Don't Stop The Music

It was everyone’s worst nightmare. When the news came through that nine people had been stabbed at the Swedish House Mafia gig in Phoenix Park, it was like a boot to the solar plexus. But that, it turned out, was only the half of it. It emerged sharply, also, that two young men, later named as Lee Scanlon from Clonsilla and Shane Brophy, from Swan, Co. Laois, had been taken to hospital after the gig and died subsequently as a result of drug overdoses.

In the circumstances, the first thoughts of any civilised person have to be with the families and friends of those who died – who have themselves, as a result of the sudden and brutal loss of a loved one, been plunged into tragedy. For them, no matter how unbelievable and heart-wrenching it might be, there is no way that the clock can be turned back: nothing, but nothing, can be done to restore the life of the victim. 
It feels cruel and desperately wrong. Those who are left behind will have to live forever with the grief that attends the premature death of a son, a brother, a boyfriend or an old school buddy. It is a fearsome cross to bear. I know that I speak for everyone in the music community and beyond, when I say that they deserve every ounce of sympathy that we have in our hearts. 
And then there are the victims of the stabbings – on the face of it, nine innocent people, randomly attacked by one or more vicious thugs bent on destructive action. You have to ask, how can someone convince themselves that they are entitled to hide a knife, go to a gig and stab an innocent stranger, for no reason at all? In the wake of the event, one man, 23-year-old Raymond Donnan, has been charged with assault causing harm, possession of a knife, violent disorder and public order offences. Other arrests may follow.
Some small consolation was to be gleaned from the fact that none of the stabbings was fatal, and as the week wore on the bulletins from the hospitals confirmed that the victims were all, separately, on the mend. But that doesn’t change the fact that no-one should have to endure the horrors of an experience like that.

If those dramatic and deeply upsetting events hadn’t taken place, then the rest of what went on during the day in the Phoenix Park would almost certainly have passed unremarked. The Stone Roses and Snow Patrol gigs on either side went off without blemish and Swedish House Mafia’s outing would doubtless have been seen as a more boisterous but still essentially ordinary day out in the park if no-one had been stabbed. A lot of people went, had a great time and saw nothing seriously untoward.
However, the horrific nature of the knife attacks invited a different level of media attention, which spun out over the airwaves and in print throughout the following days. There were lots of eyewitness accounts suggesting that, during the build-up on the afternoon of the gig, conventional restraints had been abandoned by fans heading for the show. 
Well, let’s be honest. Rock ’n’ roll music, and its dancier derivatives, has always had the power to affect audiences in this way. People dance like dervishes. They get out of it. They take off their clothes. To one degree or another, they abandon their conscious selves and dig into something more elemental. They shout and scream and roar and behave in a way that their mothers – or some of them at any rate – might not like. Sometimes they go a bit bananas. In itself, that’s okay. 
If people end up getting their rocks off in a good-humoured, hedonistic way, then there’s no harm done. Festivals the world over have always had a bacchanalian aspect to them. You only have to think of Woodstock, the event that defined the modern festival template, to know that the idea of letting it all hang out is nothing new. In relation to this, Ireland was never likely to be an exception. 
Going back as far as the first Fleadh Ceols, that bacchanalian spirit was always to the fore. The host town was taken over, in effect, for the weekend, by music fans in search of the craic. There was drunkenness aplenty, for sure, but most people’s response was, ‘So what?’ And if there was less fornication than nowadays, that was a function of the generally more conservative attitude to sex back then.
The same held true in Lisdoonvarna, the legendary festival immortalised in the hilarious Christy Moore song.
It’s easy to forget too that in its final year, 1982, Lisdoonvarna culminated in a riot. There were some fearsome exchanges between Hell’s Angels and members of the public, with numerous people injured. There were riots the night before the Bob Dylan gig in Slane in 1984. Both of these gigs saw deaths too, from drowning. A youth was stabbed and died at a Radiators From Space gig in UCD early in the punk era. To remember this is not in any way to minimise the recent tragedy. But it is to say that it’s important to keep these things in perspective. 
In an imperfect world, there’s only so much you can do to exert control. If some people come determined to cause trouble, at a football match or a parade in the city centre as happened on St. Patrick’s Day a few years ago, or at a gig, no hand-wringing afterwards is going to change that.
The fact is that the vast majority of gigs happen without any form of complication whatsoever. Some events, of course, are more volatile than others. The Swedish House Mafia show was one of those very rare occasions.
While it is facile to generalise sweepingly about any audience, clearly the crowd for Swedish House Mafia and Snoop Dogg was very different from that which would show up at a Bruce Springsteen or a Madonna gig. For a start, the average age was far younger. In addition, certain types of dance music attract a tougher, in some ways hardcore, urban audience. 
To put it gently, you might say that it is more a soccer crowd than a rugby one. But that doesn’t make that audience any less entitled to see their heroes in action or any less entitled to go to a great show.
At the licensing stage, certain conditions were put in place in relation to security for the gig. The Gardaí were involved in every aspect of the planning, as they are in relation to all major shows. The requirements set out were exceeded by the promoters M.C.D. There were 125 gardaí and 511 private security personnel on duty. 
The situation in the Phoenix Park was undoubtedly rendered more volatile because of the heavy consumption of alcohol beforehand by a significant number of those attending the gig. The ‘car boot’ sale of booze at off-license prices in bars close to the venue didn’t help. As is the policy at all gigs, cans and bottles are not allowed, and so drink that had been bought in advance had to be consumed before fans could gain access to the arena, contributing to early intoxication.
That, we have seen before. But there were more sinister forces at work, which in truth no one had predicted. 
After the event, members of the gardaí privately briefed the media in relation to those responsible for the violence. Elsewhere, they said, Dublin was relatively quiet on the night. They believe therefore that the gig was targeted as a place where factions from different areas of the city might congregate, with the possibility of a rumble in mind. In effect the Phoenix Park was like a city the size of Waterford for the night, but with some of the most volatile elements from the tougher areas of the deprived Dublin suburbs present in numbers. How relevant is it that one of Swedish House Mafia’s biggest tracks ‘Antidote’ is a collaboration with Australian musician Rob Swire of Pendulum’s ‘Knife Party’ project? Names are usually taken to mean nothing in rock’n’roll – but maybe that did trigger something among a few of the street level sociopaths of Dublin’s hardest areas. The fact that three people were stabbed at the subsequent SHM gig in Milton Keynes should be enough to convince Swire that the name is a stupid one that he should ditch pronto.

