To All The Mosh Pits I've Loved Before
For the first time since March, my personal calendar is actually starting to look a little crowded again. Of course, we’re still in a pandemic, so in this case, all my upcoming events are really just music livestreams. My very first edition of this newsletter was actually about livestreams, which have certainly grown over the past eight months (jesus christ), most of them evolving from experimental and impromptu to actual events, be they regularly-held ones on platforms like Patreon, or big shindigs with their own merch and digital tickets. Most of the livestreams I’ve participated in have been quite well done and a lot of fun — they can never replace being able to experience live music in person, but I’m certainly happy to have them here to fill in the gaps in a time when live music is otherwise unsafe. They can’t replicate the feeling of being in a room with all my friends sharing this thing we love, but they can come close, and I usually walk away from these livestreams with a greater appreciation for the music and musicians.
But one aspect of live music livestreams will never be able to replicate is perhaps my favorite: the mosh pit. While there’s a few beloved favorites (such as Saves the Day and the Get Up Kids) where I always try to be front row at their concerts, watching them closely, most of the time at shows I can be found in the pit, dancing and bouncing and being thrown about by dudes three times my size and girls half my size alike. A part of it is turning my love for the music into movement, a part of it is just getting out all that pent-up, repressed energy I trade in, but I think the biggest part of it, again, is that sense of community I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Aside from a few rare jerks, for the duration of any given show every person in the mosh pit is my friend, sharing this fleeting, beautiful moment with me. It’s a sense of belonging I don’t find in many other places.
Clearly, I’m feeling nostalgic for mosh pits, so I thought I’d take this week’s newsletter as an opportunity to reminisce about some of the most memorable ones I’ve encountered throughout my years of attending punk shows — and note that memorable doesn’t always mean great, but to be honest I even look back on terrible or painful mosh pit experiences with much fondness these days. I like a good story, I guess. Hopefully you can find something to enjoy here, and I’d be thrilled if you dropped me a comment to tell me about your own favorite live music experiences (doesn’t necessarily have to be mosh pit related, though that would certainly be a huge plus).
LESS THAN JAKE
APRIL 17, 2019 — THE QUEEN, WILMINGTON DE
WARPED TOUR, JULY 22 2014 — MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION, COLUMBIA MD
Perhaps my favorite experience ever in a mosh pit came just last year, watching everybody’s favorite 90s ska band, Less Than Jake, put on a show in my tiny little home state of Delaware. I’m a casual fan of Less Than Jake at best, but I always try to catch them when they’re in town because they have some of the absolute best pits, always a blast to skank along to, as if I have any idea what I’m doing. At this particular show, as I was dancing, minding my own business, some random guy grabbed both my arms and started spinning me around like a wrecking ball, like he was Mario and I Bowser, as if it were a commercial and “Time Of My Life” was playing in the background, before letting me go and sending me flying into the crowd. It was, without hyperbole, easily one of the top five greatest things ever to happen to me in my life and I will never forget it. I wish someone was spinning me like a wrecking ball and sending me flying into a crowd of people right now.
Less Than Jake was actually my very first circle pit as well, back in 2014 when I was still a bit scared and nervous of the whole idea. I wasn’t quite sold on getting thrown around yet, but a bunch of folks essentially running in circles to peppy guitar? Yeah, I was down with that. Thanks for easing me in, Less Than Jake.
MXPX & ZEBRAHEAD
OCTOBER 3, 2014 — THE BLACK CAT, WASHINGTON DC
This show was my first sighting of a 90s ska kid in person (white collared shirt, tie, khaki pants, black and white checkered Vans), but it was also the mosh pit where I got to see a man on crutches and a guy in a horse costume crowd surf. The guy on the crutches kept his crutches while he crowd surfed! That takes some skill. This is easily the most eclectic crowd I’ve ever seen at a show.
