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POLITICS & COMMUNITY No More Safety Dance: Moshing as Musical Mugging May 16, 1996 Past columns by Ted Rall: Adolf Redux: Buchanan's Basic Instinct Forget China: America Gets Rich on Slave Labor The Other Primary: Democrats Choose Their President My Teen Daughter Is a Lesbian Lap Dancer: In Defense of Trash Talk TV Cashing In On Irony: Dole's Secret Youth Strategy Revealed Hose-Down Economics: Why Settle for a Trickle? Have to Die Before I Get Old: Generation X Faces Old Age Payback Time: The Unabomber on Ice Joe Pulitzer and Me: Flirting With Fame Standard Deviation: America as Cost-Benefit Analysis You Can't Be Too Rich, Too Thin Or Too Litigious: An Ode in Awe of the Law Let Them Eat Averages: A Personal History of Wage Stagnation

Slam-dancing isn't what it used to be. Not only does the dim-witted '90s version of slamming, "moshing," not require punk music, it makes slam-dancing look like a Merchant-Ivory flick. Moshing's recent poster child victim is 18-year-old Christopher Mitchell, who, during a December 1994 concert at the L'Amour heavy-metal club in Brooklyn, either dove headfirst into the floor or got shoved off stage by a bouncer, depending on whom you ask. No matter who tells the story, though, the fact remains that Mitchell hemorrhaged into the space between his brain and his skull. The next day, he was dead. The bouncer, James Gheida, will soon go on trial for second-degree manslaughter and criminally-negligent homicide. Also in 1994, two young men were turned into quadriplegics as a result of moshing-related injuries, according to Chicago-based Crowd Management Strategies. At Woodstock '94 alone, there were 7,000 injuries. Not even the performers are safe anymore -- last October the lead singer of the band Silverchair got knocked unconscious while diving offstage at a concert in Australia. Instead of catching him, his fans let him plunge to the floor. Then they crushed him and tore off his pants. Also last year, singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley dove into the mosh pit last year and got his wallet stolen! Lest any comparisons to Bob Dole's side job as armchair cultural critic come to mind, I would like to point out that I grew up on punk and hard-core. One afternoon during my first month of high school, my friend Robert and I stopped by our neighborhood Alligator Records store in Kettering, Ohio. The owner was a bear-like, easy-going guy known for his excellent stock of imports. Robert and I already liked the Police, the Clash, Blondie, Devo, Iggy Pop-typical New Wave stuff. On this particular day in the fall of 1978, the Alligator guy dispatched us to a private listening booth with a stack of new singles fresh from the UK. The fourth or fifth disc -- Robert and I still argue about this pivotal moment -- was the Dead Kennedys' single "California Uber Alles." When the lead singer, Jello Biafra, belted out NOW it is 1984 Knock-knock on your front door It's the suede-denim secret police They have come for your uncool niece halfway through the stripped-down anthem to then-California governor Jerry Brown, Robert and I looked at each other. We didn't say anything for what seemed like ages. But like a trailer-park denizen seeing Virgin Mary in a Happy Meal, we knew that our lives had just changed forever. We were 15. Where the Sex Pistols and Sham 69 sang for disaffected British kids in London housing projects, the DKs and punk bands like them crafted a sonic political assault for suburban American kids like me. Most importantly, they opened my mind to countless other groups with a mixed message of alienation and three-chord, three-minute fun. I learned about sexual politics from X-Ray Spex and the Avengers, kitsch culture from the Ramones and the Dickies and postmodernism from Wire and the Buzzcocks. It's hard to explain the visceral thrill of a few choice chords played really fast behind some intelligent, angry, funny lyrics. For the first time in my life, I heard other people express my resentment and frustration with the world. I felt like part of a community. Punk was a filter, too -- you couldn't hear it on the radio. You had to go out of your way to search it out; if you were into proto-Boomer bands like the Grateful Dead, you probably weren't very interesting anyway. On numerous occasions the existence of these records and their implicit existence of an audience looking for smart fun dissuaded me from suicide. I attended my first punk concert, a multiple-bill extravaganza featuring the Dead Kennedys, in 1981. The crowd was an eclectic mix of spiky-haired posers, blue-collar types and scrawny college geeks like me. The crowd was multiracial, and the gender mix was roughly two men for every one woman. The atmosphere was militantly anti-drug. In the men's room, I watched someone knock a joint out of a guy's mouth and spit at him: "What's the matter with you? Don't you know the government pushes that crap to make young people like you stupid?" Concertgoers, male and female, swirled around the foot of the stage where Jello, Klaus Fluoride, East Bay Ray and Peligro held court and spewed anti-corporate invective, shoving each other around in a brisk, good-natured way. The more ambitious types jumped on stage, shared the mike with Jello for a few lines and dove off the stage. Most of the time, we'd catch them. Sometimes, we didn't. Whenever anyone fell, the dancing stopped until the person could be pulled up. No one moved until it was obvious that he or she was okay. It was aggressive without being violent. I slammed my way through hundreds of punk gigs through the '80s, and aside from ringing ears and a small patch of missing hair where some guy's Docs used my head as a springboard to the stage, never suffered any physical injuries. The worst incident I ever witnessed was a possible broken hand as a stage diver landed badly. Around 1988, there was a noticeable shift in the makeup of the crowds. Punk shows started attracting jocks and frat-boy types who thought of slamming as playing football to music. Women disappeared from the pits. Drinking and pot-smoking became more prevalent. At New York's Beacon Theatre, these misguided people even slam-danced to the Smithereens, a band that played radio-friendly retro-'60s pop -- not exactly the punk of yore. The jocks brought the same lowest-common-denominator aesthetic they perfected in junior high gym class to the dance floor. Previously, injuries had merely been incidental to slam-dancing; now they became its primary objective. At a 1991 Ramones concert at Columbia University, a man with the size, shape and personality of an ice chest walked up to my friend and, without warning, slugged her in the jaw as hard as he could. By the time I rescued her, Tamara was on the floor, knocked out cold. This riot set to music was so out of control that I lost a shoe and a pant leg trying to escape. That was around the time the term "moshing" came into use. Reacting to the success of demi-metal band, Nirvana, critics called 1991 "the year that punk broke". Naturally, the opposite is true: Success took punk out of context. Devoid of politics and culture, there was nothing left but three chords and unfocussed rebellion. The alternative didn't become mainstream; the alternative died and the mainstream became a wee bit hipper. "Punk bands" can't sell millions of records because, by definition, million-selling bands aren't punk. At age 32, I don't feel too old to venture near the mosh pit -- I'm just afraid of being mugged in 3/2 time. Besides, I can get assaulted for free anywhere in Manhattan. I don't go to concerts unless I can get a balcony seat high above the action, and what I see there still scares the hell out of me. Bikers waving knives belong in dark alleys, not concert halls. John Dittmar, president of Pinnacle Entertainment, a New York booking agent, says, "Is it a little bit more aggressive these days? Yes, but everything is more aggressive." Sure. Clearly the violence of our concerts reflects society in general, but that's what I find sad. Punk saved my life and gave me a respite from mainstream idiocy. It kept me sane throughout the last 15 years of my life. So what do I do now that it's dead -- join the moshers or the Boomers? Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist and freelance writer living in New York. © 1996 Ted Rall, All Rights Reserved.