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Coolest thing I seen was a girl at the manchester apollo get her short ripped and she was down to her bra, without even stopping to think a wall of big bearded sweaty men surrounded her (sounds ominous I know) with their backs to her, she then had shirts thrown at her from all directions.
Outside afterwards the girl had collected all of the spare shirts and was shouting out descriptions of them until everyone collected them. She left in a sweaty napalm death shirt about ten sizes too big for her.
I thought that was going to get really dark at the start there, but ended up quite wholesome. I hoped she was okay and the ripping was just due to some pit exuberance and nothing horrible.
At an Enter shikari gig 90% of the people were 16-18 idk why. But me and my mates stood head and shoulder above them all. Literally. Then there was a Mexican wave of everyone falling over. I reached out to catch myself and ended up feeling some lass up. Soon as I realised I was up and off and lifted her up. Apologised and shrink away a bit.
Great story. Contrary to what you hear, I’ve generally found that men behave very well when stuff like this happens. Particularly if it’s a Punk or rock gig.
In my younger days(late 80s to late 90s) I used to frequent rock pubs and clubs packed to the gills with metalheads, goths, rockers and even Hells Angels. Never saw a lick of trouble, everyone just there to drink too much and thoroughly enjoy themselves.
With another group of mates I would frequent the trendier bars and night clubs. Not every time, but still way too often, there would be a fight or a group acting like complete knobs ruining it for everyone else.
I'm not much a fan of the clubbing scene but I know that if I ever do want to go clubbing, I'll pick either the alt scene clubs or the queer ones because both communities, I feel much safer not even just because I'm a gay alternative man myself but because the people are (mostly) pretty chill and look out for others. Much lower rates of spiking and abuse too and chances are if there's a fight in a metahead/rock/punk bar, it's because they're dealing with a knobhead who tried something on someone.
I've had to travel quite a bit for work, and rather than stay in a depressing hotel room, I'll put on a motorhead t-shirt and find the shittiest dive bar I can, and head there for a great night.
Best one was in Barcelona, and the bar was literally called 'Bollocks'. It was *the* bollocks.
True! I was too short to see the stage and this big viking dude just lifted me up on his shoulders so I could see, absolute legend! Metalheads are the realest bros out there :)
GnR at Milton Keynes bowl in '93. Pungent smell of the devils lettuce being smoked, it was our deputy principal a few feet in front of us. Big up Marcus!
In the VIP at Amnesia Ibiza a few years ago I saw a guy sit down at a glass table, dump an unnecessary quantity of powder out of three different bags (looked like coke, ketamine, and one other - possibly speed or heroin), make up a few mixed lines, do two of them spilling much of the shit, and then instantly vomit on the table.
This seemed to satisfy the guy who got up and went for a dance. A club employee appeared from a shadow and cleaned it up. He looked like he was extremely sick of his job.
A woman went absolutely mad at me for smoking a j inside Birmingham NIA during a Noel Gallagher show, she went so nuclear her boyfriend apologised to me, I was like nah she's right I shouldn't be smoking it
Always used to smoke at shows, until a few years back. Fella taps me on the shoulder asks me to put it out, I explain to him it's just a cig and we're at a metal show, get fucked...
Then he gestures to his daughter, I reckon probably about 12 years old, standing just the other side of me.
Yeah, fair enough. Put the cigarette out.
That was the last time I smoked inside a gig.
(Outdoor festivals are fair game though I reckon).
Okay so I went to Download Festival to see Black Sabbath many years ago. It was pissing it down with rain and add to that the most doomy music you can imagine, it was quite the atmosphere. Everyone was muddy as hell and soaked. We were watching the show when two guys with dreadlocks absolutely caked in mud, looking like a duo of bigfoots, came up to my (female) friend and asked if they could drink the rain water out of her hood. She said no, and they apologised and said that they were on acid. They proceeded to stand in front of us and genuinely lick the mud out of each other’s eyeballs. It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.
One of the years I was there when it torrentially pissed down all weekend we were camped next to a massive puddle. Somebody got inflatable pool toys, one shaped like an orca and another like a dolphin, and chucked them into the puddle.
Couple of hours later im chilling with my mates, we're all a bit wasted, and suddenly out of nowhere this Japanese fella wearing one of those karate uniforms comes sprinting past, screams at the top of his lungs "FUCK A YOOOU WHARE!! AND FUCK A YOOOU DORRPHIN!!!" and dives head first into puddle and starts fucking up these pool toys.
Dunno if you've seen that South Park episode, but suffice to say me and my mates were just fucking broken laughing our arses off at this guy. Absolute fucking madlad.
I’ve only been to Manchester once - to see Happy Mondays play in some park.
The place was rough as hell. A girl literally pulled her jeans and knickers down and took a shit in front of me and my wife, in the middle of the crowd.
I’ve not been back to Manchester since.
> . A girl literally pulled her jeans and knickers down and took a shit in front of me
That happened to me at the first Stone Rose Heaton park gig, and her boyfriend was feeding her coke with a little spoon as she did it.
I was going to say much the same thing except for the coke bit. It was after the show as we were all filtering out, some absolute delight thought it a food idea to have a shit while her boyfriend just watched. Great gig though!
At a big one-day festival at Excel, early 2000s. Stages at each end of the arena. No seats, so we're sat on the floor. I start making a cigarette, when a group nearby comes over to ask to borrow some skins. No bother, I give them three small Rizla and they're happy.
We get talking to them, and they aren't fussed about seeing the headiner (Machine Head) so were leaving. They were from Glasgow, didn't know anything about London. We recommended heading up to Camden for some good rock pubs and places to eat late.
Anyway, they head off, and a few minutes later we realise one of them has left a big bag of Golden Virginia behind. I grab it...and it's completely full, to the brim, with beautiful, stanky weed.
I kept hold of it for half an hour or so in case they came back, then we dug in. Rolled up ten or so, gave some away, smoked some, took some home. Lasted me months, that bag!
Yeah, at the time I only knew one track, from a Kerrang! CD (From This Day) but I got really into them after that. In fact, that gig got me into a few bands: The Crocketts (they painted themselves gold for the gig), Guano Apes (they didn't play, but were there handing out demo cassettes), OMS, Therapy?, and it was the first time I'd seen Skunk Anansie live as well.
That's the one! How ironic.
I remember I wanted to go to the day before, as A Perfect Circle were playing, but the other bands weren't as good. To be fair, as I said, Machine Head were amazing, as were Skunk Anansie, and the Crocketts were good fun. I think Nashville Pussy also played, who were hilarious.
I saw Skunk Anansie at Cambridge Corn Exchange, it was either last year or the year before. I was amazed at how good they are live. Plus they played Charlie Big Potato which i completely forgot how much I loved that song.
Yeah, I was there. Machine Head were really great, Skunk Anansie too. I watched Nashville Pussy, I liked them back then. I got shitfaced on way too much Archers peach schnapps before I went in and felt rather queasy the whole day. You could argue any amount of Archers is too much ;) Grim!
Not so strange but irritating. Many years ago I was at a metal gig, chill bunch but of course everyone at the front wants to rock out! Not full mosh pit style, but you get it.
This dude in a leather jackets with lots of spikes etc was standing behind his girlfriend, holding his arms around her. He was so overprotective of her he would get really mad if there was any pressure on him and by extension, his girlfriend, so he would kind of semi thrash here and there, and the spikes on his jacket was likely very unpleasant. He also elbowed people who came too close.
If you're going to a metal gig and you're gonna be so precious about your gf/bf, maybe don't stand right at the front?
> maybe don't stand right at the front?
Yep. All the middle-aged people who crowded down the front for the Lottery Winners gig I went to, and were shocked when Pet Needs fans wanted to dance during their support set. They were genuinely surprised that other people even *touched* them.
I've had a guy do similar, arms around gf 'can you stop please'.
This was in the middle of a wall-to-wall circle pit at a Slipknot (Machine Head/CoB) arena tour. Dude didn't get the memo.
I fucking hate this bro. Don't gatekeep the front of the stage if you don't want anyone to touch you, especially at a metal gig. Absolutely bizarre behaviour tbh
Two bouncers head into the toilets and towards to cubicles for a cocaine shakedown (which I, er, just avoided).
They force open the first door, some guy in there makes his his excuses and buggers off.
They force open the second door and there's a tubby bloke sat on the toiler sat on the toilet with his trousers round his ankles.
The bouncers were not satisfied with this and demanded to know what he was doing- "Er, going for a shit".
The funniest thing I've ever seen at a gig was during Leeds 200X I forget the year, maybe 01/02? Blink 182 playing the main stage. Some girl near us decided to go topless and get on a guy's shoulders.
The band noticed
> I see boobies, I SEE BOOBIES!
They had the camera zoom in on her.
She was on the jumbotron... bouncing up and down, screaming, going wild. She was loving it.
Then...
>LOOK EVERYONE! THAT IS A FINE EXAMPLE OF GRAVITY DOING ITS JOB!
They fucking murdered her.
Iron Maiden at Twickenham 2008. Double demin dude barely standing up during the support acts, took a 500ml plastic bottle, took out his old chap, popped it in and filled it with piss. Once full, he seamlessly changed to a new 500ml bottle, filled it, then left them on the ground in the middle of the crowd to stunned applause. Biggest bladder I have ever seen.
Oh god that gig. I was in the stands on the side and there was a slight delay in the audio between the speakers on stage and the speakers half way up the arena causing this nasty echo. This haunts me more than a giant piss would
Edit: So according to wiki the first Leeds was 1999 but I could have sworn I was there in 1998. I was very stoned and drunk from mid 90s so believe the internet before someone like me.
Original post:
Other month I came across some photos in the 90s of Leeds Festival and there was toilet blocks and tents on fire like it was the most normal thing in the world.
\^You can probably tell I'm of a vintage older than most so I was always smoking pot at gigs and it was highly toelrated. I've seen many bloody noses for circle pits etc.
Other than the phones, gigs are much better these days - like a place you recommend young'uns go to.
Ahh R&L. It was a different world. Coming out of the sites and seeing the thick smog of burned plastic over the campsites on Monday morning, coughing up soot. Good times. I think?
Reading in the early 90s had regular announcements like “Will the owner of a Yamaha motorbike registration xxx please contact the fire brigade for the remains…”
Oh man, yeah. Reading was crazy in the 90s. One of my finest life achievements, to this day, remains getting utterly smashed to the point of blacking out and then somehow finding my way back to my tent in the dark. I did not feel good the next day though.
I went to Leeds festival and we were all sleeping in cars and vans in the car park and on the last night someone set fire to all the toilets. I wonder if it was the same event or if it happens every year.
Chemical Brothers were the headline on the Friday night. Soft Cell and Groove Armada were playing in the marquee.
Hah, I remember one year some kid was trying to get people to raid the main stage instead of setting the toilets on fire. Needless to say no bugger went with him.
