What was the scariest performance/concert you ever attended?

[BurtWorm]

Mine was a John Cale concert at the Iron Horse in Northampton, MA (a small nightclub/coffee house) in about 1984/5. He was definitely drunk out of his mind and who knows what else? He never cracked a smile during the whole show. He kept everybody on the edge of their seats. Occasionally he would interact with the audience by snarling at their applause and spitting out insults. At one point he hissed the line "rrrrrrrrrrright now, ya FASCISTS!" and the hair on the back of my neck went straight up in the air.

I was the bartender that night (which is how I know he was hammered). At the end of the evening he came for one more Scotch. For the first time in the night, he gave a little smile that communicated to me that it really was all just a show, like an Ubu roi play. Or maybe he was just happy to numb himself just that little bit more.

How 'bout yizall's?

[noonwitch]

1. Servant-a christian rock band

It was weird. The music wasn't bad, however. Altar calls and rock concerts don't really mix in my book, however.

[wtmusic]

2. The Who/Anaheim Stadium/1976

Fans in the upper decks were jammin' to the music so hard that whole sections were flexing 1-1/2 or 2 feet. When management asked them to stop, it was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Finally they pulled the plug on the concert. :scared:

[KurtNYC]

13. The Stones - 1979 at Anaheim Stadium

Nearly crushed in the crowd as people pushed toward the stage then back. I crossed my arms in front of my chest (to keep the pressure off my internal organs) while I was swept forward about 20 feet then back then forward again, feet barely touching the ground. No control by anyone, Scary as hell.

They used General Admission seating - bad idea.

[Richardo]

18. I was at a beach Boys/Chicago concert* at the Big A and the same thing....

...happened. The upper deck looked like a slinky :scared:

*(Yes: Beach Boys/Chicago. :eyes: I was a big Chicago fan when they were a political, non-treacle band.)

[wtmusic]

23. No eyeroll here, I bet that was a great show n/t

[Richardo]

24. Chicago rocked.

Beach Boys were off their game that day. Harmonies were NOT working.

[Wickerman]

3. Bee Gees - 1979 - Hilton Coliseum, Ames IA

reason: self-explanatory. Bee Gees, Iowa.

[sundog]

4. ZZ Top

When I was like 12

:scared:

[XNASA]

5. Bauhaus, Halloween Night 1980

In a warehouse in the Fulton Market District usually used for rehearsal. It the only show I ever saw at that particular venue.

Dark, creepy, dirty, sinister. Bauhaus on Halloween. It was perfect.

[FrankBooth]

30. I am so jealous!

What an awesome scene that must have been.

[warrens]

6. Right Now, You Fascists

Is a line from Leaving It Up to You

"And if given half a chance
I'd do it now
I'd do it now
RIGHT NOW YOU FASCISTS!

We could all feel safe like Sharon Tate..."

Cale is a very nice guy. Probably nicer now that he quit drugs.

[BurtWorm]

7. I'll bet he is. He did have a sweet little smile

when the show was over. It was a good show, by the way. I mean, the guy's fookin' talented. Great singer. Great Welsh voice.

[tigereye]

9. Cale story from a friend from about the same period

Friend to Cale (in restroom, I think): I really love your music, think you are amazing, etc.

Cale: "That means nothing to me." ( My friend who is kind of a surrealist-nihilist, thought that this was a perfect response.) :)

Worst concert: tie between Adam Ant and a terrible British all - female band( think pre-Spice Girls), whose name escapes me. They were almost booed and heckled off the stage by my feminist punk peers. And said peers usually reserved that privilege for really sexist male bands. ;)

woops.. scariest. Never been to a scary/dangerous concert, just really bad scary ones.

[BurtWorm]

10. Bananarama?

Not that I've ever seen them in concert. I'm just guessing based on your description. No Slits, they.

[tigereye]

11. no, I think this was after that

I have put out the word to my friends who are Brit-pop/ new wave experts. At least I think they were Brits. No Slits, they, is definitely the case!

