I’ll Be Watching You: CCTV & Getting Sprung At A Coldplay Concert (Naked City)
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I’ll Be Watching You: CCTV & Getting Sprung At A Coldplay Concert is the latest edition (July 27, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – exclusive to City Hub.
It was one of those oddball news items that attracted TV bulletins all over the world: a couple at a Coldplay concert were sprung canoodling on the so called big screen ‘kiss cam’. Turns out they were having an affair and were well and truly sprung. So much so that the male offender Andy Byron, from the Astronomer Company, supposedly resigned his job in disgrace.
“Oh look at these two. Come on, you’re okay. Oh, what? Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy,” Coldplay’s Chris Martin was heard to say as the camera zoomed in. He had previously joked to fans that they might find themselves on the big screen during the show, but could not have imagined the consequences of what was a fairly tacky invasion of privacy.
Well, what would you expect from a band that Alan McGee, the former head of Creation Records described as “music to wet your bed to” in The Guardian. Their fellow Brits, Oasis were not amused and at one of their reunion concerts Liam Gallagher asked the audience:
“Do we have any lovebirds in the house?” Don’t worry, we ain’t got any of that Coldplay snidey fucking camera shit. It doesn’t matter to us who you’re fucking mingling with, or tingling with or fingering with. None of our fucking business.”
A refreshing rebuttal of CCTV surveillance you might say, and thank God that kind of intrusive technology was not installed back in the 60s and 70s when rock festival mosh pits were veritable cesspools of fornication and other shameless depravity. Today however, it’s seemingly becoming common place. When The Police wrote ‘Every Breath You Take’ back in 1983, could they have had any idea how prophetic their lyrics would become?
The Jelling Festival in Denmark is one of the country’s most popular and regularly attracts audiences of around 40,000 to the four day event. It also attracts a massive number of ‘smart’ security cameras covering entrances, stages, mosh pits and right across the campsite. There are even thermal cameras installed in the latter so illegal campfires and barbeques can be quickly detected. Whether they can detect normally ‘cool’ Danish rock fans who overheat with excitement or sexual tension remains to be seen.
Denmark is certainly not alone and throughout the world music and sporting fans are being constantly watched like dissidents in North Korea and Turkmenistan. You enter a stadium or festival site and there are often facial recognition cameras to supposedly keep out known trouble makers,
Not surprisingly the use of this relatively new form of surveillance raises questions of privacy and guidelines to protect the data of individuals. Only Belgium and Luxembourg are countries known to have banned facial recognition technology on privacy grounds, although last year The European Parliament introduced restrictions in its Artificial Intelligence Act.
If you head to Accor Stadium in late November for the AC/DC ‘Power Up’ tour, you’ll be watched from the moment you queue at the entrance. If you have just escaped from the Silverwater Correctional Centre for the night, chances are the computer will single you out – unless of course if you paint a huge black thunderbolt across your face, shave your eyebrows and remove your dentures.
Whether facial recognition cameras will eventually manage to see through such disguises remains to be seen. Imagine a Kiss concert for example where hundreds of fans might chose to paint their faces in their classic makeup. Potential bomb throwing anarchists and stage divers alike, could avoid detection. Then again the security enforcers might insist all punters arrive at the venue with a clean face otherwise they will be forcibly scrubbed.
How far surveillance at music concerts goes remains to be seen. We are all used to sporting events like football matches where the dressing room pep talks and warm ups are often televised or displayed on the big screen at the match. Not so when it comes to rock and pop concerts where the dressing rooms are often a highly guarded inner sanctum, well protected from any prying eyes.
The question arises – is it now time for cameras to be allowed beyond that veil of secrecy that is the dressing room door. Who wants to see some aging rock star being bundled into a fat reducing corset you might ask? Well, I do for starters and if they are snorting a line of coke at the same time, it’s my right to know.
I have just forked out a few hundred dollars for an Oasis ticket and I’d like the dressing room cameras to tell me if Liam and Noel are having an almighty blue just before they go on stage. Maybe Noel has jokingly suggested they activate ‘kiss cam’ for the show and Liam has reacted violently. Let all the watchers be watched themselves!
