Injuries, fainting fits, and overdoses sustained and experienced at gigs

god bless the st john's ambulance massive !

I remember it well, well...it was only a few years ago. Twas the 2nd from last Pumpkins gig evah! Corgan came on in a white wedding dress played an hour of the most boring acousitc drivel I think I had ever heard. He returned in a skin tight black number to play an hour or two of the most boring 'industrial' metal I had ever heard. And no 1979!!!

Luckily losing my shoe gave me something to do throughout the latter half of the show, which was spent wading through legs looking for the missing shoe! The show also marked the point where I decided that there must be other music out there other than what I could buy in HMV or Virgin or whatever.

In retrospect it probably wasn't that smart an idea to be at the front of that gig wearing "Rock Against Racism" and "Pogo On A Nazi" badges.

Although I did get some pretty bad bruises at a Beck concert in St. Louis in '94. People started shoving, it was probably the hottest day of the summer, and the floor was slippery. I couldn't hold myself back and ended up with bruises from my hips/abdominal area being slammed into the edge of the stage. Several people were thrown out of the venue. Good times.

I dunno about "mostly" but certainly an *extremely* highly visible part of their audience consisted of the seig-heiling fuckwits, yes.

It was basically the same wankers who used to "support" Sham 69 by kicking crap out everyone at their gigs who wasn't a skinhead and smashing up every venue they ever tried to play at until they effectively forced them to retire.

Try reading the weekly music press from around '79-'81; it seemed to be pretty much inescapable at the time.

It was also around that time that I had a bike chain wrapped 'round my head as I was leaving an Angelic Upstarts gig and got out of a Cockney Rejects gig to discover the back of my leather cut to shreds and blood all down the back of my jeans where someone had clearly been taking a stanley knife to my back - fortunately the leather saved me from serious injury.

Happy days!

I once got a paper-cut at a Belle & Sebastian gig...

Shane's then girlfriend, Jane Crockford (later of The Mo-dettes) did manage to bite a lump out of one of his earlobes during an early Clash gig, yes (I think there's footage of the incident in Don Letts' "Punk Rock Movie").

Got kicked in the chin at a Circle Jerks show (their "farewell" tour, also 1990), causing one of my contacts to fly out of my eye. I took the other one out and flicked it away. They were expensive to replace, too, but there was no way I was gonna find the lost one, so fuck it, right?

Semi-miraculous non-injury story: my glasses fell off at a packed Chili Peppers show, and I had to get on my hands and knees in a pit packed with thick-necked no-knowledge-of-pit-traditions-or-rules fratboys and crawl around to grab them. My glasses survived intact, and so did I, but that was one of the scarier things I've done at a show.

Also narrowly missed being clipped in the skull by a flying folding chair at a GG Allin show.

Re: Nazis, even in 1986/7, in Portland the hardcore scene was full of them (plus lots of SCAR skins as well). They used to stomp around giving people random beatdowns. Gotta love the Pacific Northwest.

we dreamed of girls like you in middle school.

teenage msp sitting on skateboard in rural florida, "out there, somewhere, there's girls that are actually cool and know about dri and coc."

my injuries involve a few pairs of bent glasses. oh, and i nearly passed out while performing once. i screamed a little too hard, felt like i popped something in my head, finished the song, but had to sit down for a few after that. i'm probably walking around with a blood clot in my head about to die at any moment.

m.

my story-just typical bruises & cuts from the all ages hardcore shows @ the channel, boston. it was the typical meathead b.s. one had to endure those days.
also, the guy next to me od'd/died at a s1sters of m3rcy show..right as the band got onstage. i think i have the paramedics made my boot.

When I first started going to Reading Festival the "security" was provided by the local Chapter of the Hells Angels and they didn't seem to like punks very much....

I dunno if Dr. C or Mark S were about at the time but there was a Court case following one of their gigs at Reading Uni. which I didn't attend, but which if my memory serves me correctly, involved some (15 year old?) lad who was apparently de-flowered by one of KK's female entourage on stage during KK's set and subsequently caught a dose as a result.

I wondered where S Club 7 got the idea from.

Sustained two black eyes at a 7 Seconds show in '85.

Multiple contusions after I was buried under the crowd at a Youth Brigade show in '86.

Hit with a folding chair at a Samhain show in Cambridge, I think about '86. Ow!!!

Had my arm practically wrenched from it's socket during a Shelter--yes, Shelter-- gig in RI. sometime in '95. Unusable and blue for a week.

Dropped on my head at Motorhead in RI in 2001. As you can see, I never grew up. Ears rang for a straight two weeks.

Funnily enough, I saw the Angelic Upstarts in London and it was a fairly peaceful gig. It was the one time I expected violence and none came. Ditto all the times I saw the Cro-Mags. I'll probably get my legs broken if I go see Beth Orton or something....

I once almost broke my leg pogoing to Belle and Sebastian. I was jumping up and down and managed to disturb the cover of an air vent in the floor so when I landed my leg went right though the hole.

There were some not-very-muffled sniggers in the casualty department of the GRI that night.

Nice junior doctor bloke: "Pogoing at a gig? Wow. Who was it?"
Me: "er, belle and sebastian"
NJDB:`"mwahwhawhawhahwhahwa"

I also fainted at a Manics gig and had to get hauled over the barrier at the Barrowlands, but that's kind of acceptable amongst the angst-ridden leopard-skin-clad Richey-worshipping masses. Whereas doing an injury to yourself pogoing to Belle and Sebastian...