For the first ALIEN gig in over 12 months - WE SUCKED! But fuck did we (well Matt at least) do it well! It happened like this. The chance to do our annual gig for 1997 came up at only a weeks notice. We were asked to do a benefit gig to support local death metal and grindcore radio show DROP AND ROTT. It was held in a small band practice room type venue with only a vocal PA. ALIEN had only played one gig like this before, and that was in our very early days. Not realizing how important a PA was to the ALIEN live sound, (to be able to fill the sound out by boosting the distorted bass up to cover as wider frequency range as possible) we decided this wouldn't be a problem and would turn everything up as loud as possible to compensate. We got on stage about 11:45 pm, after spending a fair portion of the night drinking gin, (and the free keg made available to band members!) to an audience of only 50 or so people (advertising for this gig was kept low-profile as to avoid attracting Christchurch skinheads). We ripped into our set to a very non-responsive and skeptical audience. After about the 2nd or 3rd song I walked out front to check out the sound, only to discover (due to the fact that we didn't bother doing a sound-check either) that what was coming from the stage was nothing more than a loud shitty ear-splitting MERZBOW type wall of white noise with a muffled drum beat under it.
By this time Matt Alien was getting quite frustrated
with the audience's lack of reaction and had begun throwing pieces of stage
equipment at them (one young woman apparently suffering minor cuts from
a flying microphone stand and a number of other people complaining that
they had been narrowly missed by hurtling 25L metal drums). By the end of
song 4# Matt had managed to make a nest of at the front of the stage out of
leads, which resulted in the first of many problems, in this case his
vocals becoming unplugged. After this problem was fixed, various attempts were
made to finish the set, although not one more song was completed without
either the keyboards or bass becoming disconnected. The end result
being that the last half hour or so of the show involved the various drunken
members of ALIEN sitting down making random instrument noises, while
Matt stood and abused the remaining audience in an obnoxious politically
incorrect fashion insinuating that they we're nothing more than
pre-pubescent ten year olds (amoung other even less politically acceptable
statements) who wouldn't know decent music if it kicked them in the Ass!
Either way, no matter
how shity we played that night ALIEN still Triumphed and, God dam it we
proved once again that WE ARE INDEED BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! Even though
we're now considered the new 'Worst band in Christchurch', we do aim to
beat this
freshly set standard! We intend to play more gigs even more regularly
from now on and sink to even lower levels! THIS IS ONLY THE FUCKING
BEGINNING!!! ......Shortly after the gig ended, we all left the venue
sticking as
close together as possible, to avoid any form of confrontation that our
performance may have generated. The back of our Car was kicked by a
number of angry punters as we slowly drove away into the night...
