Wherein I regale you with tales of metal shows past.
“I once knew a man named Ed… who used to dance with the dead. DEAD. SKIN. MASK!”
I was seventeen years old and at a Slayer concert. My first and only Slayer concert, to be exact. I’ve always been a big fan of metal off and on, but there was a period during my teenage years where I had a love affair with the very heavy metal – death metal, black metal, and anything angry and moshable. This led me to Slayer’s Rein in Blood album, and then to Seasons in the Abyss, which they were currently playing songs off of.
I’m not sure why the hospital made me reminisce about heavy metal. Maybe because it was so unlike the deathly clinical silences, the serenely white walls, and the undanceable beat of the hospital machines. Maybe the isolation made me angry. Maybe I just wanted to hear some fucking metal.
Slayer songs are usually about the devil or death, so you would wonder if their concerts are full of angry, sadistic individuals that were just waiting for any wrong look to go postal. Surprisingly, this isn’t true. They were obvious outcasts, disaffected individuals, but they really enjoyed the music and the scene. Many were dressed in leather with spiked collars, torn clothes, and a variety of skull-adorned jewelry. Dark eye shadow was popular both on men and women. There was a guy dressed up as the Crow, which would be cool and unique if there wasn’t some other guy, unrelated, also dressed up as the Crow.
I was similarly dressed, in a torn T-shirt with both skulls on a cross, black jeans, and black boots. I didn’t want to get all bulky or spiky, in case I wanted to mosh. Even if the spikes on you were pointing outwards, there’s still a very good chance that you could get hurt by them as you slam into someone, or that person slams into you. A T-shirt was comfortable with how hot mosh pits would get. And boots, well, you need to protect your feet with people stomping all over in close quarters.
I want to say something exciting happened, some sour moment. But it was actually quite nice. No fights, no assholes. For people who enjoyed music about horrible things, they were actually really nice. And the performance was enough for me to enjoy myself. I was just awed at being at a Slayer concert. It was the most interesting crowd and show I would see until I saw GWAR years later.
***
When I was sixteen, I saw White Zombie at a club. Its name was Voodoo, or Club Voodoo, or something like that. Nearly every town that has live music has some club with Voodoo in its name. It may be the Voodoo Room, the Voodoo Lounge, or the Voodoo Glowskulls, but there’s a club named that or a club recently closed called that. It’s almost as common as the Ritz.
Club Voodoo was medium sized, so I was lucky to see a metal show there. White Zombie hadn’t gotten super popular yet, so they still played some smaller venues. Since it was a club, the stage was maybe three feet off the floor and the guitarists not more than two feet from the edge, which made for a much more intimate experience.
In front of the stage was one tightly packed crowd of fans. It would have been a mosh pit if there was room to mosh. It was so tight that I couldn’t have fallen down even if I wanted to. The crowd was a sea of people that moved together, jumping up and down, colliding and banging their heads. Flannel was in fashion, so there was enough in that crowd to dress the entire Royal Canadian lumberjack population for years. That also made the hot and packed crowd even hotter. I think I had sweated out a few pounds by the end of the night. But I didn’t care; I was having fun.
Remember when I said I couldn’t fall if I wanted to? That felt true, but wasn’t true in extreme cases. There was some crowd surfing, but that was fine. We could easily keep a skinny white kid up, or even the tiny girlfriend someone foolishly suggested stage dive; I felt sorry for her, every hot girl that crowd surfed got groped. No, it was someone way bigger that fucked everything up: Bouncers.
While the band played, bouncers walked back and forth across the front of the stage. These guys weren’t with White Zombie, they were hired by the club. They had no interest in the music. They were six and a half feet tall Italian slabs of meat and muscle, their hair slicked back with gold chains displayed over their black muscle shirts. They were there to make sure nobody messed with the band. Since kids wanted to get up to leap from the stage for crowd surfing purposes, the bouncers were somewhat lenient. Instead of yelling for the kid to get down, the bouncers gave the kids five seconds before they picked the kids up and tossed them off the stage. But again, a skinny kid was not a problem for a frothing, bouncing crowd.
The problem started when a fight broke out behind me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a turf battle. Maybe it was between a neo-Nazi and a SHARP. Maybe a girl was involved. I’d like to think it was a fight over a disc that held secrets that the right corporation was willing to kill over. But likely it was something more like one guy hit into one guy the wrong way, and neither wanted to back down. There are a lot of morons in the mosh pit, and most are not the type who will back down.
What I saw was two of the bouncers stop in front of me on the stage. Interestingly enough, when standing next to each other, they looked so similar. Like they were clones from the same gigantic mook. One of them pointed out into the crowd, past me. I felt the crowd freeze around me, but I didn’t acknowledge it at first. Almost in slow motion, I saw the bouncer bend his knees. In a moment, he jumped forward in a Superman pose.
I think he tackled one of the guys in the fight behind me. I’m not sure. I got a massive boot to the face and then I was lying on the ground. I’m not sure if the bouncer intended to jump over me, or if he just didn’t care. I wound up on the floor, dizzy, while the bouncer broke up the fight. I vaguely recall the other bouncer – seemingly the more civilized one – climbing off the stage and going to the fight.
As a testament to the good will of the mosh pit, a few of the people around me helped me back up to my feet. One patted me on the back, which nearly sent me back to the floor, as dizzy as I was. I grabbed onto the stage, which attracted the disapproving look of a third bouncer. When I noticed I let go and stepped back. I noticed I was bleeding. Now it was truly a metal show.
Even when it healed, I had a scar from the edge of my lip to the edge of my nose. In high school, that’s the sort of thing that gives you character. Chicks dig scars, and no chicks dig scars more than teenage metal chicks. Alas, the scar healed up within a few months, changing my scarred mug to just an ugly mug.
Bollocks.
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