I went to Rollins Band tonite. My first concert. I was really suprised at how humane the moshers were. When I got pushed so hard I was falling, a guy grabbed my shoulders and lifted me back. I gave him a thumbs-up and continued. That convinced me that moshing is not about violence, but shared male bonding. Ah. Mundane and pointless.
Pfft, that’s just cuz Henry’s gone soft since he ditched Black Flag. 
Bullsh*t. It may be about bonding now, considering the circumstances, but I can remember several shows where the mosh pits were dominated by steroid-pumped psychopaths who would toss the 120lb. weaklings like myself(I was in eighth grade when I went to Lollapalooza One) around like it was all in good fun. I saw several girls getting knocked to the ground and I lost a couple shoes.
Being helped up happens a lot. Everywhere. Most of the times someone has to fuck it up with knocking people down and all that. The last time I saw someone do that at a show, 20 people surrounded him and told him to leave or get a couple of broken things. It was a peaceful pit from them on.
Nor did you go see Exloited where the Sharp Skins broke both of the single white power skinhead’s arms. Not to mention just went into the pit with razorblades and cut eachother up. (That was the only pit I didn’t go into.) Not that there was any wrong in teaching the racist fool a lesson (I actually knew most of those skinheads, including the white power one), I just think that was the wrong venue to do it in and the wrong message.
Also, the pits vary by locality and band. San Antonio pits tend to be mean anyway, but Austin pits tend to just have a bunch of guys and girls jumping around into eachother. (From personal experience…) Houston and DC pits are meaner or nicer depending on the location of the venue and sometimes the band.
I have had many people help me out (when I was the skinny 140 pounder) when I was tossed around in the pit and fell. I have also been dragged into the pit by the earlier said body builders, in a headlock, and swung around until I fell. (My first big concert, DRI was the band.)
HUGS!
Sqrl
In my experience there are several different types of mosh pits. It totally depends on the band and the dynamics of the crowd. In general:
Punk: Angry pit but many times the kids are too small to really hurt anyone.
Metal: Mostly drunk, usually fat guys with some stocky kids not trying too hard to hurt each other.
Hardcore: Same as punk but they try harder to hurt people. Especially with all that windmill arm-flailing.
Alternative/ Nu-Metal: These kids just hop around, if someone gets hurt its because someone broke the rules. They are usually moshing in a mocking way. I hate these kids the most.
I would guess that Rollins Band had a good mix of Punk and Metal. As such, the Metal guys are usually pretty good at helping people out. As Tom Araya says on Decade of Aggression - “If you see somebody goin’ down, help each other out. Thats what we’re here to do, help each other out.”
Avoid the pit at Harpos at all costs, regardless of the band. They are out for blood and they always get it.
Last time i was in a mosh pit… my g/f was pushed down… and I was the ONLY one to help her up… some guy fell on top of her right away and I was sure she was going to be out for good… I pulled (read-- Kicked and Shoved) him off of her and yanked her right up and she was fine… I do think the people around stopped for a second… but overall, nobody really seemed to care. I tell you what… Scary shit going down in a mosh pit like that…
(The show was Filter btw-- they were the first band at the first EMP concert in Seattle… we were there to see Metallica at the end of the night and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kid Rock along the way. Filter sucked ass… )
Moshing is one of the things that made me stop going to shows. It’s fine at Rollins or something similar, but idiots were moshing at ANY show, just to be cool. Moshing at The Jesus and Mary Chain? Come on. And no, it wasn’t about expressing yourself or bonding, it was about fucking up the people next to you. Except it didn’t turn into a fight because you were suposed to just “take it”.
Like I said, it has its time and place. But like everything else, it got appropriated by a bunch of assholes just using it to be assholes.
There was moshing only close to the stage, so I could come and go as I pleased. The moshers seemed like pretty nice people, just there to push around and be pushed. There were people crowdsurfing if that gives any measure of it. The moshers had their place, but there was a place for everyone else at the venue.
I found a really cool hat once in a mosh, i found a shoe after the show 2.
Sure…the place for non-moshers was the same as always - away from the stage. It only makes sense that the ones closest to the stange be people who, for the most part, couldn’t care less what’s going on ON the stage, since they’re mainly interested in just ramming into each other. I guess the stage is convenient for those who want to draw attention away from the band by crowd diving and crowd surfing.
I’m sorry, I just remember a time when people went to a show to actually pay attention to the band and not just themselves. And I remember a time when you didn’t have a mosh pit at the pront of every single performance of every band, appropriate or not.