SAVES THE DAY & COHEED AND CAMBRIA
OCTOBER 15, 2016 — STARLAND BALLROOM, SAYERSVILLE NJ
I’ll forever remember this night as the night I hugged in a mosh pit. As I mentioned back in the introduction of this piece, I try to be front row whenever I see my favorite band, Saves the Day, but on this particular night they were actually opening for Coheed and Cambria, and I was not prepared for the devotion of the Coheed fans who showed up half a day early to line up for front row in costume. My getting there an hour before doors was just not going to cut it.
So I ended up in the pit, and I’m grateful, because it was a blast. A big part of my love for Saves the Day comes from the friends I’ve made because of them, and it’s a joy to see friends and fellow Saves fans get as excited about them as I am, to see what specific songs would drive them from the sidelines straight into the pit. But what got me was the moment when — again, mid-pit, mid-song — I bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years and we spontaneously hugged among the frantic flying bodies. There aren’t too many moments like that one out there.
WARPED TOUR (YELLOWCARD, CHUNK! NO CAPTAIN CHUNK)
JULY 24, 2012 — MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION, COLUMBIA MD
Of course I hit my first Warped Tour at the tender age of 25; I’ve mentioned I’m a late bloomer on here before, right? Other than the friend I attended with having an asthma attack because of all the weed smoke in the air, the most memorable part of the day for me was getting to see Yellowcard, one of my Top 5 bands, live for the first time. I wasn’t really a pitter yet, but the pits worked to my advantage during their set, as I started out near the back of the crowd, but every time a pit formed, ran across it to move up, and by their final song I was only a few rows back from the front. Magical.
The other notable pit experience of the day came courtesy of Chunk! No Captain Chunk, a perfectly fine, run of the mill French pop-punk band I’ve somehow seen live three times solely because they’re always on Warped Tour and somehow always ended up playing during a lull in my schedule for the day. During one of their songs we heard a wail and this kid came running out of the pit, hand clamped over his nose, blood gushing and trailing behind him. It was a certainly a sight, though my first thought was ‘Of all the bands here, you busted your nose for Chunk! No Captain Chunk?!’
YELLOWCARD AND THE WONDER YEARS
NOVEMBER 16, 2012 — THE ELECTRIC FACTORY, PHILADELPHIA PA
At this point in my concert-going career I still wasn’t attending them alone, and the friend I usually took to shows with me refused to see Yellowcard (he even abandoned me during Yellowcard’s set at Warped Tour a few months prior). So I enlisted another friend to come with me, one who loved Yellowcard but had never been to a concert before. He was a little out of his league, not because of Yellowcard or even the venue, despite it being the notoriously cramped and narrow Electric Factory, but because of the opener, Philadelphia’s own Wonder Years (who I wrote about in a previous entry of this newsletter).
This early in the Wonder Years’ career they had a passionate, young, wild, hometown crowd, and those kids did something I’ve never seen before or since at a show — they started moshing before the band even took the stage. In fact, as soon as the band before the Wonder Years left the stage, people started moshing, leaving my friend and me to ride the waves of the packed audience and dodge crowd surfers while nobody was on stage. When the Wonder Years started playing it was absolute pandemonium — my friend’s glasses had been kicked off his face before the end of their first song (and the poor kid’s legally blind in one eye), and I had to drag him to the safety of the balcony. After the show I went looking for his glasses and found only a single earpiece; the rest, I assume, were pulverized into glass. I still have the earpiece sitting on my desk to this day; my friend never went to another concert again.
(I don’t know if it made my friend feel much better, but karma had its kiss for me: my glasses got kicked off my face and crushed a month later at a New Found Glory show.)
THURSDAY
MARCH 8, 2019 — UNDERGROUND ARTS, PHILADELPHIA PA
THURSDAY
AUGUST 24, 2018 — ASBURY LANES, ASBURY PARK NJ
I suppose it’s a problem we’ve grappled with as long as there’s been mosh pits, or even just wild crowds in general — how do you dress up for a show (half the fun is being seen, right?) without the crowd destroying your outfit? There’s not a good answer, I just try not to wear anything too sentimental or that might get easily destroyed to a concert. For the first of these two shows, I was wearing a brand new pair of shiny red Converse sneakers that I’d barely owned two months, and about five seconds into the set, someone had already stood directly on my feet. To this day there are still brown scuff marks on the top of those shoes from this show that I’ve never been able to get out. Enter with caution, I suppose.
