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kaigouAbout live shows among the subcultures, a facet that apparently exists on both coasts, per ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cosplayeriori’s comments in a previous thread:
When I was in college and home for the weekend (a somewhat rare event, given that I was frequently in the city but not necessarily making any effort to swing by actual home), I managed to get two tickets for the Fishbone show at a city university. I already knew I’d be doing head door for them when they played my own school the following Monday, but it’s one thing to stand at the door the entire night, and another thing to actually, y’know, see the show. It was one of the few times I made a real effort to do something for my sister, seeing how she liked Guadacanal Diary (the actual headliners).
When we arrived at the university’s gymnasium (the bands didn’t even score the really fancy graduation hall where I saw Nick Cave, sheesh), I knew this was going to be a different kind of night: it was a much more diverse group than I normally saw at clubs in the city, but then, the band’s audience was also wildly diverse, thanks to the pre-MTV fans and the MTV-grown fans and the ones who just plain liked their message.
So what did we have? Oh, about a fourth of the audience in line were university students, looking like the normal Gap-wearing kids you’d expect. Another fourth were hardcores, some of whom I knew in passing, in their slightly-more-worn version of the Gap-kids, but with boots and plaid overshirts instead of college sweatshirts and sneakers. A handful or so of punks -- and by that I mean, mohawks or manic-panic hair, studs and chains-for-show... and then a good quarter of the folks waiting were hippies.
Okay, so “Cult of Personality” might appeal to hippies, I suppose, but I wouldn’t expect the music style to be all that for them, but there they were, decked out in tie-dyes and long flowy skirts and free-hanging hair and looking all laid-back and peacey and, well, hippie-like.
And then the last quarter were skinheads.
My sister tensed, thinking this would be a bad night, and I kept telling her, “some of the best behaved people at a show are skinheads.” Well, they are! They know off the bat (as a doorman told me once) that if a skinhead gets into a fight with a college student, the cop is going to arrest the skinhead. No questions asked. It doesn’t matter if the skinhead’s on the ground with his skull bashed in and the college kid is holding the baseball bat, it’s the skinhead’s fault -- though perhaps in that case, the cop wouldn’t arrest either, figuring the skinhead got what was coming to him.
Regardless, my sister remained dubious (and for once, I got to feel all Older Sibling Knowledgeable And Protective even though I knew full well there was no reason, and even though my sister still made a show of putting on a miniaturized version of the probably quite-lackadaisical attitude I was showing).
So the first band plays... and to this day, I can’t remember who they were (my sister would recall, I’m sure) but everyone seemed to get along okay. Then the lights go to full brightness while the roadies break down the stage and set up for the second band, Fishbone. My sister and I sit in the bleachers, watching the crowd, chatting, saying hey to a few people I knew, nothing much. Then my sister pokes me.
“Hey, look down there,” she says. “That group.”
I look. There’s a large circle of people sitting on the floor, in the middle of the auditorium. Maybe ten hippies, about six or seven skinheads, a few college students, a punk or two. They seem to be just hanging out, sitting cross-legged, a loose confederation of fellow fans. Then, suddenly, one of the hippy-chicks jumps up and starts running around the circle, patting heads as she goes.
“I’m not sure,” my sister says, “but I think they’re playing--”
And right then, a skinhead yelps and leaps to his feet, taking after the little hippy-chick, who lifts up her skirts and wow, could that girl sprint. He’d almost caught her, but she did a perfect two-point skid into his vacated spot, everyone cheered, and now the skinhead was walking around the circle patting heads.
“---Duck-duck-goose,” my sister concludes.
They played it until the lights dimmed for the next band.
That night remains one of my favorite all-time live-music memories, for the game of duck-duck-goose, as well as for later -- during Fishbone -- when the hippies danced along the perimeter in their arm-waving, flowing, graceful style, while the skins all moshed by the stage, and the college students danced somewhere in between. Then, around the fourth song, some blonde chick with pink lipstick dancing near me, tugs on a skinhead’s arm to get his attention. He leans over to hear her, and she yells, “can I do that crowd-surfing thing, too?”
