It’s not surprising that a 16 year old boy like Nate loves music. What is surprising is that most of his favorite bands were at the peak of their careers nearly a decade before he was born. These bands, including Minor Threat, Agnostic Threat, Million Dead Cops, the Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains, marked the rise of hardcore punk scene, and the beginning of the mosh pit as we know it.
The term “mosh” is itself the result of misunderstanding, which given that it describes an important aspect of a misunderstood counterculture of hardcore punk is possibly one of the reasons the coined term stuck. According to punk lore, “mosh” was how a bunch of Americans interpreted the Jamaican-accented Bad Brains’s saying of the word “mash.” And thanks to this mistake, a movement was born.
Just as with many counterculture phenomenon, moshing started out with a small following, grew, and splintered. And, though, over time the face of mosh pits has changed, the reason for their existence has not.
“In their natural state, humans are brutal and violent,” Nate says. When you see things from his perspective, thrashing around in a pit is not senseless, but poetic social commentary. In a sense, the violent chaos in front of a stage frees his friends and him from the everyday hypocrisy they see around them. Teens like Nate embrace moshing as a way to act in a way that coincides with the true nature of the human race.
“When people tell me about peace, I’m like, ‘no, peace won’t work.’ There’s going to be constant conflict and war,” Nate said.
Though the chaos in the midst of a mosh pit reflects the way Nate and many others like him see the world around him, there is a price for this expression. Many people have died while moshing.
At a 1997 Smashing Pumpkins show in Dublin, a girl was crushed by the crowd and died of the injuries at the hospital. Even after Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins, publicly denounced moshing “young, college lughead-types,” another fan died at the band’s Richmond, British Colombia, Canada show on September 24, 2007. Jessica Michalik was killed during the 2001 Australia Big Day Out festival when she was reportedly crushed by a crowd and asphyxiated.
Despite the risks, moshing continues, but not without controversy among and between bands, venues, parents, and fans. Some bands attempt to stop rowdy crowds and others provoke them. Some people go to shows looking to incite the pit and others just end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though European-style concert regulation doesn’t seem likely in the US in the immediate future, controversy might soon require concessions on all sides.
WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO SAY?
What’s your craziest thing that’s happened to you in a mosh pit? What do you think about bands that ban mosh pits?
