Speaking as a 5 foot nothing female, I can honestly say I’ve never had a problem with concerts, I agree with reprise, most people tend to look after each other. I’ve survived Pearl Jam, Metallica, Tool, Korn, Marilyn Manson and NIN and I’m alive! Having tall friends helps You can usually find a safe distance back from the stage if it gets scary.
Flame me if you will, but if you go and see morons who spout hateful things about women (ie Fred Durst) then I think there would be a higher chance of real threat.
I’m 31 and I wouldn’t think much has changed from my concert days.
I’ve seen Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Ozzy and a good few more metal bands. There was lots of drinking and drugs. I’ve seen a few people hurt in fights, crowd collapse etc but nothing serious. At the Megadeth gig an idiot jumped from the balcony. The crowd opened up and he broke a few bones. No more concerts were held in that venue thanks to him. The biggest danger IMO is the front of the crowd were there are dangers of crushing etc but I’ve always notice that people do look after you if you get into trouble. Maybe that just the rocker code though
Concerts will always be a bit dangerous and you need to be aware of the dangers. Big exicted crowds are a unknown sometimes.
I don’t think concerts are anymore dangerous than when I was growing up. We just don’t really remember the bad press very well.
Growing up I do vaguely reacall news items about teens being trampled at some events from poeple rushing the stage in the 70s. I vaguely remember stuff about Kiss concerts, and in the late 80s I remember news about riots after Guns N’ Roses concerts…
The hazards of crowd control and general rowdiness have always been there. However, in today’s more litigious climate, I think that crown control tends to be organized a lot more thoroughly (one dumbass climbing up and falling from some speakers can result in a multi-million dollar suit).
I was 14 or 15 the first time I ever went to a rock concert (that weren’t free outdoor ones). An parent was with us, and we weren’t allowed down front where we’d get stepped on. As we got older, we were able to manage just fine on our own.
Send your kids to as many concerts as possible. It’s kinda like drinking; the safest thing to do is know your limitations.
Having said that, concerts aren’t really that dangerous anyway. You might get kicked in the head by a stray crowdsurfer (and i think that this is happening less frequently anyway), but it’s very rare to come out with any serious injury. The closest i’ve been to danger in a moshpit is nearly overheating in a mosh around midday in a hot australian summer festival. so i did what any sensible person would do, and left, got some fresh air, a drink of water from the first aid tent until i’d cooled down. it’s just common sense.
and reprise is right. people in mosh pits generally do look after each other. no-one wants to see anyone else die - we’ve all heard the media reports.
They’re less dangerous if you don’t wear sandals (Teva’s). I had my foot stepped on and the big toenail ripped off. Which wasn’t nearly as painful as it sounds, actually.
I’ll second the recommendation to go with your kids for their first concert experiences, assuming they want to go at an early enough age that they aren’t horribly offended by the idea and that you can stand the music.
I took my 12yo to her first concert last fall-the Family Values tour-and it was a real learning experience for her. I don’t think she realized just how loud/smoke-filled/over-stimulating it would be. I certainly didn’t mind going with her. She was mostly interested in Staind and Linkin Park, which I don’t mind, and I was excited to see Stone Temple Pilots. (We both agreed that Deadsy sucked big time.)
I gave her permission to go on the floor at Weezer, but she wasn’t ready. The biggest danger there (assuming you were wearing proper footwear) was being dropped on your head while crowd surfing. The upper body strength of your average Weezer fan is not what it could be.
If you really can’t stand the music they listen to, it’s worth it to enlist a willing adult friend. My husband took our friends’ 14yo to Metallica as a favor because they wouldn’t let her go alone and really didn’t want to go themselves.
Crowd surfing has been banned at most concerts here because at many concert venues the ONLY way someone can be quickly removed from a dangerous situation is to be passed over the heads of the crowd - “recreational” crowd surfing creates a lot of confusion about whether or not urgent help is needed, wuite a part from any risks of injury inherent in the practise.
Whatever anyone thinks of the lyrics sung by Fred Durst, Limp Bizkit had expressed many concerns about the security arrangements for the 2001 Big Day Out and requested that T-barricades be installed for the event to allow emergency and security personnel rapid access to the crowd and there’s a very good chance that of the band’s request had been met Jessica Michalik would still be alive today.
[slight hijack]Does anyone have any figures which compare the number of crowd deaths at sporting events with those at concerts? I suspect that there have been many more of the former than the latter, and yet we don’t seem to perceive being in part of the crowd at a major sporting event as being inherently dangerous.[/slight hijack]
Nothing that hasn’t been said already, stay out of the pit if you want to avoid the remote possibility of getting hurt. You might want to keep you kids away from a HateBreed show though, then tend to resemble small riots.
Nothing that hasn’t been said already, stay out of the pit if you want to avoid the remote possibility of getting hurt. You might want to keep you kids away from a HateBreed show though, then tend to resemble small riots.
So say Limp Bizkit. The promoters tell quite a different story. Which isn’t unusual, but I wouldn’t expect Limp Bizkit to go around incriminating themselves either.
I guess I’m more inclined to believe the promoters because of the ten years or so of well run festivals they’ve given me, as opposed to Limp Bizkit who gave me Nookie.
ignoring my personal bias, all I’m saying is that what both parties have to say about the event should be taken with a grain of salt - the findings of the inquisition haven’t been determined yet, have they?
I think it would vary from country to country. Riots and crowd deaths are exceedingly rare in the United States – the riots that do occur, like after L.A. and Chicago basketball championships ( :rolleyes: ) tend to take place away from the arena and involve more property damage than anything. I can’t think off the top of my head of any deaths resulting from crowd activity at a sporting event in recent memory. (Doesn’t mean there haven’t been, but I can’t remember any.) But I can think of several at concerts, most notably the 11 killed at the Who concert in Cincinnati in 1979.
According to www.crowdsafe.com , a website concerning crowd management at concerts, in 2001, 55 deaths occurred at 31 festival concerts in 11 countries. I couldn’t find comparable figures for sporting event deaths.
I went to a buttload of concerts in the 80s, at both indoor and outdoor venues (mostly Richfield Coliseum and Blossom Music Center in Northeast Ohio), and I don’t think they were any more or less safe than they are today. At Blossom, there were always warnings after there were a couple of rape incidents in the surrounding woods, but it was a very safe place. I also have been right up at the stagefront for plenty of shows at the Cleveland Agora and the Odeon, among other clubs, and rarely had a problem except for the occassional asshole.
You can usually find a safe distance back from the stage if it gets scary.