Tonight’s Stones concert at Scott Stadium was abruptly halted shortly after it began, after a bomb threat was called in. The Daily Progress was the first to report this, via their Stones show quasi-blog, writing:
Mick Jagger announced that the band had been told by authorities they needed to take a 10-minute break because of a technical problem.
Afterward, several police officers appeared on stage with dogs.
Several thousand people seated on the field were evacuated, and the dogs sniffed around the stage and the field in front of the stage.
On their 11pm broadcast, NBC 29 reported that it wasn’t until an hour later that the show started again; clearly, the problems were not technical in nature. Bomb threats became a nasty habit at UVa in 2002, but hadn’t been an issue for the past few years. The Stones intend to play a full show, despite, planning to wrap up shortly after midnight.
my money is on all those cvillians who don’t like noise nor like the fact yesterday 29 was INDEED like Northern Va.
wouldn’t it be ironic if it was somebody pissed about the noise, since their actions only prolonged the noise rather than stifling it? how late did the show go, anyway?
Why am I left to believe that the number of people caught and punished for bomb-threats is strikingly low?
I didn’t attend the concert myself, but I hear it was THE BOMB…!
Word is the scare was called in from the 5th Street Food Lion shopping center. Probably somebody from Richmond who was stuck intraffic. I talked to one person from Richmond who left there at 5. The show started at 7. I left my home at 5, and I live 10 minutes away. Any time you go to an event like this, you need to be sure to allow plenty of time for traffic congestion and parking delays. Apparently, some folks from the eastern part of the state didn’t know that – but probably do now.
I also talked to plenty of people from the east who left early enough to arrive in ample time to party in the parking lot.
This wasn’t Charlottesville’s fault – the city is what it is, nd I think everybody did all they could to alert concertgoers to the fact that traffic was going to be a bitch. They handle 10,000 more people for home games, but most of those are regulars who know what to do and exactly where to go. Most of the people from out-of-town have probably never been to a Virginia football game, and they probably started freaking out a bit when they were sitting in traffic well after the show started. Frankly, if somebody in Richmond left at 5 to go to a 7 o’clock concert in Charlottesville, it’s pretty hard to sympathize with their travel woes.
And yes, the show was totally the BOMB. A taper with an apparently excellent rig made it in, and the recording is already in circulation (http://www.dimeadozen.org – it’s a bittorrent site, and requires registration). It may be the only time Mick Jagger has ever said the word “Midlothian” on stage.
When the band came back after the intermission, it seemed as if they were concerned that the crowd may have become distracted, and the second set was SMOKING. Either that, or they read McKenzie’s column from the previous day’s paper and it motivated them to teach the man a lesson. The Stones not as big a deal as Barbara Streisand? On the scales of “rock and roll,” Streisand doesn’t even register.