The Pukkelpop Collapse
It's been a scary summer for music festival goers, who seem to be cast as pawns in some kind made for the Weather Channel when-disaster-strikes video game.
It's been a scary summer for music festival goers, who seem to be cast as pawns in some kind made for the Weather Channel when-disaster-strikes video game. First, the Cheap Trick stage went down at the Ottawa Blues Fest in Canada, and miraculously, no one was hurt. Last weekend, five died at the Indiana State Fair when a storm rolled in at a Sugarland show. And yesterday, the sky fell in on music fans - and bands - at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium, where five were killed and 75 injured.
Chicago pop-rock band Smith Westerns were on stage when the storm hit, and singer Cullen Omori (that's a picture of him I took at SXSW earlier this year) at first petulantly tweeted "Stage collapsed max almost got crushed by the tress. I hope pukkelpop has insurance bc all our s--- is broke". He then deleted the tweet, offered an apology, and, as reported by Pitchfork, issued this statement:
"We had just finished the first song of our set at Pukkelpop when the stage/tent started shaking and simply thought it was a storm passing through. I made a comment about Cheap Trick and we were about to play the next one when our tour manager yelled at me to run off the stage. Right then the tress collapsed 1 foot in front of [guitarist] Max [Kakacek]. At this point we thought only the stage broke, not the tent. Amid the chaos it was hard to tell exactly what had happened, but after the rescue teams started coming in it became clear that there were severe injuries and we are now being told there are reports of multiple deaths. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones in today's tragedy."
The rest of Pukkelpop, which was to feature James Blake, Foo Fighters, Lykke Li and Philadelphia's Kurt Vile & the Violators, has been cancelled. A "Pay Your Respects" Facebook page is here.
Previously: Review: Bob Dylan at the Mann Follow In The Mix on Twitter here
