Let's kick those people out of our concerts

You can read this column imagining me as Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud. I accept that, but just because the angry old man fights windmills doesn't mean he's wrong. I am. Half the people who go to concerts are redundant , annoying, and ruin everything. They've ruined the best experience there is, clothed or naked, to turn it into the ultimate victim of social media and posturing. Like when they took the poor tuna and turned it into vulgar tartar because it was more photogenic.

The last time Radiohead came to Madrid, in 2003, they were still one of the most acclaimed bands on the planet. They played Las Ventas for just one night and didn't fill the venue. There were 16,000 of us, a great crowd, but there were about 4,000 seats left over. Now that they're returning for their first concerts in seven years, they're going to fill the 17,500-seat Movistar Arena four times over and could have filled eight.

The purchasing process was convoluted. A two-stage pre-registration, days of waiting while the bots screened for resale and favored requests from the same city, and a tense wait to see if you'd be accepted. Five friends followed the process, all living in Madrid, and all five received the same message: "Unfortunately, you haven't been assigned a random code for sale." They're going to sell (let's keep our commitments down) 60,000 tickets, and zero out of five. It's not bad luck; it's just that the requests have been exorbitant. Where do all these fans of a band that didn't sell much in Spain even in its prime suddenly come from? Easy. They're not; they're intruders looking for something to brag about now that going to concerts is like going to Pachá in the 90s .

Let's admit that the nostalgia factor pushes people who once reasonably liked the band without being crazy about it to go. Okay, I'll let them go. But Radiohead isn't Oasis or Nirvana , they don't grace H&M and Primark t-shirts, and their comeback isn't a global event. The fakers don't care, but they'll come in droves because it makes them feel more interesting than they are, and in the meantime, they ruin the concert for those who actually want to be there. What used to be a problem at festivals—arguments with idiots talking with their backs to the stage—you have today in any venue.

Recently, the artist himself requested silence for one song. Next to me, a fool who'd been busy recording videos and flirting all night loudly ignored the request. I rebuked him. "This is a concert, not a mass," he said. Trying to keep things from escalating, I asked him to respect the musician. "He's nobody to tell me to shut up. I'll pay for his ticket, and he'll sing." What happened next isn't publishable, but that sham will definitely go to Radiohead. Exhibitionism and farce have taken over concerts. They need to be kicked out .