My first concert was Night Ranger and Rail (winners of the first MTV Basement Tapes competition; remember them?) back in 1984. My first way out-of-town concert was Petra, the "Christian rockers." I saw them in Lubbock, Texas, two whole hours away from Clovis, N.M., where I lived at the time. Bon Jovi and Ratt was the first concert I drove myself to see. Bon Jovi was just the opening act (this was the 7800 Fahrenheit tour, a couple years before the whole Slippery When Wet phenomenon), but those were the guys I desperately wanted to see. So back in the winter of 1986 I took my younger brother Matt to the Amarillo Civic Center (again, two hours away) to catch the show. I think tickets went for ten bucks.

Like most arenas out west (who apparently hadn't heard about the Who tragedy in Cincinnati back in 1979), seating in the hall was first come, first served. I was fifteen, about 5' 5" and maybe 120 pounds. But I had to see Bon Jovi. Up close and personal, like. So I abandoned Matt in the stands, hit the floor and squeezed my tiny frame through the crown until I was the equivalent of ten rows back. Once the music started, the movement of the crowd lifted me up. My feet didn't touch the ground until after the boys finished their 45-minute set.

At first, the lack of footing bothered me. What would happen if I fell? Then I realized that as long as three or four thousand people were crammed onto the floor trying to get up to the front of the stage, there's no way I could fall. So I simply rode the energy of the crowd. Not exactly crowd surfing, I guess, but something close.

When Bon Jovi finished up, the masses climbed up over the walls and headed to the bathrooms. I found the ground once more and wandered up to see Matt. He actually got to see the show (being on the floor amongst the giants, I'd merely caught glimpses of the band, though the music was really, really loud), and despite my entreaties, he wanted no part of the action in front of the stage. He was 13 and even smaller than me. He made the right choice. So we sat in seats stage right and took in Ratt. As arena rock bands go, Ratt was pretty pedestrian. I liked "Round and Round," and I still dig "You're in Love," the first track on the band's second album, but past that there's a lot of middling stuff in the Ratt repertoire. No matter. I'd floated in a crowd. And, more importantly, I'd seen (as it were) Bon Jovi live.

Like most guys my age (32), I've seen Great White live as well. I saw them open up for Whitesnake (in Lubbock, once again) back in 1988 and I heard them in St. Louis when they and Tesla (before that band released its hit acoustic album--the one that inspired MTV to create "Unplugged") were playing a co-headliner gig in the spring of 1990. I was backstage interviewing Brian Wheat, Tesla's bass player, while Great White played (interviewing being something of a subjective term as I had laryngitis; Wheat was nice enough to make me a cup of tea with lemon and honey in a vain attempt to resurrect my voice). I'm familiar with Great White and I own all of their albums through Twice Shy. I'm sure a lot of people can say the same thing.

So when I heard about the tragedy in West Warwick, R.I., I was surprised. Surprised the band was even around. Back in 1989 these guys were ancient. Jack Russell, the lead singer, has got to be pushing 50 or more at this point. They haven't had a hit in more than a decade and like many folks (though I really should know better) I assumed the boys had hung up their spurs and given up on chasing Spandex-clad jailbait once and for all.

That Great White was still a going concern (I'd lay down plenty of cash that the band is now kaput, even if the press release is a few months in the making) is weird. Even more bizarre is that the "bombing" of the Station came only five days after more than 20 people died in a stampede to the doors at the E2 nightclub in Chicago. A while back I wrote about how it was a shame that rock and roll wasn't dangerous any more. I don't take back the words--I was speaking in more of a metaphorical than literal sense--but it is frightening to see how stupid people can be sometimes.

As I see it, the responsible parties in Chicago are the people who chained the doors and the people who failed to provide adequate crowd control security. If the city failed to enforce its own laws, whether or not the officials were bought off, that too is reprehensible. As for the Station, I don't know if the band asked permission to fire flash pots (basically cans full of gunpowder and other fun flammable dust), but someone should have either lowered the amount of fire in the pot (which is really easy to do, assuming the band mixes its own pyro) or simply decided that the ceiling was too low. I'm just guessing here, but I assume that someone with the club (maybe the manager, maybe a waitress) approved the pyrotechnics. It is possible that the band lit them without permission, but I find it hard to believe that anyone at the club who watched the sound check (which is most likely when the pots were placed) didn't notice the stuff. After all, the sound guy is crawling around all over the stage to make sure that mikes are properly set. He certainly would have seen the flash pots, and he certainly would have known what they are and how they would be used.

The bottom line is that more than 100 people died last week while they were supposed to be having fun. They died because other people acted with extreme stupidity. We can pass all sorts of laws and increase inspections of nightclubs all we want, but I have no doubt that there will be another stampede at a club or arena or stadium someday and that people will die. A band or DJ or someone will burn down another small shack that passes as a live music venue. That's just how it is.

I'm not trying to be fatalistic or cynical or anything like that. I'm not saying we shouldn't increase our vigilance or do everything we can to make sure that tragedies like this don't happen. I am saying that at some point we will have done as much as is humanly possible. And then we ought to focus on other important things. There's more to life than explosions and other loud noises, even if such things kill people.

Jon Worley bought his last Bon Jovi album in 1986.