Mind your p's and q's in the mosh pit

By Nate Seltenrich

Falling tailbone first onto the Leavey Center's hardwood floor did not feel good. However, with the aid of a few fellow moshers, I was quickly back on my feet. It was merely an accident caused by being hit too hard by a guy twice as thick as me, but my butt and my ego were both slightly bruised and I decided to take a little break from the pit.

That's when it happened. As I watched the furious circle with one eye and No Use For a Name on stage with the other, someone on the opposite edge of the pit caught my attention. A young man who looked like a high school student and acted like a barbarian was studying the other moshers with a deranged look in his eyes and his feet firmly planted .

All of a sudden he identified his victim and stuck out his foot as the kid shuffled past. The poor guy toppled stiffly to the ground like a domino with a death wish. Luckily, he was able to get his hands out in front of him and protected his face from smashing into the ground.

I turned back to the perpetrator of this most heinous violation of the mosh pit ethic and saw that he was pointing and laughing.

I was outraged. Did anyone else notice? I should go over there and teach this guy a lesson. Who does he think he is? What a punk!

For fear of personal injury, I refrained from moshing for the rest of the evening. Even though I knew my tailbone was just fine, my trust in my fellow concertgoers was shattered.

As I continued to watch, I observed more instances of blatant abuse and male aggression. Kids plowed into one another with harmful intent. More than a couple fights almost broke out. Physical contact became vindictive rather than cathartic.

I'll be the first to advocate participating in a mosh pit as a healthy way to relieve aggression, stress and tension. I've done so on many occasions and under many different circumstances. But never before have I witnessed the intentional infliction of harm upon other concertgoers within the context of a mosh pit.

Maybe I'm naïve and maybe I'm an idealist, but I maintain that there is no place for that at a concert. In the words of Agnostic Front drummer Jimmy Colletti, "Dont fight with each other in the scene ... This is one music. This is one scene here, one voice."