He looks her over and motions to her ears. “Take out your earrings,” he tells her. (They were overlarge hoops.) She does, and I took them for safe-keeping. Then, with a quick warning, he lifted her straight up into the air and with a yell, practically tossed her over to the folks around him, and the next thing I know, Betty Sorority is crowd-surfing in her college sweatshirt and her Gap jeans and her expensive shoes... and having an absolute ball.
The song ended and she rode back our way and the guys lowered her down. I gave her back her earrings, and... she gave the skinhead a hug and thanked him.
It’s times like that, that I recognize the incredible power of music to bring us all together, if only for an evening.
cosplayeriori’s comments in a previous thread:Yes, for clubs it’s usually the dumb white kids getting into fights. In my years being around music scene of SF and having bouncers for clubs like the Fillmore and Warfield be my ‘baby sitters’ on going to the office with mom days, when I was young, rarely did I ever hear about fights and they didn’t hold back talking around me, because they where always talking about what shows they worked, how late it went, if they had to do anything. Really all you got were guys getting kicked out for moshing/stage jumping (which isn’t allowed at the Fillmore, they will kick you out) or some guy getting drunk and being an ass. I will say one of the most WELL-behaved and friendly audiences I’ve ever seen was at a Garry Newman concert who had Switchblade Symphony as their opener. Granted the Filmore was filled to the brim with a strange mix of ex-80’s now semi-prep office types and hardcore-goth scene. Everyone got along, and was really nice.
When I was in college and home for the weekend (a somewhat rare event, given that I was frequently in the city but not necessarily making any effort to swing by actual home), I managed to get two tickets for the Fishbone show at a city university. I already knew I’d be doing head door for them when they played my own school the following Monday, but it’s one thing to stand at the door the entire night, and another thing to actually, y’know, see the show. It was one of the few times I made a real effort to do something for my sister, seeing how she liked Guadacanal Diary (the actual headliners).
When we arrived at the university’s gymnasium (the bands didn’t even score the really fancy graduation hall where I saw Nick Cave, sheesh), I knew this was going to be a different kind of night: it was a much more diverse group than I normally saw at clubs in the city, but then, the band’s audience was also wildly diverse, thanks to the pre-MTV fans and the MTV-grown fans and the ones who just plain liked their message.
So what did we have? Oh, about a fourth of the audience in line were university students, looking like the normal Gap-wearing kids you’d expect. Another fourth were hardcores, some of whom I knew in passing, in their slightly-more-worn version of the Gap-kids, but with boots and plaid overshirts instead of college sweatshirts and sneakers. A handful or so of punks -- and by that I mean, mohawks or manic-panic hair, studs and chains-for-show... and then a good quarter of the folks waiting were hippies.
Okay, so “Cult of Personality” might appeal to hippies, I suppose, but I wouldn’t expect the music style to be all that for them, but there they were, decked out in tie-dyes and long flowy skirts and free-hanging hair and looking all laid-back and peacey and, well, hippie-like.
And then the last quarter were skinheads.
My sister tensed, thinking this would be a bad night, and I kept telling her, “some of the best behaved people at a show are skinheads.” Well, they are! They know off the bat (as a doorman told me once) that if a skinhead gets into a fight with a college student, the cop is going to arrest the skinhead. No questions asked. It doesn’t matter if the skinhead’s on the ground with his skull bashed in and the college kid is holding the baseball bat, it’s the skinhead’s fault -- though perhaps in that case, the cop wouldn’t arrest either, figuring the skinhead got what was coming to him.
Regardless, my sister remained dubious (and for once, I got to feel all Older Sibling Knowledgeable And Protective even though I knew full well there was no reason, and even though my sister still made a show of putting on a miniaturized version of the probably quite-lackadaisical attitude I was showing).
So the first band plays... and to this day, I can’t remember who they were (my sister would recall, I’m sure) but everyone seemed to get along okay. Then the lights go to full brightness while the roadies break down the stage and set up for the second band, Fishbone. My sister and I sit in the bleachers, watching the crowd, chatting, saying hey to a few people I knew, nothing much. Then my sister pokes me.
“Hey, look down there,” she says. “That group.”
