Loyal reader and Ashvegas music correspondent MicFly, who hasn’t been heard from on these pages lately, sent this urgent dispatch Sunday:
Went to the B-52s Saturday – an excellent show. Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson vocal harmonies tighter than 1980, and Fred Schneider’s campy delivery is timeless.
But here’s the Ashvegas-worthy moment: The Biltmore guards are apparently more accustomed to the seated, sappy audience for Chicago, etc. The guards were constantly having run-ins with the well heeled, middle aged groovers who were determined to dance in the aisle and stand on their seats.
And in the middle of Love Shack, the guards forcibly removed an audience member or two from the front row, prompting the band to stop the tune, Kate Pierson to admonish the guards, and bandmembers to
declare that the Biltmore clearly was not a “love shack.”A fellow attendee said that one old guy was going up front to fetch his dancing wife, tripped, and took down another audience member. The guards thought a rumble was underway and piled on, smashing
faces into the ground and hauling the folks out. Classic stuff. An unlikely Altamont moment to be sure.The band eventually resumed the tune, and at the end of the show, guitarist Keith Strickland pointed to the Biltmore heat guarding the stage and told everyone not to get arrested.
The set was short – about 90 minutes max, but the new tunes had a funky beat and the band hit Private Idaho, STrobe Light and Give me Back my Man from “Wild Planet” plus Rock Lobster and Planet Claire….
Wow! Sorry we missed that.
5 Comments
I am so sorry I missed that…and how in the world is it possible not to get up and dance to the B-52’s? I mean, really.
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I saw what happened. . . the biltmore company police used unwarrented and excessive force in restraining a man who was just returning to his seat. The man had gone over to the left of the stage and was returning to his seat along the center aisle about 5 rows back, when a biltmore company police officer from the left side indicated to another officer in the front to stop the man. The officer that was in the middle went after the man, and pulled him backwards such that the man fell to the ground, at that point the two cops jumped on him and started to wrestle him to get his hands cuffed, that is when the band started to react, then another two cops came up to finish arresting the "villan".
I am still upset that the Bilmore Company Police reacted so inappropriately to a concert goer. (the people trying to keep the aisle clear were just ‘security’ wearing white uniforms, the Biltmore Company Police force had brown uniforms and guns) I was watching because one of them (the brownshirts) had already grabbed a woman, that was obeying his direction to return to her seat, by the hand and forcefully walked her off to the left.
I had purchased season passes this evening and returned them, cause I don’t think I would feel safe with such people "protecting" the estate.
The other issue is that the Biltmore Company Police force is a private army…there is no local public oversight of these officers. They are sworn officers with weapons, arrest powers, and where is the oversight? What type of complaint process is there? How many arrests do they make? What training do they have in crowd control?
The Biltmore Estate has some explaining to do, I would encourage folks to avoid going until they do, I know I will tell everyone I know about what happened at the b-52 concert and the black eye that the estate gained on what otherwise would have been a perfect evening.
W.I.F.E. and I also went! Great music, but perhaps the shortest concert I’ve ever been to. They were on for about an hour and 5 minutes. PS I spotted you at the Chicago concert, but could not beat through the crowd to say hello.
The show was excellent, the security was strange. I’m not sure what they were trying to prevent…
I doubt the band has ever played a show that was this disconnected from their audience.. I don’t keep up with their playdates, but the overall evening was what you would expect from a retro band in a surreal setting with a bunch of middle age drunk honkeys with security misreading the intent of the crowd. As long as you took those factors into consideration, everything was great.