Worst ever festival line up?

i've heard more people talking about people that are talking about it than people actually talking about it

already seeing usually friends of mine sharing these stupid "at metal shows, we pick people up in mosh pit" takes, which a) comes across as pretty racist or adjacent to it ("of course fans of HIP-HOP would be like this!", but b) completely misunderstands the mechanics of crowd crushing and how this shit happens to begin with. have had to call them out on it.

not to mention, it's not even universally true - I've seen more people than I like to count at metal shows getting thrown out for cheap shotting someone in a pit.

I dunno, as someone who was excited to see Travis at Coachella in April, I have to admit he doesn't seem to "take care" of the audience the way I've seen most punk/hardcore/metal frontpeople do.

Sure, Travis has a history of incitement. I'm referring to the fans, though. If the average metal show actually got attended with Travis numbers, which for obvious reasons is unlikely, the same crowd crush could easily happen.

I almost got trampled at a Bad Religion show in 2000 that had an overfilled floor and had to ask security to pull me out. I was screaming at the people around me after I got knocked down and stepped on and somehow managed to get to my feet.

But they didn't know what was happening. They were just dancing on an already crowded floor. This was mild compared to what happened at Travis.

I almost got trampled at a Bad Religion show in 2000 that had an overfilled floor and had to ask security to pull me out. I was screaming at the people around me after I got knocked down and stepped on and somehow managed to get to my feet.

Same thing happened to me at a Red Hot Chili Peppers show in 1989. My glasses fell off while I was down there, too, and I had to reach into the mass of stomping feet and grab them before I could even start fighting to get upright again.

Neanderthal otm. The blame lies with the organizers of the festivals, not the fans.

Didn’t know all that much about Travis Scott before this but he seems like an asshole.

I went to a show on the first Def Jam tour in the mid-80's, which was at a big arena. The main floor was general admission/standing only, and was packed. I was in the middle of that crowd, and throughout the show fights would break out (not really fist-fights, but yelling/shoving altercations) which would cause the immediate crowd to back up and send a wave throughout the entire mass of bodies. It was really hard to stay upright when this happened. In retrospect, I probably never fell because we were hemmed in so tightly (at point I lifted both feet off the floor and was able to "levitate" briefly) that there was literally no room to fall unless everybody did so at once. Still, packing that many people together so tightly struck me as a seriously bad idea, but I'm sure somebody else saw only a teeming mass of dollar signs.

i have see the “at punk/metal shows we pick each other up” take on tumblr and neanderthal otm it struck me as frankly both wrong and fucking racist

i spent some time reading firsthand accounts from attendees on the travis scott subreddit, one thing that struck me was how often 'people passing out is normal at a travis scott show so i didn't think anything was wrong' came up. seems like this was an inevitability. so much trauma and survivor guilt also- sounded like an absolute nightmare. (one kid said he was 'off a tab' even)

also, one less remarked-on angle i think is covid- his fanbase skews young, and two years without being with friends/going to shows is a long time if you're now 18. so i think concert inexperience and pent-up energy could play into this, but again, that's hardly the fan's fault- just may have exacerbated the situation. the organizers should have taken this into account

also, not sure how accurate this is, but it's certainly believable, that live nation utilizes drones to monitor the crowd. so if that's the case, someone absolutely calculated that a few deaths were worth it

I mean this happened in 1985 at the UK Monsters of Rock festival:
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/guns-n-roses-legend-my-nightmares-248861
Someone who attended a festival (Sonisphere?) at the same place in about 2010 told me fencing divided the crowd area off into sections now, making surges far less likely. Which is how I imagined all venues did it nowadays.

I've never been in many amped up crowds numbering in the tens of thousands - I think I've always been aware of the need for an escape route and situated myself accordingly - but the one time I saw Rage Against the Machine at Lollapalooza some years back (2008?) the crowd surged forward multiple times and from my perch it seemed pretty precarious. Indeed, the band stopped the set a few times and made people back up and chill out a tad.

I don't think I've ever heard Travis Scott, but the more I read, the more I learn that making the crowd go nuts is sort of his thing, so I imagine a lot of these kids went to the show with the very intention of going crazy. I'm not sure how you prepare for that, but hundreds of shows, from club sets to massive festivals, go on every year without a hitch, let alone fatalities, so there must be a way to do it that this show did not do.

