Newcastle music lover Laura Kebby has hit out at the punters in her local music scene. In a fiery open letter published via Newcastle Live, Kebby has taken members of the Newcastle scene to task for the rampant violence she frequently sees at gigs.
“I’m writing this because I’m getting desperate,” Kebby says in the piece. “Because the crap you keep pulling is sending me insane and makes me long for 14 hour train trips to Melbourne to go and see shows. Don’t play dumb, ok – enough is enough.”
Kebby opens with an account of how she left a recent Hard Aches gig in relatively good spirits, only to open up Facebook the next morning to find that the gig had once again been the scene of violence, as many gigs in Newcastle are, Kebby alleges.
“It’s happening all over Newcastle,” she writes. “I saw the Smith Street Band last year and came home with a ripped T-shirt and a black eye. Not an accidental black eye. I was punched in the face in the pit – and this is not the first time.”
“Yes, I can hear it already: ‘If you don’t like the pit stay out of it.’ No way. This is not at all about that. I have been front row at many a gig, and in the middle of many a mosh pit of much, MUCH heavier gigs than the ones I’m talking about.”
As Kebby stresses, this is not about bemoaning the fact that she’s come home with a scrape or a bruise after a gig. The issue, she writes, is that Newcastle has somehow bred a community of punters who are intentionally out to hurt other people.
“At a Luca Brasi gig earlier this year, I saw a girl get dragged into the pit only to be pulled out just in time before she was fly-kicked to the face. The same thing happened at the Pup gig earlier this year,” Kebby continues.
“I’ve seen groups of people at these gigs blatantly turn their back on whoever is performing on stage, to run at an unsuspecting punter fist-first – for what? For the sake of music? ‘It’s punk rock, man,’ one guy told me as I pulled him off the floor, bloody-nosed, full cut.”
As Kebby notes, the problem is not restricted to punk gigs. “At the Alex Lahey gig a month or so ago – after she had finished playing – not one but TWO fights broke out on the dance floor,” the author recounts.
“Have you checked the Facebook pages of the bands you apparently love the most lately?” Kebby adds. “Every single time some idiot decides to behave like how they think a true punk lad is meant to behave, the bands comment. They do. And they will stop coming. They will stop coming here.”
Indeed, numerous bands, including The Smith Street Band, Camp Cope, High Tension, Luca Brasi, and Spiderbait, just to name a few, have taken an active role in calling out unacceptable behaviours from punters in their crowds.
But it’s important to note that the gigs these bands have cited as being the scene of violence and assault were not in Newcastle, and violence, sadly, takes place at gigs all over the country. Is Newcastle a particular outlier in this regard?
As far as Kebby’s concerned, it’s only a matter of time until the bands get fed up with such behaviour and stop coming to non-city destinations like Newcastle. You can read her entire op-ed via Newcastle Live here.
