Rock Band Opens $35,000 In Bar Tabs For Their Fans After Melbourne Gig Was Canceled For Safety

Rock Band Opens $35,000 In Bar Tabs For Their Fans After Melbourne Gig Was Canceled For Safety

An Australian punk rock band picked up the bar tabs for hundreds of people after a gig in Melbourne was shut down at the last minute due to security concerns.

Amyl and the Sniffers are up for a Grammy this year, a year that also saw them open for fellow countrymen rockers AC/DC for a section of their tour.

Just minutes before the headline act took the stage in Federation Square, the event organizer learned that rowdy fans had breached the heavy-duty barricades in multiple around the standing area, where a full capacity crowd of all-ages had been reached by 7:40 p.m.

If the Sniffers’ guitars rang out over the city, there was “a very real risk of crowd crushes,” according to the organizer’s CEO Katrina Sedgwick. With children of all ages scattered throughout the crowd, it was a risk that could not be taken, and the concert was canceled.

“You simply cannot imagine the tantrum I am having,” said the band’s lead singer Amy Taylor, who nevertheless understood why it had to be called off. “So, so, so sorry, we’re really sad,” she said in an Instagram video.

But that wasn’t going to be the end of the night if Taylor and her bandmates could help it, and Channel 9 News in Australia reported that they returned to Instagram shortly after to announce that they had loaded $5,000 onto bar tabs in seven different downtown pubs where any of their fans could go and have a drink while in the city.

“We’re not doggin’ you, it’s because a bunch of people rushed the barriers and so it wasn’t safe, and especially because it was all ages, we just can’t have that,” said Taylor in the Instagram post which also contained a not insignificant amount of frustrated profanity.

The punk rock act has gained rapidly in popularity in the last 5 years, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Performance for their 2024 single “U Should Not Be Doing That.”