(no subject)

[janradder]

It's an odd feeling to be standing in a crowd and waiting to see a band play when you realize that not only are you the oldest person there, but you're more than likely the only person there whose age is north of twenty-three. It's a little like being the dad who accompanies his son to his first concert. He stands around with kids less than half his age looking uncool and feeling out of place as he realizes that the youth of today have their own culture and behaviors completely separate from his.

That was me Monday night at the 7th Street Entry when I went to see Titus Andronicus. And that feeling only increased when the band took the stage and started playing their first song.

In case you've never heard Titus Andronicus, they sound a lot like Bruce Springsteen if he were born in 1985 and raised on a steady diet of hardcore punk and Henry Miller. They rage, they scream, they spew out sloppy chunks of melted asphalt ripped straight from the Garden State Parkway that they kick up as they barrel down the highway doing eighty and leaving long streaks of paint and metal each time they sideswipe the barriers along the median. At the Entry, the band's singer stood onstage wearing his heart not on his sleeve but on his chest in the form of a hand-made Black Flag T-shirt, and with the first chords and the first pounding drumbeats, they churned out a raging punk rock assault that stormed off the stage to shatter against the back walls of the club. Which is why as they played all I could think was who could not want to slam to this music?

Apparently, the answer was the kids around me. They stood anchored to one spot, staring at the floor and shaking their heads and like spastic rag dolls. Inexplicably, they'd stop one by one, even though the band was still playing, and stare at the musicians for a few moments before going into another seizure. Occasionally, someone would accidently knock his neighbor with a flying arm or head, and then move over a little so as not to do it again. I started to pogo and bump into the people next to me, and when I did, the kids around me gave me a look that said I'd crossed some sort of mutually agreed upon line. Apparently, accidentally nailing the guy behind you with your flailing head is okay but intentionally bumping into the people around you as you jump around is being a jackass.

So I listened to the band as I avoided the jerking limbs of the kid in front front of me, and I watched the audience around me. Each one stood apart from the rest, engulfed in his or her own personal moment, shaking and trashing to the music. It was as if every kid were wrapped in his or her own pod so that nothing else existed beyond its walls. Which, in a way I realized, is kind of how most people go through their lives nowadays.

We've got cell phones and iPods and laptops, and through them we supposedly connect into a larger world. Instead, we exist apart from one another, chatting on the phone as we ignore the cashier who rings up our purchases, listening to headphones to shut out the lives around us, reading news feeds, Facebook updates, and blogs within a virtual world while we ignore the one outside. Like the kids at the show, we dance alone in our cocoons, oblivious to the people around us unless one of them knocks into us and breaks our illusion of solitude.

It might come across as sounding like an old fart reminiscing about the old days when I say this, but so what: Shows were better when kids slam danced. And here's why -- when there was slam dancing, even if you weren't there in that pit, there was no way you could ignore the people around you. You helped pick up the kid next to you that some asshole had knocked over after you shoved the asshole back into the pit. You watched for the stage divers not only so they wouldn't accidently kick you in the head when they jumped but also so you could catch them before they hit the floor. You pogoed with the crowd, bouncing off your neighbors, feeling the sheer exhilaration and joy of being alive. Going to a show was a shared, communal experience, regardless of whether you knew a single person there, and for however long a band was on the stage, you became part of a larger world.

Maybe I'm wrong -- maybe the kids at the Titus Andronicus show did feel like they were connected to one another, and maybe just I don't get it because I'm not eighteen anymore -- but I don't think so. Then again, most generations think they had it better than the younger ones. Still, I can't help thinking our lives might be richer if there was a little more slam dancing in them, if only because it would force us look up from the floor and see the world around us for a moment. At least then we'd know for sure if we really were missing out on something or not.

Comments

[rsheslin.livejournal.com]

A very sad, and probably accurate, observation.

I was more into metal than punk, but we slammed to Ministry and Megadeth all the same. Kinda sad to see the communal aspect wither.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I had a friend (actually the drummer of my high school punk band) who was hugely into metal. Though he wasn't really into punk at the time he was willing to play it because he liked the energy and attitude which, to him, was pretty similar to the metal he listened to (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeath, Anthrax, et al.)

[joelarnold.livejournal.com]

"Still, I can't help thinking our lives might be richer if there was a little more slam dancing in them, if only because it force us look up from the floor and see the world around us for a moment."

Coolest fucking line I've seen this year!

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Thanks you!

(and I see looking at it now that I left out a word which I had to fix)

[fengi.livejournal.com]

You have a point, but also:

1. Clubs have been forced by lawsuits, insurance rates and increasingly draconian municipal laws to repress moshing. This began mid-90s and finally had an effect.

