Thor Christensen of the Dallas Morning News explores the artist reaction to escalating cell phone usage at concerts. The article, “Are cellphones ruining the concert experience?,” gets input from musicians Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, Carrie Brownstein, Feist and more. [Seagull]

“Everyone has this strange archiving addiction now. It’s like they’re trying to pin a butterfly to a corkboard,” says Canadian singer Feist.

“To me, a gig isn’t supposed to be for posterity,” she says. “It’s supposed to be a bunch of people tossed together in a room, making a mood, and then it’s over. You can’t see the world through a viewfinder.”

Since Kottke mentioned this very quandary last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Personally, I think there is definitely some accuracy to this idea of people archiving or documenting the concert experience, but I also think there is something to the fact that many concertgoers are totally bored and disinterested. Point the finger wherever you want, but, at the end of the day, that’s a much greater problem for an artist than people text messaging.