A donnybrook broke out at Brighton Music Hall in Allston last night after a show by British punk veterans the Adicts was abruptly cut short. According to accounts, the rowdy crowd began throwing bottles at the band, who ended their set after roughly 30 minutes. Fights broke out among the crowd and the police were called in.
UPDATE 2:42 pm EST: Here is some video of the aftermath of the brawl:
“The Adicts themselves were great, but a large swath of the audience were a bunch of pricks,” one witness told Vanyaland. “Even though Brighton Music Hall has a ‘no moshing/no crowd surfing’ policy, people were doing that and causing a ruckus. Some people threw beer cans and rushed the stage to stage dive a couple of times. They interrupted the group’s songs a ton of times. Pete Dee, the guitarist looked fuming. I thought if it kept up he might jump into the crowd and start landing punches.”
Added another witness: “Only a few assholes out of a couple hundred, at least, to ‘ruin’ it for everyone. So the Adicts could only play for about a half an hour.”
Someone who who was in attendance said the guitarist from the Adicts jumped off the stage “to deal with some” throwing cups and/or bottles at him.
A few minutes ago, the band posted the following message to their Facebook, apologizing for pulling the plug. “Last night’s gig wasn’t so pleasant due to certain people in the audience throwing beer bottles at us while being on stage….. We’re sorry we had to stop the show but it wasn’t our fault… it was certain people within the crowd that ended up causing trouble for everyone.”
One show-goer said there was immediate tension between the band and people in the crowd. There weren’t any incidents during sets by the openers, Detroit punks Downtown Brown and Boston noir-punk trio the Devil’s Twins.
“There was some disagreements between the Adicts and crowd members,” that person tells us. “Back and fourth banter, some of it insulting. They stopped the show multiple times [as people tried to stage dive] and they were all pissed. At the end, a huge fight broke out by stage. I’d say [up] to 10 people, including bouncers, involving possibly band members. Bouncers were draggin’ people out back door.”
Here’s the Adicts playing opening song “Joker In The Pack,” and you can feel things get rowdy right at the beginning of the show.
Here’s the Adicts’ Facebook post: