40th Anniversary of Who tragedy documentary on Cincinnati tv tonight.

For those that don't live in this area or familiar with it.The arena the Who will come to play at is not in Cincinnati,but the greater Cincinnati area.It's at Northern Kentucky University Arena about 15 mins from the old Riverfront Coliseum.
Also the Greater Cincinnati Airport is located in N Kentucky to,about 15 mins to downtown Cincinnati and 15-20 mins to the NKU Arena.
So technically they could come do the show and never set foot in Cincinnati or Ohio.Hopefully that won't happen.
I doubt they will want to go to the location of the 1979 concert at what is now Heritage Bank Arena.But hopefully they will go out to Finneytown High School,which is a suburb of Cincinnati and visit the memorial there,just as Roger has already done.Three of the victims that night were students at Finneytown.I think that would be so beneficial for Roger,Peter and Ben.

 

No I went anyway. I was over 18 and technically an adult (still living at home though).

And there were no problems at all - other than overexuberant security searching everyone at the gate I went through and a larger than normal police presence there standing around, the guy searching me put his hands into my coat pockets, felt that I had a packet of coughdrops in there (I had a cold ferchrissakes), said "I GOT YOU NOW" like he had won some kind of prize, grabbed me by the back of the neck and handed me over to some other security guy with a cop nearby, one of them took the cough drop package out and looked through the contents (also made me empty all my pockets), while the friend I went with jokingly stood by and said something like "what are those prescription coughdrops?", security then pushed me away and told me get out of there, all the while some poor kid who was caught with pot in his pockets stood off to the side with 2 cops holding onto him as he was being busted, looking at what happened to me being let go and yelling over and over again "FFCK YOU" at me like I was to blame for his troubles (not something I've forgotten even after all these years).

P.S. The tickets were $9.00 including the tax.

 

Just saw the WCPO special. It was surprisingly well done and the newsroom should be commended.

The bad parts are obvious. For example, how many times did they include those CPR shots? once was enough to get the point, and more than once begins to look exploitative. And do we really need to pump up all the emotional recollections with a slow zoom? And I have to agree that there should have been a lot more information about the way the venue was managed that night. Who made the decisions, and why? I guess that's legal territory and no one would touch it, but isn't that what news is for?

But the good parts far outweigh the bad parts. The interviews with the parents, siblings, and friends were often deeply moving. The special emphasis on Finneytown didn't make their losses seem worse, but it did allow for a focused connection that would have been more difficult otherwise. The interviews with Pete, Roger, and Bill were also very, very moving. I have to say that Bill had me in tears several times, and I thought it was wonderful that Roger said Bill had never been properly thanked the way he should have been. For that reason alone, it was great to have Bill interviewed. But I was also struck by the fact that the interviews were an opportunity to bring some peace and reconciliation, and that they have now led to a concert scheduled for late April nearby.

I remember Roger's secret, small-scale visit last year. I admire that man as an artist and as someone who does not spend his time trying to out-talk his responsibilities. I wish I could say the same for Pete, an artist I have loved for decades but who continually finds a way to make absolutely unnecessary cutting remarks for the sake of ... what, exactly? It's hard to watch him calling Roger's remarks to the audience in Buffalo the next night "dumb," especially because he misremembers what Roger actually said, and even if Roger had said that, Pete's reason for calling it "dumb" was itself quite dumb. Pete's a brilliant man, but it's clear that Roger is also a very smart and talented man. So Pete, c'mon. Not only did you likely drink another bottle of brandy afterward, you also said some really stupid and unfeeling things in that Rolling Stone interview right after the tragedy. Remember?

FWIW, I think Curbishley made exactly the right call that night and after, and Roger did a truly stand-up thing when he went for that visit. Pete can talk all he wants, but it would be nice for him to show some generosity of spirit, to walk the talk more consistently, and above all, to make some peace at last with the plain fact that it's not all about him. I love you Pete, but c'mon.

 

I should also say that I attended a Led Zep show in Greensboro, NC in 1977 that was general admission and pretty scary. The situation was nowhere near that of Cincinnati, but that's still the biggest and most intense crush of folks trying to get in the doors that I've ever experienced. I was lifted off the floor more than once, and a couple of times I wasn't able to draw a good breath. It doesn't take more than one or two times struggling to catch your breath as a crowd pushes you along to make you very worried and panicky.

