Life is Peachy for Korn Fans

NOT! Andy Richardson asked two unidentified men at a Korn show to mind the belly of his pregnant girlfriend and a mentally ill child who was in attendance with them in Atlanta. Apparently the two men were insulted by Richardson's cautioning, because after leaving the HiFi Buys Ampitheatre, they came back to beat the generous 30-year-old (boy)friend to a pulp. His mother, Gloria, claims that Andy is now brain dead and will not likely survive.

Not to make light of this devastating news, but all of the odds were against Richardson, and I'm surprised he hadn't foreseen disaster. Taking the two people he took to a Korn concert was not exactly the sharpest move. It could have been acceptable had he secured a comfortable place apart from the inevitable group of angry-for-no-real-reason-mosh-fucks. In the end, though, you only get the information that generates the most sympathy for the victim. The two left the arena and returned to beat the shit out of this guy. The victim had to have been really pissing these guys off to have inspired this in them, or maybe not. We don't know. Either way, these two guys should be put away for a very long while. What did this to them, though? Was it Korn?

My first rock concert was Korn in 1997. I was 12-years-old and I guess you could say it was the beginning of my long and loving relationship with live music. At the time, though, I was dooped. I like aggressive music, but Korn gives me this pedophile vibe--taking advantage of and soiling the purity of children. Their angst sells records to kids just as they reach that angsty stage and make them angstier. Fuck these puritanical shits who want to ban certain music, etc., but sometimes I feel as if bands like Korn have the ability to rile up something in you that shouldn't be riled. Anything could aggravate this thing inside of you if that thing is in large enough quantity, but bands like Korn make it trendy--trendy to package yourself in a metaphorical casket that you violently and without logical reason fight to stay in and simultaneously fight to get out of.

I was one of these kids, but I never had enough of that thing inside of me to flip, but I did see the worst side of me come out during this time and I attribute the way it came out to music like Korn's. Looking back on it, it was totally silly. Absolutely hysterical, but if I was the wrong kind of person, perhaps I could have ended up like those two pieces of shit at the Korn concert. It's not a band's responsibility to change themselves and their music to accommodate unstable egos, but couldn't they preach something else outside of their music? Establish their live setting as a safe place to vent (Dance your fucking asses off. Throw yourselves around, even, but know that in the end this is fun and the people around you are here for the same and there should be an overwhelming sense of harmony and love in the air despite what might appear to be violence); Tell us, Korn, that while we're a frustrated people, we could be happier if we didn't dwell so much on everything that's wrong and the hate we have bubbling inside our immature bellies.

Going through these rebellious periods of your life are so critical to your development, and your music taste could and maybe even should reflect this period, but I also believe that sometimes it's the music's responsibility to talk to us on some intelligent level. Instead of throwing back at us a darker and ballooned version of the belief system we already have for ourselves, these bands like Korn could discuss what's so hard about life, but not let us get so fucking angry about it. Stop aggravating that sense of dissatisfaction, or whatever it is, to the point of explosion, an explosion whose debris puts a guy in the hospital brain dead and close to death. To say that there aren't other variables would be just as stupid as the guys who actually put him in the hospital, but it seems almost too convenient that it happened at a Korn concert. Isn't a concert supposed to be a transcendent experience instead of a constant concern for your safety from those fucking assholes whose only intention is to drink some beers and whoop some ass (Don't forget this happened in Atlanta)?

The sad part of all of this is the guys in this particular situation were not kids, but apparently just as impressionable. It's arrested development. If a band like Korn still speaks to you on a truly emotional or intellectual level after your teenage years, I think you've got to step outside of yourself for a moment. As I get older, I get more and more calm and peaceful. Isn't that supposed to happen for all of us? Well, I apparently not for Korn fans.

Source: NME