[asthmaticeog]

8. Most of y'uns aren't gonna know who these bands are, but anyway

1) Caroliner Rainbow, at Speak in Tongues, Cleveland, OH
They're a deeply obscure band with a ridiculous concept - all their songs are alleged to be remakes of 1800's era songs as performed by the fictional "Caroliner, the magical singing bull." They play late-1800s instruments, but in ways that could NOT have been conceived by anyone actually living then - very noisy, angular and discordant. They decorated the stage and themselves with huge day-glo painted constructions that obscured their amps and identites, and the singer was extremely menacing, going beynd just threatening the audience, but entering the audience to swing and hurl chairs. The audience was in real danger at times. I felt safer in the pit at a Circle Jerks show. They were amazing, by the way. - I wish their albums weren't so damn hard to find.

2) Arab on Radar, also at Speak in Tongues
Actually, these guys were only scary for like 20 minutes, until you figured out that they were supposed to be funny, which, once you caught on, they were, kinda. But for that first 20 minutes when you didn't yet quite have a handle on what was supposed to be happening, the audience was pretty fuckin' nervous. Pretty brutal, tuneless music, sort of occupying a halfway point between U.S. Maple and The Locust.

3) The Dwarves, Kennel Club, San Francisco
More audience-baiting crossing the line into actual violence. During their 15-minute set, I was injured by 2 seperate band members - the guitarist kicked a beer bottle off the stage and it nailed me in the forehead, then the singer did a dive when I wasn't paying attention, and everyone cleared out but me, so I got to break his fall by myself. I got off light. Some fool tried to stage dive. He was thwarted. Not by security, but by the band. It was a while before he stood up again. Fucking insane. When they trashed their instruments at the end, it almost seemed kinda redundant. Totally ridiculous - though it was exciting as hell for punk rock hubris to be made real for once, I'll never subject myself to that sort of thing again.

[kwassa]

12. Two Jefferson Airplane concerts, mid-1970s

one at a converted movie theater in Cleveland. The press of the crowd in the lobby was so much that I really thought I was going to be crushed. Once we got inside and the concert started, they were so loud that I had partial hearing loss for a couple of days.

The second was outdoors at the Akron Rubber Bowl, a stadium built into a hillside. Major scuffles between concertgoers and police brought about the release of a huge quanity of tear gas at the top of the stadium. One entire section, about 3000 people was gassed, and emptied out, including us. Tear gas is no fun. We fortunately had a cooler full of ice that we rubbed on our faces and eyes. The Akron police proceeded to arrest the Airplane for inciting a riot. The Airplane has no idea what was going on, but this is typical of Ohio justice.

I also went to Woodstock, which was wildly inconvenient, but not scary. The scary part was trying to drive home after being up for 36 hours straight, er, not so straight. I fell asleep driving, and was woken up when the car hit some gravel in the median, and thereby avoided death. My friends slept through the entire thing.

[Beware the Beast Man]

14. Ministry-Lollapalooza-Pittsburgh, 1992

People went nuts and started throwing sod chunks and burning plastic cups.

[NeoTraitors]

16. Plenty of '80's hardcore shows

Slam dancing can get violent ya know.

[tigereye]

27. oh you were at the infamous burning sod concert!

yikes. I went to Starlake once to see WOMAD and that was the last time. I hate that place.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

29. I overheated and passed out at that one

In Fort Bend County Fairgrounds, Houston area show.

[Midlodemocrat]

15. Alice Cooper - Hartford, CT 1971

A lot of bad acid was making everyone throw up, and some idiots started throwing bottles, etc. at the band.

Bad, bad night.

[BBradley]

17. Went to a halloween concert on acid...

Yeah, I know. The thought hadn't crossed my mind until I noticed the band was dressed like oompah-loompahs, then I had an ooohhh shit moment.

[TrogL]

19. "Plus One" Houston, British Colombia 1983

We were a hard-core reggae band and some idiot booked us into a country-and-western bar in the middle of redneck land (think Blues Brothers).

Half and hour of dead silence from the audience then the grumbling started. Sensing something was wrong, I attempted Queen's "We will Rock you" (an octave down, no guitar solo). Bad news.

We got out of there after somebody threw a chair through the front window.

[sniffa]

20. green day concert on the hatch

i thought i was going to die! i finaLLy squeezed my way out of the crowd when the fuLL scaLe riot and fires broke out.

[maveric]

21. Led Zeppelin, Tampa Stadium, 1977.

The only FL performance for the mighty Led Zep. 80,000 tickets sold and the media hype went on from a month before.

