Concert #4

When I go to a concert I like to enjoy the music. I like to hear different versions of songs and in a different way than I am used to. I never usually join the Dirty Hazards in dancing and such. In October of 2002 I went with 3 friends, Rob, Bob and Mike, to an Incubus concert. Bob and Mike are brothers and they had never been to a concert before, as far as I am aware. We waited through the boring opening band and I got smacked in the face by a bottle of water thrown by some jerk across the arena. This distracting and annoying action would set the tone for the rest of the night.

When Incubus finally came out people got excited and started rushing closer to the stage. Mike got squeezed into the crowd and began to get carried away. He turned around and he had the most frightened look I have ever seen on anyone’s face. He looked as though he was being dragged into a fiery pit from whence he would never return. Bob grabbed his hand and pulled him back to where he was before he was washed away in the river of humanity. Mike fought for his ground for a good portion of the rest of the night.

When a concert starts, I always like to know where the Health Hazards are moshing at, so that I can not get trapped in their swirling circle of sweaty annoyance. I looked across the crowd and saw that the melee of loadies was in up in front, next to the left part of the stage. I felt some relief that I might actually get to enjoy the music, free from distraction. This freedom only lasted for about a song and a half. The mosh pit migrated over to right in front of my friends and I. For some strange reason people slamming into each other and running in circles always seem to decide to carry on their activities right by me. I like to think that it is because I am a very large guy and I stop the herd from progressing with my brute strength and you would do well to think the same thing.

So, now my friends and I are being constantly bumped into and sweated on by the swarm of stoners. Amidst all the turmoil I am glad to know that some people near us had made a peace pact and were solidifying the agreement with the peace pipe. It smelled like someone had released a skunk in there and the Health Hazards sweat romp was only adding to the stench of peyote. My friends and I didn’t take long to become extremely annoyed with having sweat rubbed on us. When people would run near us we would shove them into other people in the circle. I myself threw several people down to the concrete and we all soon began to enjoy shoving other people around. Rob and myself would take turns running through the circle and running against the flow, knocking people down and giving them the forearm shiver. Anyone who knows Rob would be surprised that he was knocking people down as he has never been given to much physical activity, but I was a witness and he was really into it.

After we stopped running through the crowd wreaking havoc and returned to our spots by Bob and Mike we just did some old fashioned shoving. After a couple of minutes doing this I noticed that my shirt had gotten very tight. I turned around to find that there was a line of girls behind me who were trying not to get run over and had found sanctuary behind the big guy who wasn’t moving. One of them was holding my shirt so that I wouldn’t move from in front of her. I wish that I had a camera because the girls all looked like refugees from a foreign war or disaster seeking refuge. I turned back around and focused on shoving people again.

A couple of songs later I saw a guy heading straight for me from the circle. He was the first guy that seemed to notice that we were there and were shoving people like crazy. He came right towards me and I gave him a good solid shove. He bounced right back toward me and I shoved him back to the center of the circle. On his third attempt I decided to put him on the floor. He came back again and this time I just grabbed him by the collar and yelled in his face, “WHAT??” He said, “Dude, dude. I am just trying to get out.” I still don’t understand why he felt that the only way out was by running towards me.

A few songs later a girl came up to me and recruited me and the boyfriend of one of the refugee girls behind me to throw her onto a group of people who she assumed would catch her. I asked her if she was sure that she wanted to and she said, “Oh yeah, just do it man.” So we each took a foot and we hurled her high in the air. This girl must not have understood that you need to lay flat for people to catch and carry you. She instead did a dive that would have given her a very high score in the Olympics and she went straight down to the floor. I think I even felt the floor shake a little when she hit. I am not sure where she went after that but I hope it was to a medical station.

At the end of the night I realized that I hadn’t actually paid any attention to the music and would have been just as well off to crank up the sound on my stereo at home and bump into my friends for a couple of hours. I did have fun though.