I do not dance…I’m too awkward and too self-aware of my awkwardness…I know we’re all supposed to dance like no one is looking, but when it comes to me, people will look, point, and judge…
My wife realizes this…since we were married decades okay, she’s had to be content with the fact that she got that dance at the wedding and that’s pretty much it…and that’s because she’s not into dancing, either…
I can feel the judgment stop it…
This doesn’t mean that music doesn’t move me…I’ve got that involuntary need to move when the music is great…and I don’t mean tapping a toe or nodding my head, although that’s where it starts…
Put it this way: I’ve done my time in the pit…I’ve been elbowed, kneed, kicked, head-butted, burn with cigarettes and joints, and doused with water (at least I hope it was water)…no problem because that’s all part of the pit experience…the only thing I haven’t done is stage dove or crowd-surfed…I’m not sure why…
But here’s a question: why is there a pit in the first place?...who came up with this idea?...how did it spread?...and is it the same everywhere?...
These are important anthropological questions…we’re deal with a type of human behavior that’s seen all over the world…I think we need to study this…here a whole hour on the history of moshing…
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Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime. This is the sound of your ride home with Dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most Vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of Vapes, brought to you by the FDA. Since 1979, TireRack.com has been helping people find the right tires for how, what, and where they drive. They sell only the best, like the full line of Bridgestone tires. Test results, ratings, and reviews are there to assist, or try the Tire Decision Guide to get a personalized tire recommendation. They're shipped fast and free to you, or one of over 10,000 recommended installers. In many areas, they offer mobile tire installation that comes to your home or office. Shop Bridgestone tires at TireRack.com. I do not dance. I'm too awkward and too self-aware of my awkwardness. I know we're all supposed to dance like no one is looking, but when it comes to me, people will look. They will point and they will judge, so I do not dance. My wife realizes this. Once we were married decades ago, she has had to be content with the fact that she got to dance at the wedding and that's pretty much it. And that's because she's really not into dancing either. I can feel the judgment. Stop it. Just stop. This doesn't mean that music doesn't move me. I've got that involuntary need to move when the music is great, and I don't mean tapping a toe or nodding my head, although that's where it starts. Put it this way, I have done my time in the pit. I've been elbowed, need, kicked, head-butted, burnt with cigarettes and joints and doused with water, at least I hope it was water. No problem because that's all part of the pit experience. The only thing I haven't done is stage dove or crowd surfed. Not sure why, but I'm sure people are very grateful for that. But here is a question. Why is there a pit in the first place? Who came up with this idea? How did it spread? And is it the same everywhere? These are important anthropological questions. We're dealing with a type of human behavior that's seen all over the world. So I think we need to study this. Here is a whole program on the history of mashing. This is The Ongoing History of New Music Podcast with Alan Cross. That's it, 56 seconds of the Circle Jerks Mosh Pit Classic Red Tape from the fall of 1980. Welcome again. I'm Alan Cross, and this entire program is dedicated to the history of the pit and what goes on in there. I was serious when I said that this is a worthy bit of anthropology. What compels men and women to throw themselves into a human blender of motion during a concert? And whose idea was this anyway? Well, for these answers and more, we must start at the very beginning. First of all, mashing came out of dancing. A big deal there, right? And of course, dancing has always been part of the human experience. The most direct ancestor of mashing is the Pogo. Now, anybody can Pogo. You stand in place and jump up and down like you're on a Pogo stick. The Pogo became a thing during the original punk rock days in the UK back in the 1970s. In many venues, there were no stages, so the band would set up on the floor. In other words, at the same level as the audience. If you weren't right up front, you couldn't see because people were in your way, and the only way to catch a glimpse of the band was to jump up so you could see over everyone's head. It is said that the inventor of the Pogo was Sid Vicious, later to be the bass player of the Sex Pistols. Now, there's a lot of fog around what he actually did, but legend says he started pogoing as a way of mocking non-punks who came to see the pistols. They danced, but Sid felt that they didn't really belong, hence his aggressive sort of bouncing up and down. We've also heard this from Shane McGowan, the singer of the Pogs. He was a very big punk fan back in the day. He says Sid's dance was the result of him insisting on wearing a tight leather poncho that restricted his dance movements to just jumping up and down. There's another story that says when Sid played the saxophone, yes, it's claimed that he played the saxophone, that he jumped up and down on the