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Boston not the first: Drugs, ambulances follow Avicii like a groupie

After last night's meltdown at the Garden, Tim Bergling, a.k.a. Avicii, tweeted:

Just hearing the awful news abt tonight. Its a terrible thing, I rly hope everyone is ok! My thoughts go to those affected & their families.

It might be a familiar refrain for the Swedish DJ at this point, since this sort of thing seems to happen at least once a year at one of his concerts:

UNH police sorting out dozens of arrests at rave, apparent arson under investigation, Manchester Union-Leader, 11/19/11.
Dean said 32 adults and 2 juveniles are facing charges that include public intoxication, alcohol possession, assault, assault on a police officer, criminal trespassing and theft.

22 hospitalized during, after Avicii concert, CTPost, 4/22/12.
The number of those hospitalized after being entertained by the up-and-coming Swedish electronic musician was more than any local concert in recent memory, according to a spokesperson at St. Vincent's Medical Center, which treated and released 12 patients.

Fury as DJ Avicii gig in Bellahouston Park descends into drink and drug-fuelled bedlam, Daily Record, 8/19/13.
THE concert, the second performance of Glasgow's Summer Sessions, was attended by tens of thousands of fans but locals described "horrendous" scenes as drunken louts fought and turned their area into a scene of chaos.

29 sent to hospital from Avicii concert in Toronto, Toronto Sun, 5/18/14.
The Avicii concert kept Toronto EMS scrambling Saturday night, with at least 29 people ending up in hospital to be treated for illnesses related to alcohol or drugs.

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Comments

This would never have happened at a Bud Ballou show.

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What was the name of that place on Kilby St. where he used to appear? Benny's, maybe?

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Although I later learned his real name was Ron Polcari.

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The song was standard training bra circuit formula crap.

I'm old school and prefer Benny Benassi.

http://youtu.be/ddC6GEHAlkg

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Benassi is now considered old school? I get that the electronic dance music scene is very youth focused but are relatively recent artists really treated as old hat so quickly?

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You can really take everything I know about this music scene, put it in a thimble and still have room for Texas.

And a pudgy 60 year old is not a good bet for this level of strenuousness and substance chowing anyway.

Nice dancin goils though.

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How's this jar your preserves , although not at Boston Garden when I saw them , but jazzed up anyway, Chicago with Earth , Wind & Fire, can you dig it !

http://youtu.be/zz1ntKkWitQ

http://youtu.be/CwxyP06ZPu4

Or maybe J Geils at Boston Garden ,

http://youtu.be/pKyb5b4HS1o

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You should check out this radio show on WFMU, playlist and archives here: http://wfmu.org/playlists/NI The DJ used to to have a show on WZBC for years, but moved to New York. I think he's right up your alley.

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I'm familiar with the system of stations like WFMU, ZBC etc, but I don't listen to radio anymore, just an iPod.

I was at a Thanksgiving reunion a year or so or go and it was depressing.

I use google plus in ways that resemble my old DJ days. My following at Google is about on par with U Hub at Face book so I'll periodically roam and share stuff.

In many ways it is orders of magnitude better than radio. Where I use to listen to field recordings of Pontic Greek music, now I can watch people actually doing it and the sound quality is fine for my crappy ears.

I can watch Sonny Rollins on Italian TV in the 60s with Ornettes band. Don Cherry looks like a gangster. It rocks.

And fun stuff happens like introducing an Indonesian woman I know to a Thai version of a Horace Silver Jazz standard, "Song For My Father" cause the woman was missing her dad.

She's also fond of Burgundian Polyphony.

In a way, doing stuff at Google Plus is like playing your life as a dj. The totality of your lore.passed around this vast cyber campfire with a planetful of strangers you get to befriend.

I don't use Facebook but I have a feeling it doesn't quite roll that way as it builds out from clan structures.

This works with affinity structures.

