Following my desire to try out new experiences and hang around with Gel, a babe in my lectures, I went to a punk / gabba night in London. The venue was the LA2, and the main bands were Ultra Violence and The Exploited.
Half of the crowd had punk hair and most people wore black. I sported my faded shaved spiral and felt pretty cool - if only I had some metal hanging from my face... There was plenty of shouting and threatening chanting but no violence and everyone seemed excited about the evening before them.
When the first band played there were only about 8 people dancing at the front. However, when Ultra Violence played there were 50 people throwing themselves about. At the front, the general idea seemed to be to push each other about and ricochet off each other. We'd thrash about bumping into one another, grinning as we collided. The music seemed to me like simple hard core / gabba which came in short sprints. For 5 minutes we'd thrash in the flashing lights then the bass would stop, we'd stand and catch our breath, and then we'd be back into it again bash bash bash. The music was perfect for this sort of semi-violent exercise, and it was great fun.
Later the punk band The Exploited came on. By this time much beer had been consumed, and the room was getting packed. There were now 200 large sweating hairy bodies squished together on a wet floor with lyrics like "Fuck the USA, fuck the USA..." and "sec and violence sex and violence...". Near the middle the bouncing bodies were moving with great momentum, and after inviting two of my smaller friends into the mosh, I lost them and became concerned for their safety. But if you got right up the front you would crush in immovably against everybody else, with your breath pushed out and your arms either in the air or jammed down at your side. That is, until you were released from the protection of the organic wave machine and let back in the Brownian motion simulator where you were elbowed, shouldered and headbutted by high speed bodies from all directions until you made it back to the crush, or were hurled off the dance floor into the rows of moody onlookers. This is different, I thought to myself, but I was loving it.
The band themselves were kewl, with their dyed hair, plenty of metal in and on them, a great shouting lead singer, and roaring guitars and drums. The songs were angry yet cheerful and the choruses were beautifully simple to sing along with, and it was as if we were saying a big fuck off to society's pointless complications and long words. It seemed that there was still some element of anarchy left in the punk scene that night.
After the concert I went to stay in the room of a friend in London, and as we got stoned my friend imparted the wisdom of anarchy to me, but that is another story.
I really enjoyed the punk evening, and it had an extra element that just twiddling about to techno lacks (although techno also lacks scratches and bruises, and has its own special something). People claim the dance scene is all about a shared experience, man, and that was certainly the case that night, with everyone joining together to knock each others brains out. Certainly for a bit of tension and energy release it was an excellent occasion, but there is something else that attracts me to this sort of night. I think despite my hippie peace-loving nature, I also relate to the expression of anger and energy that punk (and this gabba / punk mutation) represents. For a few days after the concert I thought a lot about anarchy and expressing some of my social desires through violent action. Now I see that the two ideas are only linked historically, not fundamentally, but in some ways I am an advocate of both, and as long as I am I shall happily draw inspiration from future punk / gabba concerts.