Fans cheering a Vampire Weekend performance. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Been out to a gig recently? Hard work, isn't it? No, not the drinking, the late nights, nor the physical trauma of getting trapped stage-front at MBV's Roundhouse gigs, but this sudden pressure to "get involved".
Crowd participation, once the preserve of Christmas pantos and Queen at Live Aid (those two, pretty much, the same thing), is suddenly very "in" out there in gig-land. In just a few days last month, you could have been asked to bark like a dog to amuse Camille; Vampire Weekend may have pressured you into a lusty backing vocals role on One (Blake's Got a New Face); or you might have been part of Feist's semi-successful attempt to turn the three individual tiers of Manchester's Palace Theatre into a choreographed close-harmony group, to usher in So Sorry. Something they seem to have been a bit more up for in Quebec.
From the slick, sickening professionalism of the Feeling to the ditzy exuberance of Noah and the Whale, there are numerous other examples out there. Some of the better ones include MIA, who regularly brings half the audience up onstage to dance with her, and Leeds band O Fracas, who (brilliantly) hand out percussion instruments to the audience. Meanwhile, let's hope Ben Folds continues to use his powers for piano-based pop, not evil, because, judging by the way he can control a crowd, should he decide to annex Belgium or invade Macedonia, there'll be no stopping him.
Aware as I am that there's the faint whiff of showbiz about all this, that it's contrived, and that - as this N-Word Test clip, from US rapper Sean Price, illustrates - you should never unquestioningly do what you're told, I find all this hugely refreshing. There's nothing worse, nothing that looks more self-satisfied and feels less rewarding, than going to watch some self-consciously cool guitar band rattle through their album, with barely a word of acknowledgement or a chord out of place. It's boring. It's arrogant. It's like being at home, listening to the album, with none of the fringe benefits, like being near your own fridge.
Surely if you go to a gig, you want a bit of a human connection, you want the band to take some sort of risk, which any crowd participation is. You want the gig to blossom into a communal event. Traditionally, that happens in those magical moments when, suddenly, a band finds itself being comprehensively outsung by the audience. But this new taste for crowd participation takes things to a whole new level. Even when it's hammily stage-managed, or falls a bit flat - generally in front of an uptight English audience who haven't drunk enough yet (guilty!) - it can't fail to break the ice. And, from that crack, great gigs often emerge.
Perhaps, with bands gigging so much more now, and it being so crucial to how they make money, we will see much more of this in the next few years. Indie bands are going to have to learn the sort of call-and-response stagecraft that hip-hop MCs have long mastered. And while this brings to mind all sorts of horrific possibilities in the name of "show" (a Kaiser Chiefs mid-set Play Your Cards Right interlude; Pete Doherty turning his gigs into open poetry-slams; Razorlight insisting the audience give them an R, an A, a Z, an O ... and then storming off because it's not loud enough), I can't help but think it's a good thing.
But what about you? Do you love a spot of crowd participation? Do you think it's time for Nick Cave to lighten up, and start doing Where The Wild Roses Grow, with the audience singing Kylie's parts? Or is this childishness the last refuge of bands who've got stage-school tendencies where their great songs should be?
