At most shows, there are two well-defined groups of people. There’s the keen first group, who really like the band and stake out a place at the front of the stage. They’re more likely to dance, they want really good sightlines, and some of them are going to try and grab a drumstick, guitar pick or setlist after the show. Then there’s the more laid-back crowd that can’t be bothered to stand for three hours; they’re content to talk to their friends, have a pint or two, and generally enjoy the music.

When you’re thinking in abstract terms, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with all-ages shows. I mean, don’t you wish there were more of them when you were 17? I sure do. But in reality, an all-ages show is more than just a concert with high school kids. See, the first group of people I mentioned? With the slight tendency towards dancing and the staking out spots at the front? They mutate into the high school crowd, who want nothing more than to talk to their friends, jump up and down a lot, and form a giant mosh pit of mass destruction. And that’s at a Low concert.

Imagine, then, the sheer chaos that is the first three minutes of an all-ages Pretty Girls Make Graves concert, and you’ll know what my night was like last night. “I run out of the theatre screaming” indeed. To the folks at Mesa Luna: please don’t book any more all-ages rock shows in your impossibly awkward and tiny dinner-and-dancing space—the second group of people I mentioned can’t see a damned thing from your second floor balcony, a full eighteen feet above the stage. I will buy all my friends salsa dancing lessons if that’s what it takes to keep you out of the concert business.