(Thanks to audience member/reader Spencer Kaye for the correction regarding this story.)
Win Butler, singer of Canadian art-rock band Arcade Fire, recently lambasted the crowd during a concert in Nottingham, England, on Wednesday, stating that they’d never return, because of two idiots who thought it would be funny to throw things at the band during the performance.
The group was headlining a show at the Nottingham Arena on Halloween night, and they were about midway into the set when a bottle thrown from within the crowd hit Butler in the face. He stopped singing, looking into the audience and saying, “Where’d you go? No seriously. Where’d you go, you f*cker?”
After that brief delay, through which the band had continued to perform as Butler took the audience member to task, they played uninterrupted for a few songs until yet another person (or possibly the same person as before) threw yet another object onto the stage. This time Butler said, “If anything else comes onto the stage, we’re not playing Nottingham again” [Editor’s Note: As previously reported, the show was not stopped at this point, and the band continued to play the rest of their set, as well as an encore]. The threat apparently worked, as no further missiles were thrown throughout the rest of the night. I’m hoping that this was because event security caught the guy and beat him with an assortment of beer bottles along with a lone whiskey bottle before throwing him into the nearest busy street.
But the real losers here are the people who came to the show to see the band play. Nobody wants to have a show interrupted, as well as an irritated band. So why would you come to a show just to throw shit? I can see maybe if Arcade Fire performed at a festival where some of the crowd might not be into them, but they were headlining this show, so the people in the audience where there to see them. The person who threw the bottle is a filthy swine who needs to removed from society as soon as possible.
What if the person was just drunk? Well, considering it was Halloween, the chances of that being the case are very high. But just like not throwing things onto the stage is one of the unspoken rules when going to a concert, another one is not to get hammered. It not only affects the way you enjoy the concert, but it can also piss off other people who came there to see the band and follow the rules. If you’re going to act like an ass, stay home, because no one else wants to deal with you.