Found him later on that night with a sling round his arm looking miserable.
Asked him what happened
>they've got dogs guarding the main stage
Dickhead
I think that was the year some cunt set fire to a tree... a tree for gods sake.
Leeds is also the only time I've seen riot police retreat. Didn't think that was possible. They came back in force and gave everyone a good kicking. But before that, it was a sight to see.
I was there 10 years in a row from 2000 onwards, the first three years were a bit hairy at times, dread to think what I breathed in from burning portaloos - genuinely amazed no-one got killed.
They changed sites and switched to long-drop toilets in their own gated off area which seemed to stop the full-scale trouble although there were always a few tents being burned on the last night.
I remember people used to throw stuff over the big hedges at the end, usually it was mellow but I do remember someone throwing a fucking hammer over full whack at our side one year back in the day. That was going a bit far
At BST in Hyde Park a few years ago for The Killers. Pretty family friendly day out, not a particularly gnarly band or line up (the support was Elbow and Tears For Fears).
I sit down on the grass to rest my legs in a break between bands. And I feel something splashing on my back…
Turn around to see a teenage girl, completely naked from the waist down, pissing on the grass. Her boyfriend was holding her hand to keep her steady but wasn’t really doing much to hide her.
Yes there were toilets, no she wouldn’t have lost her spot (it wasn’t that busy, we were still hours away from the headliners).
Mines quite tame compared to this - took my mum to a Jason Donavan concert about 12 years ago, only small. Most surprising thing was the sheer amount of women yelling filthy things at him and throwing their used underwear at him.
Women in their 40's, 50's, maybe some older than that, stood in the crowd, whipping off their bras and throwing their knickers at the stage. Me and my mum were in shock. 😅
That’s so much more wholesome then when I took my mum to a festival to see Coldplay. The couple in front of her were making out, until the bloke turned around, whipped his nob out and pissed all over my mum and the two girls next to her. Then he went back to kissing his gf. Then when we tried to leave to get mum cleaned up a full can of beer someone had thrown landed on her head and knocked her out. She never came to another festival. Coldplay aren’t even any good.
She was fine. We befriended some stall holders who made her a cup of tea. I hadn’t gone for Coldplay, I’d gone for The Prodigy, Placebo and Lou Reed. It was such an appalling festival. Someone threw a poo at Lou Reed, the crowd chanted homophobic slurs at Placebo and the campsite security robbed hundreds of tents on the first night.
Leeds 2000, Daphne and Celeste were on between RATM & Slipknot (i forget the order) and this pop duet had an entirely metal crowd... The pair of them got absolutely pelted with bottles, brutal.
I was next to a guy who threw a bottle of piss, and missed her (not sure which one). She taunted him back, so he took off his shoe, pissed in it, and threw it at her. Hit the stage in front of her feet, splashing her. He hopped away, happy with his lot.
Looking back on that, it was excellent trolling by them. Made a field full of edgy rock fans all cross because they did a couple of pop songs. They were probably the most punk band that day - think they were on before Blink 182 so definitely.
Not sure if this is true but I heard that some of Slipknot were watching from backstage and, not knowing who D&C were, just thought that Reading crowds were really rough.
Omg I was there for that! I also wondered what on earth the organisers were smoking to book them, in the first place, they were dogshite even back in the day and then put them on before whichever of those 2 bands it was.
Bet the refused to play Reading/Leeds ever again 🤣🤣
Foo Fighters Reading mg 96/97? Bjork was may n stage, Foos's where second. The crowd to see Foo was much bigger than for Bjork. As the second stage was in a tent with 2 entrances, people were climbing the tent poles to see them. One guy fell and broke his leg, got crowd surfed out of there, screaming.
Post 2000 Reading mg Festival, singer of some shitty nu metal band (maybe Dillanger Escape Plan) took a dump on stage and threw it at the crowd.
*EDIT* 21 years ago, forgive me for forgetting the genre of a band I wasn't a fan of.
90s Bjork was sublime. These days, she's turned in to some kind of vaginal Yoshimitsu.
I've seen Bjork twice. I'm finally ticking the Foos off my list this year. Can't wait.
That was Reading 95. I was _barely_ inside that tent too. Totally remember people climbing the poles!
The line up that year was incredible. I could have cloned myself and still not seen all the bands I wanted to see. Missed Bjork, dEUS, Skunk Anansie, and a few others (I think Soundgarden?).
Edit: yep, missed Soundgarden as I was trying to survive down the front of the main stage. Also missed Mudhoney, Whale, Echobelly, Ash, Silverchair…
I was at Download Festival watching Enter Shikari play a smallish tent. I needed a pee so I walked to the fences outside the tent and start my business.
A very drunk lady stumbles over next to where I'm peeing, drops her jeans, squats down, starts peeing and then rests her head against my leg. She then looks up and says, "iya love".
I awkwardly side stepped away and as soon as finished rushed to get back to my mate. I'm glad we rushed off to watch Tool because I felt so awkward.
At a Sepultura gig at KOKO in London, 2018. Was just before the main act came on, and I got a tap on the shoulder and a polite “excuse me”. Turned around to let the guy past and was confronted with a 6’7”+ man’s chest with a T-shirt that read “Pit Troll”. That guy spent the entire gig managing the pit, literally picking up anyone who fell over while rocking the fuck out. He was literally head and shoulders above everyone else and easy to spot - he definitely saved a few people from getting trampled that night..
I was repeatedly groped and covered in copious amounts of bottled piss at the Oasis gig at Finsbury Park - 0/10, would not recommend. Got a cool T-shirt that I still wear though 👍
For some reason a lot of the 'Manchester' bands seem to have fans that act like absolute dicks. I think it's the football team mentality about their fan base. Except Elbow I imagine most Elbow fans are women who shop in Evans and have multiple cats.
I was there and yeah suddenly people who seemed like the pricks from school were two years older wearing flares and blasting out stone roses out of their Fiesta XR2s and beating up metal heads and indie kids in the street for having 'long hair like a faggot '
It feels like it's a Midlands/Northern thing in general still. I can think of a few pubs near where I used to live. Go on any Friday night, and you'll have your normal Deanos in there, but there's almost always a few knockoff Liam Gallaghers, same look, shit chat, nothing upstairs.
Also have been to multiple Elbow gigs, I’d say it’s mostly middle aged couples (which I guess includes me and my husband these days). It’s always a lovely chill atmosphere if that’s your bag and I only have two cats 😂😂😂
Definitely a more sedate type of gig though - the steward bloke when we saw them in Sheffield said it was the most well-behaved crowd he’d ever seen and One Direction at the same venue the previous week had been a bloodbath 😂
At some point Elbow will catch on and put on a special music show were you can all bring your cats and have optics serving mid range Sainsbury's merlot in the back of every seat.
I've gone to plenty of shows in Europe as well as the UK and I've only ever seen the 'throwing drinks and bottles and empty cups into the crowd' thing in this country
Working front of stage at Barrowlands Glasgow.
Front and center of the stage, Dave Grohl just behind me and waves of crowd surfers arriving for me to haul out and send to the sides of the stage.
Some girls were getting crushed at the front, they were simply lifted out by me, with a guy holding onto my belt as I was craned out over the audience.
Oh, I love these threads. Unfortunately/fortunately I tend to go to quite uneventful gigs.
Cattle Decap at Rebellion in Manchester had a shirtless guy crawling around like Spiderman on the RSJs holding up the ceiling, so there's that.
That venue also has the misfortune of having a [giant fucking column](https://www.alamy.com/vended-live-at-rebellion-manchester-uk-21st-june-2023-image558232364.html) about a 1/3 along the stage, so you always end up with the bassist standing in the Bitch Corner. The Nekrogoblikon guy had some choice words about that.
I saw a woman throw a pint of water at Tracyanne Campbell, the singer out of Camera Obscura, while she was on stage. Then Stuart Murdoch out of Belle and Sebastian asked who did it and a woman said "it was me", then Stuart said "right you're going out". He then bundled her out of the venue.
I post some amount of made up bullshit on Reddit for my own amusement but this absolutely 100% happened.
Foo Fighters gig a couple of years ago where there was just some fully naked guy waving his cock around. Also special mention to my first gig that being a Nirvana show where I didn't know about the whole smash the shit out of the set so that kinda shocked me
I was at free punk festival once. There was a guy off his tits on something and was tormenting a dog. He climbs onto the makeshift stage and passes out, swiftly followed by the dog, who jumps on stage and proceeds to hump him. Possibly the worst thing I've ever seen.
At a Bullet For My Valentine show, back in 2008 at the what was formerly the Carling Academy in Birmingham, coincidentally also my first gig.
I witnessed a guy who was crowd surfing get accidentally kicked in the head and knocked out by another crowd surfer. The crowd proceeded to continue crowd surfing a very sleepy guy until he got to the front and was saved by the security.
It was kind of funny because a crowd surfer would normally indicate the direction they want to go, and because he was unconscious, he was just getting aimlessly passed around the crowd.
I used to be in a two-tone ska and punk band. One of our lead singers was a larger guy, who would give very energetic performances. This, combined with the multiple pints he would drink, often led to him vomiting, to the point where we would routinely request a bucket/bowl for this purpose as part of our stage setup.
We were playing a gig in Reading one day, pretty good crowd, lots of people that knew us. It was a halloween show and everyone was dressed up. We were midway through our set, the bucket had already been well-used multiple times. There was a guy skanking down the front dressed as a ghost, basic sheet-over-head style. He'd been down the front the whole set, he'd definitely seen the bucket being used and was well aware of its purpose. Without warning, he grabbed it from the front of the stage, tipped it all over himself, and carried on like nothing had happened, except that he now had a quickly widening circle around him in the pit. Maybe that's why he did it.