That night Thursday was playing my favorite of their albums, War All The Time, from front-to-back. A few months earlier I had seen them play the same album in New Jersey, and though it’s not necessarily a pit story, I’ll never forget jumping into ocean on Asbury’s beach at 1AM with all of my friends after that show. A seminal moment in my life.
THE EARLY NOVEMBER & THE MOVIELIFE
MARCH 25, 2016 — THE FILLMORE, PHILADELPHIA PA
I'm grateful to have never had a permanent or visible injury from a mosh pit, and I hope to keep things that way when shows eventually start back up, but at the same time, our scars and injuries are a badge of mosh pit honor, and this show is one of my most cherished. It was unusual from the start, as the crowd was far wilder than I've come to expect from either of these bands, especially the relatively mellow Early November. At one point during their set I had my phone over my head, filming the stage, never losing my grip as people ping-ponged me back and forth across the pit. A random guy who saw my accomplishment gave me a big thumbs up.
At some point during the Movielife's set somebody hit me hard in the side, and I didn't think much of it at first. I was running on adrenaline, and stayed at the venue until well after 2AM at the Emo Nite afterparty (my first, which taught me to love dancing; I wrote about it here), so there was no time for pain. The rest of that week, though, was another story. I never figured out what exactly happened to me, but I had my hand clamped over my left side most of the week; just the seatbelt brushing against my side was agony. I looked up "broken ribs" on WebMD and nearly passed out. That's not hyperbole; after reading the page I legitimately had to lie down. I was eventually fine, but it set, at the time, a record for my most painful pit injury. The record lasted nine months.
THURSDAY
DECEMBER 30, 2016 — STARLAND BALLROOM, SAYERSVILLE NJ
Then came December 2016, when I finally got to see Thursday for the first time after their spending the majority of my adult life broken up. Nowadays I know that Thursday is right on the border of my mosh pit tolerance — the border that separates "dangerous if done wrong" from "deliberately dangerous" — but at the time it took me by surprise. I actually never saw what happened to me. I wasn't even actively pitting at the time, just standing at the edge of the pit watching the band on stage. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor and couldn't breathe. I had to be dragged into the crowd by a few extremely friendly folks and spent a song or two trying to get my wind back. Unlike the previous entry, the pain was immediate, but it was right in the same spot I'd been hit at that last show, only ten times worse. For about a week I couldn't even sit up; to get out of bed, I had to roll onto the floor so I could be on my stomach then push myself onto my feet. I think I pulled a muscle, though, of course, I never actually saw a doctor about it.
Despite it all, I've seen Thursday five or six times since.
JOYCE MANOR & SAVES THE DAY
AUGUST 16, 2019 — WEBSTER HALL, NYC
Okay, one last injury story. This one is so absurd I can hardly believe it happened — like, it feels more like a Looney Toons or Three Stooges shtick than something that's actually physically possible. It was the last song of Saves the Day's set, I was exceptionally losing my mind (in fact, there's footage of me losing my mind [I’m in the hat]), and I jumped into the air. Either I got some distance, or someone backed up into me as I was in mid-air, because when I landed my feet hit the floor, but the bottom of my chin hit some guy's shoulder. I don't think I dislocated my jaw, as I could still move it, but I was certainly afraid I did for a while. It felt misaligned, it clicked every time I opened or closed my mouth — I spent the entire break between the two bands pacing the venue, opening and closing my mouth, and to be honest, it took a few days to calm down and get back to normal. I'm so thankful it did for many obvious reasons, but also because I have no idea how I would have explained this to a doctor or surgeon. "Well sir, you see, I walked into this guy's shoulder..."
