"I can see the chaos just fine from here, thanks!"

“I can see the chaos just fine from here, thanks ”



This is well charted territory. What I am about to scribble on this machine has been well worn, sold and bought back many a times. But I don’t care. I’ve never written about it so just shut your clam hole and enjoy.

OK. This came up in conversation quite recently. A buddy of mine just left his band of five years. Not so much of creative differences but more of “I just can’t take the b.s. anymore”. It happens. We hear about it all the time with big acts but it also trickles down to the little guy struggling to get studio time and gigs.

He mentioned that something that has ceased to exist, oddly, was the always present mosh pit.

“It’s like they don’t care anymore,” he said. “Their either too cool, too high or too drunk to get into it. Why is that?”

I then pressed my observation to him saying that the last decent metal show I attended was wrought with pit violence.

“It wouldn’t end,” I explained. “I got shoes to the head on several occasions. Rampant flailing and stage diving. So I had to leave.”

Now, I didn’t leave the show, just merely stepped aside and watched the action on stage and on the floor in relative safety. I’ve never been a big pit guy anyway. Pain hurts and why did I just pay $20 to get my head stepped on and shirt ripped?

But my friend’s cognizance on the usual pit frenzy being abandoned for standing with one hand in pocket the other on a beer, lazily gazing at the band as they sweat blood for their supper, made me nostalgic on the origin and the essence of what is and was the mosh pit. A bruised trip down memory lane if you like.

First off, I am not a punk and metal historian in any account. Just a longtime fan. In the 20+ years of going to shows on a fairly regular basis, I too have seen a change in club floor regalement. So I’m gonna take you on my personal journey with my affection and apprehension with ‘The Pit”.

The first time I had ever heard of an audience bashing and jumping around like lunatics was as a little boy. Growing up in suburban LA, I was privy to a radio station, KROQ, that often promoted and aired bands such as the Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, etc. At the time my dad was really into the station seeing that, in the 80s, they played the best selection of one hit wonder New Wave and modern rock. At night though, it could switch to the grittier end of things. I remember listening to a Crime and Dead Boys concert live on this little transistor radio I had. Under the covers and pretending to sleep, I extended the silvery antennae towards my open window to get the best reception. With the volume as low as possible and the cool metal speaker pressed to my ear, I was soon listening to my first punk rock show. I couldn’t understand a thing. The lyrics were squalky and mumbled at best. Drums crashed in the distance. Guitars went in and out of tune and harmony. But, for some reason, I loved it. I had no idea what was going on but I was absolutely in awe of that noise. At one point a guy got on the microphone and said “Keep the slamdancing to just jumping up and down ok?”

Slamdancing? What the heck was that?

A few weeks later the movie channel we had, SelecTV, showed a movie called Suburbia, which was, strangely enough, about young runaway punk rock kids in LA. If you watch it now, that’s Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the weird guy with the rat. Anyway, the film was really low budget and kind of boring...BUT I finally got to see what this slamdancing was all about.

There, as TSOL commanded the stage, the crowd whipped itself into such a frenzy that they were literally slamming against each other. Ah HA I get it now. Slamdancing. Yes. It all makes sense.

My new found curiosity with punk and slamdancing came at the same time I was a card carrying member of the KISS Army. KISS was rock and roll right? They’re pretty loud and fast, right? So...how come no one was slamming at their shows? I just see a bunch of guys pounding their fists in the air and girls lifting their shirts up.

Let’s move forward 5 or 6 years. My dad and I moved from LA to a small town called Salinas, a central California city known for it’s farms and rodeos. It was also the first place I heard the word “nigger” that wasn’t in a movie but rather a classmate, as the township was a big division between blacks and whites with Latinos being the major “minority”. Very strange city. It was also the place where I met Jason Williams, a kid who got me full on into hardcore punk. At the time punk and metal were still two very different worlds. Mid to late 80s we’re talking about here. As I skateboarded through the parking lot at my high school, I would see all of these flannel wearing, mullet headed stoners blasting Slayer and Metallica from their beat up cars. And I loved Slayer and Metallica. Still do. Well, their older stuff. So as I tried to hang out with them just because I loved the music, I’d get chased off and teased because I had more of a skate punk look rather than a headbanger.

