A DISTURBED fan has slammed the band’s frontman for calling her out for texting during the group’s recent concert in Texas, saying that she will “never pay to see him again nor will my friends.”
Shannon Pardue tells the Dallas Observer that she started texting her 14-year-old daughter — who was at home in Rendon, a suburb southeast of Fort Worth, in the middle of a hailstorm — after the main part of DISTURBED’s show was over and before the band returned to the stage to the encore. As the crowd began chanting “one more song,” Pardue began texting with her daughter to calm her down.
“So what is so important going on in the world that you need to be texting the entire fucking show?” DISTURBED’s David Draiman asked, in an episode that was captured on video and posted on YouTube (see below).
Pardue says she tried to tell Draiman that her kids were more important, but he couldn’t hear her since she didn’t have a microphone.
“Don’t tell me to go fuck myself,” Draiman added. “You already did by looking in your phone instead of paying attention.”
“I’m not wrong. Am I wrong?” Draiman asked Pardue. “If you were up here and I did that to you, how would you feel? Seriously! It is fucking rude. It is!”
Draiman then addressed the rest of the crowd. “Now she’s all pissed off,” he said. “She thinks that I did something wrong to her. I love it. Welcome to the age of the Internet, ladies and fucking gentleman.”
In an online posting, Draiman tried to further explain his actions, writing: “That woman was not a fan. She was the date of a real fan who was standing next to her. She was face in phone from the moment the show started ’till the very end.
“I didn’t ‘stop the show.’ This was when we came back out for an encore, and I started out by saying how amazing the crowd was (the part not on the recording)… this woman, who didn’t want to be there in the first place, was the exception, so I chose to make an example of her.
“These shows went on sale in August and the whole run sold out in 48 hours. There were many TRUE fans who simply didn’t have the opportunity to buy tickets and would GLADLY have switched places with this woman.”
After video footage of the exchange went viral, Pardue spoke to Dallas Observer about the experience, saying: “At first it ticked me off. But then I just wanted to go away. I told my husband, ‘The most embarrassing thing in my life just happened to me.'”
She went on to say: “Rock stars wouldn’t be where they are without people who come to pay for the show. Whether I had my eyes on him or not, I am still there and I can hear them. He’s an amazing singer, and they were good, but it was just his attitude. I’ll never pay to see him again nor will my friends.”
Pardue, who says her husband purchased upper balcony tickets for the March 23 show at the House of Blues about six months ago and even wore his 15-year-old DISTURBED concert T-shirt to the show that evening, summarized the episode in a Facebook post. “[Draiman] was a jerk,” she wrote. “DISTURBED just lost two big fans.”
Source: Blabbermouth
