My ‘Gig From Hell’ – Chazz Valentine
Written by Allan Maxwell
Sunday, 28 January 2018 04:00
Chazz Valentine cut his teeth, alongside his brother Rupe, with New Zealand street punks The Rabble, releasing five albums in the period between 2006 and 2011. At the tail end of 2016, he released his debut solo album, ‘Generation Y’.
Recently, I tracked Chazz down to get the lowdown from him on one of those gigs that’s memorable for all the wrong reasons… but one which, on this occasion, brought with it a silver lining:
The Rabble did a tour in Australia once. To be fair, the whole thing felt jinxed from the start (losing all my pedals/leads/new strings /tuners etc., then a junkie trying to steal my wallet). It was a mess!
But anyway, there was one show, we drove for hours to get to on the Gold Coast. We finally arrived at the accommodation prior to the show, the guy at the front desk told us to wait outside (after taking one look at us), so we did. A few minutes later, the owner came out and told us we couldn’t stay there. Everything was already booked and paid for so we asked what the problem was (we already knew it was probably because of how we looked), but he told us he had “dealt with New Zealander’s before and they just wreck the place”. Good times!
This was the start to another strange night.
We eventually got to the show, the support band played for what seemed like fucking hours, then when we got up there was a ‘New Zealander’ standing at the front while we were playing, pulling the fingers at us the whole time. Rupe ended up jumping off his kit and almost getting in a fight with the guy. Then, about one song later, we were told it’s too late and the venue was turning into a night club now so we had to end our set. We only played about five songs and some people drove for about six-plus hours to see us. It was a cluster fuck and really put (another) downer on the whole tour.
On a positive side, Mark from The Unseen was in Australia at the same time we were, so he ended up joining us for ‘The World Is Dead’, ‘Reflection’, and a cover of the Unseen’s ‘Live In Fear’ for a few shows. That was fucking golden!
www.facebook.com/ChazzValentineOfficial/
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