December 03, 1979
Tragedy strikes The Who concert
On this day in 1979, eleven people were trampled at a Who concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. The deaths occurred as concert goers ran for seats at the city's Riverfront Coliseum. In response, Cincinnati immediately banned festival seating, a ban that held until 2004. The Who did not find out about the deaths until after the concert.
I have an interesting story involving this infamous day...
I was 19 years old back on this date and one of my younger sisters was 17. We were both rabid Who fans and when the Who announced their world tour during the spring of that year, I was hell bent on getting tickets for myself and for her. Three shows were to be played in my region of the country, New England. The Boston and the New Haven shows sold out in minutes, as did the closer show at Providence. For days after, I called every ticket outlet company looking for tickets, but no luck. Then, they announced that some auxiliary tickets were going to be sold at the Providence Civic center the following Saturday morning at 9:00AM. I had to work the night before until 2:00AM, and I left right after work to camp out. There were already a couple of hundred people in line when I got there at 2:45AM.
The next morning they start selling right at 9:00AM, and the lines starts to move. I'm praying that they won't run out before I get there. Each person was only going to be allowed to purchase just two tickets, so I felt that I had a good chance to get one for myself and one for my sister. I'm getting close to the window, and there's only 6 people ahead of me when they run out. I go home and tell my sister that this was our last chance, and we're both resigned to the fact that we weren't going to see the Who that year.
A couple of weeks go by, and suddenly, one day she comes rushing into our home, all excited.
She screams I got two tickets!!! I jump up and shout in complete ecstasy and she turns to me and says,
I only got two tickets, for me and Paula. Paula was her best friend and neither she nor my sister had spent 1/10th the time that I had spent trying to get tickets. I instantly looked at her and said,
What did you say? She repeated that the other ticket was not for me, but for her friend. I instantly went ballistic. I called her every name under the sun, and my father had to hold me back from beating her to a pulp. I ran out the front door so I could cool down. I didn't speak to her, nor even look at her for months.
So the months go by, the Who start their tour. My father and I are watching Monday Night Football, when they break into the game to announce the disaster in Cincinnati. The Providence show that my sister was going to without me, was scheduled for 12/17, just two weeks away. The show at the Providence Civic Center is also scheduled to be general admission seating, just like in Cincinnati. The uproar over that kind of seating is at a boiling point across the country. A few days go by, and the mayor of Providence, Vincent "Buddy" Cianci overreacts and cancels the show.
I hear the announcement on the radio station I listened to back then, and I couldn't wait for my sister to get home. As she walks through the door, just before dinner, I ask her in a very smug and cocky manner,
Did you hear the news?. She replies,
No, what?. I responded,
Because of what happened in Cincinnati, Cianci just canceled your concert. For the first time in my life, I truly understood what they meant by
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
