Weekly Survey: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen at a concert for festival?
I’m just back from the wonderful LIfe in Beautiful Festival, a music event that takes over 18 square blocks of downtown Las Vegas for a long weekend each September. And like all festivals, it attracts some interesting human specimens.
For example, I witnessed some poor sod puking his brains out into a garbage can. Maybe it was the heat (38 degrees), the alcohol (there was no shortage of that), or perhaps some bad food/drugs. Whatever the case, this dude had the wherewithal to pull out a cell phone to shoot a selfie as he vomited. What he planned to do with this photo and/or video, I have no idea.
That spectacle ranked second to the absolute weirdest thing I ever witness. Whilst tromping through the rain, mud and the debris at Woodstock ’94, I chanced upon a man wearing nothing but a diaper.
I couldn’t help myself. “Why are you wearing that?” I asked.
“SO I CAN DRINK UNTIL I PISS MYSELF AND STILL KEEP ON DRINKING!” he bellowed. His girlfriend just laughed.
Gross.
So here’s the week’s survey question: What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever witnessed at a concert or music festival?
I saw Gwar play at a small club in Kitchener, Ontario. At this club they had some cages for go-go dancers. A lady decided to climb into the cage remove her top and lactate onto anyone standing below her.
A topless Courtney Love taking a swing at her manager (or security guy) who was trying to get her back on stage and out of the crowd, her punch missing and feebly hitting me in the chest. I was wearing a Superman t-shirt so when a person near me asked if that hurt, without hesitation I said “No, of course not…I’m Superman”
I was at a NOFX concert and Fat Mike had to stop the song to point out the guy with no legs crowd surfing
At a Rush show in Ottawa in 1981, a garbage can in one of the men’s washrooms was full of puke, literally about 24 inches deep of puke. Some drunk guy fell into the garbage can knocking it over and landing in all the puke all over the floor. After struggling to get up from the slippery mess, covered in puke he realizes he has something in his hand. A large chuck of hash, that I would estimate from its size to be about two ounces. He proceeded to pull a pipe out of his pocket and smoke some without even washing it off, still covered in puke!
In the nineties I saw the Hip at an incredibly small outdoor fair in Pennsylvania where there was only a wee bit of snow fencing keeping the crowd back. Gord was getting really angry as people were pushing forward with some getting squished and the fence buckling. He finally had enough and just walked right off ending the show rather abruptly. Weirdest thing: snow fencing… Really? They totally underestimated not only how popular this band of Canadian boys had become; but also just how many Canadians would make the six hour plus drive down to see then play a small fair!
This one isn’t too out there, just a weird turn of events. I went to see Mother Mother for their 10 year Oh My Heart tour with my sister earlier this year in TO. There were these very drunk people behind us who kept spilling their drinks on us and shouting and just generally being annoying. They were really bothering this other girl who was by herself so we kept making sure she was doing all right. About halfway into Mother Mother’s set the band called some people up on stage. They said these people met 10 years ago when Oh My Heart was first released. It turned out to be the super drunk couple. The guy proposed to the girl on stage and she said yes. Everyone was cheering and going crazy, meanwhile me and my sister and our new found friend were just happy they weren’t behind us anymore!