Jay Charles Reatard 04/21

[A.M. Thomas]

I'm 27 years cool and I prefer to leave the freakouts for when I'm home alone. Moshing, if you will, just looks dated and embarrasing.

I'm 21, but I agree completely.  I love dancing, I guess, but anything that becomes violent isn't fun.

To bring it back to the topic of the thread, here is what Jay Reatard recently said about the "Toronto incident":

"A lot of people read press and get this idea that the show is supposed to be this cathartic fuck-everything-up experience. Sometimes when I play a show, I just want to play my songs. There's still a lot of energy. There's just not this level of impending violence hanging over everything.

Some people decide that if I'm not freaking out enough, they're going to try to inject something into the show that makes it this negative, violent experience. I'm fed up with it. It took me forever to save up enough money during my career to get to the point where I could afford things like a nice guitar and to have some guy pay $10 and think that entitles him to throw a beer pitcher at my guitar? I'm done."

[ughwhy]

Why are we still using the term "mosh pit?"  What is this, 1982?

You're right, I should have said The Fray.

[Tim K in DC]

Why are we still using the term "mosh pit?"  What is this, 1982?

I need to fact check this in Rock, Rot & Rule, but I think TL is right, here: the "mosh pit" term wasn't coined until the later days of hardcore (around 1986 or '87), when New York bands like Youth Of Today, Bold, and Underdog made breakdowns a standard in their songs and the "mosh" was the slower version of slam dancing that accompanied them. I remember going to an all ages show in Newport, RI (Blue Pelican, yo) and this kid Ruscia Wiggins (RIP) had written an article titled MOSH! for a one-off fanzine (actually, that may have been the name of the -zine or newsletter... it's foggy now) to inform all the RI hardcore kids about the new dance craze that True Blue (they soon became Underdog) would be introducing at the gig (yeah, Verbal Assault played the show, too...).