Trouble seems to follow Snoop Dogg when he plays a concert in the state of Washington. He performed at the KUBE summer jam concert at the Gorge in 2001. At the show there were 53 arrests and 31 people were sent to the hospital. At the time those were the highest totals for a show at the Gorge. A man was also shot to death in the campgrounds after the show. Before the 2002 season the Grant County Sheriff’s office asked House of Blues that manages the Gorge to never invite Snoop back. On Saturday night I went to see him at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, WA and trouble followed him again.
Snoop’s nephew Oowee opened the show and played for about 20 minutes. I did not see any of his act as I was busy eating and drinking in the VIP club. Next up was “The Game”. He invited everyone in the venue to come down to the pit. The lack of security was kind of surprising and people from the 100 and 200 level sections pushed and jumped their way down to the GA pit/floor area. At this point I noticed that there really where not a lot of people at the show. I would guess less than 10000 people were at the show. The Game said he was sick but he sounded fine, maybe a little bit of a cold. I thought it was cool that he was wearing a Seattle Seahawks jersey, specifically a Steve Largent #80 jersey. He was my favorite player in Seahawks history. After a long career in the NFL he went on to be a Congressman for the state of Okalahoma and he also ran for governor. The lack of depth in The Game’s songs really showed. He took a lot of time in his set talking with the crowd and asking them which song he should play “I will play any of them for you.” This is an old classic trick to stretch your set and at the same time make them fell like you are on their side. You can act as if the next song you plan to play is in fact the song that someone from the crowd requested you play. Overall I did enjoy his act. On “Hate it or Love it” he kind of dogged 50 Cent a bit and then asked the crowd to sing 50’s part. He had some nice fireworks as part of his set which were kind of fun.
Last but not least was of course Snoop Dogg. He started almost 40 minutes after he was scheduled to start even though up to that point the concert had been on schedule. My VIP box is right behind the mixing area where all of the consoles are and I was able to get the set list from the show. I scanned in a copy of Snoop’s setlist and have included it in my blog. Snoop starts out his set with a “R” rated video with naked women – very soft porn. Snoop put on a good show and came out surrounded in smoke. The smell of incense was everywhere. He even has an off stage DJ that his show on video that does a good job interacting with mostly when the stage was dark between songs. Things turned bad during Gin and Juice. A fan came from what I saw the side of the stage and came up behind Snoop. This started him and Snoop’s entourage quickly threw him to the ground, kicked him, punched him, mobbed him, and I think I even saw them throwing bottles on him. There were at least 15 people going to town on the guy. These were not security people in the yellow shirts but part of the crew that Snoop had up on stage. This was kind of disappointing to see and in at this point the show it was basically over. It was already 11:35 pm and since the show was supposed to end at 11 pm I have to believe that we were running up on the mandatory cut off that any show would have given local noise ordinances and just how late into the night a show can go. Some people seem to think that this was just part of the act but I worked as a yellow shirt doing security for big shows in the early 90s and this was far from an act and really disappointing to see considering the guy made no hostile moves at all toward anyone on stage (but he should not have been there in the first place). I saw something on the news tonight (Northwest Cable News) and they showed the guy in a lot of pain and he was barely able to walk. For some reason this story has not made the Seattle papers. The Seattle Times incorrectly reports that Snoop played “Drop it like it’s hot.” and the Seattle PI just mentions that a fight ended the show. The Tacoma New Tribune has no mention of the fight also in their write up of the concert.
Update: They have the link up from the newcast I saw. You might have to register to see what they wrote and to view the interview but you can see just how bad he was beaten up.
A digital recording of my life 