The one GREAT thing about the US and the close proximity I have to New York City is the venues for all the concerts!! This is one thing I will miss very dearly when I am away. Bombay always had its shortcomings in this respect that many artists wouldn't come here or wouldn't be allowed to perform there. The performances which did happen weren't of my favourite bands nor even bands that I liked. So of course I LOVED it when I could go for Roger Waters (he performed the whole "Darkside of the Moon" as well as some of his newer more nonsense stuff), MUSE (YES !! The best damn show ever!) and very very recently Serj Tankian (formerly System of a Down).
The first "real" step into the universe of music for me was Pink Floyd and Wish You Were Here. Now Waters was my very first concert and it was as Pink Floyd as you can get (if you can get it without David Gilmour at the guitar). However it was a great and really fulfilling concert, with the music taking precedence and the crowd more or less in the "swaying with the music" mode. Almost everyone there was donning some Floyd garb or the other, weed could be smelt in the air along with lots of beer. All in a very musical experience.
MUSE is one of the bands I've been following the last few years. Their music is unlike what I'm used to. Their songs are different album by album, their music changes song to song. It keeps things interesting. Matt Delarmy's voice is phenomenol and his guitaring superb! I could go on. The concert was OUT OF THIS WORLD !! They sounded just like in their album (which initially I thought was shady, but apparently the band is completely against lip-synching - watch what they do here!). In anycase, I was in the seated section ( I didn't know that standing would be more fun), but the seats were great. The concert was out of this world and I cannot wait for the next one...
Which brings me to the topic of the post. My near-pit experience. Now the two concerts I've mentioned above were pretty much a mellower music compared to System of a Down and Serj Tankian. Check out some of the tracks from System of a Down here and here (I don't know too many, but they are fairly hard metal). So even though Serj Tankian's new album is much much more mellow than System of a Down, that's obviously not going to matter to the fans..who are here to watch System. It did to me of course, cause I wanted no part of a MOSH pit. Here is a youtube video of some mosh pits though these are MUCH MUCH more extreme than what I was standing one man (sometimes) thickness away from.
So what is a MOSH pit? According to Wikipedia (and NO, I don't much refer to it all the time..) it's "the activity in which audience members at live music performances aggressively push or slam into each other. Moshing is frequently accompanied by stage diving, crowd surfing, and headbanging. It is commonly associated with concerts by heavy metal, punk rock, and alternative rock artists."
Now from the video, you can see that it can get pretty violent. Ours wasn't that bad..there were people shoving each other, one or two fell down but all in all it was relatively harmless. I did feel the pull of joining in; but you know what with my bad knee and my relatively small stature.
This got me thinking, what's with the moshing. Personally I don't get it. Moshing mostly happens at live venues but also can be done for recorded music. Now, I have nothing against people liking heavy and death metal; I'm not into it myself. However, I do understand enjoying your music. Lots and lots of people love hard and heavy and death metal with more screaming than singing; but hey - it's still music to their ears. So what could you get from moshing. I was going through the comments on the many mosh videos and most of them are not about enjoying the music or the dance form (if you can call it a dance) making you more engaged with the music - most of them were about "kicking the shit out of people" and "I cannot wait to get my ass kicked". WHAT THE HELL?!!?
Please someone make me understand? I can understand that while you're being shoved and kicked and scratched, you're actually listening to the music and it means something more - I can atleast pretend to understand that. If anyone reading this, likes to Mosh and it means something to you other than the novelty, then let me know !!
yeah I don't get it either!!
ReplyDeleteHmmm. It may have to do with the fact that almost every single person IN the mosh pit is stoned! WHich means every experience, especially the physical ones, combined with the magnitude of the sound emetging from the stage gives them a rush that a sober person would find absolutely disgusting, appalling and as you mentioned, inexplicable.
ReplyDeleteIts either that or its very simply, the "hatke" factor. See, metal/punk lovers like to think of themselves as unique in the music-loving world. They think that no one really understands their music (which may be true) or them (which may also be true) and this kind of violence just adds to the enigma of that whole genre. You know? Its like ,"look at how cool we are and just how much we are into our music while you sad, sad people sit and snap your fingers to some %^&%$ with a Cowboy hat" :D
P.S. How was the concert. Serj is pretty big in Mumbai now though not very surprising eh?
How is Serj popular in Bombay? Radio? They play English songs now? That's pretty great.
ReplyDeleteI had fun at the concert though he's not a good showman. No charisma and the sound system left a lot to be desired. But I knew most of the songs so I had a good sing-a-long.