Thursday, September 25, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover Story: Mosh appeal

The mosh pit goes mainstream--and turns violent

By Newt Briggs

With his sneakers, jean shorts and sun-bleached surfer-shag, 16-year-old Sierra Vista High student Kirk Homeyer doesn't look like the typical punk--at least not that safety-pinned, spiky-headed scofflaw who's haunted parents' nightmares for the past two decades. If anything, Homeyer looks a bit like the kid who played Ralph Macchio's blond-haired, blue-eyed nemesis Johnny in the first Karate Kid movie. But definitely not like a punk.

Still, at a recent show at the Huntridge Theater, he is immersed in a roiling mass of bodies--all of them bumping and shoving in a flailing riot of arms and elbows and hair. Homeyer, who's been attending punk shows for as long as he can remember, surges with the melee as it ebbs and swirls, pinballing among friends and strangers in the delirious ecstasy of the mosh pit.

For a few moments, he feels breathless and vital--right up until the point when he's thrown hard to the concrete floor. As people scramble to help him up, Homeyer finds himself confronted by an unknown (and unprovoked) foe, a brutish man-child with backwards hat and hands balled into fists. In a flash, 75 vibrant moshers are reduced to languid gawkers--the pit's glee forgotten in the face of looming violence.

"Moshing used to be a lot of fun," says Homeyer, who escapes the encounter with little more than a scraped knee and a sour taste in his mouth. "But now all these jocks and college kids have caught on, and they come to the shows and try to get into fights. It was never like this before. It wasn't about one-on-one or who was the toughest. It was about coming together and dancing and having a good time."

Homeyer's grouse is quickly becoming a familiar refrain among local denizens of the mosh pit--a fact that comes as no surprise to UNLV sociologist Matt Wray. Although Wray is hesitant to link mosh-pit aggression with an overall trend toward youth violence (a downward spiral typified by alleged suburban gangsters the 311 Boyz), he is quick to point out that culture clash plays a pivotal role in fueling concert tumult.

"Even though it can look pretty violent, moshing was born out of a culture that more or less agreed it wasn't cool to try to hurt other people," says Wray. "When that smashes up against a bunch of bored, methamphetamine-fired, suburban white boys--most of whom have no idea what an authentic subculture might look like--then you're asking for misunderstandings. Since the activity has been ripped from its original context, it can be misinterpreted as an opportunity to beat the crap out of somebody."

Not your daddy's pit

Sir, I hate to belabor the point, but why don't you think about the fact that you are consistently kicking the same people in the head every time.

--Ian MacKaye

Of course, there's nothing particularly new or shocking about violence in the mosh pit. As far back as 1981, Rolling Stone was cataloging mosh-pit (then called slam-dancing) carnage inside L.A. punk clubs. A few years later, hardcore legend Ian MacKaye of Fugazi began actively discouraging moshing at his shows. In fact, not only was MacKaye well known for stopping in the middle of songs to scold ruffian moshers, at one particularly fierce show he even allowed the audience to stand on the stage while he and his band played on the floor in the midst of the pit.

But as Audioslave guitarist and founding member of Rage Against the Machine Tom Morello observes, the mass-culturation of moshing has added an increasingly hostile vibe to the traditional mosh pit.

"As early as Lollapalooza '93--when the alternative rock culture began breaching the mainstream--there was an uncomfortable, violent tendency in the mosh pits at shows," says Morello, a Harvard grad and longtime punk scenester. "Mosh pits were no longer the domain of kids who grew up in a punk rock community and who used them as a means of coming together and working out some of their collective angst. By then, it was kids who saw moshing on TV and decided it was a great opportunity to come down and kick somebody's ass."

Paul Wortheimer--head of Chicago-based Crowd Management Strategies and an internationally recognized expert on concert safety--echoes Morello's sentiments. "I used to describe moshing as `chaos with etiquette.' It looked crazy. It was crazy. But there was a certain sensibility to it, a kind of communal spirit. It didn't mean that people couldn't get hurt or killed, because that did happen, but there was this early sense of togetherness.

"But now things seem different," admits Wortheimer, who goes on to describe a recent Andrew WK show he attended in Chicago. "Now you've got what I call `the big boys' coming to every show. These are the people that are willing to hurt people as evidence of some kind of mosh-pit machismo. Before Andrew WK started, there were about eight guys forming a line and slamming themselves against the crowd--you know, catching the crowd between themselves and the front barrier. After that, everybody just kind of ran wild. That's the kind of spirit that prevails in most mosh pits I see today."

And according to Fuzz, booker and bartender at the west side's Cooler Lounge, this tendency isn't limited to festivals and all-ages venues."The majority of the fighting or mosh-pit static that starts in my bar is usually instigated by the younger crowd," he says, suggesting that each successive generation of bar patrons seems to become "less respectful and more impulsive." "Seven times out of 10, it's a young guy who's either moshing too rough--like with his fists and elbows--or just acting like an idiot. From there, things can get out of hand in a hurry."

The crying game

You motherfuckers need to wake the fuck up!

--Fred Durst at Woodstock '99

Perhaps the culmination of this violence came at Woodstock '99--the alt-rock festival intended to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original three days of peace and love. According to Wortheimer, the festival's first-aid staff treated more than 10,000 injuries during the event--many due to crowd crushes and violence in the mosh pits. Even more disturbing, however, were the allegations by four women who say they were raped during the weekend. One even alleged she was raped by multiple assailants in a mosh pit during Limp Bizkit's performance.

"One of the profoundly negative side effects of mosh-pit mainstreaming is it seems to have given a green light to horny dudes to paw at any girl within their reach," says Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine at Woodstock '99. "Previously, the pit had been a pretty safe zone, and we would make the announcement at our shows that it's a place where everyone who's bought a ticket should feel secure and should be welcome to have a great time. And if you're a pretty girl who's crowd surfing, that means you too. You shouldn't have to worry about getting groped."

Listening to some local concertgoers, the same phenomenon is becoming increasingly common at Vegas venues. "I won't even go in a mosh pit anymore--not unless I'm wearing a suit of armor," says 20-year-old Henderson resident Liz Marcus, who stands near the back wall of the Huntridge as she describes her experience at a Sept. 5 pop-punk show. "I got my tits and ass grabbed at the Starting Line concert by more guys than I could even count. I left after, like, six songs. After that, I just went home and cried."

God save the scene

The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music?

--Lou Reed

In response to this shifting dynamic, many popular local venues have taken to outlawing moshing altogether. At a recent Sex Pistols show at the Joint, a sign at the venue's entrance claimed that security would be "strongly discouraging" slam dancing, crowd surfing and all other pit-related activities. In other words, they would be kicking people out for doing the very things that helped make punk fun and liberating in the first place.

But who can really blame them? According to crowdsafe.com, a survey of 31 of 2002's most violent concerts (15 of them in the U.S.) uncovered at least $542,000 in property damage, 4,567 injuries and 20 deaths. Although many had nothing to do with mosh pits, these are just not numbers some venues are willing to risk--particularly not in today's litigation-happy world. "We're talking about a lot of money," says Wortheimer. "If this keeps up, we may eventually see the end of the mosh pit altogether."

In the meantime, Kirk Homeyer vows to continue his forays into mosh pits--wherever they can be found. "Some kids want to go to clubs and dance, we want to go to concerts and mosh. Just because a few kids decide to come in and act like goons doesn't mean we should have to give up what we like, does it?"