Mosh Pit

 

I used to attend concerts all the time. I’d buy tickets for the latest stage show or musical traveling through town or the local symphony. To get a close up view of the performance I’d buy the expensive ‘orchestra seats’. Even with acts like ‘The Who’ or ‘Jimi Hendrix Experience’, the audience sat quietly in their assigned seat and applauded at the end of the song.

Then kids who had bought the ‘cheap’ seats in the balcony started running down the aisles and sitting on the floor to get the full impact of the show close up without paying for it. They would be shooed away by the ushers, but it became a habit.

The English Invasion happened and kids just couldn’t sit quietly and listen anymore.

Folk music in small coffee houses was quiet with no speakers as the audience sat a candle lit tables and swayed to the music. Then electric bands plugged in and everyone just used the floor to dance around.

 

Then there came the ‘mosh pit’.

 

Moshing (also known as slam dancing or simply slamming) is a style of dance in which participants push or slam into each other, typically performed to “aggressive” live music. Moshing usually happens in the center of the crowd, generally closer to the stage, in an area called the “pit”. It is intended to be energetic and full of body contact.

The dance style originated in the hardcore punk scenes of California and Washington, D.C. around 1980. Through the 1980s it spread to other branches of punk rock as well as thrash metal and grunge, which exposed it to the mainstream. Since then, moshing has occasionally been performed to energetic music within a wide variety of genres, including alternative rock, EDM and hip hop, while remaining a staple at punk and heavy metal shows.

Variations of moshing exist, including “pogoing”, “circle pits”, and “wall of death”. Dancing can be done alone as well as in groups.

While moshing is seen as a form of positive fan feedback or expression of enjoyment, it has also drawn criticism over dangerous excesses occurring in offshoots. Injuries and deaths have been reported in the crush of mosh pits. 

Concert seating turned into general admission and the appeal to stand for three hours and leaving the smoked filled venue with my ears ringing was lost.  The mosh pit put the period on attending musical acts.

Being on the floor with kids who wanted to run into each other was reserved for football, but they gave themselves helmets. Hand-to-hand combat has a long history but they were at war.