Caught between a rock concert and a hard place!

 

CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK

 CONCERT AND A HARD PLACE!

 

TIMES they are a-changing at open-air rock concerts in the 1990s - and not always for the better if you’re an ageing Genesis fan like myself. 

As a birthday “treat” I was among the 100,000 people at the “gig of the summer” as my favourite band performed at Knebworth last Sunday. 

The marathon concert itself was good value for £22.50. Fans were not so chuffed, however, when charged £14 for a T-Shirt, £8 for a programme and £2 for a beer (bottles and cans were conveniently banned from the arena and confiscated at the gate). 

But the biggest rip-off was charging its captive audience £5 - YES, FIVE QUID - to park in the field outside (a cool profit of at least £200,000) and then failing to provide any stewards to sort out the chaos afterwards as everyone converged on a single exit. 

 

It had already taken us almost THREE HOURS to crawl the last two miles of the A1 into the concert site that afternoon. Radio reports on Monday revealed some fans were still trapped in the car park at 3am - FOUR HOURS after the concert ended. 

Visions of a Hillsborough-type disaster flashed through our minds as 100,000 scared people were left to wander like cattle in semi-darkness trying to find their cars - with only one light, folk were blindly falling into ditches or falling over in the rushing crowd. 

Then hundreds of traffic queues had to converge, unaided, onto a single track road, then police outside sent ALL cars onto the SOUTHBOUND carriageway of the A1 whether they wanted to go in that direction or not, so this already frustrated fan from Kettering was forced to drive to north London before he could turn round and head back north. 

Being among the last into the car park, we were among the first out, but it was still almost 2am before we got home. And I thought rock music festivals promoted love and peace!  

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THE PAIN IN SPAIN 

THEY CALL SPORT 

THE fun and games of the Barcelona Olympics come to a climax this weekend amid much publicity about the sick rituals Spaniards act out in their own back yards. 

At village festivals, so-called sporting events include bull-spearing, chicken-slaughtering and pushing live goats off 50ft high church towers. 

After public protests about the latter in one village (done to celebrate the feast of St Vincent), residents agreed to catch the terrified animal in a sheet. Let’s hope nobody shouts “Ole!” at the next one! 

 

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THEY’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!

I THOUGHT bouncy castles in pubs were supposed to ‘amuse’ kids while their parents enjoyed a quiet drink.

Last Saturday a friend’s young son ran crying to his dad with blood pouring from his lip after a clash of heads while playing on one. 

Then I read on Thursday about a five-year-old who broke his neck on one and faces weeks in hospital in a neck brace lying flat on his back. We are NOT ‘amused’!

(This column was originally published in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Saturday, 8 August, 1992