There has been much confusion in the last few months over the deaths of three fans at an AC/DC concert at the Utah Salt Palace January 18th. Many people, in general, feel that the blame lies with AC/DC for the cause of the deaths. After all, AC/DC is known worldwide for their loud, hard rock enjoyed by millions of fans. But everyone is using the band as a scapegoat, hurling accusations that won't accomplish anything but ruin hard rock's favorable reputation.

In Salt Lake City, the Salt Palace sells about 6,000 tickets for "festival seating" which is a large area near the stage where there are no seats and you must stand as close to the stage as you can. When AC/DC appeared on stage doing their opening song, the fans in festival seating immediately rushed to the stage, trampling and killing three fans.

In my opinion, festival, or floor seating, should be abolished to avoid any further deaths. With assigned seats, we can assure the safety of concert-goers at future shows. Several concert promoters have already decided to cancel selling tickets for festival seating, but some are doing this for only hard rock/heavy metal acts. Why not for rap, country, pop and jazz concerts? If this seating is abolished at hard rock concerts, then it should be banned at all concerts.

In this whole situation, AC/DC should not be considered the villains; the real "bad guys" are the greedy concert promoters who want to pack thousands of people into their arenas. They are the ones responsible for this unfortunate and unnecessary incident. n