It’s a 3 day weekend both here in the US and in Europe, Friends.
That means, most of you are (hopefully) going to be out doing 3 day weekend things.
So we are going to try something new….a replay of sorts…a long preamble of a fan favorite from 2018 — except this time, YOU CAN LISTEN TO “ME” (okay AI Dave) NARRATE IT AUDIOBOOK STYLE (1.5x if needed works).
👇 👇 Check it out below 👇👇
For those who really want to read it (and did not originally catch it on Medium), here it is.
WARNING: I told you, it is long…but it is worth it!
A mosh pit may seem like a fun place to recapture your youth. But when you are over 40, it’s an absolute cauldron of terror….
My wife and I thought we were just going to enjoy a relaxing evening at a concert. Instead, we came “this close” to it turning into an evening of blood, broken hips, ACL tears, and prison shanks.
Friends, the cautionary tale I am about to share is not a horror story….it is true…
My wife and I were excited about a long overdue date night. We both enjoy live music, and I was able to score a great deal on floor tickets to see Social Distortion at the House of Blues in Boston. Social D is an alternative, Southern California based punk band who’s heyday was in the late 80s/early 90s.
Formed in 1978, the band’s frontman, Mike Ness, is now pushing close to 60 years old. I always enjoyed their music but had never caught one of their shows in person, so when they came to town I figured it might be a good time blow off some steam and to cross it off our “band bucket list.”
The first sign of trouble arose when we were getting ready. Earlier in the day, the Senate had voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Without getting into the politics of it all, let’s just say my wife was in a foul mood most of the afternoon. The fun, carefree night out that we had planned was invariably starting off on the wrong foot. Remember this, because it will come back into play later…
Of course the real burning question was with our evening attire. What does a preppy suburban parent wear to a concert where the main draw is an AARP card carrying, Orange County chopper riding, head-to-toe tattooed, vegan frontman? Surely the crowd would most certainly be demographically similar to us, so I rifled through my things to find the grungiest looking Jos. A. Bank shirt I had to go over a Foo Fighters tee (because, duh, U2 or, god forbid Coldplay, really?) and J. Crew jeans that I purposefully had not washed in a week.
My wife decided that, for her, a black cardigan with still visible 15 year old baby vomit stains accented by an already-out-of-style Vineyard Vines pashmina that her parents had gotten her a few years ago would work. The pearls would definitely stay home. She also opted for her red low top Converse All Stars because they were “kind of punk” and would be more comfortable to both stand and walk in for an extended period of time. We were ready to rock!
We both found the ferry ride into town to be absolutely delightful on this early Fall evening, and after grabbing a quiet bite to eat (carefully staying away from any foods that might trigger heartburn), we crammed onto the “T” to head to the venue — transporting us back over 25 years to our carefree college days in the process.
The House of Blues in Boston happens to be across the street from Fenway Park….which was also hosting the Red Sox vs. Yankees playoff game that night, starting at the same time.
Let’s just say that, when we arrived, Lansdowne Street was a powder keg packed with buzzed, red faced, vest wearing (both of the leather biker and puffy Patagonia varieties), baseball cap adorning, “R” dropping (as in “pahk” or “Hahvahd” or “Nomah Gahseeahparra”) concert goers and baseball fans all chanting “Yankees Suck” and all fired up and looking to punch someone.
The only words I could use to describe the scene: wicked awesome.
After my wife was briefly detained to have her cute Vera Bradley hand bag with the 80 zippers carefully checked by security for weapons and contraband (she stunned the facially pierced female bodyguard by politely thanking her), we headed to the bar. We skipped our normal craft beer favorites and debated whether to go with the Bud Light or Coors tall boy cans to start the evening.
Understandably, we didn’t want to stick out or seem pretentious by making a non-punk rock choice. After settling on the Bud Light, we then made a bee-line for center stage to claim a spot close to the front as we normally do at smaller venue shows. I was quite pumped that we were so close that I was going to be able to see Mike Ness’s facial tattoos in vivid detail.
As we stood waiting the hour before the opening act was scheduled to go on, we sipped our beers and shared friendly banter about babysitter challenges and adventures in financial robo advising with a group of fellow Gen X guys right in front of us. Just to their left, right up front, were a Mom and Dad, both wearing vintage Doc Martens, who must have brought their elementary school aged kids with them to attend their FIRST rock show…We agreed that they surely are known as the cool parents in their playgroup.
The crowd starts to eagerly fill in as we approach the 8:15pm start time for the first of two opening acts, Pony Bradshaw. It’s an eclectic crowd of former frat boys to burnouts, but as predicted, aside from a few college aged kids looking to get a glimpse of punk rock history (almost as if they were going to a museum exhibit), all were decidedly middle aged. At 8:20 there was still no one on stage, and a rather large gentleman with a fu manchu impatiently bellowed from behind us “C’mon, let’s get this friggin’ show stahted ahlready!”