Before Zep took stage, stadium packed, the sky grew black. People kept saying "It ain't gonna rain" "Nah it'll blow over". Then the sky opened up. I never saw rain fall so damn hard in my life. The concrete steps leading up the stands were like waterfalls. Everyone got soaked. Then like that, it stopped. Zep took stage and played "Rock n Roll", followed by "The Rain Song". Their 3rd song was "Nobody's fault but Mine".
Halfway through it, the sky opened up again. The band was getting wet and had to leave the stage. Ten minutes later Robert Plant came out and told us to save our ticket stubs and come back the next night, same time and place.

Then the exodous from the stadium began. 80,000 pissed off Zep fans, drunk, stoned and soaking wet. Outside,in the parking lot, tempers flared and the Tampa PD got a bit testy. A riot, a real riot, ensued. Police cars were tipped and burned. Rock fans were beaten and arrested. I lived near the Big Sombrero and managed to walk home safely.

I put the news on when I got home and saw the damages. Several cops went to the hospital,10 cruisers burned, and a couple hundred arrests.
Later that evening the Mayor of Tampa canceled the rescheduled show and banned Zeppelin from ever playing in that city again.

It was very scary and apocalyptic.

[RobinA]

22. ZZ Top/Aerosmith

Three River's Stadium, 1976. Festival seating, very, very, VERY hot. Someone died in the crush before the gates opened. Areosmith was great, but after they were done, Top put tarps up on the sides of the stage so everybody sitting with a sideish view suddenly had no view at all, so they had to move to a place where they could see center stage. That meant half a stadium's worth of people had to join the people already sitting with a straight-on view. Did I mention it was hot? After dark, people on the upper level started throwing firecrackers off the balcony into the crowd below and then started ripping up the chairs and throwing THEN over. Luckily, when we had to move we ended up under the upper level, so nothing hit us. It was a freakin' war zone. Those were the days.

Great concert, by the way. Now I go see Springsteen, get frisked at the door, am sold a soda with no lid or straw, and have some narc breathing down my neck all concert trying to figure out where the whiff of pot is coming from in the middle of my section. Give me the '70's any day. I have a lot better chance of dying of a stroke caused by skyrocketing blood pressure due to rage at the narc behind me at Sprinfsteen than I did of getting hit by a firecracker on a hot day in Pittsburgh.

[GumboYaYa]

25. I watched Greg Allman hold a microphone and slur lyrics

loudly for an hour before he walked to the front of the stage and proceeded to fall off into the crowd. He had to be carried out of the bar that night.

At another show, I was producing the album release party for the Mission Impossible II Soundtrack. Godsmack was the headliner. Knowing the band's name and having heard the lyrics to their tunes, I should have had someone watching these guys like hawks before the show. Unfortunately, they managed to slip off and get into something that seriously wacked out the lead singer. We had to carry the sorry SOB out of the place that night. I thought for sure I was about to have a dead lead singer on my hands. The other band members went on stage and cancelled the show. Heavy metal heads filled with booze and god knows what else don't like having shows cancelled. That is probaly the most wacked out concert that never hapened for me.

[driver8]

26. Dead Kennedys -- Washington DC in 1985

The show was being held in a community center in a not so good part of town. After the last song, Jello Biafra says to the crowd, "Apparently, the locals are not happy with what is going on here tonight. Be careful
getting home."

We go outside, and there are about 500 people waiting for the crowd to come out. I saw one guy pull out a switchblade and I told my friends, "Let's get the fuck out of here." We head down a street and see a taxi go by and flagged him down. I was never so relieved to see a taxi cab in my life!

[MrSlayer]

28. GG Allin. Wasn't "scary" but it was bizzare.

GG Allin was a fucking maniac. He would attack and fistfight the fans, shit in his hands and throw it, mutilate himself and fellate his brother the bass player on stage. If he got off 5 songs before the show degenerated into a riot it was a good gig. Strangest show I've ever been to.

[Wat_Tyler]

31. The Proclaimers.

[FrankBooth]

32. Pearl Jam/Neil Young/Blind Melon - mid 90s

It was at the Gorge, a beautiful natural ampitheater in Eastern Washington - they used to have bleachers up on top of the bowl overlooking the general seating - there was a fence in front of the bleachers and then basically a cliff ... once PJ started playing these deranged idiots rushed the chain link fence, pushed it over, and began hurling themselves down the cliff, which must have been at least 30 feet. It cast a pall over the whole performance.