On Sunday morning, I woke up at around seven o’clock because I have to go work. As if I’d stir that early for any other reason; I hate the sanctity of my lazy Sundays being breached by anything. By now, I have a routine for the early shifts: I’ll get up, go about my bathroom business, get dressed, go downstairs and breakfast while Facebooking. I enjoy that 20 minutes to myself to listen to some music and to laugh at the ridiculous things the internet has to offer, as they help me battle on through the day – but not this day.
This is the morning after the Swedish House Mafia gig and the internet is rife with rumours of stabbings and deaths. 37 is a figure which crops up at least twice in my News Feed, but seeing as that number took on only one meaning for me after I watched Clerks for the first time, I was happy to discover that it was a false estimate of the number of knife attacks which took place. Sadly, though, knife attacks did take place.
An attempt to find official confirmation of these events (Facebook also told me there were at least two deaths) proved futile, with a thread set up by residents living near Phoenix Park the only thing I could find at 6:30 am on the morning after. Here, people spoke of how they saw teens stumbling ‘round their area after the gig, with some residents stating that some of these drunken louts had told them about the stabbings. In the immediate aftermath of the concert, when the Twittersphere was buzzing, Gardaí initially said that no such incidents had occurred – which in the end was tragically incorrect.
After satisfying myself that I would need to wait until I went into work to hear of any official news, I suddenly remembered something: my little brother had gone to it with some friends. It was one of those thoughts that wouldn’t normally carry such weight; simply a train passing slowly by – but this train’s horn blew right into my ears as it roared through, making me fully aware of its genuine importance in the current circumstance. I ran upstairs to check if he was in his bed.
He wasn’t. Frowning, I calmed myself and let the train speed off without jumping on. If my mother had no idea of his whereabouts and had not heard from him before she went to bed last night, she would have barged into my room, woken me up, and raged about his lackadaisicalness. Nothing of the sort had happened and my sleep had been sound(ish). The only logical deduction I could make, then, was that he had spent the night in a friend’s and my mother knew this already.
But, of course, there was no way she could know about the events that had transpired at the Phoenix Park. In fact, it wouldn’t be until Monday that she learned of it as she has a thing against Sunday papers, as do I, but only because they’re so annoying to put out in work – how about you put your own damn supplements into your own bloody papers, Sunday Times?
So, off to work I went, where, if I recall correctly, only one paper had mention of the concert on its front page, and the headline was something along the lines of “Swedish House Mafia bow out in style in glorious finale,” or some such nonsense referring to the fact it was their last ever Irish appearance before they split up. So far, so good. But then the FM104 news came on and made reference to “a number of assaults” that had taken place at the gig, adding that there were no serious casualties. That was at roughly ten-past eight.
As the day progressed, the news became increasingly more grim. By the end of my shift at three o’clock the count was at seven stabbings, with three people hospitalised and two in a serious condition – there was also a report of one death which was drug related, a shock to me because I had simply been hearing about stabbings the whole time and hadn’t even considered the obvious drug element that would be occupying the crowd.
I had seen this element close at hand on the Thursday during the Stone Roses gig when some woman in front of me turned around in the middle of ‘I Am The Resurrection’, grabbed me by both shoulders and said almost hysterically: “I NEED drugs, have you got any DRUUUUGS?!” I pointed at some guy seemingly trying to chew his own face off and said, “He probably has some.” She just replied, “Nah, lads like that never do.” Sound logic.
I was held up in work a bit later than usual so I didn’t get home until about twenty-to four – and the first thing my mam said to me when I appeared was, “Your brother still hasn’t come home and he’s not replying to my texts.” She was still ignorant of the stabbings and overdoses. I just nodded, failing to see the point in worrying her, and went into the other room to make the call. One ring, two rings, three rings, “pick up, you PRICK…”, five rings, six rings, “Hello?”
He was fine, in his friend’s house as I thought he was. When I asked if he had seen any of the violence, he replied that he hadn’t, but added that his friend had seen somebody getting stabbed – and judging from the details I was given on the phone of the attack he witnessed, it sounds very similar to one of the attacks which has since been described in the papers several times. His friend was lucky he didn’t get himself involved.
I felt a tinge of relief when I had made certain that nothing had happened. My brother was recently jumped by a bunch of little knacker kids when leaving work at Croke Park one night and got bottled in the hand. He was with one of his friends and they managed to avoid their pursuers by walking into a chipper to hide out – when the kids appeared at the window, some creepy old man sitting nearby took out his phone and began taking pictures of them. Needless to say, they “scarpered.”
When things like that happen it makes you realise the frightening ease with which a loved one can be lost. If that bottle had caught my brother in the head, it could have been game over. If he had found himself in the wrong area of Phoenix Park, he could be still in hospital now with those other unfortunate people who are related to somebody somewhere and who are very real, tangible human beings – not just names and pictures we see in print.
Nobody should go to a gig either in fear of losing their life or with the intention of taking somebody else’s life. People should go to gigs to experience their favourite music in a setting they will never get to experience it in again, because no two gigs are the same. The Stone Roses and Snow Patrol/Florence + The Machine gigs either side of the Swedish House Mafia show went off without any reports of major altercations, so why is it that this band attracted this type of aggressive crowd?
Now, of course, the organisers of the gigs, MCD, have been called to count the cost. They believe security in the wider areas of the park outside the venue space is what needs to be addressed, but there have even been calls in other quarters for Phoenix Park to be abandoned as a gig venue altogether.
That would be a massive shame as its size and space make it an ideal location. I saw Arcade Fire there in 2007 and it was some show, albeit in a tent as opposed to the open air shows of last week.
If people’s lives are at stake, though it’s a no-brainer - but I felt perfectly safe within a crowd of 40,000 people during the Stone Roses, so I don’t believe that ceasing gigs in Phoenix Park will solve the problem.
Ultimately, it was a music fan, a complete stranger, who summed up the gig experience quite nicely for me. During the pandemonium caused by ‘Made in Stone’, a bespectacled middle-aged Northern Irishman with a big belly and a bigger heart grabbed me and said, “If I died right now, I'd be fuckin' happy.”
But he didn’t die to prove his point because people shouldn’t die at gigs.
This was published during my brief spell as a writer-in-residence with Teaandtoast.ie, a now seemingly defunct political and culture website (the Facebook page remains but is largely inactive). A good friend of mine who had become editor of the site in May asked me to contribute to the cultural aspect of the website she was developing, so I wrote slightly comedic feature/opinion pieces on various societal ills which occurred in Dublin between May and July of 2012.
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