I have tried and tried many a time to understand how punk tuned into what it is today, and I really can't figure out the succession of events and sounds that led to the development and inspirations that spawned all of the sounds and subcultures of the punk movement. But specifically, I want to know how hardcore dancing got into the mix. Cause it's pretty fucking retarded. I'd consider myself a metalhead but I went to a sXe hardcore show last night. Some new kids were in town due to the first semester at uni started up, so I figured I'd show them a small local place where lots of underground bands get gigs. First off this, place is boutique sized. Usually there's barely anything in it but a merch table, and then a bunch of tall, white sweaty people pack into it to watch some bands perform. Now I had a great time and everything, the music was loud and the beats were hard... But moshing was a little bit difficult because everyone was just punching shit for no reason. Where and when did moving as a crowd turn into showing up just to injure someone or yourself? Is there some unspoken law where moshing is only allowed at metal shows, and this kind of extreme shit is just guaranteed to go down no matter what at a Hardcore gig? The last mosh I was in before this, I had to get a root canal because of fuckers like these.

Also, how do people become so well versed in punk knowledge? I felt like I was the only one who didn't know the lyrics to their songs, and yet they hadn't been up in Syracuse in half a decade. They weren't big either. The bands were No Tolerance and The Rival Mob. I want to keep attending shows like this because they're full of energy, and we get virtually zero metal up here. But I feel uneasy because I tend to end up being the "metal kid" there.

hardcore dancing is so... literally 8 years ago.

I blame the emergence of commercialized of Pop-Punk and Post-Hardcore in the mid-late 90's.
It's not really a complex question.

Doesn't mean those are bad, either. Ramones were Poppy as fuck... It's the fact that music made commercial is polished and cleaned and condensed into an unrecognizable caricature of whatever it is attempting to modify for commerciality. So you get lots of stupid, extreme parodies of things that are appealing to the majority of consumers. Retarded bullshit is born, fed, and grows until it collapses under its own stupidity and people find something else... but then there's still hangers-on, so someone somewhere on earth is probably still "hardcore dancing" the night away, because he was brought up on manufactured youth culture and knows nothing else.

C'est la vie, who cares?

I guess I care because I don't like taking a trip to the dentist and getting holes drilled into me sequentially after every time I go see a concert.

There isn't a single lineage to trace for how anything evolved, but there are a few ideas that can explain it a bit better. Hardcore dancing sort of evolved from people who didn't dance in traditional styles simply moving with the music. Fast, percussive music lends itself to limb flailing, air-punching, etc. Some of the different styles of dancing were noted in Sick of it All's video for "Step Down", which is pretty awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fvu951up_0

Two thoughts on the origins of violent moshing/punching. First, a lot of guys in the local hardcore scenes were kids who didn't have much, and as adolescents, they liked rough play like pushing and shoving, air-punching, and occasional/frequent fighting. Second, the powerful nature of the music was used to push quite a few different messages that resulted in conflict - racists/nazis against opponents, militant straightedge against drinkers and drug users. These battles, sort of for control of local scenes/territory or because people don't like nazis, became sort of an ongoing war and bonding experience, and a lot of the guys who fought together kept rough physical play as part of their general show conduct. Scares away the undedicated, it's a primitive pump-up and bonding experience.



It's a lot like underground metal, but with less of a commercial backbone for the style as a whole - there are some bigger labels, but there's a lot more of a DIY network for bands to use, so tours can be done without professional booking agents and premiere venues. Lots of news spreads by word-of-mouth, now evolved into connecting with other people in scenes via the internet. Fan-zines/sites, forums, labels, and localized communities that tend to be quite active. You won't see ads or albums in stores, but you'll know they're out and where to get them if you hear from people who are involved.

The Style of mosh has its roots in the Eastern hardcore scenes from what I've seen at least, I look at early NYHC shows of bands like Sick of it all, Madball, Merauder, and Agnostic front especially during the heavier beatdowns which is more or less peculiar to NYHC at least during the early days. Its not necessarily an odd part of the music as suggested by Zodi's well-researched post, but just a reaction to the intensity of the music. Hardcore kids say the same thing about how lame metal pits are, especially when you rub against sweaty man boobs, so its not as if our own dancing doesn't attract negative connotations as well.

