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c h a P t e r 9 film at elEv en the month oF February 2003 was not a good one for nightclubgoers . In the early morning hours of February 17, an overcrowded club on Chicago’s South Side called E2 was the scene of twenty-one deaths when someone (a club security guard was suspected) discharged pepper spray on the second-floor dance floor to break up a fight between two women. A panicked crowd surged to the only exit it knew—at the head of a steep flight of stairs descending to street level. The force of the crowd pushed victims down the stairs, where they piled up ceiling-high at the bottom. The dead were crushed and asphyxiated, their bodies stacked and faces contorted against the glass doors to the street. It was this tragic event that prompted Rhode Island state fire marshal Jesse Owens to tell a reporter the day before the Station fire, “It’s very unlikely something like that would happen here.” When Great White took the stage at 11:05 p.m. on February 20, an unprecedented audio-visual recording memorialized the event. The coincidence of Chicago’s tragedy three days earlier and a TV reporter, Jeff Derderian, owning The Station, resulted in the presence of a professional news photographer at The Station, filming a walk-through of the venue, then Great White’s appearance . Jeff Derderian, who had begun his TV career at Channel 6 in Providence, then worked at Boston’s WHDH, had just returned to Rhode Island, where he started reporting for WPRI-TV Channel 12. His first day at Channel 12 was the day of the Chicago club trampling. Derderian figured that a story on nightclub safety would be newsworthy in the wake of the Chicago tragedy, and what better place to shoot generic nightclub footage than his own club, The Station? So, around 10:40 on the night of the Great White concert, WPRI cameraman Brian Butler, driving the station’s SUV, passed soon-to-be club k i l l e r s h o w 54 owner Michael O’Connor’s car traveling in the opposite direction and pulled into The Station’s parking lot. Butler hefted his broadcast-quality digital video camera into the club, where Jeff Derderian set him up with bouncer Tracy King to act as his guide and crowd “icebreaker.” Clad in black T-shirt and black vest, with shaven head and brilliant smile, the house-size King parted the crowd and played host to Butler’s camera as it roamed each quadrant of the club, gathering footage of both crowd and venue. At times, King’s six-foot-two, three-hundred-pound body obscures all else in the frame. Watching the video, one feels like a slow-motion running back, following his lead blocker through crowds of opposing tacklers. But the opponents all wear smiles. And heavy-metal T-shirts. Early in his tour, Butler stepped onto the club’s stage, camera on shoulder. He dearly wanted to get three or four seconds of usable “B-roll” (background) footage of the crowd from a performer’s vantage point. The only problem was the gestures flashed by the hyper-excited crowd. Most on the video give the two-fingered “devil’s horns” sign associated with heavy-metal bands; some spoil Butler’s shot with a single finger. All are pumped to the max by beer, Dr. Metal’s between-set giveaways, and the crescendo of recorded music blaring through the club’s speakers. As Butler’s camera pans stage left, it stops just short of where Dan Biechele was standing while he inserted electric matches into the plastic caps of four gerbs. A few feet behind him, also out of camera range, stood Jeff Derderian, whom Biechele asked for the balance of $2,500 due before Great White took the stage. Bespeaking a cash flow dependent upon the real-time status of ticket and liquor sales, Derderian told Biechele, “I’ll have it for you in a little while.” Biechele was used to venues operated on a shoestring. As Butler’s camera traverses the dance floor, it captures male patrons in leather vests and tank tops. Women wear summer tube tops in deference to the club’s cumulative body heat. Everyone holds a drink—some, two. Smokers abound. Two patrons, standing near the apron of the stage, sport “Jack Russell ‘For You’ Tour” shirts, apparent leftovers from his abortive solo album...

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