corner, or missed a shot by a light year or two. It devalued the experience, made it feel cheap and forced, almost like the flames were an order to fans to be entertained – or else.

But back to the music. It’s a self-sustaining reaction – I think sport and music are devaluing each other through excess. The more it is forced into our ears in the stands, the less we are able to enjoy any given game simply for what it is. And as every aspect of our lives is filled with music to keep our attention (god forbid we hear ourselves think), the harder it is for music to have that special effect on us. 

There will always be a place on any field for such hits as Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the cries of WANKER from the Port at an Auckland FC game, or the CHAHOOs reverberating around Mount Smart Stadium after the Wahs score.

No kid has ever come home from their first experience of live sport buzzing about whoever was on the stadium AUX. No, they’re thrilled by the atmosphere. 

Seeing their favourite players in the flesh, when the closest they could otherwise get was via a collectable card snatched out of a box of Weetbix. Celebrating on dad’s shoulders after watching the team clinch a last-minute win. The squeak of a sneaker on court. The sound of leather on willow. The oo-oo-ahh-ing after an overzealous bite into a thermonuclear hot dog at halftime. The roar of the crowd. The groan of the crowd. The sounds that made us fall in love with our sports in the first place – let them prevail. Save 'How Bizarre' for the car.