Mush Mosh

I’m usually the awkward guy standing in the center of the crowd at a concert.  The one who, despite his best effort, can’t seem to achieve the casual, yet engaged, head bob.  The one standing right in front of you, who might catch your group of friends’ attention, only for you to notice I’m gawking at another person in front of me.  After all, between music, beer, standing for long periods of time, and more beer, concerts have a way of morphing upstanding citizens into Class A specimens for sober people watchers, like myself.   

What I thought was a prime seat in the second row at a recent Ani Difranco concert, turned into a fifteenth row standing room location – prime mosh pit watching territory.  Right in front of me was contact improv replica of the Montana landscape: a rolling mountain of lesbians with Ani Difranco starring as the sun, just peeking over the horizon. 

The weight shifts that are a benchmark of contact improv were there, possibly induced by the prop they had brought to their jam session: a flask.  During the course of the opening band, a children’s group excelling at “Bio Mimicry,” (a fancy name for making animal sounds, like in “Old McDonald”) the ladies passed around their silver flask, taking swigs and then contorting their faces, as the burn of alcohol traveled down their chests.  By the time Difranco took the stage, the group had expanded to ten ladies.  Excuse me…ten drunk ladies. 

It became obvious they wanted the crowd to know that their dedication to Difranco surpassed anyone around them.  As she took the stage, to shattering cheers from the sold-out crowd, the ringleader, a tall blonde with heavy eyes, made it her sole purpose to flag down Ani and make contact with her.  Difranco seemed to look anywhere but. 

While most were enjoying the delight of rapid paced guitar strumming, the ringleader lifted her arm adorned with hemp bracelets and started waving.  Back.  And Forth.  Back.  And Forth.  Only to stop momentarily as the communal flask made its rounds.  The burn hit her chest, and there was only one remedy: kissing as many girls around her as possible. 

Any head bobbing I had in me ceased, as the stultifying behavior a few feet away detracted from my experience of the music.  Just over their heads I could see Difranco, an amalgam of different musical and movement styles, partnering her guitar with a delicate forcefulness.  It was a reminder of the concert that could have been.

She glided back and forth from the microphone, as drums pounded, urging the crowd of ladies to accelerate their movements.  And despite the tone of the song, they did just that.  One thrashed her head, as she lifted a lighter to the roof, during the most somber of numbers about an ex-lover.  Another took a literal approach during one of Difranco’s signature numbers, “Both Hands,” by using both hands to crush her beer can overhead and hurl it to the ground. 

For a group that wanted to prove how connected they were to the performer, they seemed as far away from the performance as possible.  Subsequently, so was I.   There was the movement on stage, Difranco’s fingers blazing on the guitar, mouth spitting out lyrics in a race with her fingers.  There was the mountain of ladies, matted hair and buzz cuts mingling as tongues locked together.  And then me, bobbing my head, not because of the music, but out of sheer dizziness caused by the proceedings.  Maybe you saw me.  I was the surprisingly normal guy in the center of the crowd. 

Comments

[jolene]

Aw, that really stinks. It's so distracting, and they really should have been removed. I wonder if it detracted from DiFranco from her singing at all?

I witnessed something like that yesterday - I went to a San Francisco Symphony concert, and there was a guy a few rows ahead of me who gave enthusiastic standing ovations for every song, standing and clapping his hands really high over his head, and aggressively trying to get the people around him to stand up as well. And because that wasn't enough, he walked up to the front and went up to the stage, and started reaching towards the feet of the violin players, and almost tripped the conductor on his way out. Everyone was eyeing him suspiciously, and the conductor gave him a short but defensive wave, almost like a "stop" hand signal. Thankfully the rest of his party rescued him before anything happened, and it was the first time that I thought that the symphony may have needed security. I think it was more out of place at a symphony concert, and thought it was more appropriate for an 'N Sync concert. At least he didn't start kissing the people around him. ;)

[Beckylooo]

Aaaaaaaaaand that's why I stopped going to Ani shows.

[Natalie D.]

Oh Ani concerts. How I miss them.