A Kick In The Head Injuries At Rock Concerts Are Mounting As Moshing And Crowd Surfing Get Weirder And More Violent

If you’re going to a general-admission rock show featuring punk, hard-core or alternative music, and want to get close to the band, perhaps you should bring a helmet.

Moshing and crowd surfing have reached a critical mass at modern rock concerts.

Now there are so many bodies aloft, being passed around on the hands of other fans, that it can lead to traffic snarls. And with heavy boots in fashion in this crowd, a rattling kick to the head is a distinct possibility.

The trend cannot be good news for bands such as Fugazi, a nearly decade-old Washington band. On one hand, its intense hard-core sound is the kind that encourages such activity. On the other, Fugazi has always been an outspoken opponent of moshing and related moves.

“It’s not a matter of dictatorial policy,” band leader Ian MacKaye told the crowd the last time Fugazi played Connecticut. A couple of times, MacKaye stopped the fall 1993 show at the University of Connecticut Field House to rant against crowd surfers.

Some bands encourage body-surfing “because it’s wild, or it looks good on MTV or something,” MacKaye said in an earlier interview.

“We’re concerned with the majority of the audience who is not into getting kicked in the head like 35 times a minute,” he said, explaining Fugazi’s hard line.

“It’s not like we’re telling kids don’t have fun or don’t be energetic or whatever,” he said. “But if they fight, we don’t play. Period.”

The same type of antagonism between band and fans occurred at a Veruca Salt show in New Haven, Conn., last month. “It’s so distracting,” band member Nina Gordon said from the stage as floating bodies were pushed in her direction.

“Stop doing all that stuff,” she said at another point. “It’s disrespectful to us, and it’s disrespectful to each other.”

“All I see is people getting kicked in the head,” she said later. “This is my final warning.” (Eventually, the surfing did stop).

By nature, moshing and surfing have always disrupted audiences somewhat, but the activities have gotten even weirder in recent months, especially in arena shows. It’s not enough to merely hoist someone aloft to crowd-surf. Now others are climbing onto the floating bodies and using them as human diving boards to jump into the crowd.

Such amateur Flying Wallendas were evident at the 4,000-capacity O’Neill Center, a new gymnasium at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury that is the first general-admission venue of its size in the state.

Even stranger, the moshing didn’t stop between sets by the bands Live, Love Spit Love and Sponge. Moshing and crowd surfing, it appears, has less and less to do with the music than with a celebration of (or exploitation of) a big crowd in close quarters.

The injury toll at that particular show: one broken leg and several cracked ribs.

“It was normal for a show of that type,” said promoter Jim Koplik of Metropolitan Productions. “A couple of injuries, some banged-up knees. But the people who get hurt are the people who are moshing.”

It also means that those who merely want to get a close look at the band have to risk being kicked in the head.

Promoters are sometimes in the middle because bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Green Day and Pearl Jam demand venues that are general admission - where moshing can occur.

Trying to limit moshers to reserved seats doesn’t always work; flying folding chairs or bodies may skid down the rows of seats, along the heads of unaware concertgoers in front.

“For a while, it was out of control, and we put the kibosh on it,” says John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, a band that is not known for playing aggressive music but which attracts its share of moshers anyway.

“I guess part of what we’re feeling is that if you completely stop paying attention to the music and are moshing, it makes us feel like we don’t have to be there.”

“But it’s a really odd thing to ask your audience to stop dancing. You spend your entire career to get people to start dancing,” he says. “I can see how it’s fun, but I’ve seen too many people getting kicked in the head.”

The Beastie Boys, in the program for last summer’s Lollapalooza tour, advised against “any dance that can only be performed at the expense of others.” That included floating, which the band endorsed only in the case of a “certified waif” of less than 110 pounds.

The annual Lollapalooza was seen as a kind of Super Bowl for moshers (at least until Woodstock ‘94). So it was kind of a losing battle for the Beasties to discourage floating with such passages as: “Don’t offer potential moshers a stirrup - you’re not a horse! Floating also leads to being passed over the barricade, which usually involves injury, ejection or humiliation at the hands of the authorities.”

“In short,” the Beasties said, “don’t be a knucklehead! Just because you’re a jock, exjock or would-be-jock doesn’t mean that Lollapalooza is just another game… . Do yourself a favor and learn how to really dance a real dance step.”