I didn’t get it. Sure I love punk but I also love metal. What gives?

The summer of ‘86 brought a special gift to Salinas; a concert featuring Slayer and DRI.

Oh my god Are you joking? Both of them, together? Here? Wow
DRI back then, as I knew them, was the absolutely fastest band on the planet. Beyond speed metal and beyond punk, those four guys thrashed into a whole new realm of oblivion...and I WORSHIPED them Sure I liked Slayer but back then they were still into wearing goofy makeup and leather spiked outfits. DRI were like us. Goofy suburban skate punks wearing ripped jeans and Discharge t-shirts. It was also music I could relate to, more along the lines of being a bored suburban skate punk rather than singing about Satan and human sacrifice. Two things I had very limited experience with.

The show was about ten bucks so after a night of bussing tables at the local VFW with a buddy of mine, I had the cash to get one and maybe buy a shirt. Telling my dad that I was spending the night at Jason’s (which I did so it wasn’t a full lie as my dad was adamantly against me going to the show) we raced over to the venue and I was soon engaging in my first hardcore and metal show.

All I can say is this...I really don’t remember much. DRI was the first to go on and the place erupted into one massive pit. It was funny because the metalheads were on the outskirts literally “corralling” the thrashing punks into their pit. The headbangers had nothing to do with slamming. They were there to see Slayer, nod their head quickly up and down and drink beer.

But not us. The DRI faction wanted chaos and blood and, by gum, they were gonna get it. I got caught right up in it as a tall long haired doofus pushed me in. It was there that I was literally baptized into the realm of slamdancing. It wasn’t just slamming though. Oh no. It was leaping and crushing and pummeling and diving and falling and stomping and...and... Oh dear lord, what the heck am I doing here, I thought.

In the center of the maelstrom, it quickly dawned on me that I was pretty much a wimp. This kind of bonding with your fellow thrashers wasn’t my idea of a good time. I could barely hear the band, let alone see them, so I made my way out of the maze of sweaty bodies to safety.

Towards the back and to the side I finally got to see my favorite band and witness the jumbled terror of that pit. When Slayer came on the pit turned to a swirling sea of shaggy heads dancing up and down. I got into it too. Headbanging is much more my style.

The thrashers tried to start a pit but were always usurped by leather jacketed gorillas higher and drunker than any hardcore punk could deal with. But I didn’t care. Slayer blasted on in silly speed metal demonics and I was finally having a good time.

A year later both bands released an album that would bring the two worlds together. DRI offered up Crossover, taking them from hardcore punk into the thrash metal arena, and Slayer released Reign In Blood, still, to this day, one of the greatest metal albums I have ever encountered.

That’s when things changed. That’s when “slam dancing” became “moshing”.

Moshing caught on so hard and so fast that it even made the news a few times and was a feature on MTV news. The two musical alliances I had loved for so long were finally united in a blistering hatesphere of boots, fists and pent up suburban tomfoolery. Bands like Exodus, Corrosion of Conformity, Cryptic Slaughter, Suicidal Tendencies, Anthrax and, yes, Slayer were now playing for a wider and wilder crowd. Even Metallica hooked up with Glenn Danzig and often wore Misfits t-shirts on stage.

It was a glorious time to be a metal thrashing dork!

Cut to the early 90's or as I like to refer to it as “The Death of Metal”. Sure the music was taking on different forms like death, doom, stoner, industrial and even gridncore but Grunge was in the forefront of music and I allowed myself to get caught up in it. Hair bands that once packed stadiums were now playing small clubs again if not completely breaking up. Metal went back underground to reform itself in the various blocs listed above, and beyond, waiting to pounce once the Grunge shtick wore off.

So I waited it out. Until then, I bought Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgraden, Screaming Trees, Tad, Melvins and Dinosaur Jr. records. Seeing as Grunge was basically a flanneled mixture of punk and metal of course there were mosh pits at the shows. And let me tell you this, those things were out of control! It was really bizarre.

