It’s always risky when you corral a bunch of humans in a field for one, two, three days, or more. The promise is that everyone will have fun experiencing music and the company of like-minded music fans.
But humans being humans, things will go wrong. It could be something as common as bad weather. Not much you can do about that except do your best to prepare for that contingency, whether it be blistering heat or pouring rain.
But then there are cases where carelessness, negligence, criminal behaviour, and even terrorism destroy everything.
Once the dust settles and lawsuits are settled, promoters, venues, and music fans pick themselves up and move on, hopefully learning something from the disaster they survived—but others didn’t.
This is why it feels so strange that there are music festival disasters that people either don’t know about or have forgotten entirely.
This is episode 73 of “Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry.” And this is the second half of stories involving music festival disasters that have been forgotten or swept from history, even though people have been hurt and even died.
In addition to the podcasts, you can hear Uncharted on these Corus radio stations (all times local):
- Toronto: AM 640 (4-5 am)
- London: 980 CFPL (4-5 am)
- Vancouver: 730 CKNW (1-2 am)
- Edmonton: 630 CHED (1-2 am)
- Calgary: QR77 (770 AM) (1-2 am)
- Winnipeg: 680 CJOB (1-2 am)
And don’t forget about my current national speaking tour that will feature a live Uncharted podcast presentation. Get your tickets here.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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