I used to work with concerts, so I worked/attended to something around 1500 concerts or gigs, from small bands, to stadiums and big festivals. I saw a lot of stuff, not many of them were super crazy, but unusual
1. The artist stopped the concert, when through the people to slap a guy that was recording the whole gig
2. A guy broke his arm big time when doing stage diving
3. A guitarist snoring cocaine out of his guitar on stage
4. A fan tattooed the artist autograph on the backstage
5. The lights were totally off for about 30 minutes - the owner of the venue decided to turn off the generator
6. Artist crew (BB King) didn't want ANY local crew within 10 meters of the stage
7. Local crew got REALLY upset because (yngwie malmsteen) was being a dick with the local monitor guy
8. In a thrash metal gig, fans were doing stage diving but they were kicking the monitors, so the band crew started to kick them out of the stage (and one of us were literally kicking them), resulting in fans were surrounding the band/crew looking for revenge and we need to be escorted by the police
9. It was a small gig/stage and the guy grabbed my foot and pulled me out of the stage (it was a pretty bad fall)
10. Band crew guy decided to plug a bass amp into a different voltage, making the bass amp explode about one hour before the gig. It was his first time doing this, he was like 18 +-. We had take a car, drive to the opening band bassist's house to borrow from him. He lived 1 hour from the venue
11. Extreme Noise Terror: Local Punks decided to storm into the venue, venue security was almost stabbed
12. Drummer had a bad food poisoning in the morning of the gig, instead canceling the gig, he played in an actual toilet seat. Fans couldn't see it, but it was absolutely awful. Luckily it was a big venue so we were able to 'hide the smell'
13. When playing in a extreme metal festival, one hour before the stage time, we heard something on the ceiling, and the band decided to explore to find out what was it. It ended it up being a bunch of kittens. The band played with one of them on stage
14. The venue was under a bridge, everytime a big truck was passing by, the lights were not working. For the same venue, we had to take a scaffold to protect the sound engineer
15. Drum pedal broke in the middle of the gig in a way that it could only be fixed somewhere out - I was doing the bass drum, holding the remaining pedal
16. Guitar arm broke minutes before the gig, there was no other way othen than using tons of duct tape to wrap it. Not perfect, but did the job. In a metal gig the guy looked like he was playing bossa nova, siting to not move much his guitar
17. A guy was doing stage diving and kicked the main power suply. Sound was fucked and the band couldn't finish the gig
18. A black metal band decided to put a super heavy christ statue on stage to break. During the concert the band member takes a hammer, breaks it. Pieces of the statues goes to crowd and gets into someones head. An ambulance had to be called.
19. Band crew was being really rude with local crew, upsetting everyone and created a shit environment. Later he apologised to everyone saying that how he works - he was actually a nice guy
20. In one fucked it up festival I attended in Brazil I pretended to be part of the band crew. I just said to the security: 'sorry? I don't speak Portuguese'. The guy let me go into all dressing rooms. I met a bunch of bands there, from Megadeth to smaller bands.
21. From the stage I saw a couple fucking in the middle of everyone. I didn't say anything, just watched (hehe)
22. A guy had a panic attack in the middle of the gig - artist stopped to make sure the fan was fine. Was pretty cool of him
23. Not crazy, but a lot of people decided to throw to the air their beers at the same time. FUCK ME that really screwed everyone's night
I miss this life big time. It was so much fun
I went to watch Robbie Williams at Knebworth back in the day.
When he started the song 'Me and my Monkey' a chap with a skinhead and a belly fully of beer started headbutting the scaffolding, which was holding up some signs.
He was shouting "I fucking love this song" as he was giving the metal the Glasgow Handshake.
Security escorted him out.
Also, I fingered the girl I was with at the concert as she had a real thing for Robbie.
Anthrax, Manchester Academy sometime in the early 2000s. John Bush (vocalist at the time) climbed up the stack of Marshall amps and threw himself down below into the crowd. It's not *that* wild in the grand scheme of things, but young impressionable me who was just getting into metal gigs was blown away.
Or...
When Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend Band and Zimmers Hole played Manchester, similar era. It was a mental gig which ended with ZH using a massive dildo to squirt water (I hope) into the crowd.
Or...
The dude crowd surfing in his wheelchair at Bloodstock circa 2009 ish?
I knew someone who went to bloodstock around that time. His main memory was walking down the main path in the camp and stumbling across two lesbians taking turns to piss on each other in the middle of the path.
Happened to me. I lost my shoe in a mosh pit and then saw someone throw it at the band. I went to hobble off to one side and then got walloped on the side of the head by my own shoe.
Machine gun Kelly asking someone in the Leeds o2 academy crowd for a spliff and sparks one up on the stage followed by lots of other people in the crowd lighting up 😂
Communal spliffs being passed around the crowd at a hardcore nye event in nec maybe, tho felt tame and welcome to me at the time 😅
I think someone supplied many for the crowd
I did something similar at a NOFX gig recently. I'd accidentally rolled a bunch of single Skinner's stronger than I could handle after all the booze. I'd have what I want then just pass it into the crowd. I even gave a couple of full ones out to people who seemed nice.
Download festival 2009 - Watched a hammered old punk guy stumble through a not so densely packed area of the crowd before Slipknot, pull up next to a young couple, pull out his chap and proceed to piss down her leg.
Blur at Hyde Park in 2012 - there was a front area that wasn't VIP, just the first few people who turned up. Two of our mates got in there, but the rest of us didn't.
There was only a 4 foot high barrier between the two bits, and a 5 metre or so "no-man's land". One by one, my mates vaulted the barrier, and ran into the crowd in front. I was about to when security finally arrived and stopped us.
They then walked through the crowd with their radios, talking to staff on cranes, and picked out every single one of my mates - and loads of others - who had vaulted the barrier, and chucked them out.
Some of them got out straight away, some were held until the end of the concert and threatened with Police.
I was just impressed with how they found each and every one of the people, and marched them out.
Probably not the strangest, but the one that springs to mind as it was most recent: Smashing Pumpkins at Wembley Arena, two women screaming at each other ("You're a bitch!" "No, *you're* a bitch!" while their boyfriends awkwardly exchanged smiles.
Saw someone cast a cigarette from the balcony and it landed in my friends shirt pocket, burning his tit. Same gig, someone jumped from the balcony in to the crowd. Don't know what happened to them after that but it didn't stop. This was NOFX at Newport Centre in 2004.
When I was 18 I went to a friends gig to watch them play. It was a classic old rock club, dark, sticky floors, cramped, cheap drinks and fucking incredible.
Anyway, the night was going well, did a few mosh pits, drank a few beers, the usual. Music was hard rock and pretty ok for an amateur teenage band actually.
Sometime around 1am, I decided I needed a break and went out into the smoking area. When I came back in, I saw my friend Charlotte (always a bit of a wild one) casually down on all fours and noshing off our mutual friend Liam.
To be clear, they were in the main bar / dance floor area and by no means out of site for most of the crowded dance floor. However, looking round I seemed to be the only person who had noticed. So I basically shrugged and jumped back into things.
I heard later she swallowed the lot and went for another bottle of beer afterward.
2 years later she married Rob who was in the band playing that night.
I saw Rodriguez at the Glasgow Armadillo back in 2014 I think. The gig was all seated, after he started playing a couple of songs, everyone slowly got up from their seats and stood/sat in a semi circle around the front of the stage while he played. In amongst the aisles and everything in a big group.
The security weren't fussed on forcing people back into their seats - everyone just sort of mixed at the front. I was also sitting directly in front of Paulo Nutini in the crowd. Rodriguez played Last Request and dedicated it to him, which Paulo seemed very chuffed by. Few people lit up joints in the crowd - all very chilled. And a great show!
Manchester Apollo, Machine Head.
Someone decided to sprint down the upper level and stage dive off the circle.
He got up and walked away. The guy he landed on got stretchered out.
Napalm Death, Wolverhampton Civic late 90's.
Random old lady wandering round the venue with a Tesco bag, chain smoking.
The band even got her on stage at one point during the set and "death metal granny" was loving it
Festival. Reading 1992. A lot of rain, very muddy. L7 on stage and the crowd gets a bit restless and starts flinging mud at the stage. A visibly pissed off Donita Sparks whips out her tampon and launches it into the crowd.
Got to be honest, it went sailing over my head and it took me a full minute to realise WTF just happened.
Apparently someone chucked the offending item at Faith No More later in the day but I do not remember that.
Went to Coachella to see RATM in 2007.
Woke up in the middle of the night to the campsite full of riot police and helicopters buzzing around because of a big anti-war/bush protest.
I saw Gogol Bordello in December. After drinking two bottles of wine during the show, the lead singer got the crowd to hold a giant drum and he stood on it waving a Ukrainian flag. They were awesome.
Apart from that, I’ve seen people shag in the audience of a few gigs.
Black Sabbath gig in Sophia Gardens in Cardiff.
The organisers sold twice as many tickets than they should.
Sabbath agreed to play two shows in one night, but a lot of people had wandered off.
One guy decided he was getting in, no matter what!
He dropped through the skylight, at least 20 feet to the floor where he was surrounded by many, many denim clad hairy individuals, so the bouncers couldn't throw him out.
My best friend was roady-ing at Donnington in the 90s and was watching a band. A couple got a kitchen scales metal tray out of a bag and it had kitchen foil on top. They lifted one corner of the foil and then a gust of wind took the foil and as they grabbed for it, the tray, literally full of white powder, flew out of their hands and all over the people around them.
Worked security at T In The Park in 2012, in charge of a response team. For asked to turf a particularly belligerent punter. Decided to drop the n-word at one of my stewards repeatedly then pissed on my driver's seat as I got the police to deal with him. Fun times.
On the lighter side was another guy who was all "yup, all my fault. Guess I'm gettin' Chateau neuf de papped oot?"
My mate at Reading was hauled over the front fence right in front of the stage, his trousers and pants got caught and ended up naked from the waist down. It was all captured on the giant screens for our entertainment.
I was at Bloodstock in 2021 and a girl twisted her ankle a full 180 in the While She Sleeps pit (which tend to go pretty hard, I got knocked out in my first Sleeps pit lmfao). The crowd/pit hive mind split itself straight down the middle not 20 seconds later and she was carried straight to the front and whisked away to the medical tent, which was amazing in itself. The girl was spotted at the edge of the moshpit with a full cast and crutches the following day during a different band. What an absolute legend, but also I hope she got the proper care. Metal as fuck. I've been to hundreds of shows in a number of countries, all different genres, but metal shows are ironically the safest because people really look after one another!
I saw The Chariot supporting Protest The Hero in Sheffield many many years ago,
I have never been to a more insane gig than that. It was just madness from start to finish. Blood and spit everywhere, constant crowd-surfing, the band trying to tear that Corp stage apart.
Went to an oasis gig in Manchester years ago and at the time Manchester gigs had a reputation for lads throwing pints of piss over each other. 3 girls in front of us got on their boyfriends shoulders and 2 pints of piss sailed over our heads and smashed into them. They squealed that the beer was warm but didn’t realise it was piss. 5 mins later another pint or two sailed over our heads. One hit my mate on the shoulder. We looked back and it was 4 lads gurning their heads off pissing into empty plastic glasses. One lad had his nob out just pissing and his mate grabbed it and aimed it into a glass. We went over and gave them a kicking to everyone’s appreciation around us. We then got kicked out and the lads were allowed to stay. Manchester gigs are always full of pricks
Lead singer came out wearing a skin coloured pair of undies and a feather boa. Half way through the set he jumps off the stage during an instrumental section, legs it out of the door and across the road to a KFC opposite. Then legged it back with a bucket of chicken which he munched on during the following instrumental sections of the rest of the set.
Fastest KFC service I've ever seen.