NEW FOUND GLORY & YELLOWCARD
OCTOBER 28, 2015 — STARLAND BALLROOM, SAYERSVILLE NJ
This is a Top 5 mosh pit for me, no contest. Sometimes you get in a crowd and they just have an electric energy, and this crowd was charged. I’m pretty sure I covered every inch of the floor that night as I ran and jumped and got thrown about; my memories of the show come from dozens of different angles. I had caught this exact same line-up several nights earlier in Philadelphia and while it was also a great show, the crowd wasn’t as into it as they were in Jersey — Jersey just brought an energy to it that personifies everything I love about mosh pits, about crowds, about live music, a spirit I miss so badly. Yellowcard’s Ryan Key just tweeted “Jersey rips” over and over after the set, and I think we were all feeling the same kind of stunned amazement in the breathless aftermath.
My favorite memory of this pit came from a guy next to me seeing the Saves the Day wristband I was wearing, and suddenly — while standing in the middle of a mosh pit, mind you — excitedly pulling out his phone to show me a picture of himself with Saves’ lead singer, Chris Conley (I talked a bit about my relationship with Conley in this newsletter). I was able to pull out my own phone and show him a picture of myself with Conley too. I had never seen the guy before and never saw him again, but that fleeting moment of real joy and connection has always stuck with me. That’s the magic of live music.
JOYCE MANOR
OCTOBER 14, 2018 — UNION TRANSFER
Not long before this show I had hurt my leg while working out. My physical therapist never got me any sort of formal diagnosis, but I aggravated my hamstring somehow, and while we eventually figured out a stretching regimen that got everything back to normal (and which I still pull out every once in a while after a session of particularly heavy squats or deadlifts), I went a month or two not really knowing what was wrong with my leg, enduring pain that made it hard to stand for very long. Idiot that I am, I kept going to my shows anyway, and this was the night where I figured out the cure, not to my aggravated hamstring, but to the pain: three Angry Orchard hard ciders. With those in my system my leg felt amazing, and they propelled me through a particularly lively mosh pit. When I got home, though, I pulled off my shoe to find my once-white socks now red, absolutely soaked in blood. I guess that's how you know I had a good time.
THE MENZINGERS (PROJECT PABST CITYWIDE FEST)
SEPTEMBER 16, 2017 — THE ELECTRIC FACTORY, PHILADELPHIA PA
The most important ethos in the pit is that, when someone falls, you pick them back up. Everything needs to stop until everyone is okay. I’ve experienced that many times, but rarely as memorably as this night, where I was knocked flat on my back, but not on the ground for more than a second before several guys had grabbed each of my arms and dragged me to my feet. I think this may have been my first time getting picked up like that, but certainly not my last.
It also stuck with me because when I fell I landed in a puddle of beer and permanently ruined the shorts I was wearing.
PUP & AJJ
SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 — THE ELECTRIC FACTORY, PHILADELPHIA PA
The day after this show I had surgery on my shoulder to repair a labrum I had torn during a dislocation when I was a teenager, which was only getting worse as I got older. I had posted footage on social media of me in the pit at this show, then the next day, after the surgery, posted photos of myself in my sling saying “I survived.” I was suddenly inundated with messages asking me if I’d been hurt in the pit. I’m proud that that’s the first thing people assumed, that this is my reputation.
THE GET UP KIDS & PUP
MARCH 27, 2015 — THE STONE PONY, ASBURY PARK NJ
Speaking of dislocations, the main reason I had to have surgery on my shoulder was because, after that initial dislocation and tear, my arm just kept dislocating more and more often, sometimes with no provocation at all — it once popped out of place as I sat at the table eating dinner! My scariest dislocation, though, happened at this show. I wasn’t even in a mosh pit; one magically formed, as mosh pits are wont to do, directly behind me during PUP’s set, and a bro got thrown into my shoulder, knocking it right out of its socket for about ten terrifying, excruciating seconds. If it hadn’t gone back in immediately, I don’t know what I would have done.
Anyway, that was the first time I ever heard PUP, and despite this experience, they’ve gone on to become one of my favorite bands.
