How did a guy with a 9mm stroll into a club, walk on stage and shoot the band? As a guy with a son in a metal band this is more than a rhetorical question. And what are clubs going to do about it, if anything?

concert bookers and bar managers [are] wondering whether fans will grumble less the next time they're patted down or directed through a metal detector.

Scott Stienecker, for one, thinks it will. "It'll be a whole different feeling, I bet."

Stienecker's PromoWest Productions owns two Columbus concert halls larger than the Alrosa Villa, where 25-year-old Nathan Gale gunned down "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three others before a police officer shot him to death.

Caroline O'Toole, though, and many of her fellow managers doubt Wednesday's violence will mean any significant changes.

"I don't think you can let the actions of one lunatic affect the industry as a whole," said O'Toole, who manages The Stone Pony, famed as Bruce Springsteen's stomping ground in Asbury Park, N.J. "You can't let the nuts win."

...."This is a very tragic situation, but isolated," said Mark Leddy, co-owner of Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. "Anything like this causes everyone to take a little look at what their procedures are. A bigger mistake would be an overreaction to it."

But a San Diego police officer and security consultant argued for more training for the largely unregulated job of nightclub security worker.

"They need the same type of training that police officers get," Robert Smith said. "The bouncer has no weapon and no police powers, but they still have to do the same exact job. They don't get the same training on how to read body language and how to stop someone verbally and how to calm someone down."

Concert deaths have spurred change before. Inspectors nationwide rooted out flammable soundproofing material in bars after on-stage pyrotechnics killed more than 100 people nearly two years ago at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island.

It was only in August that the city of Cincinnati lifted a nearly 25-year ban on concert general admission seating imposed after 11 fans were crushed to death trying to get in a show by The Who.

....Security varies with style of music at PromoWest Pavilion and the company's Newport Music Hall in Columbus, Stienecker said. The venues hire trained guards from another company he operates, Event Control Management, which also provides security for Columbus Crew soccer games, festivals and other events.

An older crowd for a singer-songwriter probably will have to open their bags at the door, he said. For aggressive and hard-core rock or rap, pat-downs and sometimes hand-held metal detectors are the norm. [AP]

Mitch Carpenter, an Alrosa security guard working in the parking lot, said he encountered Gale before the concert and asked him to "park his car and buy a ticket or leave." Gale parked behind the building near the band's bus and was asked to move his car, which he did. The next time Carpenter saw Gale, he was in the club. "He had hopped the fence at the patio," Carpenter said. "He was walking really fast toward the stage and I followed him. "I thought he was going to get up there and stage dive or something during the first song. I figured he was just a guy who didn't have any money to buy a ticket so he got in the way he did. "I've been going over it in my mind, but when he came in I didn't want to tackle him. He was a big guy."
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