Last Saturday, September 11th, local band Home Star Runner played their last ever two shows. The day show, as expected, attracted a large number of under 18s who moshed, crowd surfed and stage dived their way through the epic 16 song set. Within about 5 minutes of the band leaving the stage, security were shouting at people to leave the premises.

For the night show,an even larger crowd packed themselves into the venue and sang back every word from every song. These were the people who grew up listening to Home Star Runner since they started in 2005 and, like me, expected them to move onto the greater things.

The controversy began about 3 songs from the end when several security guards started throwing people out for what could loosely be described as ‘moshing’ but was more like jumping up and down to music. The response from the guards was heavy-handed to say the least. After the final song, Nocturnal, cries of ‘One More Tune’ were met with security guards standing on stage telling people to “Shut the f*ck up and get out” and singling out one person in the crowd to hurl abuse at and threaten. Security then began to push people out of the venue and into the bar area. The majority complied but a few had taken exception to being herded out like cattle and turned back towards the stage. The security guards responded by grabbing the throat of an individual and forcing him outside. When many of his friends saw this treatment, a fight broke out in the bar where security were more than happy to join in rather than defuse the situation.

The fighting spilled outside to the smoking area where security began looking for the offenders inside. Again, instead of asking politely for them to leave they opted for the heavy-handed approach, getting people into headlocks, grabbing by the throat and throwing punches. This led to numerous people getting involved and the situation quickly getting out of hand. Having talked to a few people after, listened to people giving statements to the Gardai, it appears the situation escalated when one of the bouncers punched the girlfriend of Home Star Runner’s front man in the face. The gardaĆ­ arrived and arrested the frontman as he was seen reacting to his girlfriend getting punched but was later released. Crawdaddy was evacuated and everyone was left on the streets giving their accounts of how security let a minor situation get completely out of hand.

Now, after having Sunday to retrospectively think about what had happened and having looked at the photos and videos uploaded, it has been decided that more action has to be taken. A Facebook group has been set up for bands as well as everyone else to find out exactly what happened and we are asking people to boycott Crawdaddy, not only because of what happened on Saturday night but for your own safety. Formal complaints and legal action are also being considered.

If anyone has more to add about what happened, feel free to leave a comment here or on the Facebook page.

We contacted POD for comment on this matter and they have given us the following statement.

There was an incident last Saturday night in Crawdaddy during the Home Star Runner performance.

Crawdaddy management have investigated this incident, met the security and venue staff involved, and watched the CCTV footage. We can categorically confirm that no females were struck or injured, and that security acted in a responsive manner to being physically attacked. Security responded to prevent the incident escalating further.

Both Crawdaddy and P&B Security have a zero tolerance policy on any aggression or unpleasantness in our staff. Security had the safety of the members of the public at the forefront of their minds when they moved the trouble outside the venue.

When the Garda intervened, one band member and one member of the public were arrested.

Links:

Discussion :

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iseanie/4982635324/in/photostream/

Videos uploaded to YouTube:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqUd6ko4Qgw

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyFMjg0QDT4

Facebook Group ‘Bands Against Crawdaddy’ (All welcome to join):
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114152201976775&ref=mf#!/group.php?gid=114152201976775
Which has the following mission statement :

Calling all performers: On Sept. 11 2010, security at Crawdady, Harcourt St. assaulted several member of the audience and a member of a band, who was subsequently arrested and released, without charge, because he did nothing wrong. The security were seen hitting at least one girl. Several more people were injured. We will not stand for uniformed thuggery.

Goldenplec would like to add that the above statements are based on the actual witnessed acts by the person writing the article and not hearsay or comment of others, all the facts and details leading to things seen may not have been witnessed and therefore we have drawn no conclusions on why certain things definitively happened. So far there is contention between whether a girl was struck or not with witness’s claiming yes and POD claiming via CCTV that nothing of this nature occured.