I look. There’s a large circle of people sitting on the floor, in the middle of the auditorium. Maybe ten hippies, about six or seven skinheads, a few college students, a punk or two. They seem to be just hanging out, sitting cross-legged, a loose confederation of fellow fans. Then, suddenly, one of the hippy-chicks jumps up and starts running around the circle, patting heads as she goes.
“I’m not sure,” my sister says, “but I think they’re playing--”
And right then, a skinhead yelps and leaps to his feet, taking after the little hippy-chick, who lifts up her skirts and wow, could that girl sprint. He’d almost caught her, but she did a perfect two-point skid into his vacated spot, everyone cheered, and now the skinhead was walking around the circle patting heads.
“---Duck-duck-goose,” my sister concludes.
They played it until the lights dimmed for the next band.
That night remains one of my favorite all-time live-music memories, for the game of duck-duck-goose, as well as for later -- during Fishbone -- when the hippies danced along the perimeter in their arm-waving, flowing, graceful style, while the skins all moshed by the stage, and the college students danced somewhere in between. Then, around the fourth song, some blonde chick with pink lipstick dancing near me, tugs on a skinhead’s arm to get his attention. He leans over to hear her, and she yells, “can I do that crowd-surfing thing, too?”
He looks her over and motions to her ears. “Take out your earrings,” he tells her. (They were overlarge hoops.) She does, and I took them for safe-keeping. Then, with a quick warning, he lifted her straight up into the air and with a yell, practically tossed her over to the folks around him, and the next thing I know, Betty Sorority is crowd-surfing in her college sweatshirt and her Gap jeans and her expensive shoes... and having an absolute ball.
The song ended and she rode back our way and the guys lowered her down. I gave her back her earrings, and... she gave the skinhead a hug and thanked him.
It’s times like that, that I recognize the incredible power of music to bring us all together, if only for an evening.
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no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2008 07:46 pm (UTC)I tend to end up at rock concerts where the skinheads start mosh pits and then, when there's a few hundred people in them, begin throwing punches or flicking cigar butts inside. :|
no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2008 09:26 pm (UTC)The worst at moshing, really, are the college students, who gleefully throw themselves into it with the apparent impression that the entire point is to come out of it hurting, and to hurt as many other people as possible. That rather misses the real intention, which is to simply throw yourself around in wild, wacky, white-boy dancing style where no one will laugh, and sometimes slam up full-body against someone else, just for the joy of it. (Slam-dancing is called that for a reason, y'know.)
It's not as a predecessor to a fight, though I have seen/heard of fights that start once the club closes, when a group of people are ready to mete out a bit of punishment to some asshole who insisted on ruining their fun repeatedly, by kicking/punching or by tripping up moshers or (worst of all) shoving people into the pit who didn't want to be there. Some guy did that as a joke (a what? what?) at a show, picked up some five-foot-nothing chick and just about threw her into the pit. (I was sitting on the stage, watching the pit, and caught most of it.) She had no idea what'd happened and whammo, suddenly there's some skinhead who hadn't expected anyone to be in that spot and he slams into her, she hits the ground, someone else trips over her, and the scariest was that either she was knocked out for a few seconds (or instinctively went for playing dead as best alternative!).
The band stopped playing immediately, waiting until the crowd yelled that the girl was out of the way and was okay. We got a few words from the lead singer about not pulling shit like that, and to be cool about things, and the show went on.
Actually, when Fishbone played at my college, they had to stop mid-song six times to remonstrate the crowd about how the mosh-pit is not just an excuse to beat people up. They even switched mid-stanza (a real sign of a tight band, as well) to a half-speed tempo, just to remove the impetus driving the pit's speed. They finally threatened to just stop playing altogether, if the crowd didn't shape up. (It did.)
I was quite embarrassed, but the band was rather sanguine about it. Clearly they were used to having to do a bit of educational time onstage, along with singing.
no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2008 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 Jan 2008 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2008 01:00 am (UTC)Duck-duck-goose!
*laughs like a maniac*
*wipes eyes* Ah, aha, great, awesome. I really needed that.
Thanks! *goes away laughing*
^_^
no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2008 01:06 am (UTC)I'm dead in the water, but someone should
^_^
no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2008 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Jan 2008 02:05 am (UTC)