Hello there rock’n’roll Dopers!
On Thursday night, I reached an important milestone in my ongoing rock’n’roll quest. My friend the ever-surprising physics department librarian invited me along to see Henry Rollins and Black Flag at the Astoria in London. Blag Flag and their frontman Rollins are responsible for bringing us such wonders as Police story and Wasted.
Now over the past couple of years, my quest for rock’n’roll has taken me to see the infamous failed Guns’n’Roses comeback tour, Alice Cooper, Motorhead, Hawkwind, various other bands. I addition I wrote and staged a rock Christmas pantomime called Jesus 2: Judean Boogaloo (Jesus comes back to unite humanity by staging a giant rock concert on the Mount of Beatitudes - beer was involved in the creative process).
Finally, I thought that I was doing pretty well in my rock quest when in December 2002, whilst doing some Christmas shopping on Kensignton High Street, I had a pint with Lemmy Kilminster in a pub where I had taken refuge from the consumerist hordes. In my own vain way, I thought that this made me quite a rocking kind of guy.
But I was kidding myself. And you know why? Because I’d always stayed away from the mosh pit. Now what kind of self-respecting rock’n’roll type pays for seats at a rock event? Now luckily, the Astoria is a standing room only venue, and I was able to have my first experience of moshing.
The support band were rubbish, people just drank through their performance. But then Blag Flag came on, and I’m there, standing 10 metres away from the stage when the beast of a man who is Henry Rollins appeared. A huge great tattooed gym-monster is what that guy is. Then, he hits the Big Red Hardcore Punk Button, and the floor erupts into rock-fuelled insanity (with a little help from the chaps at the Carling Brewery and if my nostrils are anything to go by, South American recreational horticulture…). I steeled myself to enter the fray. This was it. This was the moment where I had to demonstrate my commitment to rocking. No more of this fannying around with old bass-playing speed freaks in pubs. So, in immitation of what appeared to be the current punk practice, I lobbed my empty beer can over my shoulder and lept into to the human earthquake.
Bloody hell. I spend two hours being smashed, punched, pummelled, crushed, lifted off my feet, having girls dropped on my head, with Henry Rollins two metres away encouraging us to "F** them! F*** them all!"* and other helpful punk-style advice. I emerged about three kilos lighter from the water I had lost, and absolutely covered in bruises, my arms looking like those of a washed-up scag addict, my rib-cage aching from so much crushing.
I have come to the conclusion that harcore punk mosh pits are for people of a much heavier build than I. It is an insane thing to do.
Which is exactly why I shall do the very same thing at the Motorhead gig in October! And I think that this would be an ideal occasion to try my hand (and legs, arms, spine, etc) at the venerable art of crowd surfing. This shall be my present to myself for my birthday: I want to crowd surf whilst Lemmy belts out The Ace of Spades, be collared by some huge bouncer guy, smacked round the head and thrown out. Rock on!
I’ll leave you with the wise words of Henry Rollins that so inspired the audience on Thursday night:
"We hate them! They hate us!
We can’t win! NO WAY! NO WAAAAY!"