A friend asked me if I would be interested in being a cameraman for a live concert at a local venue. Sure I said, having just lied about my experience. It was a Rap/Hip Hop show that had acts like Snoop Dog, Nelly, LL Cool J, Mystikal and Ja Rule. I was ready for some hot summer fun. That is until the head of security said that a gang called (I think) Gape Street was going to invade the concert and try to take over the stage. I was told where my escape route was if things went down. He should have said “when”. About half way through the concert they arrived, all dressed with purple “colors”. They descended upon the orchestra pit in mass. It was at this time the head of security told me, nay he screamed in my face “Get out of here now!!” with that I jumped onto the stage in the middle of a performance by Rakim I think. Once on the stage I grabbed my camera and tripod. The other cameraman and I were now able to continue to film the concert from the side of the stage. By the way what we were shooting was being projected on the screen behind the performers. So now I am on the side of the stage in front of some speakers. I can no longer hear the control room to tell me what to point my camera at so I had to make stuff up. It turns out I did a pretty good job and they were happy. I was deaf but they were happy. So about an hour later or so during LL Cool J (who is a great performer) things got worse. At this point I was on camera 2 that is about 1/3 the way up the seats with a head on shot of the stage. Then fights broke out all over the arena. They were on both sides of me. This is when a bunch of black guys that were dressed in very nice suits with bow ties jumped in and started to kick some ass. I was not familiar with the Nation of Islam very much but was sure glad they were there. I was starting to understand what the people at the Altamont festival felt in the 60’s with the Hell’s Angles as security. But the Nation guys were really nice and like I said really well dressed. About half way through LL’s set he left and blamed the crowed. We had a canopy for the are that I shared with the sound mixer that took 10 min to put away but only 10 seconds for us to put back up and hide. An announcer came out and said the show was over. He might as well have said “on you marks, get set, go” as that was the cue for everyone to go ape-shit. They rushed the stage. The cameraman on the left was already gone having almost been hit with a metal object. The other cameraman on the right was my friend Brian. He was already on his way out when I yelled at him on our intercom “Get out they’re coming right at you! They’re storming the stage!”. He got out all right and got to the control room right before they locked the door. The sound guys and myself on the other hand were stranded in the audience hidden in our little bunker waiting for the police to clear out the area. We were there for about an hour before we could start to clean up. Then we drank.
read about it here