Last Wednesday’s sold-out show Downstairs at the Middle East was a highly anticipated bill featuring Interpol and the Vines, two of the year’s big-hype bands. Although Interpol gave listeners what they expected for the group’s third visit to the club in six months, the Vines left concertgoers wondering whether they had just seen a typical Vines performance or signs that the highly touted rock band is unraveling.

According to a story in the December 12 Los Angeles Times (ROWDY VINES GET CUT FROM ‘JAY LENO’), the band’s December 9 appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was cancelled after singer Craig Nicholls destroyed their equipment during a sound check. The show went on without a musical guest, and during his monologue, Leno described the group as " loaded at six o’clock. "

The Vines’ performance two days later at the Middle East was uneventful to the point that many who had packed the club to the back wall for Interpol left during the Vines’ set. However, during the band’s performance of " Ain’t No Room, " Nicholls thrashed around the stage, knocking over microphone stands and clocking bassist Patrick Matthews in the head. Matthews grabbed Nicholls by the waist and threw him into the crowd before falling in on top of him. After a few minutes, the two reappeared and headed backstage as Middle East security stood on the stage, signaling a premature end to the performance.

In the days that followed, rumors about what exactly went down at the show began to fly among people who were there and in the Vines Internet fan forum, hosted by Capitol Records. The band was supposedly upset about what happened with The Tonight Show and so fed up with Nicholls’s antics that his guitar tech purposely gave him an untuned guitar at the start of Wednesday’s show. The band was reportedly banned from the Middle East because Nicholls trashed the club’s newly created dressing room, and when he and Matthews fell into the crowd together and disappeared for a while, it was because they were busy exchanging punches.

Although Middle East manager Mark Hamilton confirms that the two " went at it " in the crowd, he snuffs out the rumor that the Vines are banned from the Cambridge club. " That’s just par for the course for that one particular individual — that’s his shtick, " he says of Nicholls’s behavior. Was the dressing room trashed? Hamilton says, " No. Did they make a mess with a total disregard to everyone else? Yes. "

As for the Vines cutting their set short, Hamilton was dismissive: " He doesn’t finish a lot of shows. They had a couple of songs left, but they played all of their hits. " The Vines’ current US tour ended December 17.