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CHAOS AT NO DOUBT SHOW AND LIMP BIZKIT TICKET GIVEAWAY

With concert safety under intense scrutiny following the Roskilde tragedy, five people were injured at a No Doubt concert at the Mesa (Ariz.) Amphitheatre on Wednesday, August 2. The incident follows reports of unruly crowds at Limp Bizkit's Napster-funded free tour.

According to The Arizona Republic, toward the end of the Southern Californian band's performance, the 4,000-strong audience rushed the stage, which resulted in the crushing of some people against the railing in front of the stage and other concertgoers being trampled.

Three people were taken to nearby hospitals and two others were treated for injuries at the scene. Of the five injured, three are minors, one is 18, and one is 20. A medic was also slightly injured while pulling a person from the crowd. Mesa Fire Deputy Battalion Chief Mary Cameli told The Republic that the injuries amounted to "just cuts and bruises from getting stepped on."

Angela Donahue, 16, told the paper she was up front at the concert and saw "a lot of people hurt," including an unconscious girl who was carried out on a stretcher.

No Doubt don't have a reputation for prompting crowd chaos. Limp Bizkit do. According to those waiting on line Wednesday for free tickets to a show near Chicago, "whoever ran the fastest and pushed the hardest got the tickets."

Limp Bizkit's Back to Basics tour, sponsored by the embattled Napster company, is being presented free for fans, who are alerted to the location of each show a day or two before the concert. They must show up at the venue in order to receive wristbands guaranteeing admission. While many claimed this would be a recipe for disaster, no trouble has been reported until now.

Doug Mason described the scene outside the Odeum Sports & Expo Center in Villa Park, Ill., as "pretty crazy" to Sonicnet. A gathered throng of 5,000 scrambled for 3,500 available wristbands. In the process one person, Brian Dugan, was pushed out of a wheelchair and another was hit in the head with a bottle.

"A lot of people were wanting to get out of the line," said Dugan. "I know I was. But I had four or five guys behind me watching out for me and keeping people from pushing forward when I fell down. It could've been a lot worse if they weren't there."

"Stuff was being thrown all over the place," Dave Richards, program director of Chicago radio station WKQX, told Sonicnet. "Limp Bizkit is great, but they're all about organized chaos. They don't mind all this. It draws more attention to their band. There was just not enough security, not enough organization. It definitely could've been organized better."

Local promoter Scott Gelman, vice president of Jam Productions, conceded to Sonicnet, "There needs to be a better way to distribute these tickets than first-come, first-serve. There were too many people in too small of a space. It was a little chaotic at first, but I feel as if we had adequate security there. But we had more space the next night [Friday] in Minneapolis and no problems."

Gelman disagrees with some reports, saying that the situation was "never ugly." Police Chief Ron Ohlson concurs: "We were prepared for disorder, and it did not occur. We heard of only one incident where someone was hit by a plastic bottle and received a cut, but that's it. To me, it seemed orderly. And from the comments I've heard, it was an orderly procedure."