“ We’re getting too old for this” I heard a guy say behind me. I turned around to take a look at this apparent decrepid octogenarian , who to my shock appeared to be in his mid to late twenties.
WHAT!?! I thought, is this guy talking about. At this point I would like to set the scene, it’s a Monday night and we are in the back room of the academy in Birmingham. It’s a full on metal gig. The haunted have just finished whipping the crowd into a frenzy and All that remains are next on . And it is heaving.
Im standing there with the ‘too old” twenty somethings behind me, and the’ve got me thinking. If he thinks hes too old? what are they saying about me and my mate who where born the decade before them.
Suddenly my inside voice got quite defensive “ too old, im not too old, ill show them what a child of the seventies can do.
“ when it kicks off again im gonna get in the middle of that pit” I proclaimed to my friend marc.
“Im up for a bit of that, been a while but its like riding a bike” he reassured me. So we waited for the band to take the stage.
Slowly the crowd began to ripple and stir, the drums kick in and an explosion of energy erupts in the middle of the crowd like a metal volcano spewing out pre pubesant boys like molten rock and ash.
This is a mosh pits arrival, and the crowd explosion is the big bang. Everything after is mosh.
Now just over a few months ago we had seen Slipknot, so we were not out of practice. We knew what we had to do. So I went for it. In I charged, right into the thick of it, where I was duly spun round and spat out back from where I came.
“ Do you know what?, I thinks its ok here on the edge” I said , as a guy asked me if I’d seen his shoe. I was standing on a shoe so I picked it up and offered it to this mono-ped metaler.
“that’s not mine”
“that’s all ive got, this isn’t the foot locker” I replied whilst hurling the lonely foot garment Iraqi style into the crowd.
By this time the mosh pit had formed itself into a ‘chum ball’ like you would see tuna adopting to evade getting eaten on some Attenborough sea special. Whirling around all in one direction I think that is why I was ejected so swiftly.
Meanwhile as always, teenagers are littering the edges of the mosh, with expressions that they had bit off more than they could chew.
This is when it changed, where as 10 years ago I would of just carrying on pogo-ing and shouting,….. now I was working my around the edge of the pit with Marc picking up the young uns and dusting them off. I was that guy who picked me up in that very venue 16 years ago at a Mudhoney gig when I was getting trampeled.
We had become the St Johns ambulance of the gig, the good samiritans of metal and it felt pretty good.
The following day I spoke to my mom about the gig and what did she say?
“aren’ t you getting abit old for that”
“no “I replied, you are never to old to enjoy yourself, its just now I adopt a slightly different role.”
Iam now that older guy at the gig, but I feel quite good about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment