The Dangers of the Mosh Pit or How to Become a Real Heavy

Since I am too busy to annoy anyone with the horrid smearing I call original writing, I'll just post something I have written years ago for an English lesson at University. Andrew might recognise it :). Here goes:

We all remember Kurt Cobain. Kurt Who? Kurt Cobain, who was the legendary singer of the legendary grunge band NIRVANA, and who decided to end his life his way: the jam-a-syringe-the-size-of-Arkansas-containing-
heaps-of-cocaine-into-the-arm-way. Naturally, this made his arm explode, so he shot himself. The cool thing about it is that it made him and his former band legends.

A few years later, therefore, NIRVANA was the first music band in the “Rock” sector that I heard of. I liked them. And they were hip at the time. Everyone wanted to grow a Marlboro-man-beard (we were 13 years old then) and we had hair-dos that certainly did look great, if we had only managed to see who we were constantly bumping into.

Today my hair is sort of short again and I am older yet not wiser. I still go to Heavy Metal and Punk Rock Concerts. Recently the Gods of Heavy Metal visited Switzerland – Iron Maiden came to destroy Zurich’s Hallenstadion. Of course we had to be there. In my best (read: worst and dirtiest) shirt and trousers I got out of the tram and was welcomed by someone I had never seen in my entire life falling into my arms. He smelled of beer. Home Sweet Home! Fortunately my friends had beer too so even if the stadium collapsed – which probably it would – we’d be having fun. Once in the building we cheered the clouds of smoke floating above a layer of intense reek of beer and farts. I could live here.

After the supporting band had banged their heads so many times they did not know which way they were going, and therefore fell off the stage, there was the mandatory silence before the storm. Except for the burping, grunting and farting that is. When darkness fell we knew that doom was approaching, or the electrics had failed. It proved to be the former. Iron Maiden was on stage and virtually blew us away.

Bruce Dickinson’s voice was far from terrestrial. Immediately when the music started there was an elbow flying towards my face. With the instinct of the genuine drunk heavy I did nothing and it hit me whack! just above the eye. With the instinct of the genuine drowsy knocked-out I checked for blood and when there was none I continued trying to get stomped to death. But the dangers of the mosh pit (that’s the area in front of the stage where all the crazies are) are manifold. For instance you risk singing so loud that you will have to go collecting your entrails on stage after the gig. Then there’s the danger of flying things, shoes, toys, bottles, heads etc. I got hit once by my own shoe, which I had lost two minutes earlier. The greatest danger, apart from getting stomped into a smear is, of course, getting squeezed to the size of a, say, mosquito.

But this is all worth it. He who went through the mosh pit will forever dwell in the Halls of the Great Heavy Metal Fans. That’s where I would be now. If I found my entrails.