Last night a gig made the national news for all the wrong reasons, The Cribs played their home show at Doncaster Dome. The support band were the superb The Slits, unfortunately they had what has been described by The Cribs as "a handful of people throwing coins, beer and generally putting on a disgustingly chauvinistic display of small mindedness". I couldn't make it but a couple of my friends that went to the gig said it was more than just a handful of people, and it was something warmer than beer that was being thrown and the crowd were pretty hostile towards the support and rest of the crowd.
The Slits aren't for everyone, and although I think they're a good fit for the Cribs music, they aren't though a great fit for the Cribs crowd. By that I mean they've started to become a mainstream band, they attract alot of the same gig goers as Kaiser Chiefs and Stereophonics, rather than their Last.fm similar artists, like Johnny Foreigner and Bombay Bicycle Club. That should be no excuse for what happened, but this sort of thing does happen too often at larger gigs.
People throwing drinks, piss, coins, shouting abuse, causing fights and showing a complete lack of respect for the artists and the audience. If you don't like a support band then just talk amongst yourselves, don't give abuse to the band, other people have bought tickets especially to see them, let them enjoy it, you wouldn't want a gig ruined for you by people shouting abuse over the band. There should be no reason to throw a beer into the crowd, or piss into a glass rather than go to the loo's, even if there's a big queue, or worse piss into to a glass then decide to throw it, never mind the danger of throwing coins. It's never 'in the spirit of things', it's not 'like the good old days', it's just massively disrespectful.
The Cribs released a statement about the gig and the decision they had to make about whether to pull the show, it's true, they shouldn't allow these idiots to win but it's a massive shame that alot of people's nights were ruined by idiots who shouldn't have been allowed out of their house.
I don't know if there's anything that can be done to get rid of idiots like that from the crowd, or bands halting shows (like Morrissey when hit by a bottle in Liverpool recently) will help educate people or encourage neighbouring fans to risk violence in exchange for some common sense. Please comment with your thoughts.