 

I started going to shows only a few years after this. Every show I went to was reserved seating with chairs on the floor. Perhaps as a result of Cincinnati, I don't know.

In 1985, though, I went to a Rush/Marillion concert in Springfield, MA. The entire venue was GA, both floors and stands. There was no stampede, but up at the front we were completely crushed during the Marillion set. As someone else described, the whole floor would sometimes tilt to one side or another, taking you up off your feet. Pretty terrifying. Probably 15 or so people who must have been having trouble breathing were lifted above the crowd and pushed up toward the barricade, where security would help them back to first aid.

We ended up moving back to some nosebleeds in the rafters for Rush's set.

As the years have gone by, it seems like GA has became more and more common. Probably not the greatest idea.

There are also some venues where I wonder, "What would happen if there were an earthquake or fire?" For instance LA Forum on the floor. Only two tiny stairways and a tight tunnel at the back to get off that floor, with high walls all around.

 

I also was at the Buffalo show. They pushed back the start time to 9 pm to allow everyone to get in without a rush even though it was all reserved seating. The atmosphere was indeed intense. The Who played as if their lives depended on it. There’s a tape that circulates that really captures the performance. The show was incredibly loud - I couldn’t hear for days. Trivia: the concert was promoted by Harvey Weinstein, just a few years before he went into films.

 

I was thinking the same about that CPR shot being shown over and over. And Bill's interview choked me up a few times as well... and I hear ya about Pete, it's kinda b.s. of him to call Roger's comments "dumb", if you notice in the clip when Roger is speaking to the Buffalo crowd, Pete comes up behind him and kicks a balloon off the stage, as if he's bored. Seemed kinda disrespectful. But then again they were just dealing with horrible situation in their own ways.

 

I had a similar experience at the Sex Pistols show at Winterland way back when. I was picked up and moved by the crush of people near the stage, losing my shoes in the process. It would have been one of the most frightening experiences of my life, if I could have wrapped my head around what was happening. When I was set down I decided that I really didn't need to see the band from particularly close up.

 

Heartbreaking.

 

This doc was very well done. The accident happened the year before I was born, and this was the most comprehensive recount of what happened on that. I never totally understood it before, but this put a lot of it into clearer view. The way those doors were situated on the side of the building and in relation to that entire plaza itself, it makes no sense to begin with. And I totally understand how this could have happened.

Who fans know who Bill Curbishley is, and he always struck me as an honest, straight-talking person in interviews I’ve seen before. But much respect to him for his words and reflections on the tragedy. He’s a good man.

 

I had seen somewhere that at least a dozen shows on this tour were recorded. I wonder if Cincinnati was one of them?

 

I actually had a bootleg LP of this show back in the day, with the rather crass title of "Stampede"

 

I meant professionally recorded. Did you?

 

Multi tracked

 

The full TV documentary was well done, and very moving. The family members and friends - what they said was so insightful, generous, and poignant. Bill, too, who I never really knew much about before.

 

Buffalo 12-4-79 ..... 40 years ago today .....






there is an audience recording ....

 

Rabbit too ..... and the horn players.

 

The thing about The Forum that has always kind of bugged me is that it's right in the flight path of LAX and you'd always see jets flying low over The Forum on approach to land. I lived fairly close to the neighborhood where a DC-9 had a mid-air collision with a small plane and crashed into homes in Cerritos in '86 and have wondered what if a similar crash occurred right into the Forum.

I've been to just about every venue - stadium to club in SoCal and the only one that made me feel real uneasy to be in was The Key Club in Hollywood. I don't know if it's still the case as I haven't been there in there in over a decade but back then they had a small, secondary bar/club that probably held less than a hundred people in a claustrophobic basement that was like a concrete bunker with one narrow exit with stairs in and out upstairs to the club, not outside - if something happened in the main club and you were downstairs, you would be screwed.

 

interesting video from Roger visiting Cincinnati and high school memorial, talking about Scholarship fund that was started up.

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This show is still available. Sad but I'm glad Pete and Roger addressed this for the city.