A report in the Sunday Independent also suggested that the use of P.M.A. or paramethoxyamphetamine may have contributed to the violence. Perhaps – you could certainly argue that if MDMA was still the drug of choice at dance events that nothing like this would have happened and that banning it was a mistake. But in truth the likelihood is that there is a simpler explanation. Those responsible for the stabbing went to the gig knowing what they intended to do. A certain number of implements that can only have been intended for violent use, including hammers and bars, were confiscated at the entrance. Some people, however, successfully hid implements under their clothes, including knives. And one or two of them did what they set out to do, stabbing innocent victims.
In the extensive analysis of what was a hugely traumatic occasion for everyone who was dragged into the nastiness, there has frequently been more heat than light. The first thing to establish is that there is no need whatsoever for alarm bells in relation to the vast majority of gigs in Ireland this year, any more than it would make sense for cinemas in the US to have to mount massive security operations following the mass shooting at a showing of the Batman movie in Colorado. Over the bank holiday weekend, the Liss Ard, Castlepalooza and Indiependence festivals are happening. These will all be friendly and fun events. The same is true of gigs in the Aviva Stadium, Marlay Park shows with the likes of Van Morrison and this summer’s highpoint, Electric Picnic. These gigs involve known knowns. They require good organisation and planning, of course, but nothing more than in previous years. 
M.C.D., who promoted the Swedish House Mafia gig, are also promoting a David Guetta show in Marlay Park. They have quite rightly decided that the gig will go ahead. It would be grossly wrong if artists, promoters and fans were effectively held to ransom by a small number of people intent on causing trouble.
Inevitably, there will be a heightened awareness of the need for rigorous security for that gig in particular. In the circumstances, that is something that fans are going to have to accept. More generally, anyone who is attending the gig would be well advised to make a decision that they themselves will behave impeccably at all times, and refrain from getting out of it or arriving at the show drunk.
It is an opportunity for fans of dance music to make a collective statement. Theoretically, there is no reason why gigs featuring electronic, hip-hop, or house music should present a greater security risk than any other form of music. More than ever, there is an onus on the fans to stay clean and sober and to remember that a gig is not a place to go bearing grudges or looking for trouble. Music is about solidarity, empowerment and the pleasure principle. That’s what we should be looking for.
What everyone who loves music needs is to be able to put what was a deeply unpleasant episode behind us. Here’s to the rest of the summer’s music. Trouble-free.