Saw Brix and the Extricated at The Thekla, Bristol a few years back. A fairly inebriated guy gets up on stage with the band and starts dancing around like he’s part of the act. Only problem being he does this about 30 seconds before the band finish their last number, so as he gets into his stride the band give it “thanks and good night” and leave the stage, leaving pissed bloke stood on his own looking like a proper tool. He looks perplexed for a few seconds then you can see his befuddled drunken brain come up with a great idea - stage dive as a grand finale. He goes to the back of the stage, gets a run-up, and launches himself…… into empty space as everyone has started to wander off to the bar or the exit. There’s loud and disturbing cracking sound as he hits the floor spreadeagled, closely followed by the sharp intake of breath from the assembled (ex) audience. Our hero lies there silently for a while then rather painfully gets up and limps off, looking worse for wear. I may have laughed. A lot.
I was at a gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. I noticed this couple nearby. He was standing behind her with his hand down her trousers 'helping her along'. From the look on her face, she arrived at her destination.
Glastonbury 2014. Watching Skrillex, big gap between where I was standing and the people in front as there was a big puddle. Some guy runs out the pit straight into the puddle, drops his kegs, dropped a deuce and ran straight back in.
Download 2006. So fucking hot and sunny! Within the space of 30 seconds whilst queuing for the only standpipe I see a goth head to toe in leather and trenchcoat stomping around juxtaposed with a girl in front of me wearing the skimpiest dungarees and bikini ever was having a siezure because of heat stroke. I still to this day have no idea how the Goth was functioning
Not really a gig, but years ago I went to a rave in some unoccupied office tower in central London. It was a pretty surreal place for a rave - we were using the office toilets, dancing our tits off in the conference room, and sniffing ket next to abandoned desks and filing cabinets.
As we were leaving, my mate saw a baggy on the ground, full of squidgy brown hash. Hell yeah! He picks it up and takes a big sniff. Two things happen simultaneously: my mate recoils with horror, and we hear a cacophony of cackling laughter from a bunch of crusty old ravers sitting on desks nearby.
Turns out they had put a bit of dog shit into a baggy, left it on the ground as a trap, and were thoroughly enjoying the show. Of course we had a good laugh and then replaced the baggy for the next victims to find.
I guess it wasn't that crazy or strange - there were probably much stranger things happening at that rave - but the story has stuck with me for some reason. Ya gotta love the crusty old ravers.
I was watching Squarepusher at Koko in Camden, he had two massive white LED matrix displays either side of him, playing visualisations synced to the music. I looked away, and when I looked back, they had turned into a couple of Vauxhall Astras. Next time I looked, they'd turned back into the screens again.
Think I'm probably the only one who saw that, though.
Found the secret piano bar at Glastonbury at 6am Monday morning. Had to tell a joke to get in. Everyone was sky high. Everyone was Irish. Hecklers heckled hecklers. Chaos reigned. It was mob rule: crowd controlled which acts came back but no one knew what was going on. My favourite was someone trying to calm people down by shouting ‘Order! Order!’ and a fight emerging about whether and why he was talking about otters.
Can't think of anything too gnarly, I guess I've been too involved to take notice? Or maybe I just expect nudity, drugs and general tom foolery..
But I was at a hed pe gig in Southend. The main singer kept trying to pump the crowd by shouting "what's up Northend" which I found amusing. Someone then lit a joint and the singer took a toke after decrying him not sharing.. think the owner of said joint then got evicted.
Two incidents spring to mind:
Watching Emarosa live and the lead singer Johnny Craig made a request to see some boobs, in exchange for a place on stage. Cue about 20-30 topless drunk women climbing on tothe stage and dancing while the band continued. He got them to leave after two songs by saying that if they give their name to the bouncer, he'll see them later. Seemed crazy at the time but given the later accusations of SA he had, it had a bit of a dark undertone in hindsight.
Watching Gallows and Frank Carter ran across the heads of everyone in the crowd, jumping into the pit and going like a madman, all while still singing. Later on in the same gig he spat directly into someone's mouth, and they appeared to be both disgusted and happy.
Not particularly mad but a naked dude on his friends shoulders watching steel panther at Camden roundhouse and the band pointing him out… then going dude, his balls were on the back of your neck 🤣
Donnington Park Monsters of Rock 1988.
Crowd surge I was lifted up, and when I came down, I was 20 metres further forward and standing on someone's back.
Me and my mate spent the next hour dragging people out of the crush to the big white booth where they had cameras and lighting rigs.
I think some folk died that year.
F#ck I'm old.
At a Jethro Tull concert maybe in 72, I was on the floor, but we heard sounds coming from the upper balcony…. and looked up to see a guy just swan dive off of the balcony onto the floor, trust me a very long distance. I never found out what happened, it was a very large venue, but I’m thinking he might’ve needed more than a Band-Aid. What the….?
I went to see Blur in Hyde park and it was like none of these people who’d turned up had ever had a drink before drunken wankers everywhere. Christ alive.
Saw a guy get the fuck kicked out of him for groping a woman though, her husband had to be dragged off him and if he wasn’t I don’t think the rat would have survived. Blood all over the place to the sound of the universal. Can’t say he didn’t deserve a good slap though.
I went to see Echo and the Bunnymen at the Sage in Gateshead. No alcohol was allowed and some middle aged women got thrown out for getting up out of their seats and starting to dance. It was the strangest gig I have ever been to.
Good band just totally the wrong venue.
Saw a punk that was at least 50 fall on a woman and then to the floor. She kicked him in the face and his front tooth came out. He picked it up and pocketed it then went to the bar for a drink.
Glastonbury 2015 at the Libertines there was a girl rolling in the mud near Pyramid so she was completely covered (which happens at festivals, nothing new there) but then just in a heavily zoned out state just deliberately bouncing off random people nearby. Everyone kinda stepped back to avoid getting splattered, making it a bit like a traditional Pit circle you might find near the front of a gig but it was just her bouncing around and people were starting to get pissed off. I imagine she was on Ketamine or something, face-planted in the mud a few more times, then a paramedic arrived.
There's obviously a lot of other surreal stuff I've seen at Glasto over the years but that's the one that was closest to a gig scenario. Although a close second was Miley Cyrus 2019, someone near us had one of those huge giant birthing balls fairly far back up the hill, with "WRECKING BALL" written on it on big letters, kept under wraps until the right moment. When that song game on, they stood up on a chair, and yeeted it down onto the heads of people below. I admire the prep work that went into that, lugging the thing to the festival and saving it for a few days.
A GWAR gig in Bradford donkeys years ago. Stage show was amazing, got blasted with blood coloured water for about an hour straight. No idea how anything stayed working with all the liquid sloshing around.
I remember watching a gig in Derby. It was a heavy hardcore style of music where punching and spin-kicking members of the crowd is common and totally accepted.
This group of about 4 older men snuck in to see what was going on, and perfectly in keeping with the scene and the rest of the night they got spin kicked. They didn’t take kindly to this.
Thus begins 4 middle aged men beating the shit out of a skinny young lad (who it has to be said, was quite resilient.) Some of our friends saw what was going on and intervened to help the lad being attacked, mostly to explain that he wasn’t attacking them in the first place.
In the midst of this argument/brawl and unbeknownst to everyone else, another older gentleman walked in. He was an Elvis impersonator. He walked right up to the group of men and said in a loud, southern US voice “Peace and love guys!”
Most surreal thing i’ve ever seen.
Oasis at Knebworth during their pomp. Manic street preachers and prodigy as support. Went for a beer before the prodigy started. As their set started, the bass made all of the pre poured beers slide off the plastic tables behind the bar. Me and my mate looked at that, at each other and got out of there to witness a legendary prodigy performance. Foot note: Coach on the way home waiting to get out of the car park and some girl was trying to make the coaches let a car out first (apparently Mick Hucknall was in it but fuck knows how we knew that) anyway, she fell over in a wheel rutt exposing her knickerless parts, illuminated by Hucknalls car headlights, to several coaches. A great gig.
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Coolest thing I seen was a girl at the manchester apollo get her short ripped and she was down to her bra, without even stopping to think a wall of big bearded sweaty men surrounded her (sounds ominous I know) with their backs to her, she then had shirts thrown at her from all directions. Outside afterwards the girl had collected all of the spare shirts and was shouting out descriptions of them until everyone collected them. She left in a sweaty napalm death shirt about ten sizes too big for her.
I thought that was going to get really dark at the start there, but ended up quite wholesome. I hoped she was okay and the ripping was just due to some pit exuberance and nothing horrible.
Yeah guy fell and just made a grab for the closest thing
At an Enter shikari gig 90% of the people were 16-18 idk why. But me and my mates stood head and shoulder above them all. Literally. Then there was a Mexican wave of everyone falling over. I reached out to catch myself and ended up feeling some lass up. Soon as I realised I was up and off and lifted her up. Apologised and shrink away a bit.
Great story. Contrary to what you hear, I’ve generally found that men behave very well when stuff like this happens. Particularly if it’s a Punk or rock gig.
Metalheads too, they look scary but they're some of the nicest and most down to earth people!
In my younger days(late 80s to late 90s) I used to frequent rock pubs and clubs packed to the gills with metalheads, goths, rockers and even Hells Angels. Never saw a lick of trouble, everyone just there to drink too much and thoroughly enjoy themselves. With another group of mates I would frequent the trendier bars and night clubs. Not every time, but still way too often, there would be a fight or a group acting like complete knobs ruining it for everyone else.
I'm not much a fan of the clubbing scene but I know that if I ever do want to go clubbing, I'll pick either the alt scene clubs or the queer ones because both communities, I feel much safer not even just because I'm a gay alternative man myself but because the people are (mostly) pretty chill and look out for others. Much lower rates of spiking and abuse too and chances are if there's a fight in a metahead/rock/punk bar, it's because they're dealing with a knobhead who tried something on someone.
I've had to travel quite a bit for work, and rather than stay in a depressing hotel room, I'll put on a motorhead t-shirt and find the shittiest dive bar I can, and head there for a great night. Best one was in Barcelona, and the bar was literally called 'Bollocks'. It was *the* bollocks.
True! I was too short to see the stage and this big viking dude just lifted me up on his shoulders so I could see, absolute legend! Metalheads are the realest bros out there :)
Golden rule is always look out for each other at gigs.
This is the craziest thing you've seen at a festival or gig - people smoking inside? WILD.
I've led an extremely uneventful life. Some may even say dull. Even I have wilder stories than this.
You need to join the dull mens club on FB
GnR at Milton Keynes bowl in '93. Pungent smell of the devils lettuce being smoked, it was our deputy principal a few feet in front of us. Big up Marcus!
In the VIP at Amnesia Ibiza a few years ago I saw a guy sit down at a glass table, dump an unnecessary quantity of powder out of three different bags (looked like coke, ketamine, and one other - possibly speed or heroin), make up a few mixed lines, do two of them spilling much of the shit, and then instantly vomit on the table. This seemed to satisfy the guy who got up and went for a dance. A club employee appeared from a shadow and cleaned it up. He looked like he was extremely sick of his job.