THE WONDER YEARS
OCTOBER 26, 2019 — THE TLA, PHILADELPHIA PA
I missed two shows I had tickets to because of my surgery, and basically wasn’t able to get in a mosh pit again until December 2019, and while I went to a lot of terrific concerts doing those two or three months, it was rough avoiding the pit, though I did it for the sake of my health. This show was perhaps the most difficult, as Wonder Years pits are always awesome, and the performance had me amped. I was about two rows back from the front, air drumming and jumping in place a lot — not standing perfectly still, but nothing I thought was all that obnoxious. Apparently, the giant of a man standing behind me disagreed; about two-thirds of the way through the set I jumped and he grabbed me in mid-air, his hands under my arms, turned around, placed me on the floor behind him, and moved up into my spot. To be completely honest, I’m still a bit speechless about it. What a jerk, but what a power move.
JOYCE MANOR & AJJ
FEBRUARY 10, 2017 — CHAMELEON CLUB, LANCASTER PA
This is less the story of a singular mosh pit and more the story of an entire crowd that somehow became one massive, teeming, almost sentient pit all its own. I came to this show to see Joyce Manor for the first time (and they ruled), but it was AJJ who transformed the crowd through some sort of musical alchemy. There wasn't the typical front row barricade huggers, crowd surfers, side-hangers with a pit or two in the middle of the room -- everybody in the crowd moved almost in unison, each of us in response to the other, like when they do the wave at baseball games and it "travels" around the stadium. We fed off each other, a room of boundless energy and constant motion, but practically coordinated energy rather than the usual chaos of a punk show. I saw AJJ open up for PUP last year and tried not to get my hopes up, but still couldn't help but be disappointed that they weren't able to recreate this state. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. It was a musical nirvana I'll probably never reach again.
THE WONDER YEARS
JANUARY 31, 2018 — BOOT AND SADDLE, PHILADELPHIA PA
JUNE 8, 2018 — THE FILLMORE, PHILADELPHIA PA
SEPTEMBER 12, 2018 — HOWARD THEATRE, WASHINGTON DC
2018 was the year of The Wonder Years — I think for the entire scene thanks to their new album, but if not, then certainly for me. I decided as much walking out of Boot and Saddle on a freezing January night, soaked in so much sweat that it looked like I'd just gone swimming, no doubt moments from catching hypothermia. "I'm going to see the Wonder Years five times this year!" I declared, and I followed through. That first show of the year was something I'd never experienced before — The Wonder Years in a tiny, 100 person cap room, the type of which they hadn't played in seven or eight years. The "venue" essentially amounted to a little storage locker in the back of a bar, the type of room you'd hang raw meat in, or drag a body to if you were going to dissolve it in a vat of acid. People leapt from the stage into the crowd at rainstorm frequency, I bounced from one wall to another, the Wonder Years actually played a song from Get Stoked On It — truly, anything could happen, and it was a performance and a crowd from them that I'll never see again.
In June I saw them two nights in a row at the Fillmore, upgrading from one of Philly's smallest rooms to one of its largest. On this particular night I think I got inducted into a cult (again). During the opening lull of "The Devil In My Bloodstream" the mosh pit, instead of dispersing or standing quietly until things picked up, kneeled. One by one people started following suit, until it felt like half the room was on their knees. Of course, then the song hit its explosive second half, and as Dan Campbell screamed "I bet I'd be a fucking coward!" we ignited into motion and madness. I've seen similar moves at other concerts, but never with the full-on kneeling, and never with this many people joining in, and never with the murmurs spreading throughout the crowd as it all played out. Something happened to us that night.
The final of these three shows is notable for the lack of moshing. As I entered the venue that night, a security guard told me there'd be no mosh pits, crowd surfing, or stage diving. It makes sense — The Wonder Years are a strange fit for the historically black Howard Theatre, which doesn't host many punk acts. Things were fairly calm until the Wonder Years pulled out their oldest song of the night, "Melrose Diner," a pit opened, and I made a beeline. I got dragged away pretty quickly. I didn't get into any trouble, but my friend and I did have a security guard standing suspiciously close to us the rest of the night.
