City tells promoter to tame concert

An agreement promises less nudity and a less rowdy rock concert this Sunday at Clearwater's Coachman Park.

By EILEEN SCHULTE
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 7, 2002

CLEARWATER -- Really, the disc jockey insists, it was all just an accident.

Somehow, some way, words to the effect of "Show us your breasts" popped up on the Jumbotron during the first Next Big Thing alternative rock concert in Coachman Park last December.

"I don't know if it was left over from a previous concert or what, but words came up on a screen that encouraged that," said Michael Sharkey, WSUN-97X's program director who is also known as Shark.

As a band called Disturbed played, many females in the crowd obliged by lifting up their shirts.

"It was like starting a fire," Sharkey said. "The girls were not being shy."

Before long, he said, the camera panned across the crowd, and multiple pairs of bare breasts were shown on the screens. Meanwhile, the crowd was being hosed down by security people by the mosh pit because it was such a hot day.

Clearwater City Manager Bill Horne, who was in the audience watching, was not happy.

"We had a wet T-shirt concert without the shirts," he said.

Afterwards, city officials told Sharkey to make some changes to this year's Next Big Thing concert, which is scheduled Sunday and features 16 bands including Everclear, Our Lady Peace and Cypress Hill.

The city wanted less nudity and less rowdiness. The radio station, owned by Cox Radio Inc., wanted to make sure they will still be allowed to have concerts at Coachman.

The result?

An agreement to try to tone things down.

It worked during a test run in April when the radio station put on its Freebie Weebie show at the park.

"That went great," Sharkey said. "We laughed that day. It was almost too quiet. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop."

While the city's top concern is safety, Horne said he wanted to make sure the disc jockeys and other concert organizers play it cool and "respect the city's values."

"We felt the DJs encouraged the showing of the breasts," said Horne. "Video cameras were showing the action to the people in the back of the park."

Sharkey disputes that.

"We did not encourage it," he said.

But he admitted "that day was a big blur to me" because one of the bands was late and "threw the day off."

Horne also said there were mosh pits and crowd surfing, where a person is passed around like a doll from audience member to audience member.

"We've worked with (the radio station) on crowd surfing, to discourage it, not encourage it," said Kevin Dunbar, Clearwater's parks and recreation director. "At some point you get dropped, and not everybody lands on a soft surface."

Dunbar said one girl was dropped on her head last year and required a trip to the hospital, but other than that, "there were no big injuries," he said.

But the main problem that day was the heat. There were about 75 cases of heat exhaustion, but "one of the TV stations erroneously reported them as injuries," Dunbar said.

Sharkey has been fielding calls all week from worried parents who remembered the report and wanted to know if the concert will be safe for their children.

"I told them there will be more security and more barricades," Sharkey said.

Horne is hopeful this Next Big Thing will go more smoothly this time around.

"Last year, we had one of the hottest rock bands on the circuit, Disturbed," said Horne, who plans to attend. "And they really were disturbed. This year is more of a toned-down lineup, from what I understand."

And if things get out of control?

"I will give serious consideration to whether we will do it again," he said.

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