From my experience, if you want people to stop moshing into at hardcore shows, you should get to know some people in the scene. People are more likely to get physical with someone who isn't part of the club than someone who they have mutual friends with. The whole thing is a lot like high school.

The Syracuse hardcore scene is pretty lame. Lots of straight edge bands. Not my kind of thing. The d-beat bands round there (Hunted Down, Herpes) are awesome though.

I'm pretty sure all those mostly lame NYHC bands mentioned are a bunch of fucking second-gen. frat boy wannabes, tbh.
Remember BOSTON?:



I'm pretty sure moshing has its origins in earlier Boston HC, all the doughy vegan sxe4lyf gorilla-broz in NY aping that shit (no pun intended) were a bunch of late-comers who completely perverted it with their fucking mutton chops and shit. Maybe not originally, but that was certainly the scene that influenced and nurtured that whole fat football player, varsity-font-on-fucking-everything, tuffgai hXc broz4lyf subculture more than the early Boston scene ever did.

It seems more about dressing up for the later HC generations than it did in the early days when everyone was a scrawny, greasy, ugly, pimply teenager with plain-ass clothing and the ability to be moved by the energy of the music, as opposed to being solely motivated by some (TRULY ATROCIOUS) fashions and posturing bullshit.

That's generally how the whole scene seems. I'm not familiar with anywhere but Seattle, but its a group of phoney adults still playing kids.

sounds like a lot of older metalheads too, but okay.

I've missed shows recently where they played. I'll definitely check them out next time they get a gig.

Talking shit on Hardcore just because of a few teeny boppers who think they're Bruce Lee is foolish.

I wasn't talking shit at all. I said I enjoyed the show and I liked the band that played there. 0_o

Edit: I guess I didn't say that. Anyways, I don't have a problem with hardcore, just the... perks.

I go to tons of [hardcore, hXc, HxC, HC, h-core] shows and rarely see crazy dancing like that, but it's definitely more violent than most metal shows I go to. The crowd gets really into it and swings around like nutcases, that's how aggressive music should make you feel.

Here's a video of some moshing in California from 1979: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64bCTy8sa8

Does the year in which we see the crowd running into each other give one city/scene/band credit for inventing moshing? Nope. One city/scene didn't invent moshing, it fit with the music and evolved and spread. It spread and evolved along with the music, with the notables of the SoCal scene emerging a bit earlier in the late 70s, the Boston scene having most bands starting around 1980, the DC scene around the same time as Boston, and NY a little bit later.

It is very short-sighted to generalize the NY scene as you did for several reasons. It's a huge city and a central point to a lot of things - punk and post-punk thrived there, and it was also a midway point for Boston and DC bands, so many of them played there before NY started to develop its own identity. One of the notable things about NYHC is that many of the leading bands were less driven by ideology. The earlier bands of the Boston scene mostly burned out and/or quit by the mid 80s - this was partly due to a lot of the scene being straightedge and drifting apart/moving on. The scene evolved, and Boston has had quite a hardcore scene since then, but it turned over a few times. The early Boston scene died, but it wasn't being aped by others. Some of the prominent mid-late 80s NYHC bands would become known as some of the "tough guy" bands, but the separate tough guy culture didn't emerge as much in NYC until the 90s. The straight-edge varsity letter tough guy stereotype sort of came out of Boston in the late 80s, and there's plenty of documentation of FSU to show their role in that. NYHC had a lot of thrashy hardcore through the early 90s, when the tough guy stuff came out a lot more. NY hardcore was far past the second generation when the tough guy stuff that you're talking about came out, Queens stuff like Skarhead and 25 ta Life.

Most hardcore bands started out as you described hardcore as starting out - teenagers in plain clothing moved by the energy of the music. A lot of them change as they get older. Part of the idealistic vision of early Boston hardcore is that the bands disappeared before they could get old or sell out (or evolve). Mostly unrelated to these points, look at Hatebreed 17 years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbj3ckYlfhs - sure looks like some kids being moved by the energy of the music!

