Gig Goer of the Week, Part 6
I think I cursed us by saying that we’d had a good run of gigs because tonight, I don’t know where to begin. Should it be with the groupie who had 5′ of space in front of her but chose to dance on top of me, leaving me pressed against a post at the Night & Day? Should it be the former drummer of Manchester no-hopers, Exit 52, who practically stood on The Ledge and waited for The Ledge to move?
Actually, no.
This particular post is reserved for the drunk bloke who fights with girls.
Yes. You heard me right. The 6′ tall man who starts fights with girls over a foot smaller than him.
Yeah, so during the Aliens first song, the nice woman who had been stood to my right gets thrust out of the way. This is the woman who’d moved to make room for my tiny self and who’d been giving origami pigeons to the guy from Lone Pigeon while he was setting up his gear. She got pushed out of the way and suddenly this tall drunken lout is elbowing me in the side, moshing in what was certainly not a mosh put and pulling my hair! I shoved back. He shoved back harder. I told him he was hurting me. He didn’t care. He said he was having fun and I could go to hell. He kept talking to me, I couldn’t hear much of it. He pushed harder. I pushed back. The guy on the other side of him started screaming at him. He ignored that guy and kept pushing me and shouting in my ear and jumping. The Ledge shouted at him. He ignored the Ledge. The people on the other side of me got annoyed, they were getting pushed cause I was getting pushed into them, and the talking was pissing them off. They were nice to me about it though, they could see it was not my fault. It was actually so bad that at one point I seriously considered using the empty Corona bottle I was holding. I thought I might have to. He was being that aggressive.
Luckily, this was the point at which the couple on my right pulled me across to their right and the bloke stepped in to sort the problem. He shrugged and said “There’s always one, and that one is always next to me,” just before he grabbed the drunken lout and started screaming at him. They had words, possibly ineffective ones, and eventually the drunkard just walked off.
The thing is, I felt a bit bad, all this fuss, because, quite frankly, the Aliens were shite. If I’d known that to begin with I wouldn’t have been at the front. We’d probably have left after iLikeTRAINS. Ahh well.
So here it is folks, I’m not sure what to say about this one but here’s my best go:
1) Personal space. If there’s room, try to honour people’s personal space. Be aware of that person behind you and give them room when you can. Don’t stand on someone as a means of getting them to move, they were there first. Find somewhere else to stand that isn’t on someone’s feet or head.
2) Umm…don’t be a dick. Don’t hurt people. Don’t elbow and pull hair. Don’t talk into someone’s ear when they’re watching the band. Don’t shove people out of the way. Don’t pretend it’s a fight when it’s a gig. If someone says you’re hurting them it’s because you are, so stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing that’s causing physical pain!
October 25th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
[…] A couple of days later we caught The Aliens at the Night & Day and they were awful; a shambolic mess of styles, none of them any good. 70s cock rock rubbed shoulders with dire attempts to replicate the Beta Band’s electro-folk excellence and there was even a misguided stab at Nick Cave style piano balladry. There were interminable gaps between songs as equipment broke down, guitars were tuned up, band members pissed about, and the crowd, sizeable and enthusiastic though it was, didn’t help matters by being full of dicks, like the drunk guy who pushed his way to the front and pissed off just about everyone in his vicinity (JustHipper mentions this here); or the guy in front of me who was so obsessed with people chatting during the songs (even though the level of chatter wasn’t too bad) that he spent most of the gig looking over his shoulder, scowling at and shushing people, which ended in a big argument with the guy behind me who continued to wind him up throughout the show, much to my amusement. Three members of The Aliens used to be in The Beta Band. It is now fairly obvious to us where the talent in that band lay. The night wasn’t a total loss as earlier we had enjoyed Canadians Born Ruffians‘ angular indie pop and the excellent Leeds band iLiKETRAiNS who, if you like the idea of a post-rock Tindersticks, then you’ll love. […]