It was inevitable...

...And by "it," I mean what happend the night after this Pittsburgh Who show, when 11 people died in the crush of Who fans in Cincinnatti. I saw the Pittsburgh show on Dec. 2, and while I was thrilled to be seeing one of my favorite bands live for the first time, and the show was really good, what happened the next night overshadows it.

The show at Pittburgh's Civic Areana which was a festival seating concert too, was truly the first time I'd ever been really terrified by the crush of a crowd piling into a concert. The situation and the venue were pretty similar to Cincinnati and Riverfront the next night. I've always considred it just dumb luck that the same tragedy didn't go down in Pittsburgh, or some other town. Too many people, too few doors, a stupid timing policy and the overall IDIOTIC festival-seating bullshit where thousands of people want the same few hundred seats. My friends and I got to the Arena earay and got a good place in "line," but of course there weren't really lines -- just masses of people crowding the entrances. When the cluekless ushers opened the doors and everyone crammed through them, I was literally picked up, as if by a massive ocean wave, and carreid through the doors for probably 15 or 20 yards. We were swept right passed the ticket-takers, who ran from the mob. It was chaos. Had I been off balance or knocked to the ground, those same hundreds of folks who picked me up and carried me would've simply stomped on my body on the ground. Not because they wanted to -- but because no one could help where they were being pushed or do anyting to get out of the wave of humanity. Which is I geuss what happend to those poor souls in Cincy. At the time, when I'd finally gotten my breath back and we were in our (decent but not great) seats, I said to my friend, "That's some of the scariest shit I've ever been through -- I had ABSOLUETLY no control over what was being done to me. It was suffocating and it was FUCKED UP!" I then took some rather large hits to mellow out.

I might add some music comments later.