From the moment the gates opened on Saturday, November 6, in Houston, Texas, for the Astroworld Festival 2021, there was chaos in the air. At 2 p.m. there was a stampede of festival goers through the gates and many people were trampled in the process right then. It appears that things remained rambunctious thereafter, and a large crowd had assembled by the time Travis Scott arrived to perform.

Scott has become the poster child of “raging” hip hop shows. For those unfamiliar with this variety of hip hop, it is extremely dynamic and Scott’s moves on the small stages he favors are almost worthy of the term “frenzied.” Scott is a showman first and foremost, and draws huge crowds who enjoy how he spreads the energy of the music and whips up the “raging.” To older eyes, a lot of the raging is reminiscent of old school hard-core and punk rock scenes, with mosh pits and crowd surfing, only with larger crowds and hip-hop beats. Scott takes things right to the edge and his audiences love it.

Until they don’t.

In the crowd at Astroworld was Ellenville’s own Steve Gutierrez. Interviewed when back in Ellenville, Gutierrez confessed, “The crazy part is this was the best show I’ve ever seen in my life.”

And Gutierrez is a veteran of the modern hip hop concert. “I’ve been to a lot of concerts. I was at one the week before at City Field in New York City, that was also a Travis Scott show.”

Gutierrez has it down nice and clean. “He’s just amazing when you hear him live.” And having grown up on hip hop, Tupac to Jay Z, to anyone you care to mention, Gutierrez knows the tune; he added, “I don’t really want to hear those songs outside of his live performances. His show is the thing, it’s just an experience, a whole experience.”

Gutierrez added, “It’s that release from reality. You know? You forget all these bills, all the stress of your life.”

This is something that has drawn people to music for centuries, of course, only not perhaps to anything quite this loud and explosive.

And Scott has the gift of really communicating the feeling, the vibe to the audience, it’s a trait that his fans often comment on.

But at Astroworld last weekend, things went truly dark. Gutierrez said, “I’ve been to a lot of concerts, I travel to see them. I was in Miami earlier this year for one. I know what to expect.”

Important point, Gutierrez is also six foot two inches tall and weighs 390 pounds. “I’m a big guy, I can handle the pressure.”

Well, even a big guy who played on both the O line and the D line for the Ellenville Blue Devils a few years ago, can have a bad moment.

“I was at this other show and I got pulled over. I was actually on the ground on my back with about 20 people on top. Scary.”

But Gutierrez works out regularly at AA Fitness 845 on Market Street in Ellenville. He also played football for the varsity at Ellenville. So he got off the ground and back on his feet, something that not everyone would be able to do in that situation.

At Astroworld, he hooked up with a group of his friends, they meet regularly at these shows and come from all over.

“Maybe 20 minutes before he came out, me and my friends made our way up and got into the crowd to the point where I couldn’t move forward anymore.”

The shocking thing, though perhaps not when you consider the sheer scale of the event with tens of thousands of people spread out over acres of space all focused on the relatively tiny stage with the staggering light show behind it, is that Gutierrez and his friends did not observe any of the mayhem that went on in the more tightly packed area closer in.

“Didn’t see any of it. And even as we were leaving, nobody around us was talking about it. After the show had ended, I went up to take a photo of the stage and I didn’t see police or anything. It was just a total shock when we heard about what had happened.”

But the damage was done by that point. By 8:30 p.m., there was severe crowd crush going on at the front. And this crowd was freeform, there were no sections or controls regarding where people could go. The natural tendency is for people to push forward to get closer to pick up more of the incredible energy that a performer like Travis Scott puts out.

By 9:15 people were screaming for help in certain places within the tight-packed crowd. At 9:30, Travis stopped the show to ask that the crowd let an ambulance get in.

Police by that point were getting reports of casualties.

Why did the show go on? Details on that decision will probably be hammered out in court rooms. By 9:40 it was a mass casualty event. However, the show must go on, or so it seems. Just before 10 p.m., Drake, one of the hip hop world’s most popular veteran performers, and a close friend of Scott’s came on stage. Police were working in the pit below to extract people who’ve been crushed, but the energy between Travis and Drake was evident. Drake performed a few songs. Then Scott took back the mike, as it were, and finished it out, closing the show early at 10:11 p.m.

By then eight concert-goers were dead, including 14-year-old John Hilgert and 16-year-old Brianna Rodriguez. Two more would die in hospital in coming days, including nine-year-old Ezra Blount, who had been riding on his dad’s shoulders until dad succumbed to the crush and fell.

At the time of this writing, there are still an undetermined number of people in the hospital, and some are in critical condition. Meanwhile, the legal fallout continues, with dozens of lawsuits filed and more expected to come.

For example, James Lassiter, an attorney hired by the family of Bharti Shahani, a student from Texas A&M University who died of “horrific injuries” from Astroworld, said in a news conference, “We want to make sure that the people who decided to put profits over the safety of the lives of children are held responsible.”

Shahani went to the show with her sister and cousin, both of whom survived.

On Thursday last week, Scott had put a call out to victims to contact him. He maintained that he "desperately wishes to share his condolences and provide aid," according to a statement. He had already offered to pay for funeral costs and mental health counseling.

It remains to be seen what will emerge from the courts but early suspicions are that Scott could be paying a lot more than that.

And the message to fans? Back to Steve Gutierrez, “First, go to the gym! But really, it’s crazy how I had the time of my life and at the same time someone else was losing theirs. It can happen to anyone at a crazy show like that and nobody’s invincible.”

And we should note that this kind of tragedy is not unique to hip hop music. While the worst music disasters have generally been associated with indoor venues with locked doors and fires, there have been others. The December 3, 1979 disaster in Cincinnati at a sold out Who concert at Riverfront stadium stands out. A paltry 25 police were on hand and failed to control the crowd who were jammed outside waiting for the doors to open. The crowd could hear the band warming up and stormed the entrances and in that chaos 11 people were crushed to death.

Gutierrez will continue to go to festivals and Travis Scott shows, when they resume, but he will go wise and wary.

“I recommend you look at the documentary they made about Travis, ‘Look Mom I can Fly.’ You can see how crazy it gets, and it’s a good documentary of how he is as a performer.”