spot. However, if we're going to be honest about this, we have to go back to the middle 1960s. According to those who followed a new band called "The Pink Floyd" in 1966, people at their freak out gigs at a place called the UFO Club in London sometimes pogued in place. So, believe whatever you'd like. The one thing we do know for sure is that pogoing, either individually or in a group, definitely became a thing during the British side of the punk rock explosion in the middle 1970s. And depending on the band and depending on the gig, you can get a pretty good workout doing it. By the end of the 1970s, the original punk rock sounds had fractured and segmented. One of those segments turned into hardcore. This was among the most aggressive forms of music ever invented. The idea was to dance with... Well, let's call it enthusiasm. Deliberately crashing or slamming into other dancers, hence the term "slam dancing". The most frequent spot for this sort of thing was right in front of the stage, although at bigger gigs, circles of slam dancers could form at different points in the crowd. These became known as "circle pits" and sometimes "the wall of death". These were not for the week because things could get extraordinarily intense. Okay, so who came up with this idea? We might want a credit a dude named David Wood. He was a roadie for an Ellie punk band called The Weirdos. When he'd go to shows at the Roxy in Los Angeles, he'd start slamming into people once the band started. This was 1977. Right around the time The Weirdos released this seven-in-single called "Destroy All Music". Okay, so maybe it wasn't David Wood. Southern California music lore has it that a club in Costa Mesa called The Cuckoo's Nest is where "Mashing All" started. This place somehow has the nickname "The Birthplace of Slam Dancing". The place hosted a lot of punk shows, from the Ramon to the Dam to Social Distortion. And here we meet a guy named Jim Decker, who played for a band called The Crowd. They were from Huntington Beach, and Jim had a weird way of dancing on stage. It was the way he wildly swung his arms. When he started up, so did fans, and dozens of them at the same time, crashing into each other. And from there just got more violent. In addition to slamming, there was elbowing and kneeing and punching and spitting. Eventually, there was blood and broken bones. Well, why? Well, there are a bunch of explanations. First, slam dancing is something hippies would not do. Second, this emerged during the era of disco, and slam dancing was some kind of response to the whole Saturday Night Fever culture. And third, some were just looking to be as aggressive as possible. Lots of testosterone, you know? Bands would deliberately crank up the audience, insulting them, and even getting into fights, either on stage or in the pit. Some bands were on a mission to get the audience to hate them. And that made for some interesting evenings. Things got turned up when the local police started moving in, and busting shows at the Cuckoo's Nest, charging that the place was a den of violence, which it kind of was. The local civic authorities tried to shut the place down, and that only made things even more intense. One of the bands who played the Cuckoo's Nest was Fear. They started as basic punks, but evolved into something that formed the foundations of California hardcore punk. Fear was formed in 1977, still exists today, and at one point they featured a bass player named Flea. Yes, him. Here's Fear, with a Mosh Pit favorite from 1981, it's called "Let's Have a War" from an album entitled "The Record." So when did slam-dancing turn into "mosh-ing?" They're essentially kind of the same thing, but you don't hear people call "mosh-ing" slam-dancing much anymore. In the early 1980s, punk fanzines referred to this frenzied activity as a "mash," as it "mashed potatoes," but somehow the pronunciation shifted to "mosh." Two bands are really important when it comes to the transition from slam-dancing to "mashing" and "mosh-ing." The first is "scream," a hardcore band based out of DC. They would later hire a 17-year-old kid named Dave Grohl to play drums. But in 1982, they released an album entitled "Still Screaming," and that record featured a song called "Total Mash." Let's take a listen to them singing about what was happening right in front of them every time they played. The other band who turned slam-dancing into "mosh-ing" was "The Bad Brains," another group out of the DC area. They were hardcore, but they also loved their dub and reggae. Singer H.R. was always talking about "mashing" from the stage, urging the audience to "mash" it up. But this is key. H.R. had a Jamaican accent, so whenever he said and sang "mash," it kind of came out as "mosh." Listen for it in this song called "Leaving Babylon." What H.R. is saying is "mash it," "mash it" down "babylon," but that's not how it sounds. You'll hear it towards the end of the song. And that's the mellow side of "Bad Brains," but when they turned it up, people really, really, really took their advice and mashed it up. Of course, all these bands toured, and wherever they played "mashing" or "mashing" was encouraged. And finally, we have to bring up a movie called "The Decline of Western Civilization," a filmmaker named Penelope Spheris decided she needed to document this peculiar form of punk scene in DC in Southern California. She took cameras into some of these clubs and showed guys, and it