Alien Ant Farm starting small again

By MIKE HOULAHAN

Given the last time American band Alien Ant Farm played in New Zealand they were performing for 10,000-plus people on the main stage at Big Day Out, you might think they could be little disappointed at being bumped from tonight's advertised show at the St James to the smaller Galatos on Wednesday and playing to far fewer people on their upcoming national tour.

You'd be wrong - they are just happy to be playing anywhere at all after a horror bus crash in Spain in 2002 which left their driver dead and each member of the Californian four-piece nursing injuries.

"It's brought me an awareness I never knew I had as far as being excited about some of the smallest things in life," lead singer Dryden Mitchell says. "I daily bend down to tie my shoelace and give thanks my mom isn't tying my shoelace right now."

Mitchell was the most seriously injured member of the band, breaking his neck. Guitarist Terry Corso broke his left leg and bass player Tye Zamora chipped a bone in a toe, while drummer Mike Cosgrove escaped with cuts and bruising.

Mitchell - a la Kiwi pop star Daniel Bedingfield - was forced to wear a metal halo to restrict the movement of his neck and head during his recovery.

"I broke my second vertebrae, which is as close to the brain as you can get, and it wasn't looking too good for a couple of weeks there," Mitchell says.

"I have permanent nerve damage, and my whole upper body feels like a bad sunburn constantly, but it's tolerable. It's better than any number of alternatives."

At the time of the crash Alien Ant Farm's star was well and truly in the ascendant. Their 2001 album ANThology was a worldwide, platinum-selling hit, fuelled by their canny cover of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal.

AAF had spent years trawling around the States, slowly building regional followings, but suddenly their straightforward, high-energy rock was in worldwide demand. Playing to thousands - as in that Big Day Out tour - was the norm, but now Alien Ant Farm are starting out small again as they try to rebuild momentum.

To that end they are playing four warm-up Orientation shows in the main centres, before moving on to headline the Edge Fest touring festival.

Mitchell says more than ever, he now relishes being on stage.

"Ironically enough, it's the only time when the nerve damage subsides. The blood is rushing a bit quicker than normal, I loosen up a bit, and my mind is diverted to a different place and it feels a lot better than just lying in bed."

Recovering from the crash, Mitchell couldn't move his head an inch in any direction. With so much time to sit and think, all his mind could focus on was music - despite the fact he was still unsure whether he could take to the stage again.

He sent Zamora out to buy him a PC and a pro-tools production rig, set up his acoustic guitar and microphone, and worked on new songs. As his recovery became assured Alien Ant Farm set up a meeting to assess their future, at which Mitchell astonished his three friends with the nucleus of their new album truANT.

"I think everyone was waiting for me, and once they saw I had already begun everyone was pretty excited," Mitchell says.

"We were definitely everyone together and still are, but I think that little time apart did us a lot of good. Sometimes ideas get shot down - and I'm guilty of it too - before you see the bigger picture. When someone by themselves, or two people, get the time to finish the thought and show it in a presentable way, you look at things differently."

Alien Ant Farm resumed touring in July last year with 21 dates around the United States, road-testing their new material. The shows were also a baptism of fire, seeing whether they could sustain a big tour without another Smooth Criminal in the charts.

"We got so many stray fans from that Smooth Criminal song that weren't really fans of the band, and it was cool to have those people there, but it didn't really bother me either way," Mitchell says.

"When you see a fan of a band as opposed to a fan of a single you didn't even write, it's a whole different thing."

Mission completed, Alien Ant Farm retreated to the studio, where there was an additional reason for them to be on their best musical behaviour.

Dean and Robert DeLeo, guitarist and bassist for Stone Temple Pilots, were producing truANT, and Mitchell says having people they admired standing behind them every day put a good amount of pressure on them.

"We had to make the best songs we could write and I think we pretty much managed that, and they helped a lot. They didn't really put their fingers on the music too much, but I think them just being there was the value."

Now Alien Ant Farm are back in full swing and relishing the challenge of proving there is life beyond what Mitchell laughingly calls "The Song That Wouldn't Die". He's confident hard-hitting songs such as Sarah Wynne - a fictional account of the ravages of drug addiction - will prove to fickle fans Alien Ant Farm are much more than one-hit wonders.

"We were really disappointed when that song [Smooth Criminal] first hit, but at a certain point it's hard to be bummed about a song which is helping you sell 100,000 records a week.

"It wasn't what we intended - we were planning on growing slowly and this cover song blew everything out of the water.

"It was a fun idea that went a little haywire, but we're about more than that. We've got some new songs now - we dig them and if other people dig them that's cool with us."

Performance

* Who: Alien Ant Farm

* Where and when: Galatos, March 10; Supertop, March 12, as part of the Edge Fest

- NZPA