Bwah hah ha! I’m not sure why this cracks me up, but it does.
I was just struggling with that “Man, I must be getting old!” feeling because I too remember when moshing was an activity that had a specific time and place.
Ya didn’t mosh to every gol-darned band that came down the pike. Young people these days!
Ramones - yes
Primitives - no
Firehose - yes
REM - no
Iggy Pop - yes
Replacements - it seemed to depend on how much the crowd had had to drink and what year it was.
I remember getting involved in a little shoving match that devolved into an actual bar brawl when some very very annoying people were moshing at a show of our favorite local band back in the late 80s, moshing to songs that were completely inappropriate. Moshing to a funk/pop band with a brass section? grr. OK, enough ranting.
You went to a Firehouse concert? And you moshed there?
{Nelson]Haw-Ha![/Nelson]
[sub]What? Stop hitting me. It was a joke! I Fly the Flannel and Rage, Full on with the best of them.[/sub]
Last time I was in a pit was a week ago, at an outdoor show on 6th street. The headliners were Unloco and The Union Underground.
The pit was MOVIN’! I was there with three of my friends and every one of us was bleeding by the end of the Unloco set.
For TUU it just went insane. Completely nuts, especially for “Turn Me On Mr. Deadman” and “South Texas Death Ride” (come on/come on/ get up get up get up/south texas death ride you motherfuck!)
It was definitely the wildest of the Austin pits I’ve been in. The best ever was in San Antonio, for Mudvayne and Kittie. It was totally insane. It was to the point where I had no control. I’m about 225 lbs, and I was being thrown around like a rag doll. I’d slam in to someone in the pit, fly into the wall of people around it, get thrown back in, slam someone else out, and get nailed. I don’t think I could’ve gotten out of there if I wanted to.
The moshing high points in that show were:
Mudvayne- Dig
Mudvayne- Internal Primates Forever (chorus = “JUMP! JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!”)
Kittie- Raven
Kittie- Charlotte
Kittie- Brackish
I can’t wait for the new Kittie album. Supposedly it’s Death Metal this time. Yeeha!
LC
P.S.-
I was surprised by the astounding crappiness of the pit at the Marilyn Manson show I saw in San Antonio.
The show was good though, with the possible exception of when Marilyn spit on me.
LC
FirehOse not FirehOUse
BiiiiiiiiG Difference.
Guess it would have helped if I had punctuated correctly:
fIREHOSE
Last time I was in a pit was at a Staind show earlier this summer. One of the problems is that metal is big again, and people are going into pits for the first time, and don’t know to help each other up. I don’t go into pits at big shows anymore, because they are mostly filled with pumped up jocks who like to hit people, and get pissed when they get hit.
I guess I’m getting to old for it too. There was a time when I was in pits 2 or 3 days a week, seeing bands like Sick of it All, Murphy’s Law or some other hardcore or punk or metal band, and didn’t think twice about it. Now, if I happen to get in one, I’m sore for days.
Red_Dragon60
Rollins played with Bobaflex at X-fest, right?
Well what did you think of them? (bobaflex)
Bobaflex plays at alot of the Huntington clubs, I’ve partied with them a couple times.
I’ve been in rough, mean pits and been beaten up enough to show it. I’ve also been in some very good pits where you don’t have to worry about being clobbered by some drunk guy.
It all depends on the ages of people around and what it is you’re moshing to.
People who mosh for no reason piss me off. A few months ago, I was watching my friends’ punk/ska band play. I had been considering not going, because of the typical foolishness that many of these pop punk kids at my high school displayed. I figure, hey, it’ll be the last chance to see my buds play, so I went. This show was in a Christian coffee house (food and drinks were always free there; you just made whatever donation you wanted. Not that this matters.) Having a full horn section, they’re a pretty big band- a drummer, guitarist, bassist, vocalist, saxophonist, trumpet, and trombonist, and in a coffee shop it was really crowded. At this point, you’d be thinking, well, hey, no moshing there. And you’d have been wrong. They started out with that jumping up and down which passes for dancing. Then it built into moshing- I almost fell on people behind me, and I was no where near to being up front.
I’m glad they can display their rebellion by dressing in identical clothing purchased at the mall and bouncing into each other in a coffee shop. Don’t get me wrong- I don’t mind people moshing where it makes sense. But there, with that music? I don’t think so.