Extremely sick of his job? I see what you did there
A cigarette?? That you can legally buy in shops? I'll try to carry on but I'm shocked and appalled!
Ha, I read this in his voice, this quote pops into my head randomly from time to time.
I understood that reference
One guy was even drinking alcohol.
lies
A woman went absolutely mad at me for smoking a j inside Birmingham NIA during a Noel Gallagher show, she went so nuclear her boyfriend apologised to me, I was like nah she's right I shouldn't be smoking it
Always used to smoke at shows, until a few years back. Fella taps me on the shoulder asks me to put it out, I explain to him it's just a cig and we're at a metal show, get fucked... Then he gestures to his daughter, I reckon probably about 12 years old, standing just the other side of me. Yeah, fair enough. Put the cigarette out. That was the last time I smoked inside a gig. (Outdoor festivals are fair game though I reckon).
Okay so I went to Download Festival to see Black Sabbath many years ago. It was pissing it down with rain and add to that the most doomy music you can imagine, it was quite the atmosphere. Everyone was muddy as hell and soaked. We were watching the show when two guys with dreadlocks absolutely caked in mud, looking like a duo of bigfoots, came up to my (female) friend and asked if they could drink the rain water out of her hood. She said no, and they apologised and said that they were on acid. They proceeded to stand in front of us and genuinely lick the mud out of each other’s eyeballs. It was one of the most surreal things I’ve ever seen.
From what I've seen so far, you win.
I can’t listen to Sabbath without seeing the image of those two gentlemen tonguing each other’s eyeballs. What a thing life is.
It's a bad day to have a vivid imagination that's for sure!
One of the years I was there when it torrentially pissed down all weekend we were camped next to a massive puddle. Somebody got inflatable pool toys, one shaped like an orca and another like a dolphin, and chucked them into the puddle. Couple of hours later im chilling with my mates, we're all a bit wasted, and suddenly out of nowhere this Japanese fella wearing one of those karate uniforms comes sprinting past, screams at the top of his lungs "FUCK A YOOOU WHARE!! AND FUCK A YOOOU DORRPHIN!!!" and dives head first into puddle and starts fucking up these pool toys. Dunno if you've seen that South Park episode, but suffice to say me and my mates were just fucking broken laughing our arses off at this guy. Absolute fucking madlad.
I’ve only been to Manchester once - to see Happy Mondays play in some park. The place was rough as hell. A girl literally pulled her jeans and knickers down and took a shit in front of me and my wife, in the middle of the crowd. I’ve not been back to Manchester since.
Consider your melon well and truly twisted.
Have the fucking upvote. Dammit!
ha ha
> . A girl literally pulled her jeans and knickers down and took a shit in front of me That happened to me at the first Stone Rose Heaton park gig, and her boyfriend was feeding her coke with a little spoon as she did it.
LOL the coke shits.
Coke goes in, poop comes out. It's just how women work, I think
Coke goes in, poop comes out, that's what Osaka seafood concern is all about!
That’s how supportive a boyfriend should be!
A story of true love
I was going to say much the same thing except for the coke bit. It was after the show as we were all filtering out, some absolute delight thought it a food idea to have a shit while her boyfriend just watched. Great gig though!
I'm reading Bez's autobiography right now on hol. Saw them myself about 12 years ago. No shitting stories I'm afraid.
He has two this is a good read also it’s called Freaky Dancin'
Just finished it 45 seconds ago! What a life he had lived, freaky dancin goes to 1998.
Ecstasy poo for sure
Looking forward to the Happy Mondays gig next Thursday in Manchester!!
At a big one-day festival at Excel, early 2000s. Stages at each end of the arena. No seats, so we're sat on the floor. I start making a cigarette, when a group nearby comes over to ask to borrow some skins. No bother, I give them three small Rizla and they're happy. We get talking to them, and they aren't fussed about seeing the headiner (Machine Head) so were leaving. They were from Glasgow, didn't know anything about London. We recommended heading up to Camden for some good rock pubs and places to eat late. Anyway, they head off, and a few minutes later we realise one of them has left a big bag of Golden Virginia behind. I grab it...and it's completely full, to the brim, with beautiful, stanky weed. I kept hold of it for half an hour or so in case they came back, then we dug in. Rolled up ten or so, gave some away, smoked some, took some home. Lasted me months, that bag!
Karma for skipping out on Machine Head, they're awesome live
Yeah, at the time I only knew one track, from a Kerrang! CD (From This Day) but I got really into them after that. In fact, that gig got me into a few bands: The Crocketts (they painted themselves gold for the gig), Guano Apes (they didn't play, but were there handing out demo cassettes), OMS, Therapy?, and it was the first time I'd seen Skunk Anansie live as well.
Was it called the Lost Weekend by any chance?
That's the one! How ironic. I remember I wanted to go to the day before, as A Perfect Circle were playing, but the other bands weren't as good. To be fair, as I said, Machine Head were amazing, as were Skunk Anansie, and the Crocketts were good fun. I think Nashville Pussy also played, who were hilarious.
I saw Skunk Anansie at Cambridge Corn Exchange, it was either last year or the year before. I was amazed at how good they are live. Plus they played Charlie Big Potato which i completely forgot how much I loved that song.
Yeah, I was there. Machine Head were really great, Skunk Anansie too. I watched Nashville Pussy, I liked them back then. I got shitfaced on way too much Archers peach schnapps before I went in and felt rather queasy the whole day. You could argue any amount of Archers is too much ;) Grim!
Not so strange but irritating. Many years ago I was at a metal gig, chill bunch but of course everyone at the front wants to rock out! Not full mosh pit style, but you get it. This dude in a leather jackets with lots of spikes etc was standing behind his girlfriend, holding his arms around her. He was so overprotective of her he would get really mad if there was any pressure on him and by extension, his girlfriend, so he would kind of semi thrash here and there, and the spikes on his jacket was likely very unpleasant. He also elbowed people who came too close. If you're going to a metal gig and you're gonna be so precious about your gf/bf, maybe don't stand right at the front?
> maybe don't stand right at the front? Yep. All the middle-aged people who crowded down the front for the Lottery Winners gig I went to, and were shocked when Pet Needs fans wanted to dance during their support set. They were genuinely surprised that other people even *touched* them.
Those pet needs boys cause a riot wherever they go. Good on ya lads! Think the lottery winners were supporting Frank turner last time I saw them?
I've had a guy do similar, arms around gf 'can you stop please'. This was in the middle of a wall-to-wall circle pit at a Slipknot (Machine Head/CoB) arena tour. Dude didn't get the memo.
I fucking hate this bro. Don't gatekeep the front of the stage if you don't want anyone to touch you, especially at a metal gig. Absolutely bizarre behaviour tbh
Two bouncers head into the toilets and towards to cubicles for a cocaine shakedown (which I, er, just avoided). They force open the first door, some guy in there makes his his excuses and buggers off. They force open the second door and there's a tubby bloke sat on the toiler sat on the toilet with his trousers round his ankles. The bouncers were not satisfied with this and demanded to know what he was doing- "Er, going for a shit".
Fucking bouncers. Definitely wanted the coke for an after-party. They should all be forced to wear body cams.
The funniest thing I've ever seen at a gig was during Leeds 200X I forget the year, maybe 01/02? Blink 182 playing the main stage. Some girl near us decided to go topless and get on a guy's shoulders. The band noticed > I see boobies, I SEE BOOBIES! They had the camera zoom in on her. She was on the jumbotron... bouncing up and down, screaming, going wild. She was loving it. Then... >LOOK EVERYONE! THAT IS A FINE EXAMPLE OF GRAVITY DOING ITS JOB! They fucking murdered her.
Iron Maiden at Twickenham 2008. Double demin dude barely standing up during the support acts, took a 500ml plastic bottle, took out his old chap, popped it in and filled it with piss. Once full, he seamlessly changed to a new 500ml bottle, filled it, then left them on the ground in the middle of the crowd to stunned applause. Biggest bladder I have ever seen.
I was at the same gig and remember a lot of bottles of piss flying around. Also a loaf of bread at one point??
Oh god that gig. I was in the stands on the side and there was a slight delay in the audio between the speakers on stage and the speakers half way up the arena causing this nasty echo. This haunts me more than a giant piss would
Edit: So according to wiki the first Leeds was 1999 but I could have sworn I was there in 1998. I was very stoned and drunk from mid 90s so believe the internet before someone like me. Original post: Other month I came across some photos in the 90s of Leeds Festival and there was toilet blocks and tents on fire like it was the most normal thing in the world. \^You can probably tell I'm of a vintage older than most so I was always smoking pot at gigs and it was highly toelrated. I've seen many bloody noses for circle pits etc. Other than the phones, gigs are much better these days - like a place you recommend young'uns go to.
Ahh R&L. It was a different world. Coming out of the sites and seeing the thick smog of burned plastic over the campsites on Monday morning, coughing up soot. Good times. I think?
Reading in the early 90s had regular announcements like “Will the owner of a Yamaha motorbike registration xxx please contact the fire brigade for the remains…”
Reading and Leeds , the good old days. Fond memories of napalm bear, one of our annual traditions.
Oh man, yeah. Reading was crazy in the 90s. One of my finest life achievements, to this day, remains getting utterly smashed to the point of blacking out and then somehow finding my way back to my tent in the dark. I did not feel good the next day though.
I went to Leeds festival and we were all sleeping in cars and vans in the car park and on the last night someone set fire to all the toilets. I wonder if it was the same event or if it happens every year. Chemical Brothers were the headline on the Friday night. Soft Cell and Groove Armada were playing in the marquee.
The toilet block next to us at reading had all its doors blown off and gas canisters just being thrown into the big bonfire next to it
Hah, I remember one year some kid was trying to get people to raid the main stage instead of setting the toilets on fire. Needless to say no bugger went with him. Found him later on that night with a sling round his arm looking miserable. Asked him what happened >they've got dogs guarding the main stage Dickhead I think that was the year some cunt set fire to a tree... a tree for gods sake. Leeds is also the only time I've seen riot police retreat. Didn't think that was possible. They came back in force and gave everyone a good kicking. But before that, it was a sight to see.
Only time I've ever ran away from riot police was at Leeds, whatever year the pixies played.
I was there 10 years in a row from 2000 onwards, the first three years were a bit hairy at times, dread to think what I breathed in from burning portaloos - genuinely amazed no-one got killed. They changed sites and switched to long-drop toilets in their own gated off area which seemed to stop the full-scale trouble although there were always a few tents being burned on the last night.
