If you don't like not being able to see the thing you payed €200 quid to see, don't go to concerts

Hey, so apparently last Saturday’s Slane concert didn’t go as smoothly as I assumed it did. And when I say I assumed it did I mean nobody I know died at the gig, other than that I wasn’t exactly paying attention to what was the most hotly anticipated music event of 1998.

I mean, I’m all for a little nostalgia when it comes to music, but I prefer to remember good bands as being good, rather than paying money to get a close up view of how past it my one-time idols have become, I honestly do not have and have never had any interest in either Oasis or The Prodigy. I always liked Blur better than Oasis, and I wasn’t into class A drugs in the 1990′s so I failed to connect with Mr. Flint and his ilk. So that’s my explanation for why I don’t really care about this story, well, I suppose I do, but only because it’s the first thing I read this morning.

Anyway, it’s not like I don’t keep an ear out for these things, for example yesterday I heard that a guy only had like, four pints when he was there because the ques for the bar got so bad, how’s that for investigative reporting? Investigative insofar as I am relatively good at remembering snippets of overheard conversation. It turns out what that guy said was seemingly true, there were a metric ton of complaints from fans, about pretty much everything, as the Independent reports;

All the problems highlighted by fans will be looked at — including transport, queues for bars, and access to the venue — at a debriefing meeting to be held in the coming weeks.

MCD, Lord Mountcharles, Dublin Bus, Bus Eireann, and the gardai will attend the meeting; but it is understood that there will be no fans’ representatives present.

Their stories continued to emerge yesterday with some telling how they waited in ditches in the cold to get home, while others told how they witnessed serious assaults and drug busts in the VIP area.

Others experienced overcrowding and some crushing, while one woman fan [woman fan? Don't you mean female fan? I can't fucking believe The Independent won't give me a job - Ed] was kicked in the face.

Personally I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s a well-known fact that every outdoor gig or festival in this country is invariably a complete and utter clusterfuck. Every single year the coverage of Oxegen reads like the script a Mad Max movie, assaults, robbery, drugs, people set on fire, drugs set on fire, drug dealers assaulted by people on fire, the lot. So the fact that a couple of people got into fights at Slane is not exactly surprising. If you consider a night out on the town, which for most people means consuming less booze than at any festival, there are always fights, outside every single nightclub. In that case you’re talking about maybe 500 people in your average club, which is a long way off from 80,000, and way off the amount of people venturing to Oxegen every year.

As for the poor souls who complained of having to sit in ditches waiting for transport home, well, get over it. I thought it’d be a great idea to put 45 cans of beer into a backpack when I went to Oxegen in 2007, and as it turns out that many cans is quite fucking heavy when you have to carry them on your back for hours on end, in the rain. In any case I felt no desire to ring Joe fucking Duffy to complain of the lack of organisation which led to pointless delays in getting to the campsite, you know why? Well, actually it’s because Joe Duffy makes me physically sick, but also that I knew what I was getting myself into, so I like, dealt with it.

Anyway, the thing I find baffling is what exactly they hope to do to combat the problems from last week’s concert, I’d be inclined to think that any time 80,000 plus drunk people converge on one field on the same day, you’re going to have some logistical problems, not to mention a number of people getting knocked the fuck out. My only solution is that Liveline be suspended for the week after any large concert, and that goes for everything from festivals to those astonishingly expensive shows put on by people who simply refuse to die, like Barbera Streisand. So what if some langer from Cork stole your dutch, steal his tent and burn it, nevermind running to Joe bitching and moaning, it’s not like anything will change if you do.

I’m finding it hard to understand why everything I write lately has some reference to Joe Duffy, I don’t even listen to his show, I hate him, and everyone like him. I swear, this is the last time that pandering asshole is ever mentioned on ChessClubParty. Now, I feel better.