08.18.22
With afternoon highs in the 90s, temps at Sloss Furnaces - the supposedly haunted turn-of-the-century pig iron producing blast furnace turned concert venue - would hover into the 80s well into the Stripes performance that night. Factor in the crush of 2400 bodies crammed into the rudimentary shed-like structure with unforgiving open air walls and my recall of the event is overwhelmingly punctuated by the feel, smell and general annoyance of sweat.
Add in the decrepit, rusted, tetanus-y surroundings of the rest of the campus and the knowledge that the number of workers who died there was rumored to be in the hundreds, their falling or being pushed into the red hot fires of the furnaces only to be instantly incinerated and the unshakable pall that casts on a spot even some five decades after the last flames there were extinguished…needless to say it didn’t feel like an ordinary show by any means.
Listen to #TheWhiteStripes Live at Sloss Furnaces 7/30/07 now on @nugsnet and read more of Ben Blackwell's synopsis of the night here: 2nu.gs/TMR73007
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