Fanzatia NYE93, people outside dancing to a car alarm (quite a famous video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rYXcmVSeBU

This is a classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFsIskJ05I (20 seconds - worth a watch)

And I'm sure there's an anecdote about the fire alarm at the Hacienda, and I've heard something similar from someone who worked at Fabric.

Wow - I was going to raves in SF during this period. I've seen these types of people before.

Lots of stories from those days.

They caught up with the two people in this recently, they're still doing well (albeit not much raving nowadays :) )

I was at one of those gigs before several years ago. Possibly because the volume was too loud, or the music generally too discordant but about 85% of the crowd went upstairs to the chill out room for the majority of the set. I remember a distinct "nope" feeling. The artist himself was off stage twiddling his knobs too.

Those who remained were selling merch, behind the bar, or stood at the back with arms folded.

Those people need not even be intoxicated, because noise music is its own genre, and some of the people enjoying RDJ will probably be responsive to it; RDJ has had a few moments when he approached the Japanese scene. Indeed, when artists like Merzbow perform at festivals, it is clear that the noise stimulates some people's dance reflexes.

I was once at a Plump DJs gig where the fire alarm went off and it took everyone a minute to realize it wasn't part of the tune.

I've also heard of people dancing to a generator when the hardtek stopped.

To be fair to the people concerned, both examples actually match the style of the music in question.

Reminds me of the hardcore raver Tyres from the sitcom Spaced (genius British comedy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfSndZPynQk

Saying that I have had a similar thing with tracks that have police sirens in them when listening in the car, it takes a moment to realise it isn't an actual emergency vehicle.

theres a whole genre working with these methods of analog aleatory sound generation (harsh noise)

Sounds like a typical noise gig.