Crowd Control: The Who, to Now

[Jay Ashworth]

If you have the need to slap around some civilian who either does not understand the importance of planning and engineering crowd control... or does not care, perhaps this Sam Denby joint -- with pictures of the piles of concertgoers' shoes inside the doors of the Riverfront Coliseum on December 4th, 1979 -- will help. It's a bit over 20 minutes, and he doesn't actually get to the Who Disaster til a bit over halfway, but it's still worth watching.

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[Jay Ashworth]

Here's the Wikipedia article on the WKRP episode that came out of this, only *eleven weeks later* (if you are at all involved with broadcast television, you know how much of a damn miracle that is).

In Concert (WKRP in Cincinnati) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Like Third Watch and September 11th, WKRP really had no choice at all...

 

[egilson1]

I’ve been watching ‘Sam’s videos for a few years. He’s very good. However, one issue I have so far is that he miss uses the term crowd control instead of crowd management. And within the industry crowd management is the term used for getting a crowd to behave in a predictable manner and crowd control is the use of force to manipulate the behavior of a crowd.

Eric Stuart teaches amazing classes which will open one’s eyes to the nuance of crowd managment. He’s doing one again at this years Event Safety Symposium.

Crowd Safety Symposium (Houston, TX) — Event Safety Alliance

Event Safety Alliance announces the next edition of the Crowd Safety Symposium , taking place November 5-6, 2023 in Houston, Texas. This two-day workshop aims to provide an understanding of the four aspects of basic crowd safety and to provide techniques to plan and manage safe pedestrian flows in

www.eventsafetyalliance.org

 

[Jay Ashworth]

I’ve been watching ‘Sam’s videos for a few years. He’s very good. However, one issue I have so far is that he miss uses the term crowd control instead of crowd management. And within the industry crowd management is the term used for getting a crowd to behave in a predictable manner and crowd control is the use of force to manipulate the behavior of a crowd.

Yeah; I know what you mean. That's inside-baseball enough that *I* didn't know it, and Sam's talking to a civilian audience...

Wait. You think 'Sam Denby' is a stage name?

 

[What Rigger?]

I'm tellin' y'all...subscribe to the ESA podcast. They post them here everytime one drops. This seems right on target for this thread, and keeps everything relevant. The Who is just one component but Astroworld was only 2 years ago and both are tragic highlights, but like everything in our industry there's people working full time on almost every component you can think of including crowd management.

ESA Podcast: Crowd Science

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Crowd Management issues are something we can take back even further, to the Iroquois Theatre Fire or Italian Hall Massacre.

As I become more and more dedicated to the production of non-theatrical live events this is an increasingly relevant discussion.

 

[TimMc]

Crowd Management issues are something we can take back even further, to the Iroquois Theatre Fire or Italian Hall Massacre.

As I become more and more dedicated to the production of non-theatrical live events this is an increasingly relevant discussion.

The Station Nightclub fire is also crowd management related; the crowd tried to exit the same way they'd entered. Didn't help that some exits were blocked or chained, but human nature is to go in reverse.