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I can dig one of them , Planxty .
The rest are , how you say , not my cup of tea , but that's ok, this is America !

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..the Planxty.

That whole world of the Celtic continuum from Breton to Ireland has a particularly grand quality in the morning as the day stretches on ahead.

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Couldn't find them at Green Linnet, going to put it on my headphone gizmo , for mowing my field. Thanx for the tip here.

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..may have been licence deals where she was able to release discs for a certain time frame but then rights reverted to the owner.

It's still on Shanachie and you can get an MP3 download of the entire Planxty collection for around 10 bucks at Amazon

That was the deal she had for that killer Dick Gaughan/Andy Irvine recording Parallel Lines with
The Creggan White Hare and its reference to Barney Conway.

http://youtu.be/pkJsnVg7bew

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Do you go to things like the Lowell Folk Festival?

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Concerts are another relic from a past before recording.

Back in the days of Liszt or Bach, concerts were like the sound system.

I realized that it isn't that visually interesting for me.

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He's kind of up there in age at 46 and has been rocking for some time now. I don't think it's inappropriate to call him that, certainly one of the pioneers of electronic music.

I also don't think it means he doesn't still put on great shows - because he and a lot of the older guys still do them better than ever (and certainly much better than Avicii's dreck)

Also, all the press around this focuses on "drugs" but the vast majority all sounds strictly alcohol related, and the few issues actually with drugs boil down to bad public policy and lack of education. I hate the media.

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Why is it so hard for news outlets to report that this was heat also.

Oh yeah because the minute medical people hear/see drugs as apart of the story, its automatically the cause... hook, line, and sinker. It goes back to the whole "drugs are bad" attitude (rather than doing the smart thing and treat it like a public health issue and not a criminal issue)

Sure the drugs made you over heat, but in reality the cause of people's issues last night was the heat, not the drugs because if a person was not overheated, we wouldn't be talking about this today.

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And I also want to add that this "hysteria" against drug use is part of the problem. If we stopped this "drugs are bad" attitude and start EDUCATING people about usage, these issues would not happen at all.

But no, we'd rather not talk about it or sum it up with "drugs are bad" instead of giving users knowledge that will save their lives.

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Exactly this.

I pulled my kids from DARE because the curriculum was a joke and the approach was dangerously naive. I opted to be honest about why people use drugs, what the hazards are, etc.

Trainspotting is most instructive, as is Walk the Line.

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certainly one of the pioneers of electronic music.

Karlheinz Stockhausen and I had a good laugh over this post.

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it was a howl too.

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Seriously, I don't understand this. I've never attended an event in the Toronto Dominion Garden, but judging from pictures, isn't it all mostly seating? What is the point of playing music people will want to dance to, in a place where they can't dance?

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This is why I usually won't see a headliner DJ at a non-club venue (except the Comcast Center and Boston Pavilion which does provide a dancing pit).

But then again as a EDM follower.. Avicii is too mainstream to be considered real EDM. (At least IMHO). Call me when Underworld or Moby or Digweed is playing...

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Wait, Moby is underground? Even I've heard of him.

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Even Underworld and John Digweed aren't. Big beat just died off in the early 2000s.

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Sure you've heard of him but like many of these underground successes, they have a couple of larger hits for the masses.

Sorry those names were the first things that came off the top of my head (because they were in the playlist i was listening to on my way to work this morning)

How about..

Hatiras
Braxe
Phats and Smalls
Pulse Driver
Freemasons
Cream & Barclay

Better?

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...with their crazy music and the drugs.

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That these idiots can't go to a concert without ODing. When did drugs become a requirement for electronic music?

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Is alcohol required to watch sporting events on site or in bars and family rooms? No, but does usually make for a better experience.

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how long and boring watching a baseball game at the stadium really is.

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Think you answered your own question.

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I hear people in many cities suffer heat exhaustion and other injuries, pass out, and need medical attention. What to do about them?

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