THE MENZINGERS
JULY 19, 2019 — CHAMELEON CLUB, LANCASTER PA
The Chameleon Club was a narrow, cramped, HOT venue with terrible sight lines, but it was my narrow cramped hot venue with terrible sight lines, and the news of its closure last month was still devastating, if only because of the memories (and if only because I'll miss the excuse to visit Lancaster City). Chief among those memories was seeing the Menzingers there last summer and nearly dying of heat stroke. If that's an exaggeration, it's only barely. It's straight-up the hottest I've ever been at a concert. I took off my shirt because I thought I was going to explode and got yelled at by a bouncer (unlike that time I took my shirt off at a State Champs show and got called "Shredbo Baggins" by some random dude); I had to actually take a break and go out to the lobby to get water during one song mid-set, and I've never done that before in my life. My body heat could've warmed a Siberian town for a month.
Wait, why am I going to miss this venue again?
PKEW PKEW PKEW
DECEMBER 12, 2019 — UNDERGROUND ARTS, PHILADELPHIA PA
Sometimes, if you can't find a mosh pit, you've got to start your own. That can mean getting the people around you moving, but that's not always a great idea, as I can attest to from that time I watched a drunk bro try to start a mosh pit at a Jimmy Eat World show during their one aggressive song to the dismay of every single person in the crowd besides me. In those situations, it's best to be a self-contained, one-man mosh pit, and that's certainly what happens to me every time I see Pkew Pkew Pkew. I don't need someone to throw me around, I just need myself, my air drums, my hops, and my encyclopedic memory of Pkew Pkew Pkew's discography, and that's more than enough to make me a very happy boy. I have one friend who says she loves to watch me watch Pkew Pkew Pkew. On this particular night, their drummer came off stage after their set to give me a fist bump, which I'm taking as a massive compliment. I dunno, they just make me really happy. I won’t say I’m their biggest fan, but top five? Sure.
MODERN BASEBALL
DECEMBER 12, 2015 — UNION TRANSFER, PHILADELPHIA PA
MODERN BASEBALL (FINAL SHOW)
OCTOBER 15, 2017 — UNION TRANSFER, PHILADELPHIA PA
The first of these shows is another one that’s easily a Top 5 for me — I actually officially ranked it as my favorite show of 2015, which I wouldn’t have expected before that night. Modern Baseball just attracted a fun crowd, an interesting mix of kids who were young and rowdy but also more intellectual, and when I say that I don’t mean two different kinds of kids, but that most of the twenty-somethings in the crowd were simultaneously both. I think I saw more women in this pit than I have in perhaps any other, and not “keeping up with the boys,” but setting the pace of the pit. It was energetic, but not necessarily aggressive, even when there was physical contact. We weren’t releasing our aggression, we were releasing our joy in pure physical form. Modern Baseball was good about that.
The second show on this list was actually the final show Modern Baseball ever played as a band, in the same venue as the first and with just as passionate, energetic, and eclectic of a crowd. The moment I’ll never forget from this night came as the band exited the stage the first time. The lights didn’t go up, so we knew there would be an encore. Nobody really moved, even to fill the pit, which left me and a few other folks with quite a bit of space around us, which is rare at any show. This other guy and I started speculating about what they’d play, especially since they’d already pulled out all their greatest hits. What was left? Suddenly it hit us — “Just Another Face,” the final track on what was now Modern Baseball’s final album, and also a call-back to one of their earliest songs. It was a moment that brought the band full circle; there could never have been another song to close out not only the night, but their career.
We were energized by figuring out what the encore would be, and pushed to near euphoria by the thought of seeing “Just Another Face,” and you know what? It met the hype. Seeing Modern Baseball play “Just Another Face” as their final live song ever was a moment I’ll forever be grateful I got to experience in person, shared with all those like-minded strangers in the pit with me.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!