I don’t know at what level a crowd becomes a throng, but this Russian music festival had 1.6 million attendees.
Terrifying sea of humanity
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This also just popped into my head. She did manage to calm the crowd eventually. I would love for her to still be with us.
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Fun fact: The Sun (A Murdoch newspaper in Britain) lied about the fans being drunk and attacking the Police, and The Sun is still being boycotted in Liverpool.
Even Everton fans won’t buy it.
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23 July 1995, Shane castle concert featuring R.E.M, Oasis, Belly, Spearhead, and Sharon Shannon (?). Over 90,000 in attendance.
During REM’s set while they were playing “So Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” everyone started spontaneously tossing crushed Coke cups in the air. It was an amazing sight.
Jump to about 1:35:20
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As a casual fan, that is the CD I own, but I do really like it. I’d totally see them play the whole CD.
It is a bit late to see them perform with Keith. Liam was always core talent behind the music, and while Keith’s energy would be sorely missed, Maxim is still with them and I imagine they could still put on a good show.
But if/when they return to touring, i would still totally see them live.
Another UK act I’d love to see live Underworld. For now I will just have to live vicariously through their Everything Everything live album.
(Speaking of Prodigy, their live guitarist, Jim Davies, he just put a new single out on Armalyte Industries. I find it just ok. He also did a remix of Pig’s Seed of Evil and I quite liked it.)
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I saw Motörhead at Donington Speedway in '86, and Lemmy said the same, but with much more colorful language.
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That’s because the fans are not divided by geography (Anfield and Goodison Park are 500 meters away from each other, on opposite sides of Stanley Park), and when psychological trauma is included it seemed like everyone knew someone who had been harmed at Hillsborough. Scum journalists are banned from both their stadiums.
This is where my stewarding training comes in.
Football fans tend to not attack people, although if hooligans get in to a game crowd dynamics takes over. Some people will join in violence, but more will nope out and try and get away, effectively causing two surges. We were trained to identify ringleaders, and to do it fast so that they can be removed before that happened. It’s amazing how taking out one or two leaders can calm down a group of potential hooligans before things get really bad.
Things seem to have become worse in recent years, I don’t know how this years two hooligan incidents at Wembley (The Euro 2020 final and the England-Hungary game) were allowed to happen, I know there is a huge difference between the League Two games that I worked at and matches at the English national stadium but someone is fucking up there.
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Also I wouldn’t give Live Nation the steam of my piss which helps me make that decision not to see some great doing a big tour.
My money is better spent on smaller gigs. I don’t crave the stadium, wave your phone in the air experience.
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Given that conflict reduction techniques had been fine tuned in the UK on football to such an extent that the previous European Championships had seen no English fan violence I’m going with allowed. Big unregulated crowds were politically important for the Tories at the time.
It takes time and effort to stop crowd surges and violence. It takes doing nothing, laissez faire, to make it happen.
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Weirdly, They Might Be Giants was one of the loudest shows I’ve ever seen. And I got permanent tinnitus from a Gwar show in the late 80s.
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Given the recent UEFA and FIFA bans on Hungarian home crowds it should not have been that unexpected.
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Well given that constant work is required to stop English fans rioting, yes indeed.
Obviously Hungarian football thugs are an explicit Orban prestige project rather than just a predictable consequence of government policy like they are in England.
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For loudness, I have to say it’s either KMFDM or the Swans… I did see Gwar once, but it was in a hotel ballroom, so it was not as loud as it could have been.
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I had the same experience at my first They Might Be Giants show. It was at a festival years ago, and the sound was so loud that I couldn’t find anyplace in the venue where my ears didn’t hurt. So I left, really disappointed. I’ve seen them since then though, and the sound wasn’t too loud at all.
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The lighting and video technology of todays large scale concerts is a big draw. Last night I saw Tame Impala in a stadium scale concert that had the most sophisticated visual effects I had ever seen. Psychedelic visuals have advanced quite a bit since the oil blob overhead projector era. No need for chemical alteration to see trails and rainbows dancing over everything.
This band had played a few days before at Astroworld. So it felt pretty edgy when they would psych the crowd up talking about how crazy things were about to get with the next song.
I don’t go to any shows much lately, but I always have ear plugs when I do, no matter who the artist is.
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OMG Taste of Chicago was the first time I realized that I really, really hated big crowds. I was there with my parents and really wanted to leave given the crowd. I didn’t get crushed or carried off like you but it was not pleasant.
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Some Oldsters like me may remember in the '70’s there was a huge concert in Cincinnati, with The Who at Riverfront Stadium. There were 11 people killed by the crush that followed.
They said there were many factors: The band was late, Festival seating (first come get best seats). When the Who finally started, there was a crush to get close to the stage. The Who were afraid to stop, thinking it would make it worse.
An old sitcom, WKRP in Cincinnati, did a whole episode on it. I never went to any concerts/shows with Festival Seating just because of that.
If you happen to look it up, please watch the Thanksgiving episode. You’ll never look at turkeys the same way again.
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Interesting and possibly helpful in future
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I just came here to post that!
Very good tips.
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