Was thinking about that 1988 Monsters of Rock festival (where two died during Guns N' Roses set)...and how GNR made the "Paradise City" video from that same concert. If anything (as potentially with Travis Scott), it certified the intensity of their music.

Selfishly I do appreciate ILM generally going for the "blame Live Nation" over "blame Travis" angle.

Though, as with most/all things....there's blood on everyone's hands.

Yeah... in that article above, Breihan has a paragraph arguing, "Travis Scott didn’t kill eight people. I would put that blame elsewhere" - but Astroworld is Scott's fest, it's all organized around him, surely he and his management etc. bear more responsibility than, say, Limp Bizkit did for Woodstock '99 (the comparison Breihan makes). Surely the buck has to stop with all the organizers, including the artist who named the fest after his album and preceded it with a week of events tied to his interests? Anyway, sounds like he is one of many defendants in the lawsuits.

Jason Huckabay, who is described in his LinkedIn profile as a Houston-based security director for CSC, said in public Facebook posts that he oversaw a security team at the event. On Friday, Huckabay posted criticisms of festival attendees even as the event was in progress.

The day after the event, Huckabay said in another Facebook post it was “sad that all those kids inside died and others are still in the hospital because this generation has no value in other peoples lives.” He said his guards had spent 10-hour shifts trying to stop “waves of dumba---s breaking down fences trying to rush in,” adding: “A lot of these idiots were from 15-22 in age.”

Reached by phone Monday, Huckabay declined to comment, citing advice from an attorney.

seeing the footage of travis pushing away the two worried-looking entourage dudes who tentatively approach him onstage before immediately going back into 'lets all rage' mode is chilling. obv live nation is responsible in basically all of the most important ways, but travis did not exactly cover himself in glory here.

Yeah, I'm not exactly ready to free him of any blame at this point. Obviously there were a huge number of failures along the way that went into this, but I don't think Scott shouldn't share in some of the blame himself. When he saw ambulances trying to get through the crowd, he was absolutely the one person powerful enough to at least pause the show for a minute. There's dozens, if not hundreds, of examples being shared of bands and artists stopping their show then they see shit isn't right in the crowd.

Saw a clip of him, like, sic'ing the crowd on someone who tried to steal his shoe when he jumped into the crowd. Yeah, not a good look.

(from a prior show, not Astroworld)

I went to the first (or second?) Who show after Cincinnati, and forget how many times Townshend stopped the show to get the main floor crowd (also general admission) to settle down, and it worked.

One thing I learned from the different articles posted was that--unlike comparable festivals--they weren't alternating sets between stages: all the prior acts were performing on the other side of the lot, and Scott's headlining set was the only thing happening on the mainstage. So you've got people basically camping out all day in front of that stage, and then everybody else feeding into that area after stuff wrapped up on the second stage, which just doesn't sound good.

i have see the “at punk/metal shows we pick each other up” take on tumblr and neanderthal otm it struck me as frankly both wrong and fucking racist

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Tuesday, November 9, 2021 8:21 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is unequivocally true. However I will concede that there may be some difference in how Travis in particular (not his fans or genre) runs his shows. Punk and metal and the first waves of mosh rap (Onyx, Lil Jon, Odd Future) all had that support system built into it, passed down through the rules and regulations of 40 years of slamdance culture. Travis in particular seemed to have adopted the chaos and anarchy and violence but none of the self-regulation. There's been absolutely no shortage of ppl posting videos of rappers doing the "OK, everyone cool it, help that person, etc"

Though obviously the blame is ultimately on Live Nation

I went to the first (or second?) Who show after Cincinnati, and forget how many times Townshend stopped the show to get the main floor crowd (also general admission) to settle down, and it worked.

― henry s, Tuesday, November 9, 2021 11:41 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The first show after Cincinnati was the very next night in Buffalo, then Cleveland two nights after that. I remember reading that the third show after Cincinnati (Pontiac Silverdome) had some worrying moments where Townshend and Daltrey tried to calm the crowd. Townshend has said in retrospect he wishes they'd stopped the tour and broken up the band after Cincinnati.

do think you're right Whiney in that there is a definite difference between how the *artist* comported himself versus other artists in this and other genres.