I turn to my wife, who was mid yawn, and distinctly say “Wake up — this may get a little ‘chippy’ when Social D goes on.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I wore my red Converse All Stars then, “ she said with a playful wink as she straightened her crooked pashmina.
Close to 9pm and finally a regular looking guy toting 3 water bottles and an electric guitar arrives on stage. This was Pony Bradshaw. He was talented, singing a bunch of wistful, folksy, twangy songs you would expect more from a countrified Adele than the first act opening for a band with songs entitled “Born to Lose” and “Machine Gun Blues.” He completed his set to tepid applause and then, another 20 minute wait until the next opener, Will Hoge. You could tell they were a bigger deal because there was four of them in the band and they had a roadie do a quick mic check and bring up their water bottles for them.
Will Hoge was a combination of Springsteen, John Cougar and just about any ’00s southern rock band that comes to your mind. If they had been given the privilege of an encore, they absolutely would have covered the Rascall Flatts version of “Life is a Highway” from the Pixar movie Cars. As their set dragged on, you could hear some in the crowd getting a little restless. They had come to get drunk and punch someone (preferably a Yankees fan) and their buzz was essentially being wasted on a male version of Taylor Swift.
Toward the end of their act, there was some rustling and shuffling behind us. You could see Will Hoge’s eyes widen a bit either with fear or hopefulness (even though I was close, it was hard to truly decipher the emotions of a southern rock singer from Nashville playing his first gig in Boston). We turned and a few feet away was a burly mid 40 something year old linebacker-ish guy wearing a white mesh football jersey with the number “69” (of course) on it angrily pacing back and forth in the crowd. He was balding with a thick salt and pepper beard and had an ominous stare like Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket.
He clearly did not give 💩 about Will Hoge, babysitters, robo advising, or any kid’s first concert. He was there to do two things: get his Social D on and mosh. And neither was happening.
Hoping to uncover other equally frustrated potential combatants, Mister 69’s rustling and shuffling quickly escalated into jabbing and shoving. Let’s be clear, you just do not mosh to “Life is a Highway.” Ever.
Not when you have insurance premiums and mortgage payments to worry about. And certainly not on the day when Brett Kavanaugh happened to be appointed to the Supreme Court and there are tired and already agitated women, some of whom happened to be wearing Vineyard Vines pashminas, in the crowd. We had all been waiting almost two hours for the headliner and now people were getting pissed.
The powder keg fuse was lit.
Each time she got bumped and we heard people behind us shouting and shrieking at Mister 69, my wife’s grip on her now empty Bud Light tall boy can tightened.
“I swear to god Dave,” the normally mild mannered mother of my children says to me, “if that guy pushes me again, I will weaponize this beer can and cut his f^^king throat.”
Noting that she did not give a playful wink that time, you can imagine how thankful I was when Will Hoge’s set soon ended without an encore and with security descending on Mister 69. Not a moment too soon….
While he and his bros received what appeared to be a very stern talking to by security, Mister 69 was inexplicably not escorted from the building. I guess, if I had access to it, it’s possible I would find that Mister 69’s LinkedIn profile might reveal that in addition to being a live music aficionado and avid mosh pit enthusiast, he was also a master orator and captain of the debate team in his past.
Maybe he apologized, said he got carried away and promised it would not happen again.
Perhaps he presented an unassailable argument that this was in fact a punk rock show, and despite all of us being out past our bedtimes, moshing over the age of 40 was maybe the most punk rock thing we all could be doing at that moment in time. I
n fact, I could see him reasoning, for the rightfully butt hurt ladies in the audience, moshing would be downright cathartic on this particular night.
At least this is how I imagined it went down.
After over 2 hours of anticipation, a team of roadies arrived to perform multiple mic checks and strategically distribute multiple bottles of water on the stage. It was finally time for Mike Ness and Social D to get down to business. Looking back, I think Mister 69 was doing us all a favor by firing off a warning shot during the Will Hoge set, because what soon followed should not have come as a shock to any of us…
Social D hits the stage charged up and the crowd goes wild, jumping and singing like you would expect from a well behaved group of individuals collectively in the midst of a midlife crisis and who are desperately clinging to their last gasps of youth….And then, before you could say “Blink-182,” it was the “get out of the water” scene from Jaws and the opening Omaha beach scene from Saving Private Ryan all rolled into one GenX sweaty mess, with Mister 69 and his pals serving both as shark and the Germans.
We had a Category 5 Mosh Pit, and my wife and I were at the epicenter.
