The Afterhours audience: no cell phones at concerts

The Afterhours reunion was one of the musical events of 2025: a tour to celebrate 20 years of “Ballads for small hyenas” with the original lineup of the time, about fifteen dates that attracted tens and tens of thousands of people. The band recounts those 16 dates with “Afterhours, Ballate per piccolo iene 2025”, a volume published by Rizzoli which contains photos of Mathias Marchioni and Henry Ruggeri and above all Manuel Agnelli’s first-person account of the behind the scenes of the tour, a beautiful glimpse of life on the road.
By courtesy of the publishing house, we publish an excerpt from the book, the story of the public and the particular relationship that was created with the use of cell phones.

The Afterhours audience

The audience was the real surprising element of this tour.
Three generations of people from fifteen (and in some cases even younger) to seventy.
Wonderful attention, respect and participation.
Very few cell phones, a lot of trust.
The real protagonist of this tour was you. You have appropriated the concert in any
condition, even when the weather was terrible or the technical and logistical situations were not
perfect.
Not passive spectators who suffer a show, a circus, a series of lies
in a row: lights, dancers, autotune, programmed bases.
None of this.
We didn’t want to crush you and we didn’t want to subdue you.
And you trusted.
You don’t know how powerful it is to feel like you’re on the same page as people who
you have in front of you.
It hasn’t happened for years. And it happened very rarely even in other people’s concerts that I saw
in recent years.
We did the show together and heard the same comments, excited and enthusiastic,
from the kids and more experienced spectators it was simply intoxicating.
We prepared so hard because we wanted to deserve to be on that stage, we gave
really everything.
And if we had a big enough stage we would all be up there, you and me together.
But there were so many of you. A wonderful tide. Exterminated and very powerful.
There is no stage that can hold you.

No cell phones

One of the most surprising details was seeing very few cell phones raised during the concert.
Andrea first pointed this out to me, about halfway through the tour.
The faces and bodies are fixed towards the stage.
The tension is palpable. There’s nothing really planned and the show doesn’t eat
the concert, we don’t eat.
The energy, words and sounds we project from the stage are not hidden by a scenography
imposing, with dancers and extras and with a thousand lights and fireworks.
We have nothing to hide.
We are there naked and raw.
The boys and girls present live in the moment, they do not passively suffer the show.
They are the show.
They are part of the concert with us. An active part.
When the emotions you are feeling are stronger than anything you want to live them to the fullest.
You want to be there. You want to be present with a part of you that is irreproducible because it is inside.
It happened without us having to say anything from the stage.
No photos or videos that steal your soul.
Because the soul, ours and yours, was only one.

The text is extracted from “Afterhours, Ballads for small iene 2025” (Rizzoli), by Manuel Agnelli, with photos by Mathias Marchioni and Henry Ruggeri, courtesy of the publisher.