I Am Ghost – vs. Alien Ant Farm

I Am Ghost haben vor kurzem eine Show zusammen mit Alien Ant Farm gespielt, hierbei kam es wohl zu einer handfeste Auseinandersetzung zwichen den beiden Bands. Hierzu wurde folgendes Statement von I Am Ghost veröffentlicht.

Das Statement:

At a show on Friday night, I Am Ghost and Alien Ant Farm got into a fist fight…on the stage. Let me start by saying this: in the entire history of I Am Ghost we have never cancled a show. We have battled through weather, illness, van/tour bus breaking down to even deaths in the family… and still have made it to every scheduled show on time. The band and I pride ourselves on having this pretty amazing record. But tonight I guess our streak is over.

I want to apologize, and i mean, sincerely apologize to all the fans who came out to see us play the Pangea Fest with Death By Stereo, Lorene Drive and about a million other bands that night. It all strarted pretty fucking sweet. We got our own backstage dressing room to share with two of our closests friends (Death By Stereo/Lorene Drive) and all spririts were pretty high. It wasn’t until Alien Ant Farm and their fucked up stage crew began treating our crew with disprespect and acting like complete asses.

It started with Alien Ant Farm showing up late to their sound check. This pushed the show back almost and HOUR in set times. We were scheduled to hit the stage at 10:30PM but because of this were not scheduled for 11:30PM. That meant Alien Ant Farm were going to not play until 1AM. Really not our fault, since they were the headliner, getting paid a crap load of money to be the headliner, and were the reasons why they were going on so late in the first place. Durring the show our tour manager, guitar techs were doing their jobs. They were working on I AM GHOST equipment and doing what they do best. The entire night they were hassled by Alien Ant Farms crew and tour manager. It became apparent things were getting weird when they wouldn’t let our crew work on our stuff on stage. They would not let us get to our equipment, nor work on it. Our crew are some of the NICEST people you will ever met, but things were just getting really strange, and this is when things started getting bad.

Remarks were made towards our band and crew only. The other bands on the main stage were not getting fucked with. I dont know if they were pissed we actually had a crew that knew what they were doing, or what not, but it started to really stick with everyone in our band. We were talked down to by their staff, as if we had never played a show in our lives. I don’t know, but last we checked, we have done 7 US tours, 4 Canandian Tours, a UK tour, and more than 300 shows in 2007. I really think our crew and techs know what the fuck they are doing. Actually, i think they are one of the best out there.

So, as we are setting up backstage, we are told that Alien Ant Farm does NOT want to play last anymore (they were pissed at their time of 1AM)/. They tell the show manager to ask if I AM GHOST will play last and headline. We tell them NO very nicely, and say we are keeping our set time which was in our contract. The show was already an HOUR behind, so already all the bands were getting fucked. This seemed to piss off Alien Ant Farm since we said no. After that, words were said between their crew to our crew. As we were setting up to play, they told our guitar tech and tour manager to get our „shit off the fucking stage“ and we basically told them to fuck off. Their tour manager shoves our guitar tech (on stage while we are setting up) and our band jumps in. Basically, we had enough of their fucking bullshit. Fist started flying, and so did the bodies. It was a free for all with their crew and our crew and band. It ended up with the police breaking up the show. This all happend, again, while we were on the fucking stage setting up.

Let me say this lastly: we have played with some of the biggest bands out there today around the world and have NEVER been treated so badly by a main headliner. I don’t know who Alien Ant Farm think they are, but if there’s one thing I know is you don’t treat people like this EVER. The worst part about this entire thing is all the fans who paid the $30 to see us play and waited forever to see us. I felt so bad after this that it killed me. We have alot of respect for ourselves and this was just not the show for us.

We will be back in a few weeks and have alot of shows coming up. For those who saw what happend on stage, we are so sorry. Please understand and we will see you very very soon!