Girth Crisis: reunion obesity at critical levels

With the ongoing trend of hardcore bands from the late eighties and early nineties playing reunion shows still in full swing, an unexpected problem has manifested itself– middle age excess mean bands are now up to five times the combined weight they once were. Promoter Joe Fibriani explains: “It’s a real problem. You take a band that was once some seriously athletic dudes who looked after themselves, and look at them now. Did you see the pictures from the No For An Answer reunion last year? Some of these guys are now upwards of 200 pounds. This causes all kinds of headaches. If all the members of one of these bands have let themselves go like this, some of the stages in the smaller venues just can’t cope. I have had to abandon shows at venues where we are unable to reinforce the stage.” Fibriani identified another difficult aspect: “These guys may be cool about not getting paid huge amounts for every show, but even so, their riders are out of control – Killing Time almost bankrupted me with the amount of food they required. Whenh we got to my place I had to physically restrain one of them from eating my cat’s dinner, for chrissakes.” Promoters are now very wary about booking reunion shows without some kind of pre-agreed weigh-in. Fibriani concludes: “There was talk of a super-group featuring Frosty from Chain and the Strife drummer Sid amongst others– I had to turn it down, my insurers won’t cover the potential structural damage.”