The worst example of this I have ever seen was at the Journey concert in St.  Louis at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater.  Seems to me this math problem is easy to solve! 

A fan appearing to be between 13 – 16 years in age threw a bottle at Josh Homme during the performance. Since Josh had been sick with a high fever and vomiting for three days, I doubt he was feeling very well to begin with but having a bottle thrown at him completely pushed him over the edge.

He spots the kid in the crowd that threw the bottle, at least I hope it was the actual offender, and begins yelling obscenities at him including names and threatening physical violence. While he is yelling at the kid, the crowd is pushing him towards the stage and Josh wants him on the stage. Luckily, security grabs him and removes him from the show. I hate to think what might have happened if he would have been lifted onto that stage. Josh Homme was furious.

I have mixed feelings about this incident. The young fan was definitely very wrong in throwing a bottle. Whether he meant to aim it at Josh or just chucked it with no real target in mind, at his age he should have known that it could have caused great bodily harm. I agree that the guilty party should be ejected from the show.
I also totally understand why Josh was so furious. It must have taken strong feelings of loyalty, gratitude or obligation towards the fans to perform that night after having been so sick for 3 days. I don’t know about you, but when I’ve been sick like that it takes all I have just to go to work to sit at a desk. Can you imagine the energy it must take to perform a live rock concert?? I do feel that Josh might have gone overboard just a little bit with the particular names that he called the kid and the physical acts of violence that he threatened given the age of the offender.

Here’s a link to the video clip. It is definitely not suitable for children. I wouldn’t recommend watching it at work either. What are your thoughts about this incident? Which is worse, a fan throwing a bottle or a lead singer screaming obscenities at a fan??

[tags]Josh Homme, Queens of the Stone Age, Fan Violence, concert violence[/tags]

Maybe I am getting too old to stand on the floor in front of the stage with all the young-uns, but I can’t imagine that anyone, no matter what their age is, would enjoy getting hit in the face by long sweaty hair or worse yet, sweat beads flying from someone else’s head and hitting you in the face. 

I agree it is great when the band members on stage do this, but they aren’t standing in such a close proximity to other people.  Maybe all you long haired rock concert goers that love to headbang could put your hair in a rubber band or pony tail holder so as not to diminish your fellow rockers experience?  

Anyone else agree with me?  Anyone disagree with me? 

[tags]rock concerts, headbanging [/tags]

Last year we saw Night Ranger and they were awesome!  When we found out that they were coming back this year we decided to spend the money and get VIP seats.  The tickets started at $30 plus all the TicketMaster fees ended up around $40 each.  The tickets came in the mail and they stated this is a “Rain or Shine” show.  The tickets are good for the whole day but unfortunately Night Ranger was the only band playing that we wanted to see that day.

Well it rained like crazy the morning of the show so we decided to wait until later in the afternoon to go down to the festival.  The rain finally let up so I packed my rain poncho in my fanny pack (just in case since it is a rain or shine show)and we went down in time to catch Jonny Lang also.  We didn’t even know who he was but his performance definitely took the sting out of the price of the tickets.  Our seats by the way were center stage, 4 rows back.  I think they were the best seats I’ve ever had for a concert.

After Jonny Lang, it started raining again so they delayed the start of the Night Ranger show.  Finally they came on stage and after playing 7 songs, it started raining again so they stopped the show.  That was it.  They never came back out to finish the show.  We were a little disappointed because we had really been looking forward to seeing Night Ranger and they hadn’t even played our favorite songs yet.  We were also angry that we had spent so much money for what we got.  Where do you send complaints: TicketMaster, promoters of RibAmerica Fest, Night Ranger or City of St. Louis??

So what does “Rain or Shine” mean anyway?  I thought it meant they would play no matter what.  I guess it means you will pay no matter what.  We’ll definitely think twice before buying VIP seats again for the RibAmerica Festival. 

  Here we are waiting for the MetroLink to take us to the Soldiers Memorial Park.  It looked like the rest of the day would be nice.  Ha !  Tricked us.