Pumped-up Rock Crowd Floors Ex Organizers

by John Kendle

The Winnipeg Sun

June 24th, 1995

If you want to run a rock show, you've got to be prepared for a rock crowd.
That's a lesson Red River Exhibition organizers learned last night at Winnipeg Stadium, where an enthusiastic (but not ugly) crowd of 3,800 young rock fans completely overwhelmed the Ex's seating and security arrangements at the fair's first ever paid ticket concert.
The group experience of rock concerts is as much one of adrenalin as anything else, and young, pumped-up fans will do anything they can to get as close to the source of the music as possible -- including jumping walls and hurdling chairs.
Which is precisely what happened last night during Headstones' opening gambit for The Watchmen; which prompted organizers to empty the floor area of the Stadium and re-set chairs before The Watchmen could start their full-length concert.
Three songs into the headliner's set, the same thing happened again.
And how could it not, given the fact the young quartet is giving great value for money these days, playing evenly paced set of old and new tunes that displays its ever-expanding musical depth.
As Danny Greaves, Joey Serlin, Sam Kohn and Ken Tizzard collectively mature as musicians, they're finding legs which will carry them far. This is a band that -- even on its faster songs -- never loses its groove. More subdued cuts, like show opener Middle East and All Uncovered, display a great dynamic sensibility.
No wonder the crowd was excited.
Headstones certainly weren't to blame for the audience's early antics, despite singer Hugh Dillon's command to the floor-sitting crowd to "lose the chairs" before the show had even begun, prompting an instant mosh pit and setting body surfers flying.
That was going to happen anyway, and the band seemed to draw energy from the crowd as it rushed forward. Though seemingly uncomfortable on the big stage, the Toronto quartet really hit its stride on the hard riffing, heart-thumping adrenalin stomps of show-closers Unsound and Hindsight.