There is no purpose or meaning to this post at all.
February, 2002... America West Arena... Phoenix, Arizona
The "Pop Sucks" tour from Korn, who at the time were the undisputed kings of Nu Metal and the sounding board through which a new generation of disgruntled teenagers and disillusioned young adults found a common voice... Or, for a soon-to-be-28-year-old recently divorced dude, a great place to crank down beers and try to get some of my pent-up aggression out. Life had not been kind in the previous 12 months or so, 9/11 occurring, my marriage disintegrating before my eyes, relocating across half the country and finding myself in a social and financial situation the likes of which I would never wish on my worst enemy.
But fuck it, back to the show. Having seen Korn as one of the main acts on Metallica's Summer Sanitarium Tour in 2000, I had been blown away. As we watched from our free luxury box (another story altogether), I was amazed at how the entire audience seemed to be one giant, moving organism, pulsing to the rhythms of Korn's assault on the eardrums. Those boys fucking ROCKED... I came away saying they would never play another show in Arizona that I would not see. And that was true up until Head left the band... But I digress...
GA seats, the whole floor is open in the arena that semi-cold winter night. Attending with me were 3 of my closest friends and we had done a good amount of pre-partying before going into the show, drinking who knows how many beers. Imagine our shock and horror when we entered the arena and found that alcohol sales were suspended that evening. That's right. We were now locked inside the building and had nothing more to drink. This irked all of us a bit and I decided then and there that I would spend the whole night in the pit, getting as close to the stage as possible and letting the music take me away, albeit not quite in the Calgon sense of things...
From the moment the lights went down until the final notes of Got The Life, their closer that evening, I was pushed and pulled, shoved, punched, picked up, knocked down, scratched and battered. Don't get me wrong. I'm a pretty big dude and my buddy Steve and I were giving as good as we were getting, probably better. But it was all in good fun... Only one dipshit took everything personally and got in my buddy's face, but after getting decked by someone from behind, he was pulled out and never heard from again. My point is that there was a community there, a dare I say brotherhood of metalheads that used the pit as a way of expressing themselves, even if the only words spoken were lyrics shouted at the top of the lung or the oft-heard "FUCK YEAAAAAAAAAH!" that you tend to hear at shows like that... It was therapeutic, no harm no foul on any of the people I hit or that hit me. In fact, I didn't even notice that I wasn't drinking anymore (which would have been impossible with all the bumping and hitting), since the energy of the pit sustained my 'high' throughout the show. The setlist was insane that night, seemingly intended to never let the audience come up for air, and we didn't... For the next several years, every time Korn was in town, I was always found in the pit, finding that the activity up there was almost just as much a part of the show as the music and the band's performance...
Fast forward six years to a recent warm mid-summer evening with Iron Maiden, outdoors at Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix. With the reunited lineup that included all 3 guitarists that were in the band during its heyday, and a 2 1/2 hour setlist set against the backdrop of a combination of the Powerslave and Somewhere In Time stage setups, I sprung for a GA "Pit" ticket for this show as well, procured via eBay for the tidy sum of $50... Now, let it be said, my moshing days are behind me. Now, when I'm up front, I'm usually either in front of or behind the pit, not in the middle of it. See, life's been pretty great for the last 4-5 years and I have no more reason to want to bang into people. I'm at an age now where I just want to stand and watch the show, with the best and closest view possible. Let me tell you, this was NOT a problem that night.
See, there's a big difference between 2002 Korn and 2008 Iron Maiden. Maiden's in the midst of a rebirth, and their popularity has never been higher, especially now that their target audience doesn't really have a problem with $40 t-shirts and expensive concert tickets. As long as Bruce is hittin' the high notes (and he still does) and they're playing the hits, everyone is happy. The "Pit", and I use that term loosely, mostly consisted of moderately overweight, wrinkled men and women, still squeezing into that old Killers era t-shirt and holding onto every last stringy hair on their head, even if the only place it grows anymore is in the classic ring pattern, with nothing but shine on the scalp. I don't think a single person ran into me that night, even though the "Pit" was full. The only movement at all was the unified raising of fists and the incessant head-banging popularized all those years ago.
As much as I loved being close, the fact that the whole pit was so tame was a big letdown for me. No, I didn't want to mosh it up, but I did want to feel the energy from everyone banging around and rocking out. The static nature of the classic headbang is just not conducive to creating that energy...
Anyway, I learned something that night. Next time Maiden comes to town, I'll be just fine with a seat to the show, no need to be in the pit. I ended up back in the luxury box that my friends had and enjoyed the show just as much from there. I guess you need to choose wisely when it makes sense to get into the pit at a rock show.
Please go and reread the first sentence again before posting your comments. I'm just banging away on the keyboard, trying to squeeze the last bit of time out of my workday and I thought I'd tackle a topic that only occurred to me that night at the Maiden show...
Rock on,
Cru
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