Moshing: whither?

Advantage: Dud. No one wins when girls and groins are involved...

Moshing or slam dancing under those circumstances is very good, very enjoyable (for particpants and bystanders), very therapeudic and is as much a valid emotional and aesthetic expression of the music as ballet. (Insert appropriate Trigger Happy TV joke here.)

Moshing, DUD: Moshing at inappropriate music, ie, Mazzy Star (you think I'm kidding, don't you? Nope, on the tour they supported the JAMC, I saw people crowd surfing to Fade Into You). Moshing involving people who do not *wish* to be involved - ie, slamming into bystanders, crowd surfing, etc. Moshing, crowd surfing and stage surging at large venues- this is just fucking dangerous, and if I were a bouncer up at the front of these venues, I wouldn't just pull the offenders out, I would eject them from the venue no questions asked.

Anywhere else...absolute fucking dud. Frat boys saw moshing & crowdsurfing on mtv and decided it would be a cool thing to do at *every* concert they attend (like Kate's story about Mazzy Star, I once saw people mosh and crowd surf to the Cranberries. WTF?). As seen at the infamous Woodstock show a couple of years back, they think it gives them license to bully and abuse anyone who gets in their way, particularly women. And I might be holding a grudge here too, since I almost got my nose broken by one of these cockfarmers a few years back.

Good moshing: Anthrax 1986-1989. Music almost designed to mosh. And somehow these hardcore metalkids in too tight jeans or jokey short could really mosh without running into each other. Which really amazed me at the time. Also very nice almost knight-like behaviour if one would trip, one of your fellows would hoist you up and away you went. So classic.

The problem, of course, is that the only the thing average person sees in a mosh pit is a bunch of strange-looking people running into each other at what looks like full speed, so when they join in they have the impression that swinging fists and brutal body-checking is What You're Supposed To Do. Grr. The last time I moshed was at a Mr. Bungle show in 1992. I hyper-extended my left elbow. Never done it since.

The most inappropriate mosh pit I've seen was also in 1992 an an 808 State concert. "In Yer Face" came on and the dance floor essentially erupted into a full-on riot. I was having fun pinballing off of various people until I turned to my left and saw someone being punched repeatedly in the face. No kitty, that's a BAD KITTY.

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See that Cro Mags video from 1985 one day... it's a military/skinhead leather mosh orgy. Turbonegro aspire to be that video, essentially.

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maybe they won the champioship high jump while playing guitar

haha otm!

Even though I was never too big on moshing, gigs like that -- in which people moshed in order to act tough instead of for fun -- started becoming rarer and rarer, and I quickly grew out of any mosh phase I might have had. The venue became the key element in the crowd's behaviour. That is, if the venue allowed moshing, then people would do it no matter what the band or the song. Most innappropriate: Verve, during "A Man Called Sun".

I hated crowd surfers, in part because I'm tall and would always get kicked in the head.

Funny moshing story #1: at the aforementioned Lollapalooza, I went up near the front of the stage, where we were totally crushed. There was no room to do anything other than bob your head. Also, there was a slight incline in the ground about eight feet from the stage up to the security barrier. So, any crowd surfers that ended up near the front found themselves getting passed down the incline due to gravity. And since the crowd was packed so tightly, there was no room for these guys to come down, so they were stuck up there for minutes at a time. People were getting pissed with these recurring dudes and some started to punch and bite them. The surfers were crying out to the security guys to get them down, but the security guys just laughed at them

Funny moshing story #2: A Blur gig, from the Parklife tour. It was a very "active" crowd. I was up near the front, and Blur were at the end of their set and were playing "Advert". The next thing I knew, I was nailed in the head, HARD, and was nearly knocked out. Stunned and woozy, I instinctively reached out, felt for the crowd surfer who had just nailed me, and started punching him in the legs and chest. After a couple of seconds, I cleared the cobwebs and realized that DAMON ALBARN HAD JUST DOVE ONTO MY FUCKING HEAD.

I beat the piss out of Damon Albarn, even if it was only for three seconds

-- xavier (sl...), August 3rd, 2006.

otm, my sister knows a lot of these kids. according to her, they call it "throwing down" or something. i don't know if that's the term used everywhere though.

How does it differ from normal hardcore shows?

-- Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (pfunkbo...), August 4th, 2006.

well, its pretty much spread everywhere, its not just a christian thing (though that is a huge scene in america)