It's been a sad and grisly few weeks for live music: a member of Radiohead's crew was killed in a pre-concert stage collapse; a Stone Roses fan went missing during one of the group's triumphant Heaton Park comeback gigs, only to be found dead days later; a well-loved female police officer was fatally, inexplicably shot at a Denver jazz festival; a Massachusetts man was struck by a falling tree on the way home from a James Taylor gig. I've said it before and I'll say it again: never leave your house for any reason, least of all something so trivial as music.Stranger still: HARLEY FLANAGAN, the erstwhile bassist of hardcore act CRO-MAGS — I think it would be fair to call him the disgruntled erstwhile bassist — bum-rushed the backstage area of a NYC Cro-Mags show, allegedly stabbing and/or biting several of his former bandmates before being hauled out by burly dudes. Full details haven't yet emerged, but Flanagan has told nynatives.com that it was all in self-defense, though most reports characterize it as more of a rampage situation.
But the supreme crown of concert ignominy goes to a July 7 SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA show in Dublin: the Sun reports that nine people were stabbed, two died of drug overdoses, 30 were arrested, and 40 more were hospitalized. It seems that one man was in true rampage mode, stabbing four people by himself. The Sun gave particular attention to one nefarious deed, which I will reprint here with their actual emphasis:
"An 18-year-old lad from Lucan, who asked not to be named, was stabbed in theBUM during the mayhem."
They even got a statement from the poor kid who got stabbed in the BUM: "I never saw the fella before in my life. He just came up while we were standing in the mud and as I turned around he got me in the arse."
It's been a rough month for traffic, too. Justin Bieber — oh, BIEBERWATCH!, by the way — was ticketed for reckless driving after zooming and weaving through 101 traffic in California. He says he was being pursued by aggressive paparazzi, although the matter might stem from a guy named Scooter Braun giving a high-powered sports car to a hot-dogging teenage bad boy with too much testosterone and too few wholesome Christian ways to discharge it.
CASEY CHAOS, lead singer of AMEN, got it a little worse: TMZ tells us that he was arrested in Studio City for drunkenly driving his SUV through a residential neighborhood and slamming into something like 15 parked cars, giving us this week's third veritable rampage.
Bonus rampage: DOKKEN drummer "WILD" MICK BROWN was in Bangor to pound out a Nuge show; he got wasted, stole a golf cart filled with giggling girls, and drove it recklessly down a footpath, knocking square-ass security guards out of his way like bowling pins. Mad respect to "Wild" Mick for rocking and rolling in the classic style.
CRUNCHY BLACK was shot in the face a couple weeks ago. He pulled through fine; he blames the incident on hip-hop's most notorious scourge: haters.
