Why At The Drive-In Are One Of The Greatest Live Bands Ever

For years, so many music fans were split into two camps, those who had seen At The Drive-In, and those who hadn’t. Fortunately, with the recent reunion tours and the release of in•ter a•li•a, there’s still another chance to catch the band live.

Those shows over a two-year period surrounding the release of 2000's Relationship Of Command will remain legendary in their own right, but the band was inching ever closer to the infamous implosion shortly after the record's peak.

Being you had to be in a venue production crew, smuggling a camcorder down your trousers or a time travelling witch to have video recording equipment at a gig in those days, footage can be harder to find then today's jumping on Instagram when driving home after the show. Thankfully we’ve done some of the work for you to experience what made ATDI such a bright explosion.

The Glass House, 2000

Featuring the band's best opener and one that’s still used in their setlists today, this snippet of the Glass House show in California oozes with the wild energy that fires from the offset. The squealing introduction of Arc Arsenal is like a call to arms for the band, flipping on the crazy feet of guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and the relentless drums of Tony Hajjar. Even featuring on the tiny stage of a seven hundred person venue, no inch is spared from the flying band members.

Later… With Jools Holland, 2000

Showing more of a destruction than a performance, the band's spot on BBC2s Later… with Jools Holland in 2000 is both the best and worst in the same hand. Playing Rolodex Propaganda and One Armed Scissor, the band's punk roots clashed with the show's ‘adult contemporary’ style and kicked them into overdrive. From Cedric stealing a chair in the audience to thrash around the stage to Omar smashing his pedal board into the most horrific sounds he can muster before tossing his guitar across the floor and proceeding to dance the rest of the track, it was pure chaos, and it was beamed into TV sets across the UK on the national network. Who was bestowed with following up this act? Cameras panned left to find a frozen faced Robbie Williams planted at a piano right amid his media blitz to convince the world he was the ‘bad boy of pop’. If only memes existed back then. 

Late Show with David Letterman, 2000

The Sydney Big Day Out, 2001

While just three songs long, it must be included and for a multitude of reasons. Arriving on Australian shores for the first time, with an unfathomable hype surrounding them from both fans and media alike, they were the one act on the tour that all other artists couldn’t stop talking about. After a destructive set on the Gold Coast a few days prior, At The Drive-In rolled into the Sydney Showgrounds and proceeded to ignite their former Wiggles stage (just look at it) with the level of peak savagery that causes people in attendance to still quote it as a ‘THAT gig’ badge of honour to this day.

Ten minutes into their forty-minute allocation and as the mosh pit continued to increase in aggression, the band halts whilst Cedric begins pleading and then taunting the crowd with his now infamous ‘Sheep Rant’ for their behaviour. At a time where surge barricades and dividers were deemed ‘unnecessary’ by promoters, the band were all too aware of the dangers occurring in front of them. The show never restarts and the band make good on their threat to walk off on the spot. While the other shows on the tour were completed in full, ultimately the band would break up just three months later, giving birth to The Mars Volta & Sparta respectively.

Musicfest, 1999

Twelve months before the release of their landmark Relationship Of Command record, At The Drive-In played a show at the New York’s Bowery Ballroom for Musicfest that staked their claim as not only a groundbreaking post-hardcore act, but as one the most ferocious live acts on the planet at that time. With all key band members at their finest and not yet staggering with the weight of things to come, their performance is powerful, volatile, raw and wildly unpredictable. At just over thirty minutes long and heavily featuring the In/Casino/Out record, it’s a perfect snapshot at what took the El Paso five piece on the insanity that would be the next year and a half.