Crew defend Noll

By Julius Grafton

After someone lobbed a full can of drink at Shannon Noll he lost his mind. He said some offensive things. It went viral, and the condemnation was inevitable. CX asked around and got a more balanced report of what happened at The Duck Creek Races.

While the Three Rivers Machinery Duck Creek Picnic Races is intended as a family day, the after party is and was typically raucous, as anyone whose done a bush gig would know. Country folk like their rock, and they like a drink. The races management keep drink prices affordable, and – suck it up, city folk – RSA and drink monitoring just does not happen. Much.

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Morons throw things. I lived through the Bathurst Bike Race Riot which started because the band I was working with could not play due to the drummer leaving his traps case behind. That crowd got pissed and bored, and starting chucking things into the Police compound to see what would happen.

Bogans get pissed. So do well dressed folk, doctors, lawyers and psuedo intellectuals.

Noll has poor judgement. His fabulous fracas at the Crazy Horse Strip Club in Adelaide is a rolled gold exhibit of a minor star making a goose of himself.

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Here’s what we know about Noll. He is vain. He will seek out attention, ‘look at me!’. That’s part of being a rock star, so we can forgive that while we shake our heads. He likes a drink. His career lurches around and it can be hard for him to put bread on the family table. None of the above is particularly extraordinary.

Crew like him.

“Yes, there was some stuff he said that was totally obnoxious but from what I understand from crew who were there when he let rip was after a few of the band had already been hit by full rum and beer cans”, comments Stephen Askins. “When the filmed incident took place was when he saw the moron throwing them. I have worked with Shannon on about 5 occasions and never had a problem with him. Not saying he is innocent or a great guy, just saying he has always been a pro to work with as has his band and crew.”

“Following conversations with the crew I can confirm that the crew had to move their FOH ops position which was originally supposed to be on the back of a truck. The trucks owner got spooked by the crowd and and left so all ops were set up side of stage. Lighting geeza just hoped his lights looked good and the sound guy discreetly wandered out front and mixed via Ipad. Some of the crew also got injured and Police arrested heaps of punters and hung around whilst the crew loaded out. All in all a disgraceful incident so before you put shit on Shannon for his comments, just understand that his band and crew had been hit before he lost it.”

CX has seen the kind of incident handled well in the past. It’d be a good idea to have a discussion with performers beforehand if the combinations look ominous. The warning signs are simple: booze present in bottles or cans as opposed to poured into plastic cups. That part is the bad part on behalf of the Duck Creek people who should have known better.

Handled how? At first sign of anything airborne, show stops. All lights on. Announcement from side stage or FOH that the show will not proceed until the person who threw the whatever is ejected or departs. Announcement makes clear that one more object thrown will end the show. Wait five minutes and resume.

Michael Chugg, our favourite promotor, was really good at sorting this stuff out. At the infamous Guns and Roses concert at Eastern Creek in Sydney the fans – drinking cans of beer – got bored waiting for the always late Axl Rose to get his whatever together. They made a nice bonfire from the empty cartons at the top of the hill. Chuggi didn’t like it. He ‘enouraged’ them to put it out.

Family magazine as this is, we will spare you the Chugg-istic quotes but it worked a treat. In fact it worked too well, the bogans started jumping up and down to stomp out the flames, and several of them discovered that flannelette does, in fact, burn.