2. This generation has also experienced real and mythical reasons to worry the person next to you may be a touchy lunatic, looking for a pretext.

3. In Chicago at least, my experience with moshing was having to scan the concert/ dance floor the contignent of skins for whom the pit was a free pass on busting heads. More than one girlfriend got into a scrap after getting felt up near the pit. What was a communal aspect for 80% was an excuse for mayhem and predation by the other 20 and they kind of won.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

You're right about the skinheads. I've been knocked down and jabbed in the face with an elbow by them just because I was standing too close or because someone pushed me into them. And if there were two or more they could take over the entire club floor if there was no one there to police them, beating up on anyone who wasn't a skin. There were always assholes at punk shows, though, whether they were skins or not, and there were plenty of shows I went to where I wished the slam dancers would just knock it off because they were being dicks. But even with that, there was still the communal experience of uniting against the jerks, whether physically or emotionally, and there was no way you could ignore the people around you.

As to clubs cracking down on slamming, in Minneapolis (like just about anywhere else, I imagine) stage diving was pretty much put to an end but the clubs here never really clamped down on the slam dancing (especially not at the 7th St. Entry, which is incredibly tiny -- capacity is 250 -- and where I've never once seen a security staffer). You'll often see it at shows that attract an older audience (like X, for instance).

You may have a point regarding this generation being more wary of potential lunatics, but I have to say that punk shows always had a tendency to attract sociopaths and drunks who saw the show as an excuse to beat the crap out of someone. Still, I suppose people's attitudes have changed about how to deal with or act around those people in this era of school shootings.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

i would love it if you made me a mix cd. will trade for books.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

What sort of stuff would you be interested in hearing? (It might take a while for me to make a CD since almost everything I own is on vinyl, but it's definitely doable).

getting old

[(Anonymous)]

I too lament the younger generation's constant plugged-in state. My nephew has his earbuds in all the time, even during meals. To me, it's a shame that it essentially shuts him off from the rest of us. I also can't see myself ever going that route: I'd be too paranoid that walking down the street with my earbuds in, I'd miss the sound cues around me (oncoming vehicle--look out!) And there's also something to be said for the little moments of beauty you don't see if you're plugged in "somewhere else" while you're walking around.

Having said that, I, like you, wonder if this is just the age-old rant of the "old" complaining about the youth of today. But I guess if I'm best suited to be a dinosaur, then so be it. I'm pretty much the only person I know who doesn't have a cell phone and doesn't want one. Crazy as it may be, I just don't feel the need, and if I survived for 40 years without one, then I guess it's not really a need after all, is it?

I do wonder if you and the other X fans will still be slam dancing at 60, and 80. If so, someone should post some footage on YouTube of the slamming old farts.

-Ben.

Re: getting old

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I didn't have a cell phone until a few years ago when my mom got me one for Christmas. Both Haddayr and my mom laughed at the face I made, because it certainly wasn't something I'd been looking for. It does come in handy when I've had to travel or when I've been away from home and need to call since there really aren't pay phones anymore. That said, I don't use it much and, quite often, it's not even on.

Slam dancing 80 year olds would be really funny to see.

[lemon-as-always.livejournal.com]

Mayhap a little light in this tunnel...

I am 36, approaching 37 in December of this year. My hubby (seven years my junior)and I went to a Rob Zombie concert a few months back. I am pleased to say that as I wormed my way down to the front and into the pit, I got squished, elbowed, pushed, helped up, protected by strangers from slightly more aggressive strangers, slammed into by grinning people and came out bruised, sweating, smiling like a Cheshire cat and with a kind of camaraderie that you only get at gigs like that. It was as the kids say these days "Fucking EPIC!".

I don't know if it's more to do with the fans themselves, or the particular genres of music, but the few concerts I have been to here in the US - M.S.I, Dark Lotus/ICP, Rob Zombie - the crowd has been united in the joy of just BEING there, and the love of the music. I may have felt old in those writhing seas of late teens and early twenty-somethings, but as soon as the bands started playing it just didn't matter. There was a connection, something electric and tangible in the pit and in the audience, and it was simply amazing.

It's still out there, Jan. They aren't all isolated islands yet!

[janradder.livejournal.com]

No, there are definitely shows where people slam -- X and Naked Raygun are two bands I've seen recently where there was slamming -- but, at least in my recent experience, it seems to just be at shows that attract an older audience or that feature bands/musicians that have been around for a while (like Rob Zombie). I should say, though, that I just saw this band called Turbo Fruits where a group of teens were totally getting into the music -- they weren't really slam dancing, but they were acknowledging each other and the people around them and having a great time, so maybe it's just that I don't go to shows much anymore (which I don't).