scariest shows you've ever seen

place is packed to see The Godfathers. their entrance music (Godfather theme of course) starts, and the band have to make their way through the packed crowd. they are dressed in their trademark suits and look very differrent to 'typical' student crowd. however, this being Leeds 1986 there were a few people who obviously liked Sisters of Mercy/Mission.
Upon getting on stage, small brooding intense Peter Coyne, looks over the crowd, leans over the front rows glaring .. and then proclaims in his strongest london accent : 'Where are we? Oh Yeah - Gotham City. I fuckin' hate goths' he then spots a few at the back. Points at them 'What the fuck are you fuckin' Goths doing at my fuckin' gig, fukcin' hate goths'

at which point they let rip into a blistering 'Cause I said So' or something as equally visceral. the place was charged.

awesome opening and rather intimadating for a a kid from the countryside who was scared of cows getting to close.

then a couple of years later .. Leeds Polytechnic - The Godfathers

during encore - some poor innocent kid tries to climb on stage while the band are doing their thing. Peter takes the microphone stand and lays into the kid, 'no-one comes on my stage while i'm on it, this is my fucking gig, they're here to see me' now fuck off' all while he is brandishing the stand against the kids body. not holding back.

next time i see him, he's an entrant to "Who Wants to be a Millionaire".

and then there is my foetus story - which i have told before, where Jim jumped into the crowd after a lot of interaction between the mosh pit and the bass player from the Swans (a large beast of a man), Jim gets pissed off and dives in and beats the living crap out of someone while the band just pound away .. after a few minutes, Jim climbs back on stage and continues. many years later - i get the chance to ask about it ..

nothing like the stories above - but hey, i'm still scared of cows getting too close.

Kwhitehead - this will win me no friends whatsoever on ILM, but growing up in Edinburgh, I could have gone to see the Scars, Josef K, Associates and so on, but really wanted to be in LA or NY seeing the DKs or Black Flag instead.

The film goes off, the screen goes up, and then the Mentors start playing. Most of the crowd (including myself) didn't know who/what the hell they were and the second El Duce challenged someone to "ARRAARRRYOUFUCKWITHMEILLFUCKYOUBACKHARDERAAARAR!!" a couple punks took a swing at him. No real effect though, Duce probably outweighed all the angry punks combined so Duce returned fire by stage-diving on top of them. Instant melee! I have no idea how long the set lasted... maybe 15-20 minutes? I was too busy trying to stay out of the fight.

After the Mentors played, the screen rolled down again and then an early Survival Research Labs video (the flamethrower-equipped go karts) started playing guaranteeing WTF moment #3.

Oh yeah, D.I. and Social Distortion rocked mightily.

Another show I saw that got hairy was Wrathchild America, Dead Horse, and Pantera at this club that used to be a big grocery store. After waiting for at least an hour and a half between Wrathchild and Pantera, the sound went out about three songs into Pantera's set. They tried to play anyway, but it sounded like shit and people started getting riled up. Phil started yelling about the club and telling everyone to get up on stage while they were playing. There were probably fifty or so people on stage, and people in the crowd were acting like they were going to start rioting. My friend and I took off at that point.

OTM. This movie creeped the fuck out of me.

I backed out, slowly. I never did figure out what he was going to do with that bottle. Four Crash Worship shows didn't scare me as much as that.

That supermarket place was the Unicorn. I saw Anthrax/Public Enemy there amongst other shows. Not very scary.

seconded, I was there too - Oct or Nov '98 I think - also saw Tim Gane and (sob) Mary Hansen outside after the escape. it was a flare that they set off, but as far as we knew - because of the thick smoke (couldn't see the person next to me) - it could have turned into a scenario like the later Great White inferno/disaster in Rhode Island. people were trying to come IN the exits as we tried to leave - the evacuation was so slow we woulda been toast. this after a Neubaten-esque 'the works' show - power saws, fires, on stage, etc.

in mental terms, the first time i saw Gang Gang Dance, the sound made me feel like i was in the throes of the worst acid trip ever-- i think, though, that it was sort of what they were going for at the time (04). saw them last summer and everyone was actually dancing (for once) and there were all these middle schoolers there to see Comets on Fire and I was like, "what the fuck?"

But scarier still was a Glenn Branca performance I saw in Detroit in 1982 in a large theater. I thought the building and my head were going to explode from the loudest sound I'd ever heard in my life.

Scary/amusing last night at the Hold Steady show in BR was a drunk dude SCREAMING at two guys wearing suit jackets, all "FUCK YOUR JACKET! THIS AIN'T YOUR PLACE! FUCK YOUR JACKET!" (during the HS's set)--but he himself was wearing an argyle sweater. ???