Concert Goers: Push Pit or Hardcore Dance?

Get in the pit and share the love.

Everyone is family in the pit.

[quote]WombRaider wrote:
I was not saying there is an age limit to going to shows or concerts. But after awhile does it not get sad spin kicking a 15 year old girl on accident at the age of 23 or something. I still go to shows and played in bands…heck my best friend in college is the singer in August Burns Red, who you posted a video of. We did that shit at every show.
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Someone goes down you help em up! Some people are just azzhats tho. Its cool you knew him…ive seen them a bunch of times.

Dude best believe I was punching the floor like a mofo back in the day at all the local shows. You pretty much had cred directly proportional to number of sweet moves you could bust out. Summer before senior year when I perfected my spin punch → spin kick → over the shoulder flip kick → into floor punching 2-step, I was pretty much drowning in 16-y/o scenester punani.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I go to better shows where I actually want to see the band, so I’m more about getting right up front close to the stage. Plus, when you get actually get a little muscle mass on you, people just think you’re a dick if you start shoving a pushing. I had a fun time back in the day, but I will leave the floor punching for the skinny high schoolers and the mosh pitting for the annoying nu-Metal fans who think listening to Disturbed makes them badass.

Also, one of my top 5 pet peeves in life is bands who are always telling the crowd what to do. “I want to see the biggest fucking circle pit, evaaRRRRRR!!” How bout you just play the music and let the crowd take care of the crowd?

That’s why two of my favorite performances of all-time were seeing Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down. Rage came out with their patented, “We are Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles, California,” kicked into “Testify,” and then just rocked out for the whole set. Only other time the addressed the crowd was during the “Wake Up,” interlude. SoaD; same thing. Came out, just rocked song after song. Neither needed to say shit to the crowd because they were already going nuts. If you are a band and feel compelled to tell the crowd to get up and start moving, you probably suck.

[quote]jtrinsey wrote:
Also, one of my top 5 pet peeves in life is bands who are always telling the crowd what to do. “I want to see the biggest fucking circle pit, evaaRRRRRR!!” How bout you just play the music and let the crowd take care of the crowd?

That’s why two of my favorite performances of all-time were seeing Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down. Rage came out with their patented, “We are Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles, California,” kicked into “Testify,” and then just rocked out for the whole set. Only other time the addressed the crowd was during the “Wake Up,” interlude. SoaD; same thing. Came out, just rocked song after song. Neither needed to say shit to the crowd because they were already going nuts. If you are a band and feel compelled to tell the crowd to get up and start moving, you probably suck.[/quote]

Saw Rage at lollapalooza and they stopped the show for 20 or so minutes threatening to walk off stage if people didn’t calm down and back up a bit. It’s awesome getting tens of thousands of tight packed hot bodies to back up. People at the front were getting squished.

[quote]jtrinsey wrote:
Also, one of my top 5 pet peeves in life is bands who are always telling the crowd what to do. “I want to see the biggest fucking circle pit, evaaRRRRRR!!” How bout you just play the music and let the crowd take care of the crowd?

That’s why two of my favorite performances of all-time were seeing Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down. Rage came out with their patented, “We are Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles, California,” kicked into “Testify,” and then just rocked out for the whole set. Only other time the addressed the crowd was during the “Wake Up,” interlude. SoaD; same thing. Came out, just rocked song after song. Neither needed to say shit to the crowd because they were already going nuts. If you are a band and feel compelled to tell the crowd to get up and start moving, you probably suck.[/quote]
Maybe you haven’t noticed but sometimes the crowd needs some encouragement.

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
Everyone is family in the pit.[/quote]
This.

[quote]iKor wrote:
Maybe you haven’t noticed but sometimes the crowd needs some encouragement.[/quote]

I’ve probably seen close to 500 live shows in my lifetime and never seen a band killing it to a dead audience. I don’t care if it’s metal, hip hop, country, jazz, whatever… if the band is putting on a great performance, the crowd will be into it. There are a (very) few times when the “hype” helps the show, but most often just distracts from it, IMO.

[quote]kothreat wrote:

[quote]jtrinsey wrote:
Also, one of my top 5 pet peeves in life is bands who are always telling the crowd what to do. “I want to see the biggest fucking circle pit, evaaRRRRRR!!” How bout you just play the music and let the crowd take care of the crowd?

That’s why two of my favorite performances of all-time were seeing Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down. Rage came out with their patented, “We are Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles, California,” kicked into “Testify,” and then just rocked out for the whole set. Only other time the addressed the crowd was during the “Wake Up,” interlude. SoaD; same thing. Came out, just rocked song after song. Neither needed to say shit to the crowd because they were already going nuts. If you are a band and feel compelled to tell the crowd to get up and start moving, you probably suck.[/quote]

Saw Rage at lollapalooza and they stopped the show for 20 or so minutes threatening to walk off stage if people didn’t calm down and back up a bit. It’s awesome getting tens of thousands of tight packed hot bodies to back up. People at the front were getting squished.
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Yeah Rage pits were pretty intense back in the day. I saw Slayer open up for Pantera once and that was the craziest shit I’d ever seen. Me and my buddies were in there trying to fucking dominate everyone but it just wasn’t happening. We’d been going to a bunch of nutso concerts that we’d been dominating the pits at, including Slipknot, Rammstein, SOAD, Static-X, Machinehead, hell even a few Rage shows, but there was some serious fucking mangling going on at Slayer and Pantera. Everything else was strictly minor league stuff, and after going to a few Rage shows I thought I’d seen the craziest pits ever.