I'm definitely holding Travis somewhat liable for this because he has created a culture of chaos and even though he may have ultimately not known the entirety of what was going on out there, there are videos that shows he was aware people were getting hurt and in serious condition.

in either case, though, watching my dumb metal friends hi-fiving about how this would never happen at their show lead me to actually lecture one of them this morning. this isn't a mosh pit, it's a crowd surge, the dynamics of which are completely different. most metal shows are so sparsely attended that something like that *couldn't* happen, and lots of the more famous overseas festivals have adopted the appropriate measures to prevent these types of things.

xp it was the Silverdome show.

The crush at that Cincinnati show occurred prior to the event, when the doors were first opened and the fans rushed in to snag their seats. The situation in Pontiac was the same, except the venue was probably twice as big. And there were no attempts made (that I could see) to mitigate the rush or otherwise slow the crowd down as they ran in. Which even to a high school kid back then seemed pretty irresponsible.

That's fucked up, and yeah, that place is massive.

the big problem at the Who show was they opened doors late, when they did open them, they opened two whopping doors, and by the time it was 4 hours after door time, people heard a soundcheck or a soundbyte from the Quadrophenia movie and flipped out thinking the concert was started and with only two doors open...yeah, you get the picture.

basically "don't do things that can contribute to mobs rushing in" , like holding them in small crowded waiting areas or being late to doors for several hours. all of these things contribute.

bear more responsibility than, say, Limp Bizkit did for Woodstock '99 (the comparison Breihan makes)

does he mention the teenage girl who was crushed to death at a Limp Bizkit festival set in Sydney in 2001, when Bizkit refused the security guards calls to stop playing?

No – here's the reference:

By that same token, I’ve seen a lot of commentary about Travis Scott that reminds me of a certain moments in the recent Woodstock ’99 documentary. In the movie, festival co-promoter John Scher attempts to blame all the disorder and sexual assault at his festival on the victims of assault and on MTV for covering the show critically. He also tries to pin things on Fred Durst for whipping the crowd up too much. But Sher’s the one who booked Limp Bizkit to play and who set up an environment where a Limp Bizkit set could turn into dangerous bedlam.

So by comparison – no one "booked" Scott to play here (it's his show), and he undoubtedly could have exercised a certain degree of control over the crowd environment if he built a $5mm stage for his performance.

re: the Pontiac Silverdome Who show, listening to it now on youtube and about 13 minutes in Townshend says, "If something happened tonight we just fucking wouldn't be able to face ourselves ever again."

xxxxp

Durst started attacking the promoter on-stage at the Sydney show, who then took over the mic himself and asked people to calm down and move back. Durst arguing with him somehow did not encourage people to calm down and move back.

I will never defend Fred Durst, he made that terrible Stalker movie with Travolta

also that story from sic does not surprise me, at fuckin' all. fuuuuuck Fred.

B-b-b-b-but, Neanderthal, we're all supposed to love Fred and Limp Bizkit now, didn't you get the memo?

To be clear, I'm not defending Durst for any crimes, just pointing out that the Woodstock '99 comparison made by Breihan doesn't make sense.

But Travis Scott didn’t kill eight people. I would put that blame elsewhere.

No one lined people against a wall and "killed" them; there were various degrees of negligence involved. Hpefully the investigation and lawsuits will get at the specifics. Breihan wants to let Scott off the hook and place all the blame on the "promoters." I get the impulse of being wary about blaming an artist, but it doesn't seem to fit here.

Yeah, I was just adding another note of that comparison seeming off-base.

xpost you should see stan Twitter, all saying this is normal for big shows. you just let 10 or more people die, it's good business.

the big problem at the Who show was they opened doors late

That's a good point. At least at the Silverdome they opened the doors very early, like 3 in the afternoon. So anxiety levels weren't as high as they could have been.

reading the contingency planning docs makes live nation look even worse

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21100364/cnn-astroworld-operations-plan-redacted.pdf

Notify Event Control of a suspected deceased victim utilizing the code “Smurf”. Never use the
term “dead” or “deceased” over the radio.

Not at all shocked to know they'd use a code word, of course, but, really? "Smurf"?

"man get over here, this dude is totally smurf"

"They're smurfing each other to death over by Tower Three!"