Something didn't feel right to Roger Miret after Agnostic Front's show at DC9 last Thursday. The venerable hardcore band had packed up its gear and was taking photographs with fans outside the club.

"The vibe outside the club, I didn’t like it," he says on the phone, now back at home in Scottsdale, Ariz. "I told the guys, 'Let’s get out of here.'" That was around 12:30 a.m.

An hour later, one person would smash a window of the club and end up in the hospital. An hour after that, another person would smash another window of the club and die under circumstances that are still murky.

By contrast, Miret says, the show was terrific. "We had a wonderful experience to be completely honest," he says. "It was the best show of the whole tour. The whole place was just on fire with joy that we were there." (Michael Darpino's review of the show corroborates this assessment.)

He credits DC9's staff for making things just so. Bill Spieler, DC9's co-owner who along with four other employees was charged with aggravated assault following the death of Ali Ahmed Mohammed outside the club early on Friday morning, was especially attentive. Miret says Spieler didn't seem like he'd hurt a fly (a sentiment echoed the next day by many of Spieler's friends), and that he took the band's comfort very seriously.

"One of our food orders came out wrong," the singer says, "and he was really worried, very polite."

As for the other people who worked at the club: "They were polite, they made sure everything was on point. Everything was great."

What happened later was "oil and vinegar" compared to the audience's behavior at the concert, Miret says. "People were really respectful. No violence, no fights, none of that stuff. Whatever happened that night had nothing to do with the actual show."

Outside, though, a vibe got Miret's antennae up. "I’m from the streets of New York City, and you can feel the uncomfortableness of the street, you know?" he says. "I felt it, and so did the other guys....We were taking photos, signing autographs. You could tell there was people trying to mingle in that weren’t a part of the scene."

Miret's jumpiness about D.C. has a precedent — Agnostic Front's last show here was a "Superbowl of Hardcore" concert where someone got stabbed when headliners Bad Brains played. (He doesn't remember the date, but based on this piece and a couple others I found, I think it was Feb. 25, 2001, at the Nation; please e-mail me if you can help with this fact.) ""That was a crazy show," Miret says. "No one was murdered, it was just one of those things."

"What’s going on over there?" he asks about Washington.