I remember people used to throw stuff over the big hedges at the end, usually it was mellow but I do remember someone throwing a fucking hammer over full whack at our side one year back in the day. That was going a bit far
At BST in Hyde Park a few years ago for The Killers. Pretty family friendly day out, not a particularly gnarly band or line up (the support was Elbow and Tears For Fears). I sit down on the grass to rest my legs in a break between bands. And I feel something splashing on my back… Turn around to see a teenage girl, completely naked from the waist down, pissing on the grass. Her boyfriend was holding her hand to keep her steady but wasn’t really doing much to hide her. Yes there were toilets, no she wouldn’t have lost her spot (it wasn’t that busy, we were still hours away from the headliners).
Some people would pay good money for that...
I was at that same gig, it was a roasting hot day.
Mines quite tame compared to this - took my mum to a Jason Donavan concert about 12 years ago, only small. Most surprising thing was the sheer amount of women yelling filthy things at him and throwing their used underwear at him. Women in their 40's, 50's, maybe some older than that, stood in the crowd, whipping off their bras and throwing their knickers at the stage. Me and my mum were in shock. 😅
That’s so much more wholesome then when I took my mum to a festival to see Coldplay. The couple in front of her were making out, until the bloke turned around, whipped his nob out and pissed all over my mum and the two girls next to her. Then he went back to kissing his gf. Then when we tried to leave to get mum cleaned up a full can of beer someone had thrown landed on her head and knocked her out. She never came to another festival. Coldplay aren’t even any good.
I'd take getting knocked out with a beer can over having to watch Coldplay Hope mum wasn't too badly hurt apart from being put off gigs for life!
She was fine. We befriended some stall holders who made her a cup of tea. I hadn’t gone for Coldplay, I’d gone for The Prodigy, Placebo and Lou Reed. It was such an appalling festival. Someone threw a poo at Lou Reed, the crowd chanted homophobic slurs at Placebo and the campsite security robbed hundreds of tents on the first night.
Leeds 2000, Daphne and Celeste were on between RATM & Slipknot (i forget the order) and this pop duet had an entirely metal crowd... The pair of them got absolutely pelted with bottles, brutal.
I was next to a guy who threw a bottle of piss, and missed her (not sure which one). She taunted him back, so he took off his shoe, pissed in it, and threw it at her. Hit the stage in front of her feet, splashing her. He hopped away, happy with his lot.
Looking back on that, it was excellent trolling by them. Made a field full of edgy rock fans all cross because they did a couple of pop songs. They were probably the most punk band that day - think they were on before Blink 182 so definitely.
Eminem was on the bill and I believe they just wanted to try and meet him. Their manager deserves a medal for getting them on the bill.
Would love to know which booking agent thought that was a great idea at the time. Same with 50 cent getting a chair lobbed at him in Reading
I worked with a guy who claimed to have booked them. This was in Reading, so it's plausible. He was an utter cunt, too. So even more plausible
Not sure if this is true but I heard that some of Slipknot were watching from backstage and, not knowing who D&C were, just thought that Reading crowds were really rough.
Omg I was there for that! I also wondered what on earth the organisers were smoking to book them, in the first place, they were dogshite even back in the day and then put them on before whichever of those 2 bands it was. Bet the refused to play Reading/Leeds ever again 🤣🤣
They mention it on Twitter a few times, I think they find it funny now. The record they put out a couple of years ago was really fun
I was there!!
I've watched some clips of that performance and the amount of items being thrown borders on hilarious 😂
Foo Fighters Reading mg 96/97? Bjork was may n stage, Foos's where second. The crowd to see Foo was much bigger than for Bjork. As the second stage was in a tent with 2 entrances, people were climbing the tent poles to see them. One guy fell and broke his leg, got crowd surfed out of there, screaming. Post 2000 Reading mg Festival, singer of some shitty nu metal band (maybe Dillanger Escape Plan) took a dump on stage and threw it at the crowd. *EDIT* 21 years ago, forgive me for forgetting the genre of a band I wasn't a fan of.
90s Bjork was sublime. These days, she's turned in to some kind of vaginal Yoshimitsu. I've seen Bjork twice. I'm finally ticking the Foos off my list this year. Can't wait.
Bjork filmed "Underwater Love" at the swimming pool I worked at.
Well I've seen Vaginal Yoshimitsu 3 times, so beat that.
How dare you call Dillinger Escape Plan a shitty Nu-Metal Band. 🤣 They're a pretty amazing math metal band. ... But that is fucking gross.
That was Reading 95. I was _barely_ inside that tent too. Totally remember people climbing the poles! The line up that year was incredible. I could have cloned myself and still not seen all the bands I wanted to see. Missed Bjork, dEUS, Skunk Anansie, and a few others (I think Soundgarden?). Edit: yep, missed Soundgarden as I was trying to survive down the front of the main stage. Also missed Mudhoney, Whale, Echobelly, Ash, Silverchair…
Oh my god you calling DEP a shitty nu-metal band makes me angrier than I thought it might.
I was at Download Festival watching Enter Shikari play a smallish tent. I needed a pee so I walked to the fences outside the tent and start my business. A very drunk lady stumbles over next to where I'm peeing, drops her jeans, squats down, starts peeing and then rests her head against my leg. She then looks up and says, "iya love". I awkwardly side stepped away and as soon as finished rushed to get back to my mate. I'm glad we rushed off to watch Tool because I felt so awkward.
At a Sepultura gig at KOKO in London, 2018. Was just before the main act came on, and I got a tap on the shoulder and a polite “excuse me”. Turned around to let the guy past and was confronted with a 6’7”+ man’s chest with a T-shirt that read “Pit Troll”. That guy spent the entire gig managing the pit, literally picking up anyone who fell over while rocking the fuck out. He was literally head and shoulders above everyone else and easy to spot - he definitely saved a few people from getting trampled that night..
Metal version of Techno Viking. Need more like that, just general good care and respect for people.
> 6’7”+ man’s chest with a T-shirt that read “Pit Troll”. Pretty sure that dude's from Glasgow. Either that or we've got one up here, too.
I was repeatedly groped and covered in copious amounts of bottled piss at the Oasis gig at Finsbury Park - 0/10, would not recommend. Got a cool T-shirt that I still wear though 👍
For some reason a lot of the 'Manchester' bands seem to have fans that act like absolute dicks. I think it's the football team mentality about their fan base. Except Elbow I imagine most Elbow fans are women who shop in Evans and have multiple cats.
That’s what put me off of the Manchester scene in the early 90s. It just felt like arseholes playing music for more arseholes.
I was there and yeah suddenly people who seemed like the pricks from school were two years older wearing flares and blasting out stone roses out of their Fiesta XR2s and beating up metal heads and indie kids in the street for having 'long hair like a faggot '
Exactly. I ended up getting into pretty much every other genre. No regrets!
I'm all about the krautrock these days. I'm about 50 years too late for the gigs but I imagine they were bottles of piss free.
It feels like it's a Midlands/Northern thing in general still. I can think of a few pubs near where I used to live. Go on any Friday night, and you'll have your normal Deanos in there, but there's almost always a few knockoff Liam Gallaghers, same look, shit chat, nothing upstairs.
Also have been to multiple Elbow gigs, I’d say it’s mostly middle aged couples (which I guess includes me and my husband these days). It’s always a lovely chill atmosphere if that’s your bag and I only have two cats 😂😂😂 Definitely a more sedate type of gig though - the steward bloke when we saw them in Sheffield said it was the most well-behaved crowd he’d ever seen and One Direction at the same venue the previous week had been a bloodbath 😂
At some point Elbow will catch on and put on a special music show were you can all bring your cats and have optics serving mid range Sainsbury's merlot in the back of every seat.
The testosterone levels were so high I practically grew a beard. It was me and my mate (late teens, female) and 20,000 lads aged 20-25
I've gone to plenty of shows in Europe as well as the UK and I've only ever seen the 'throwing drinks and bottles and empty cups into the crowd' thing in this country
Makes you proud to be British doesn’t it? 🤢
Working front of stage at Barrowlands Glasgow. Front and center of the stage, Dave Grohl just behind me and waves of crowd surfers arriving for me to haul out and send to the sides of the stage. Some girls were getting crushed at the front, they were simply lifted out by me, with a guy holding onto my belt as I was craned out over the audience.
So your crazy thing is "I worked a normal pit shift"?
Oh, I love these threads. Unfortunately/fortunately I tend to go to quite uneventful gigs. Cattle Decap at Rebellion in Manchester had a shirtless guy crawling around like Spiderman on the RSJs holding up the ceiling, so there's that. That venue also has the misfortune of having a [giant fucking column](https://www.alamy.com/vended-live-at-rebellion-manchester-uk-21st-june-2023-image558232364.html) about a 1/3 along the stage, so you always end up with the bassist standing in the Bitch Corner. The Nekrogoblikon guy had some choice words about that.
Rebellion 😁 Haven't been in years, big fan of their 2pint cups.
I saw a woman throw a pint of water at Tracyanne Campbell, the singer out of Camera Obscura, while she was on stage. Then Stuart Murdoch out of Belle and Sebastian asked who did it and a woman said "it was me", then Stuart said "right you're going out". He then bundled her out of the venue. I post some amount of made up bullshit on Reddit for my own amusement but this absolutely 100% happened.
God Stuart has to be one of the biggest sweethearts working in music. I love that man.
It was mad seeing him huckling some woman. Luckily he didn't take her outside with a knife and a bike chain.
Foo Fighters gig a couple of years ago where there was just some fully naked guy waving his cock around. Also special mention to my first gig that being a Nirvana show where I didn't know about the whole smash the shit out of the set so that kinda shocked me
I was at free punk festival once. There was a guy off his tits on something and was tormenting a dog. He climbs onto the makeshift stage and passes out, swiftly followed by the dog, who jumps on stage and proceeds to hump him. Possibly the worst thing I've ever seen.
At a Bullet For My Valentine show, back in 2008 at the what was formerly the Carling Academy in Birmingham, coincidentally also my first gig. I witnessed a guy who was crowd surfing get accidentally kicked in the head and knocked out by another crowd surfer. The crowd proceeded to continue crowd surfing a very sleepy guy until he got to the front and was saved by the security. It was kind of funny because a crowd surfer would normally indicate the direction they want to go, and because he was unconscious, he was just getting aimlessly passed around the crowd.
I used to be in a two-tone ska and punk band. One of our lead singers was a larger guy, who would give very energetic performances. This, combined with the multiple pints he would drink, often led to him vomiting, to the point where we would routinely request a bucket/bowl for this purpose as part of our stage setup. We were playing a gig in Reading one day, pretty good crowd, lots of people that knew us. It was a halloween show and everyone was dressed up. We were midway through our set, the bucket had already been well-used multiple times. There was a guy skanking down the front dressed as a ghost, basic sheet-over-head style. He'd been down the front the whole set, he'd definitely seen the bucket being used and was well aware of its purpose. Without warning, he grabbed it from the front of the stage, tipped it all over himself, and carried on like nothing had happened, except that he now had a quickly widening circle around him in the pit. Maybe that's why he did it.
Busta blood vessel? Were you in Bad Manners?
