standard rock concert/festival experience is now a newsworthy calamity

the world is getting dumber and softer.  I'm at the point where I do not go the GA shows anymore because my old bones need a reserved seat but point is everyone needs to know their limits and comfort zones.  don't like crowds?  don't go.  

> suggesting that chaperones for high schoolers be required

Anyone remember the Satanic Panic of the 80's, followed by the Boot Camp for kidz years, to the "Let's go on TV and say our nine year old who wears makeup beats us up" era?

Could you imagine what those kids would be saying about a GA show on the East Coast?

There is nothing new here. Young people discovering that things get chaotic at GA shows and that people cram to the front when the show starts, and that they panic and then later indignantly complain with uneducated opinions has been going on for decades.

In the late '80s and through the '90s I worked front-of-stage security at plenty of crazy GA shows and pulled dozens of panicking young people over the barricade, and it was my job for over 30 years to listen to complaints at every show. And believe me, I heard complaints exactly like the ones in that video at EVERY show I worked.

What's new in this modern "bizzaro" world isn't softer, more whiny young people, it's social media giving them a broad public voice, which then alerts the news outlets to an easy story that EVERYONE will then hear. A story we're all now clicking on BTW, where every click earns the outlets more money for selling soap.

Kids in particular are the same as they've always been, it's the advent of social media that has changed the world we all live in, where everyone now has an overdeveloped sense of self-importance because every opinion can be heard around the world instead of just in our living rooms.

And they're not wrong about how fucked up it gets specifically at huge GA hip-hop & pop shows, where everyone crams forward into a truly dangerous crush. It's incredibly difficult for staff & medical people to get to an issue and then get the people involved out. It's something promoters have been dealing with (or not) for decades, it's just now everyone's complaints can be heard loud & proud.

The complaints are the same as they ever were, it's our ability to hear every god damned one that has changed.

^^^^^^ good points Lance 

I normally can tolerate only one day music fests and multi act lineups...Farm aid and Outlaw are my speed nowadays but I did just pick up a ticket to September CBGB Festival 

https://www.cbgb.com/

You've been living in Bizzaro World since January.

Edit

Lol

by the by, satanic panic is alive and well in amerikkka

bless their hearts

Yes GA is what it is but one of the things that has made it worse is VIP sections like they have at OSL that cut off exits to the right. If you can't exit back you should at least be able to go horizontal to either side to get out, but with advent of VIP sections you are often boxed in because there is another barrier there.

Let's also not pretend that GA can and has killed people. Going back to The Who at Cincinnati. At the time I hated that GA went away for most of the arenas in the North East corridor. Hartford, Providence, MSG, Nassau all got rid of GA and put chairs on the floor. You had to go to small markets like Portland, Augusta, or Hampton to get a GA shows. On average the Dead played better shows in GA arenas. All those people getting squished raised the energy in the barn.

Then there is just bad crowd management and greedy promoters who don't give a fuck like at the recent Rose Bowl show for Rufus Du Sol that was way oversold and turned into a literal shit show. If you flushed a toilet it would cause a shit geyser in the neighboring stalls. At least they identified this ass hole who is now going to jail but there is no way security could go anywhere in there as all the aisles were blocked in the whole stadium. There were people with paid reserved seats who could never get to their  seats because of all the overcrowding. Whoever the people are who run shows at the Rose Bowl should be put in jail. This is not the first time I have heard horror stories about shows there. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/avesLA/comments/1mtactu/anyone_recognize_this_d...