Re: Who In Cincinnati

[Laura Plummer <liquid@lexus.gslis.utexas.edu>]

> 
> While I feel that the Who were not the CAUSE of the tragedy, let's face it,
> they could have contributed to its prevention by simply insisting on reserve
> seating.  Pete may like festival seating, but I think it's a social failure.
>  A band like the Who could have in 1979 demanded and gotten the promoter to
> guarantee reserve seating.  And then, the Who had festival seating at some
> shows in 1982.  Jesus, didn't they learn a damn thing?  I mean, Pete may
> "just do my job" onstage, but taking some responsibility when you have real
> control would be nice.
> 
I don't have time to respond to the whole post, but I do wnat to say that 
festival seating was only a part of the problem, and would have been fine 
had they prepared in other ways.
It was reiverfront that thought the Who wouldn't sell out and wanted 
festival seating.  (1st mistake)  To give an idea of what the coliseum is 
like:  all the entrances to the seats are on the upper level, so you have 
to go up a flight of stairs to get to the entrance.  There are probably 
8-10 entrances each with about 6 doors.  (these are estimate, it's been a 
long time since I've been there).  When the day of the concert came 
riverfront was so worried about gate crashers, that they put almost all 
of their security on the lower level infron of the stairs.  Thus they 
only had enough security to open up two sections of doors to let in 
16,000 people all wanting 1st row seats.  Plus the who came in early to 
warm up and a lot of people heard them, and thought they were missing the 
concert, thus when the few doors finally did open, disaster was 
inevitable.  I was 10 at the time and my brother and friends were around 
16.  We didn't have too much of a problem other than getting squeezed and 
feeling like we were suffocating at times.  We also didn't get very good 
seats.  People started lining up in early afternoon (maybe even morning 
or sooner).  None of the audience knew what happened until later.  Even 
the Who weren't told for fear that they would cancel and riots would 
ensue.  Plus they needed time to help those that were injured out front.  
I'll stop for now, but this should give you the idea that festival 
seating was actually only a small problem.  Had more doors been opened 
and more security been available upstairs the festival seating probably 
would have caused no problems.
L

Laura Plummer				* "We are all the same:  the men of
Graduate School of Lib and Info Sci	*  anger, and the women of the
University of Texas at Austin		*  page."
liquid@gslis.utexas.edu			*         --Indigo Girls