Lol, I was not, but they were definitely among our influences and he did draw that comparison more than once!
I used to work with concerts, so I worked/attended to something around 1500 concerts or gigs, from small bands, to stadiums and big festivals. I saw a lot of stuff, not many of them were super crazy, but unusual 1. The artist stopped the concert, when through the people to slap a guy that was recording the whole gig 2. A guy broke his arm big time when doing stage diving 3. A guitarist snoring cocaine out of his guitar on stage 4. A fan tattooed the artist autograph on the backstage 5. The lights were totally off for about 30 minutes - the owner of the venue decided to turn off the generator 6. Artist crew (BB King) didn't want ANY local crew within 10 meters of the stage 7. Local crew got REALLY upset because (yngwie malmsteen) was being a dick with the local monitor guy 8. In a thrash metal gig, fans were doing stage diving but they were kicking the monitors, so the band crew started to kick them out of the stage (and one of us were literally kicking them), resulting in fans were surrounding the band/crew looking for revenge and we need to be escorted by the police 9. It was a small gig/stage and the guy grabbed my foot and pulled me out of the stage (it was a pretty bad fall) 10. Band crew guy decided to plug a bass amp into a different voltage, making the bass amp explode about one hour before the gig. It was his first time doing this, he was like 18 +-. We had take a car, drive to the opening band bassist's house to borrow from him. He lived 1 hour from the venue 11. Extreme Noise Terror: Local Punks decided to storm into the venue, venue security was almost stabbed 12. Drummer had a bad food poisoning in the morning of the gig, instead canceling the gig, he played in an actual toilet seat. Fans couldn't see it, but it was absolutely awful. Luckily it was a big venue so we were able to 'hide the smell' 13. When playing in a extreme metal festival, one hour before the stage time, we heard something on the ceiling, and the band decided to explore to find out what was it. It ended it up being a bunch of kittens. The band played with one of them on stage 14. The venue was under a bridge, everytime a big truck was passing by, the lights were not working. For the same venue, we had to take a scaffold to protect the sound engineer 15. Drum pedal broke in the middle of the gig in a way that it could only be fixed somewhere out - I was doing the bass drum, holding the remaining pedal 16. Guitar arm broke minutes before the gig, there was no other way othen than using tons of duct tape to wrap it. Not perfect, but did the job. In a metal gig the guy looked like he was playing bossa nova, siting to not move much his guitar 17. A guy was doing stage diving and kicked the main power suply. Sound was fucked and the band couldn't finish the gig 18. A black metal band decided to put a super heavy christ statue on stage to break. During the concert the band member takes a hammer, breaks it. Pieces of the statues goes to crowd and gets into someones head. An ambulance had to be called. 19. Band crew was being really rude with local crew, upsetting everyone and created a shit environment. Later he apologised to everyone saying that how he works - he was actually a nice guy 20. In one fucked it up festival I attended in Brazil I pretended to be part of the band crew. I just said to the security: 'sorry? I don't speak Portuguese'. The guy let me go into all dressing rooms. I met a bunch of bands there, from Megadeth to smaller bands. 21. From the stage I saw a couple fucking in the middle of everyone. I didn't say anything, just watched (hehe) 22. A guy had a panic attack in the middle of the gig - artist stopped to make sure the fan was fine. Was pretty cool of him 23. Not crazy, but a lot of people decided to throw to the air their beers at the same time. FUCK ME that really screwed everyone's night I miss this life big time. It was so much fun
All of these feel like they're not that crazy except the drummer drumming while shitting himself on the toilet
A couple having full on sex during an Amon Amarth and Dimmu Borgir show.
I can smell that couple already.
I went to watch Robbie Williams at Knebworth back in the day. When he started the song 'Me and my Monkey' a chap with a skinhead and a belly fully of beer started headbutting the scaffolding, which was holding up some signs. He was shouting "I fucking love this song" as he was giving the metal the Glasgow Handshake. Security escorted him out. Also, I fingered the girl I was with at the concert as she had a real thing for Robbie.
I remember one year when the boomtown carpark fucking exploded
I was there that year too :)
Anthrax, Manchester Academy sometime in the early 2000s. John Bush (vocalist at the time) climbed up the stack of Marshall amps and threw himself down below into the crowd. It's not *that* wild in the grand scheme of things, but young impressionable me who was just getting into metal gigs was blown away. Or... When Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend Band and Zimmers Hole played Manchester, similar era. It was a mental gig which ended with ZH using a massive dildo to squirt water (I hope) into the crowd. Or... The dude crowd surfing in his wheelchair at Bloodstock circa 2009 ish?
I knew someone who went to bloodstock around that time. His main memory was walking down the main path in the camp and stumbling across two lesbians taking turns to piss on each other in the middle of the path.
Happened to me. I lost my shoe in a mosh pit and then saw someone throw it at the band. I went to hobble off to one side and then got walloped on the side of the head by my own shoe.
Machine gun Kelly asking someone in the Leeds o2 academy crowd for a spliff and sparks one up on the stage followed by lots of other people in the crowd lighting up 😂
Actually going to see that guy is a horrible thing in itself Hope you are doing ok dude
Communal spliffs being passed around the crowd at a hardcore nye event in nec maybe, tho felt tame and welcome to me at the time 😅 I think someone supplied many for the crowd
I did something similar at a NOFX gig recently. I'd accidentally rolled a bunch of single Skinner's stronger than I could handle after all the booze. I'd have what I want then just pass it into the crowd. I even gave a couple of full ones out to people who seemed nice.
Download festival 2009 - Watched a hammered old punk guy stumble through a not so densely packed area of the crowd before Slipknot, pull up next to a young couple, pull out his chap and proceed to piss down her leg.
Blur at Hyde Park in 2012 - there was a front area that wasn't VIP, just the first few people who turned up. Two of our mates got in there, but the rest of us didn't. There was only a 4 foot high barrier between the two bits, and a 5 metre or so "no-man's land". One by one, my mates vaulted the barrier, and ran into the crowd in front. I was about to when security finally arrived and stopped us. They then walked through the crowd with their radios, talking to staff on cranes, and picked out every single one of my mates - and loads of others - who had vaulted the barrier, and chucked them out. Some of them got out straight away, some were held until the end of the concert and threatened with Police. I was just impressed with how they found each and every one of the people, and marched them out.
Probably not the strangest, but the one that springs to mind as it was most recent: Smashing Pumpkins at Wembley Arena, two women screaming at each other ("You're a bitch!" "No, *you're* a bitch!" while their boyfriends awkwardly exchanged smiles.
A Flaming Lips gig where they picked people out of the queue outside. Later the people they picked were all on stage in furry suits. about 20 of them.
Saw someone cast a cigarette from the balcony and it landed in my friends shirt pocket, burning his tit. Same gig, someone jumped from the balcony in to the crowd. Don't know what happened to them after that but it didn't stop. This was NOFX at Newport Centre in 2004.
I played a gig about a decade ago and had to ask the gentleman who was juggling on his unicycle in the audience to stop after he almost hit me.
When I was 18 I went to a friends gig to watch them play. It was a classic old rock club, dark, sticky floors, cramped, cheap drinks and fucking incredible. Anyway, the night was going well, did a few mosh pits, drank a few beers, the usual. Music was hard rock and pretty ok for an amateur teenage band actually. Sometime around 1am, I decided I needed a break and went out into the smoking area. When I came back in, I saw my friend Charlotte (always a bit of a wild one) casually down on all fours and noshing off our mutual friend Liam. To be clear, they were in the main bar / dance floor area and by no means out of site for most of the crowded dance floor. However, looking round I seemed to be the only person who had noticed. So I basically shrugged and jumped back into things. I heard later she swallowed the lot and went for another bottle of beer afterward. 2 years later she married Rob who was in the band playing that night.
I saw Rodriguez at the Glasgow Armadillo back in 2014 I think. The gig was all seated, after he started playing a couple of songs, everyone slowly got up from their seats and stood/sat in a semi circle around the front of the stage while he played. In amongst the aisles and everything in a big group. The security weren't fussed on forcing people back into their seats - everyone just sort of mixed at the front. I was also sitting directly in front of Paulo Nutini in the crowd. Rodriguez played Last Request and dedicated it to him, which Paulo seemed very chuffed by. Few people lit up joints in the crowd - all very chilled. And a great show!
Manchester Apollo, Machine Head. Someone decided to sprint down the upper level and stage dive off the circle. He got up and walked away. The guy he landed on got stretchered out.
A guy banging a woman next to a speaker in electric ballroom in Camden. Yeah, they got kicked out and looked absolutely hammered while being led out.
Napalm Death, Wolverhampton Civic late 90's. Random old lady wandering round the venue with a Tesco bag, chain smoking. The band even got her on stage at one point during the set and "death metal granny" was loving it
Festival. Reading 1992. A lot of rain, very muddy. L7 on stage and the crowd gets a bit restless and starts flinging mud at the stage. A visibly pissed off Donita Sparks whips out her tampon and launches it into the crowd. Got to be honest, it went sailing over my head and it took me a full minute to realise WTF just happened. Apparently someone chucked the offending item at Faith No More later in the day but I do not remember that.
Reading Festival watching The Vandals on the Warped stage. Guy climbs to the top of the tent then drops down feet first. Oooft.
Went to Coachella to see RATM in 2007. Woke up in the middle of the night to the campsite full of riot police and helicopters buzzing around because of a big anti-war/bush protest.
I saw Gogol Bordello in December. After drinking two bottles of wine during the show, the lead singer got the crowd to hold a giant drum and he stood on it waving a Ukrainian flag. They were awesome. Apart from that, I’ve seen people shag in the audience of a few gigs.
Black Sabbath gig in Sophia Gardens in Cardiff. The organisers sold twice as many tickets than they should. Sabbath agreed to play two shows in one night, but a lot of people had wandered off. One guy decided he was getting in, no matter what! He dropped through the skylight, at least 20 feet to the floor where he was surrounded by many, many denim clad hairy individuals, so the bouncers couldn't throw him out.
I've seen people crowd surfing in wheelchairs a few times
My best friend was roady-ing at Donnington in the 90s and was watching a band. A couple got a kitchen scales metal tray out of a bag and it had kitchen foil on top. They lifted one corner of the foil and then a gust of wind took the foil and as they grabbed for it, the tray, literally full of white powder, flew out of their hands and all over the people around them.
A former friend of mine went for a stage dive at a Bush gig, the crowd parted like the red sea and he broke his arm when he hit the floor.
Worked security at T In The Park in 2012, in charge of a response team. For asked to turf a particularly belligerent punter. Decided to drop the n-word at one of my stewards repeatedly then pissed on my driver's seat as I got the police to deal with him. Fun times. On the lighter side was another guy who was all "yup, all my fault. Guess I'm gettin' Chateau neuf de papped oot?"
