Parkway Drive - Ärger nach Show mit Polizei

[niffi]

Nach einer Show in Brisbane gab es Handgreiflichkeiten zwischen den Fans und der Polizei, doch lest selbst was PWD dazu zu sagen haben:

THE ARENA, BRISBANE 9/10/07

Ok, so it seems some shit needs to be cleared up after our shows at the Arena in Brisbane last week. It seems like people can't keep their mouths shut when it comes to talking about events they have no idea about, so I'm going to shed as much light as I can on events.

Both shows at the Arena were all ages and sold out , with 1200 people being let into the venue. That's a lot of kids. Every band played well, kids had fun, and it was basically like any other show we've played. There was a police presence at the show (this is a requirement for all ages events in Brisbane due to liquor licensing laws, which we knew about before the show and had no problem with) which we didn't notice until people started being ejected from the show for doing whatever. We freaked out a bit when we saw kids being arrested and what not but once we had shit explained to us we let them do their job.

So basically we had no problem with the way the show was being run until we saw the way some of the security was handling some of the kids. If a kid is "crowd surfing" or on top of someone for whatever reason, I highly doubt the safest way to help them down is in an arm or head lock. This was an all age's show. The majority of the people there were under 18. These are kids, not raging fucking pub drunks. They need to be helped over the barrier not dragged out in some kind of choke hold.

Anyway, given all these facts we still played the show like we did any other. We had fun. Kids had fun. I haven't heard of any major injuries, which is amazing considering how many kids were there. No one jumped off the speaker stacks or stage, unlike at the KSE /
Lamb of God show. Yes, I yelled at kids to mosh and run in circles. No, I didn't tell kids to "hurt someone" or any other bullshit, and I especially did not provoke any violence of any kind, be it verbal or physical towards the police or security staff. Yes I did tell kids to look after one another and stay safe, as I always do at shows.

In the end the show finished. We we're stoked. The police went crazy out side for some reason. We're not too sure about that one. We we're inside packing up. All I saw was kids being herded down the street by dogs while I tried to find my little sister, then being told to "get the fuck back inside" by some helpful officer.

The next day we arrived to play again. We had a security meeting with the venue manager, the security, and the police, in which we were informed that the previous show was the most out of control show they had had at the Arena EVER. It seems a lot of 16 year old
kids with long fringes dressed in black are far more scary towards the crew of middle aged, largely built bouncers / security officers than we had previously thought possible. They told us to tell kids to calm down. The police told us that when kids go crazy we should "play slower". Thanks for that one. Anyone who was there on the second night will be able to remember EVERY BAND going out of their way to ask kids to respect the venue, the security and the police and to take care of each other. So that's it. Bit of an anti climax. We didn't kill anyone. We didn't incite a riot. We played in the same way we always have and will. If anyone still want to blame us for anything, go for it, but you're a fucking moron. I guess the one thing we all learned from this is if you want to scare the shit of a team of security dead heads, just make sure you weigh less than 60 kg, dress in black and have a fringe than impairs your vision in any way possible.

For the record there were so many great security guys on duty both nights who were actually really good with the kids as well as us. This is not an attack on the venue in anyway, it simply states what we saw and experienced over the two nights we played.

Winston and Luke PWD

Quelle: http://www.myspace.com/parkwaydrive