Hair was being pulled, arthritic elbows were cracking skulls, beer was getting thrown, pashminas were being wrinkled. There was no time to shout or weaponize beer cans. Neither Pony Bradshaw, Will Hoge nor Mike Ness (especially the puppet master Mike Ness, who must have been quite pleased that the Facebook sharing, Nick at Nite watching crowd in front was being thinned by a raw form of natural selection) were going to save us. If you wanted to survive, you either needed to immediately get off the beach and seek shelter or ride out the storm.
My wife, angry but still the intelligent one, quickly ditched the tall boy, her Orange Is The New Black dreams and me (in that order) and exited the scrum stage left, safely finding refuge by the bar. At that moment, in that space and time, I found myself in sort of an existential, midlife conundrum. Do I do the sensible thing, grab a beer with my wife and enjoy the rest of the show outside of the maelstrom? Or do I turn and face the specter of my evaporating youth and become one with the mosh pit?
I look to my left and I see one of the few college students in attendance crouched in a semi-fetal position. Ha ha, no safe rooms or therapy dogs here for you Dylan, I deviantly thought. I kind of bounce in rhythm with the crowd, leaning somewhat brusquely on those closest in proximity to me — just hard enough to make my presence known and, more importantly, careful enough so I don’t twist a knee.
Just then my jaw gets crunched by an elbow or shoulder and some sort of liquid rains down on the back of my head. I turn and look and it is a guy wearing a “Babson Olin School of Business” vest and a Fitbit and HE TOO HAD THE PRIVATE PYLE stare. And then from my right I get shoved by another guy who I could have sworn I had drinks with at a Boston FinTech Week event a few weeks ago.
Even one of the nice babysitter/robo advising guys from the beginning was now bare chested and angrily taunting the kids who were at their very first rock concert by repeatedly thrusting his middle fingers in their faces, parents off coolly crowd surfing in their Doc Martens while they desperately cling to the security barrier…this all while Mike Ness (who earlier in the evening shouted into the mic “I was anti-racism in 1989 and I am anti-racism now” but, notably, left out any proclamation about being anti-anger or anti-mosh pit) knowingly growled “You got bad, bad luck…..bad, bad luck…”
I think three songs must have passed before I was able to locate my wife happily sipping on a daiquiri on the outer fringes of the crowd. She was pleased to report that, while she had lost her pashmina in the chaos, the bright side was there was no line in the ladies room.
Neither of us suffered lacerations, broken bones or twisted knees, and we were able to laugh as we recapped what had just unfolded. It was clear that my wife, while a casual fan of classic punk, had not been exposed to the inner workings of mosh pit dynamics in her all-girls Catholic school growing up. Nor had she completed the required reading on mosh pit etiquette that had been assigned earlier in the week. These facts, she admitted, combined with her already agitated state of mind prior to arriving, contributed to the perfect storm that lead to her Panic! At the House of Blues. What would we have told the kids if she had followed through on the beer can plan?
As we talked, we were occasionally bumped by other harried crowd members seeking relief while we leaned in to hear each other over the band. Each incidental encounter was accompanied by an urgent “Sorry!” and a “please do not punch me in the face” look. Yes it seemed a number of us were experiencing a bit of PTSD. The music was blaring, the moshing and crowd surfing continued, but it was all good from our safe haven.
The show finally ends an hour and five minutes after Social Distortion took the stage and almost four hours after we initially arrived, and we all empty out onto Lansdowne Street — just as the Red Sox-Yankee game is also ending. The home team lost on this night (they ended up winning the series though) and the street was once again filled with event goers but now with a little less verve. Since we had all first congregated, buzzes had sufficiently been killed, balls hit, songs sung, pashminas ruined, and people punched.
My wife and I spotted a sausage vendor right between the two venues and, with the threat of heartburn ruining our evening passed, we decide to indulge in a late post concert snack as we once had back in our younger days. It was then that we again spotted Mister 69 on the sidewalk. The Private Pyle stare now gone, you could see him smiling, laughing and recapping his experience with a conservatively dressed woman he must have known that was also in attendance. The menacing stalking and pacing was now replaced by some gingerly placed footsteps as he put his arm around the woman, took out his phone and they walked together up the street. Mister 69 may have gotten his Social D and his moshing on, but he was definitely going to be sore in the morning.
Just as my wife and I took a bite from our street food, I caught one final glimpse of the guy who didn’t realize how close he had been to being impaled by an angry, pashmina wearing, suburban soccer mom with a weaponized beer can. There he was, harmlessly shuffling up the street and fiddling with his phone.
And that was when the woman reached into her purse and handed him his reading glasses so they could arrange for a Lyft ride home, presumably to get their tired bones to a comfortable bed.
XOXO
Dave
For those still here…
We are in Memorial Day Weekend. Please be aware of greetings on this holiday. We can say Happy Veterans Day in November but Memorial Day is different…PASS IT ON!