I saw Static-X a year ago at this small club called The Senator here in Chico and I felt like I was too old to get in the pit until I saw my 36 y/o buddy gettin’ busy in there, so I jumped in. First thing I did was bury his fucking ass then I absolutely fucking destroyed some ass-pirate in a pastel polo shirt standing on the edge of the pit. A couple of OG bikers were gettin’ a little out of hand so I buried one of them next with a fucking blindside headspear in the general area of his floating rib. He cracked his face on a guard rail and had to get dragged out by a couple of his buddies. They were waiting for us after the show, which is another story for another day. But all in all I was disappointed in that pit bigtime, mostly because at 6’1" 195 I shouldn’t really be big enough to annihilate everyone in my path in there, but that was what was happening. A real pit and I would have been wiped all over the floor. Oh well, I’m not complaining. I left with all my teeth, which is more than I can say for one dude who was in there.

On a separate note, what’s the current protocol for when a chick is in the pit? Part of me wants to grab her, drag her out and tell her to let the big boys have their fun. The other part of me wants to fly right through her at full speed and blow her into a million pieces for being stupid enough to get in there in the first place.

Trying to elicit some audience participation is fine but I agree that some bands go overboard. The worst are excessive sing-a-longs, particularly when it’s a part you actually want to hear the vocalist sing. I’ve heard Killswitch used to be pretty bad for this when they first started.

Bands talking between songs…there’s a Canadian punk band I used to really like called Propagandhi. They made some amazing songs, but unfortunately they were militant vegans and straight-edgers and they would literally go on ten to fifteen minute rants between songs (which were usually 2-3 minutes tops). “Alberta high density feedlots” blah blah blah “bovine growth hormone” blah blah “beer and pot are for the weak” blah blah freaking blah. Even the vegans in the audience would get annoyed. The singer got really pissed at one audience member who yelled “Hey Jord! WE FUCKING GET IT!! Play a fucking song!!”, until he realized that the crowd agreed with the heckler.

They’ve since improved, so I’ve heard.

I like mosh pits for the same reason I liked football. It’s fun to run into people.

It’s not as much fun these days because I have to restrain myself now that I’m one of the larger people in the pit. Still a blast though.

I love pits and Im 39! Where else can you engage in full on ass stomping and it not be an issue! Berserker style!

Yeah pits are pretty fun, but a couple things… I fucking hate circle pits. In fact I kind of hate any pit where there is some sort of ‘design’ to it… shit is just supposed to happen.


Hardcore dancing is so gay.

I thought that was cool from my first show at like 14 till I was maybe 19. After that I just wasnt interested, so for the last 9 years. I still stand on the edge to get close to the band and help people up, just dont participate.

Funny how I would love it and beat the crap out of myself with no repercussions at 15 and maybe 130 lbs, but now Im 28 and 210 and I just get injured and winded lol.

Up until recently I had to work security @ metal concerts and stand on the edge of the mosh pits and make sure they stayed contained and did not hit people actually trying to watch the show. I have never wanted to hit someone so bad as I did everytime I worked one of those shows. Fat sweaty kids would take off their shirts and start bouncing off me and shit…omg. That being said, when actually going to a metal show I like to go in the mosh pit for a little while, the hardcore dancing is super gay though.

[quote]milktruck wrote:
Funny how I would love it and beat the crap out of myself with no repercussions at 15 and maybe 130 lbs, but now Im 28 and 210 and I just get injured and winded lol.[/quote]

At all the serious metal shows I’ve been to Gojira Testament Meshuggah etc you get a slightly older crowd, who have been to more shows so are more aware of boundaries etc.

Weirdly the shows that I’ve been to that have been the most brutal were played by girly bands like Trivium and Rise Against… those kids practically clawed my eyes out. The other thing is you cant feel good about pushing kids around if there like 15, and you a Tnationer in your 20s…

[quote]waylanderxx wrote:
Up until recently I had to work security @ metal concerts and stand on the edge of the mosh pits and make sure they stayed contained and did not hit people actually trying to watch the show. I have never wanted to hit someone so bad as I did everytime I worked one of those shows. Fat sweaty kids would take off their shirts and start bouncing off me and shit…omg. That being said, when actually going to a metal show I like to go in the mosh pit for a little while, the hardcore dancing is super gay though.[/quote]
That’s the thing, there always seems to be douche bags, typically like 18 year olds or something, that just love to ruin a good mosh pit. Every 10 seconds I stare at him and I’m thinking to myself, WTF IS THIS GUY DOING.

[quote]Steel Nation wrote:
I like mosh pits for the same reason I liked football. It’s fun to run into people.

It’s not as much fun these days because I have to restrain myself now that I’m one of the larger people in the pit. Still a blast though.[/quote]

x2 on both counts.

And I do make it a point to level kids that are just in there to take cheap shots at people.