was 99.99999% guys, "mashing" to groups like the Circle Chirks and Black Flag, guys in other parts of the world who saw the movie thought, "Hey, I can do that." So they did. The bands ranging from the Ramones to the Dead Candidates to DOA to minor threat. Walls of death, those super-aggressive manifestations emerged out of this. This is where the pit breaks into two sides who then go after each other. And if that wasn't enough for you, there was hardcore dancing. That seemed to come out of New York City. And one of the moves was called "win milling," and another was "ax handling." You can probably figure out what that means. A few other things, along with "mashing" came stage diving. This is when members of the audience got up on stage and immediately dove back on top of the audience. Iggy Pop was doing this with the Stooges as far back as 1969, and Jim Morrison of the Doors was doing the same thing at around the same time. And there's even documented evidence of some stage diving at a Rolling Stone show in Germany in the summer of 1964. But then, Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister claims he invented stage diving in the '70s when a guy threw a beer bottle at him and he dove into the crowd to pummel him. Again, choose your history. So this brings us to about 1983, the term "slam dancing" is still being used, but more and more people start using the word "mosh" and "mashing," and it was here to stay. Back with more in just a moment. Foraging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's We Call Home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer, all to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado.chefron.com 16 years from today, Greg Gersner will finally land the perfect cannonball. Epic Splash. Unsuspecting friends. A work of art, only possible because Greg is already meeting all these same people at AARP volunteer and community events that keep him active and involved and help make sure his happiness lives as long as he does. That's why the younger you are, the more you need AARP. Learn more at AARP.org/local. Hi, sorry, did I startle you? When you're used to hearing a certain type of commercial, something like this can, well, take you by surprise. That's kind of how it is with the Lexus RX, a vehicle that has continued to defy expectations for over 25 years, from the first luxury vehicle of its kind, to the first hybrid luxury vehicle, to the only plug-in hybrid worthy of the RX name. We understand you want more than the everyday SUV and isn't being understood in an amazing feeling. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. This is a history of mashing and we're now into the early 1980s. Some people loved it, others hated it, and others still were afraid of it. Venues did what they could to discourage mashing because people were getting hurt or worse. There were lawsuits and issues of liability, same thing with bands, especially after mashing became sort of a standard practice at rock gigs. There were injuries, women were getting groped and sexually assaulted, some idiots took things like brass knuckles into the pit, it was just a bad scene all around. Meanwhile, music continued to evolve, hardcore punk began to influence metal. Metal bands started playing faster and harder, resulting in thrash metal, so I think Slayer, Motorhead, Megadeth, and anthrax. Speaking of whom, anthrax wrote a song called "Caught in a Mosh." He were playing a show in Denver when some stage divers messed up guitarist Scott Ian's effects pedals. His guitar tech, a guy by the name of Artie Ring, went to solve the situation but was immediately sucked down into the pit. He got pretty beaten up, but he did manage to crawl out of the pit, and later, while in pain on the tour bus, he was asked how he felt. Mashing also became a very big thing during the grunge era. Remember that the Pacific Northwest was where grunge was born. But in the late 80s and early 90s, that area of the US was kind of a backwater when it came to big national tours. It was often just too hard to get to because of the geography, the distance from the next major center, the Rocky Mountains, and so on. So instead of being included on West East tours, the Pacific Northwest developed musical trade routes that went north-south. This meant a lot of exposure to what was happening with the punk scenes in California. Those bands didn't have any trouble piling into the van and heading north, and with them and their music came, "Mashing." When grunge went mainstream, so did Mashing, and by about 1992, everybody was doing it. Just look at any footage of that year's Lollapalooza tour. I remember standing side stage looking down into the crowd, and it was always in motion with Mashing and crowd surfing in the occasional circle, and it didn't stop there. As alt-rock cut bigger through the 90s, Mashing went along for the ride. What began as an activity at super aggressive hardcore punk shows started showing up at all alt-rock gigs. It didn't matter what kind of music was being played. You have Mashed in your crowd surf because, well, those were the rules. I was expected. It began to be ingrained as tribal behavior for the alt-rock generation. Some of the most vigorous pits I saw back then were for Nirvana, Green Day, Beastie Boys, Nine Inch Nails, but I even saw a pit form for the Cranberries when they played this song. Some Dodge, but whatever. Mashing was all fun and games until people started