Same with a lot of the shows I go to- and I grew up in Reno which is famous for that kind of stuff. When I saw Contend play years ago(and yeah, they're one of those xvx bands too) some kid tried the ninja moshing shit and got dropped as soon as he started.

I just want to fucking be in a circle pit. That's my favorite form of moshing. I was at a show recently and some guys were just running into each other and others and I was very confused. People like that usually don't know how to mosh or they just mosh like fuck heads. I've also seen a guy just grab people and throw them on the ground (which resulted in a fight because you really shouldn't grab people or deliberately try and hit them).

Hardcore dancing sucks, but you will only see that at shitty hardcore shows.



What he said.



I get that feeling whenever I go to Rochester.

The Rival Mob is fairly popular as far as modern underground hardcore goes, they played Chaos in Tejas the last two years. As for the rest of your post, I kind of agree with you. I'm a metalhead first and foremost, but I do enjoy quite a bit of hardcore so I go to a fair amount of hardcore shows. I saw Power Trip not too long, and everyone was basically standing still for the thrash, and only moving for the "mosh parts." I really hate this "waiting for the breakdown" mentality at hardcore shows these days, it always ends up as a "look at me, I practiced these sweet moves at home!" sort of thing. The band just ends up being a group of DJs at a dance contest. As for the lyrics, shout alongs are ingrained in hardcore, whether these days its earnest or out of near self-parody ("look at me, I'm piling along and know all the lyrics, I'm so hardcore"), who knows. Anyway, I don't think you should worry about being the "metal kid," no one these days cares anyway.



Agreed 100%, and I feel like that the posturing extends into behaviour at shows, including the "energy" hardcore shows are reputed for. That's the thing I can't really figure about the modern hardcore scene; Is this genuine, or just kids acting "crazy" because they think they're supposed to act crazy? I suppose a little from column a and mostly from column b.

As for the dancing itself.. I think its stupid, but I'm fine with people doing its a) appropriate (at a Suburban Scum show or something), and b) not bothering other people. And by bothering, I mean going around just blatantly trying to hit people. There's a a point where you're no longer "dancing" or even moshing, just punching people in the head while a band plays in the background. It's fucking awful. And the bands see this happening, and they never do anything about it. Never a word, yet there's all this bullshit unity, take care of each other they spout out in between songs. And then when people trying to rationalize it as being "part of the scene," I can't help but think, really is it? Wasn't hardcore originally against meathead "jock" behaviour like these guys? They don't care about the music, they just want an excuse to hurt people. Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IDTVc9pdu4

Punk was more than the Ramones and Sex Pistols. It was Fear, The Damned, Television, Lydia Lunch, and so on. One idea begat ten others, and on and on. It may be hard to believe listening to Public Image Ltd. that it was the brainchild of the same guy screaming "God Save The Queen" without the reference points, but it is true.



Hardcore punk (all punk, really) has often had a very confrontational edge since day one. Read Henry Rollins' diaries from the road with Black Flag sometime. Yeah, you have a lot of people on the outskirts of society just swinging wildly based on the willingness of the bouncers to allow it to happen. The actual evolution of how moshing turned into a performance of kempo kata? Just the evolution of people looking to do wilder and more impressive looking stuff in the pit.



Listen to music? Read? I dunno, the way anyone else would become versed in any other form of music.



Obviously you need to start a set of dudes in leather jackets and get matching patches.

[quote="godsonsafari"


Obviously you need to start a set of dudes in leather jackets and get matching patches.[/quote]

People need to start learning up on metal punk. I'm not talking about crossover either.

... Darkthrone?

At hardcore concerts, it seems like everyone hates each other, theres no sense of friendliness there at all. The violence turns personal, and at every single show you got at least a couple guys that end of fighting each other. At a metalshow, yeah, we mosh, but when someone falls, we PICK THEM UP and give em a pat on the back, theres no hatred at a metal show, everyone just has a good time.

I find that statement questionable.

You are mostly right though, there is a lot of solidarity and just plain common decency within the metal scene, at least compared to other music communities.

I sure as hell hated those assholes who puked on my shoes and waved lightened cigarettes at my hair