Sure at the big Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers new years show at the Cow Palace back in, what, 90?, 91?, I expected to see a big pit. In fact, there were several. Same thing went for Lollapalooza. That first one was such an eclectic mix of bands that people didn’t know when to start or stop the moshing. It got out of control when Ice T’s set turned into a Body Count show as I was front and center on the fence up on the lawn at Shoreline in Palo Alto, CA. The slope of the lawn area caused crowd surfers to move my way then fall down to the concrete a few feet below. Again, I could barely see of hear the band. Instead I was holding on for dear life.

That time took a strange step when I went to see (now, don’t hate me on this) the Lemonheads and Veruca Salt play a show in LA. This show was supposed to be pure pop schmaltz. It was, but the fact that Grunge and moshing were making national headlines and featured in mags like Time and Newsweek sent the scene and bands into a whole new level of acceptance and popularity. It was so common to mosh that at almost any show a pit could start up. Guess what happened when Evan Dando and the boys started playing? Yep. The pit was so stupid crazy tempestuous that all I did was laugh. It’s the Lemonheads you idiots! How can you even think of moshing to songs like “Into Your Arms” and “Mrs. Robinson”? But they did. Oh how they did.

On the drive back to my then home in Santa Barbara I knew “Grunge” had come to a full head. I was done with it.

Then Kurt Cobain shot himself and that was that. It was also the year I discovered a band called Kyuss and re-fell in love with metal. Everything was back to normal.

For 12 years I lived in San Francisco and for a big majority of those years I wrote for a slew of glossy and completely obscure music mags. So, to say the least, I’ve been to a lot of shows and have seen a lot of bands. One thing that remained and changed was, of course, “the Pit”. It didn’t have the same relevancy than it used to. In fact, on most hip fronts, it was totally passe. Sure a Napalm Death show was wrought with them, but that belonged to the younger and coked up lot. Maybe the pit hadn’t changed at all. I was just older and fully aware that I was done with it. Maybe it was because most of the concert goers in San Francisco were so obscenely high that all they could do was stand there with one hand in their pocket, the other on the red cup of beer.

Yet with the infusion of “metalcore” and the vile “nu metal” a new addition to the pit was added. The “wall of death” has two teams, them and they, the right side and the left. Both teams split up making a big open space between them. When the music starts or gets seriously fast, the two teams then run toward each other at full speed, bashing hard into one another, making it look like rival tribes of barbarians going into war. That’s where I drew the line. Let ‘em go at it. The music has taken such a splintered route that now any dopey bored white kid angry at their mom because they wont drive them to the mall can get out their aggression and show off their bruises to like minded classmates the next day at school.

Not me though. I’ll be in the back by the beer shed. I can see the chaos just fine from there, thank you.

Point is, I love metal. And I still love punk. Usually, for my favorite bands I will make the nervous jump to the front so I can bang my head against the pick up amps knowing that I will have to fight for my position and take a few lumps. Moshing is hard work though. You have to be fit to deal with it. It takes a certain stamina and attitude. A lot of people, obviously, have it, yet at the same time a lot don’t. Perhaps in this age of immediate downloads of your favorite bands and clubs now instilling “No Pit” rules because of insurance, the whole notion to start moshing has to be taken into consideration first. Do I want to take the chance of slipping and falling? Do I want to get my shirt ripped and wallet possibly stolen? Is the band even worth the sweat? Am I drunk enough? These are things I’m sure go through the minds of some aging pit enthusiasts.

Or I could be wrong here. I’m sure it’s just “Aaaaaaugh! SLAYER!!!” and off they go. The world will always be filled with testosterone filled morons looking to prove their toughness. The pit is now left for just that.

Still, my friends seemed upset at the lack of passion in his band’s fans. I then told him to read Get In The Van by Henry Rollins where he spins tales of doing shows with Black Flag, completely trashing the venue and having to pay the club owner for damages, leaving them completely penniless.

“Is that what you want?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I quit the band anyway.”

Oh yeah. Right...



-Mark Whittaker