What ever happened to a little peace, love and understanding? Over the last week, random outbursts of low grade violence have marred shows by alterna-gods Wilco and the indie-duo Two Gallants.

While reports have differed slightly, it does appear that at Wilco's show this past Monday at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, MO an overly excited fan surprised guitarist Jeff Tweedy by approaching him from behind causing the skittish Tweedy to turn and clock the interloper in the face. After being buried in various on-line outlets, Wilco defended themselves with an official statement on their site.

In short, the band cited their own decision to remove a barricade between themselves and the audience as well as lax security as underlying causes of the unfortunate incident. "I really regret what happened last night," said Tweedy. "I wish it had gone another way . . . and I suspect had I felt safer on that stage, had security been doing a better job all night long, well things would have gone differently. He approached me from behind . . . and I reacted in defense to get him away. I didn't know what his intentions were . . . and I had to get him off of me. I'm sad that it happened at all." While Tweedy could have possibly handled the situation better, let's be honest with ourselves: who hasn't wanted to see the band knock out the drunken idiot charging the stage.

The Two Gallants incident from Houston, TX is a bit more bizarre. Shortly into their set at Walter's On Washington, a police officer responding to noise complaints bypassed the soundboard and walked directly onto the stage and confronted the duo's guitarist Adam Stephens. After a bit of an argument, the officer tried to wrest Stephens' guitar from him and a struggle occurred. Drummer Tyson Vogel leapt to help his band mate and ultimately found himself under arrest. With more officers called in as backup, the situation between the police officers, Two Gallants and the fans in attendance escalated, with varied reports of arrests and tazer-usage.

Stories of the incident have faulted Two Gallants' impertinence as instigating a riot and pointed the finger at the responding officers for handling the situation poorly. Regardless of fault, the entire incident is sad and unfortunate. In the olden days, reports of such occurrences could only travel through word of mouth. Now, in the era of YouTube, we can watch fuzzy videos of just about anything. For a couple hardly definitive views on what transpired: click here or here.