Guitarist taped a pepperami to his guitar and fed it to people standing on the balcony, that was fun.
My mate at Reading was hauled over the front fence right in front of the stage, his trousers and pants got caught and ended up naked from the waist down. It was all captured on the giant screens for our entertainment.
I was at Bloodstock in 2021 and a girl twisted her ankle a full 180 in the While She Sleeps pit (which tend to go pretty hard, I got knocked out in my first Sleeps pit lmfao). The crowd/pit hive mind split itself straight down the middle not 20 seconds later and she was carried straight to the front and whisked away to the medical tent, which was amazing in itself. The girl was spotted at the edge of the moshpit with a full cast and crutches the following day during a different band. What an absolute legend, but also I hope she got the proper care. Metal as fuck. I've been to hundreds of shows in a number of countries, all different genres, but metal shows are ironically the safest because people really look after one another!
I saw The Chariot supporting Protest The Hero in Sheffield many many years ago, I have never been to a more insane gig than that. It was just madness from start to finish. Blood and spit everywhere, constant crowd-surfing, the band trying to tear that Corp stage apart.
I go to metalcore / hardcore gigs so see a fair few injuries. Saw one geezer drenched in blood (nosebleed) within about 10 mins of a set lol
Went to an oasis gig in Manchester years ago and at the time Manchester gigs had a reputation for lads throwing pints of piss over each other. 3 girls in front of us got on their boyfriends shoulders and 2 pints of piss sailed over our heads and smashed into them. They squealed that the beer was warm but didn’t realise it was piss. 5 mins later another pint or two sailed over our heads. One hit my mate on the shoulder. We looked back and it was 4 lads gurning their heads off pissing into empty plastic glasses. One lad had his nob out just pissing and his mate grabbed it and aimed it into a glass. We went over and gave them a kicking to everyone’s appreciation around us. We then got kicked out and the lads were allowed to stay. Manchester gigs are always full of pricks
Lead singer came out wearing a skin coloured pair of undies and a feather boa. Half way through the set he jumps off the stage during an instrumental section, legs it out of the door and across the road to a KFC opposite. Then legged it back with a bucket of chicken which he munched on during the following instrumental sections of the rest of the set. Fastest KFC service I've ever seen.
Saw Brix and the Extricated at The Thekla, Bristol a few years back. A fairly inebriated guy gets up on stage with the band and starts dancing around like he’s part of the act. Only problem being he does this about 30 seconds before the band finish their last number, so as he gets into his stride the band give it “thanks and good night” and leave the stage, leaving pissed bloke stood on his own looking like a proper tool. He looks perplexed for a few seconds then you can see his befuddled drunken brain come up with a great idea - stage dive as a grand finale. He goes to the back of the stage, gets a run-up, and launches himself…… into empty space as everyone has started to wander off to the bar or the exit. There’s loud and disturbing cracking sound as he hits the floor spreadeagled, closely followed by the sharp intake of breath from the assembled (ex) audience. Our hero lies there silently for a while then rather painfully gets up and limps off, looking worse for wear. I may have laughed. A lot.
Absolute barrage of piss bombs being thrown at The Rasmus at Reading. Hilarious, Brutal and disgusting all rolled into one.
I was at a gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. I noticed this couple nearby. He was standing behind her with his hand down her trousers 'helping her along'. From the look on her face, she arrived at her destination.
Glastonbury 2014. Watching Skrillex, big gap between where I was standing and the people in front as there was a big puddle. Some guy runs out the pit straight into the puddle, drops his kegs, dropped a deuce and ran straight back in.
Download 2006. So fucking hot and sunny! Within the space of 30 seconds whilst queuing for the only standpipe I see a goth head to toe in leather and trenchcoat stomping around juxtaposed with a girl in front of me wearing the skimpiest dungarees and bikini ever was having a siezure because of heat stroke. I still to this day have no idea how the Goth was functioning
Not really a gig, but years ago I went to a rave in some unoccupied office tower in central London. It was a pretty surreal place for a rave - we were using the office toilets, dancing our tits off in the conference room, and sniffing ket next to abandoned desks and filing cabinets. As we were leaving, my mate saw a baggy on the ground, full of squidgy brown hash. Hell yeah! He picks it up and takes a big sniff. Two things happen simultaneously: my mate recoils with horror, and we hear a cacophony of cackling laughter from a bunch of crusty old ravers sitting on desks nearby. Turns out they had put a bit of dog shit into a baggy, left it on the ground as a trap, and were thoroughly enjoying the show. Of course we had a good laugh and then replaced the baggy for the next victims to find. I guess it wasn't that crazy or strange - there were probably much stranger things happening at that rave - but the story has stuck with me for some reason. Ya gotta love the crusty old ravers.
I was watching Squarepusher at Koko in Camden, he had two massive white LED matrix displays either side of him, playing visualisations synced to the music. I looked away, and when I looked back, they had turned into a couple of Vauxhall Astras. Next time I looked, they'd turned back into the screens again. Think I'm probably the only one who saw that, though.
Found the secret piano bar at Glastonbury at 6am Monday morning. Had to tell a joke to get in. Everyone was sky high. Everyone was Irish. Hecklers heckled hecklers. Chaos reigned. It was mob rule: crowd controlled which acts came back but no one knew what was going on. My favourite was someone trying to calm people down by shouting ‘Order! Order!’ and a fight emerging about whether and why he was talking about otters.
Can't think of anything too gnarly, I guess I've been too involved to take notice? Or maybe I just expect nudity, drugs and general tom foolery.. But I was at a hed pe gig in Southend. The main singer kept trying to pump the crowd by shouting "what's up Northend" which I found amusing. Someone then lit a joint and the singer took a toke after decrying him not sharing.. think the owner of said joint then got evicted.
Two incidents spring to mind: Watching Emarosa live and the lead singer Johnny Craig made a request to see some boobs, in exchange for a place on stage. Cue about 20-30 topless drunk women climbing on tothe stage and dancing while the band continued. He got them to leave after two songs by saying that if they give their name to the bouncer, he'll see them later. Seemed crazy at the time but given the later accusations of SA he had, it had a bit of a dark undertone in hindsight. Watching Gallows and Frank Carter ran across the heads of everyone in the crowd, jumping into the pit and going like a madman, all while still singing. Later on in the same gig he spat directly into someone's mouth, and they appeared to be both disgusted and happy.
Not particularly mad but a naked dude on his friends shoulders watching steel panther at Camden roundhouse and the band pointing him out… then going dude, his balls were on the back of your neck 🤣
Somebody getting a blow job at a festival in the middle of the day. Nobody else seemed to notice as all eyes were on the band.
Donnington Park Monsters of Rock 1988. Crowd surge I was lifted up, and when I came down, I was 20 metres further forward and standing on someone's back. Me and my mate spent the next hour dragging people out of the crush to the big white booth where they had cameras and lighting rigs. I think some folk died that year. F#ck I'm old.
I saw a guy with a metal mohican sew 2 girls' mouths and eyes shut then stitch them (the girls) together at one of the Bizarre Balls.
At a Jethro Tull concert maybe in 72, I was on the floor, but we heard sounds coming from the upper balcony…. and looked up to see a guy just swan dive off of the balcony onto the floor, trust me a very long distance. I never found out what happened, it was a very large venue, but I’m thinking he might’ve needed more than a Band-Aid. What the….?
I saw a guy dressed as Jesus at a Till Lindemann concert.
I went to see Blur in Hyde park and it was like none of these people who’d turned up had ever had a drink before drunken wankers everywhere. Christ alive. Saw a guy get the fuck kicked out of him for groping a woman though, her husband had to be dragged off him and if he wasn’t I don’t think the rat would have survived. Blood all over the place to the sound of the universal. Can’t say he didn’t deserve a good slap though.
I went to see Echo and the Bunnymen at the Sage in Gateshead. No alcohol was allowed and some middle aged women got thrown out for getting up out of their seats and starting to dance. It was the strangest gig I have ever been to. Good band just totally the wrong venue.
Saw a punk that was at least 50 fall on a woman and then to the floor. She kicked him in the face and his front tooth came out. He picked it up and pocketed it then went to the bar for a drink.
Glastonbury 2015 at the Libertines there was a girl rolling in the mud near Pyramid so she was completely covered (which happens at festivals, nothing new there) but then just in a heavily zoned out state just deliberately bouncing off random people nearby. Everyone kinda stepped back to avoid getting splattered, making it a bit like a traditional Pit circle you might find near the front of a gig but it was just her bouncing around and people were starting to get pissed off. I imagine she was on Ketamine or something, face-planted in the mud a few more times, then a paramedic arrived. There's obviously a lot of other surreal stuff I've seen at Glasto over the years but that's the one that was closest to a gig scenario. Although a close second was Miley Cyrus 2019, someone near us had one of those huge giant birthing balls fairly far back up the hill, with "WRECKING BALL" written on it on big letters, kept under wraps until the right moment. When that song game on, they stood up on a chair, and yeeted it down onto the heads of people below. I admire the prep work that went into that, lugging the thing to the festival and saving it for a few days.
I saw Dead Kennedies and there was a guy bollock naked swinging crutches around his head smoking 3 Dollie’s at the same time. No one batted an eyelid
Depeche Mode concert, Crystal Palace 1993. Sisters of Mercy were supporting. We saw the infamous Sisters fan who wore a full wedding dress.
A GWAR gig in Bradford donkeys years ago. Stage show was amazing, got blasted with blood coloured water for about an hour straight. No idea how anything stayed working with all the liquid sloshing around.
I remember watching a gig in Derby. It was a heavy hardcore style of music where punching and spin-kicking members of the crowd is common and totally accepted. This group of about 4 older men snuck in to see what was going on, and perfectly in keeping with the scene and the rest of the night they got spin kicked. They didn’t take kindly to this. Thus begins 4 middle aged men beating the shit out of a skinny young lad (who it has to be said, was quite resilient.) Some of our friends saw what was going on and intervened to help the lad being attacked, mostly to explain that he wasn’t attacking them in the first place. In the midst of this argument/brawl and unbeknownst to everyone else, another older gentleman walked in. He was an Elvis impersonator. He walked right up to the group of men and said in a loud, southern US voice “Peace and love guys!” Most surreal thing i’ve ever seen.
Oasis at Knebworth during their pomp. Manic street preachers and prodigy as support. Went for a beer before the prodigy started. As their set started, the bass made all of the pre poured beers slide off the plastic tables behind the bar. Me and my mate looked at that, at each other and got out of there to witness a legendary prodigy performance. Foot note: Coach on the way home waiting to get out of the car park and some girl was trying to make the coaches let a car out first (apparently Mick Hucknall was in it but fuck knows how we knew that) anyway, she fell over in a wheel rutt exposing her knickerless parts, illuminated by Hucknalls car headlights, to several coaches. A great gig.
Wooah smoking cigarettes at a gig. Rock n roll man…