getting badly hurt and worse. The first band to really take a position against Mashing was Fugazi, the post-hardcore band from Washington, D.C., who would have seen Mashing culture, develop at the very beginning. Fugazi was a strange band, meaning no drinking, no drugs, and respect for both the individual and your fellow human being. When pits formed at their gigs in the 80s and early 90s, they would politely ask the crowd to cut it out. Sometimes they would even drag a kid out of the audience, put him at the mic, and tell him to apologize to everybody for his bad behavior. Other groups began to take a stand. In 1992, the ultra-political band Consolidated released an album called Playmore Music, and it contained a song called The Men's Movement, which addressed the whole issue of Mashing. There's shows back then featured a mic in the audience where people could address the band and their fellow concert gores, and that's where this audio came from. Consolidated with The Men's Movement from 1992, which pretty much summed up the divide between Moshers and those who just wanted to watch the show without getting hurt or groped or sexually assaulted. Kurt Cobain had a change of heart. In the beginning, he'd stage dive himself, but then he grew to hate the jocks who mushed whenever Nirvana played. They were the kind of people who helped sour Kurt's view of being in a famous band. Another group who took a stand against Mashing was The Smashing Pumpkins. This is a quote from Billy Corgan in 1995 when the band played Chicago. "I wish you to understand that in an environment like this, it's fairly inappropriate and unfair to the rest of the people around you. I and we publicly take a stand against Mashing." And then on May 11, 1996, something terrible happened. The band was playing the Point Theater in Dublin on the melancholy and the infinite sadness tour in front of about 7,000 people. When the pumpkins started to play at around 930 that night, 17-year-old Bernadette O'Brien rushed the stage and into a Mosh Pit. The crush was incredible. A few minutes into the set, Billy Corgan asked that the audience "Relax! Take a step back!" But that didn't help. Around 10 o'clock, Billy stepped up to the mic and said, "I'm sorry, the gig is over. There's a girl who's nearly dying. We as human beings cannot play up here while people are getting hurt down there." Bernadette suffered massive internal injuries. Her organs were literally squished inside her body by the weight of all those other people around her in the pit. And she died. Her friends and two cousins were also hurt, but they managed to recover. The story got a lot of play in the news. The crackdown on Mosh-ing that had already begun got more intense. And lawyers and lawsuits started appearing more frequently. Then November 13, 1997. Everclear was playing at a show in the Boston area called The Paradise, and everything was going great. Down front in the Mosh Pit were three members of the New England Patriots, quarterback Drew Bledso, backup quarterback Scott Zolak, and offensive lineman Max Lane. Added up, these guys weighed 741 pounds. Lane was the biggest at 305. At some point in the show, these guys decided that they would do what everyone else in the pit was doing, a little stage diving. In fact, they thought that Everclear singer Art Alexis had invited them up on stage to give it a whirl. But gravity dictated an unwanted vector for the 305-pound Max Lane. When he arced off the stage, he landed on 23-year-old Tamika Messier. She got crushed. She suffered injuries to her neck, her shoulders, and her arms. She was rushed to hospital where she had surgery to remove two herniated discs and diffuse three vertebrae together. On December 10, 1997, Tamika filed a lawsuit against the club, Max Lane, Drew Bledso, and Everclear. She wanted damages for her injuries. Things dragged on for almost two years, but then in March of 1999, a settlement was reached for $1.2 million. Most of the money came from Max Lane and Drew Bledso, although Everclear had to contribute to the settlement, too. That bit of business hit them where it hurt, in their premiums for their liability insurance. That got people's attention. In 1998, "Real Big Fish," tired of seeing so much hurt happening in front of them whenever they played, wrote a song called "Thank You for Not Mashing." "Real Big Fish" and "Thank You for Not Mashing." A few more stories from the history of the Mosh Pit coming up. "Jack in the Box" knows sometimes you're in the mood for a burger and sometimes a bigger burger. Starting at $4.99, the bonus jack combo at Jack in the Box gets you fries, a drink, and a burger with your choice of one, two, or three patties at Jack EveryBites, a big deal. Order now at Jack in the Box. Hey Fidelity. Can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app? With Fidelity, it's easy to get an outside opinion from independent experts in a single score. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential of death in the Coliseum, to find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit, twice a week leading experts and academics delve into our distant past and discover secrets thought lost to the sands of time. Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History Hit. This is a show on the history of the "Mosh Pit" that seething cauldron of human bodies that some enjoy, that some hate, and that have paralyzed and killed people. Here are some other incidents of "Mosh Pit" tragedies. Part of the disaster that was the 30th Anniversary Woodstock Show in 1999 can be traced back to the "Mosh Pit." They got tremendously violent. There were many, many injuries, broken bones, concussions, and most horrific of all were the sexual assaults and charges of rape. Then, in 2001, Limp Biscuit, who was also at Woodstock 99, encouraging the crowd to go nuts, they were performing at the Big Day Out Festival in Australia. 16-year-old Jessica Malachik was crushed in the pit and died of a heart attack related to aphyxiation five days later. The coroner cited singer Fred Durst for "alarming and inflammatory comments" when EMS people tried to rescue Jessica. Her parents filed a civil suit against Limp Biscuit. The band was then sued by their own insurance company, saying that these kinds of lawsuits weren't covered by their policy. And then, tragedy struck the smashing pumpkins again. On September 24, 2007, 20-year-old Kenny Leung went to a pumpkins gig at the P&E Forum in Vancouver. He, too, went into the Mosh Pit, but was dragged up by security when it was obvious something was wrong. He was unconscious, not bleeding or injured in any obvious way, but unconscious. But then he died. An autopsy couldn't officially connect Kenny's death to crowdsurfing or mashing, but this only reinforced the need to control what was happening down front. Others demanded a zero-tolerance policy, like a pumpkin. The 21st century has seen a major backlash against mashing. Again, people were getting hurt. This was leading to lawsuits. That was leading to higher insurance premiums for artists and promoters and venues. This meant more security staff at gigs, and all this contributed to higher ticket prices. As it venues started to appear, for the benefit of your own safety, we strongly recommend that you do not crowdsurf, stuff like that. And some content tickets began to feature fine print that said you'd be thrown out of the gig if you were caught crowdsurfing or stage diving. But the problems kept happening. In 2010, the metal band Lamb of God was charged in the death of a fan in Prague. A guy surfed to the front, got up on stage, whereupon singer Randy Blythe pushed him back into the audience. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and this fan hit his head on the concrete floor. He later died, and there was a long court case after Blythe was charged with manslaughter. Anyone who went to the 2014 warp tour would have seen no mashing signs. They read, "You get hurt, we get sued, no more warp tour." That same year, Fishbone had to pay $1.4 million to a woman who was hurt with a band's Angela Moore staged over on top of her, breaking her collarbone. And Slipknot, an aggressive band if there ever was one, has come out against how mashing has evolved, calling it a form of bullying. Still, mashing continued. Mostly, it was okay, but people still got hurt. And you knew things were out of control when in 2014, an audience member was ejected for crowdsurfing during a classical music concert. This guy got overexcited by a performance of Handel's "Messiah." But we've got music and football together on dance floors, and young kids are doing it and they're getting hurt. Mashing. You get in the middle of the floor and you bang each other, you give elbows. This isn't funny. Let me just give you a look at this. This is mashing in New York City. Young people out on the floor tell me how close we are to a riot. Show them, Brian. But what lawyers and security staff in bands could not do may be handled by something invisible, the coronavirus. The idea of slamming up against sweaty strangers and all their bodily fluids and spit isn't the kind of thing that sounds very good anymore. This could mean the end of mashing, at least until there's a vaccine and herd immunity if that ever happens. Meanwhile, have a listen to this. The band is called Vivian's hamster and they're not a fan of the whole mashing thing either. See I told you we could fill a full program with the story of mashing, plus we managed to get in a little on both stage diving and crowd serving. If you would like more of this sort of thing, there are hundreds of podcasts available through Spotify, Apple podcasts and other platforms. They're all free and they are there for the taking. You should subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And please rate, review, and share if you can that really helps. You can check out my website for more. It's agertalofmusicalthings.com. Get the free daily newsletter because it's a great way to keep on top of things. We can connect on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and I'm always looking for ideas when it comes to topics for this program. If you have something that you would like to see covered on this show, just shoot an email to allen@allencross.ca. Thanks for your production. I'm Rob Johnston. We'll talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross. You've been listening to the ongoing history of new music podcasts with Alan Cross. Subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and everywhere you find your favorite podcasts. This fall, TV's most buzzworthy drama returns. The crew from 911 is back on the scene kicking off with an epic three-part season premiere. The chaos begins when a truck spills its deadly cargo on the highway. Now, a catastrophe of biblical proportions swarms the city. All new Thursday's on Global Stream on Stack TV.
