Sam Thurman - Japanese Mosh Pit

 

Thank you. So, I am in Tokyo, Japan. I mean, in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan. I'm at the Fuji Rock Festival. It's a rock festival that is in the mountains. They convert skiing, snowboarding mountain range. I'm there to see a band. They're called the Bad Brains. They are a Jamaican punk hardcore group from the early 1980s. I'm timid. I would not normally have gone to a show like that. In Japan, I notice people are very polite. And so, I am in the middle of a crowd of about 300 people. It is pitch black. 

 

The band takes to the stage and the lights go on. And for the first time, I see the people packed in around me. And they do not look polite at all. They are foaming at the mouth, and their mouths are pierced and their faces are covered in tattoos. And the band starts to play, and the crowd surges towards the front, and I am carried like driftwood, and I am deposited in the middle of the mosh pit. Now, I had apparently never been to a real mosh pit before, and it seemed as though this one was directed towards hurting me specifically. [audience laughter] I was getting punched in the face and kicked in the ribs and jabbed in the shins. And so, I tried to escape the only direction I could, forwards, further towards the stage, and I make it to that metal barricade between the people and the stage, and that is when I feel an arm wrap around my neck and it pulls me backwards into the crowd.

 

And then, I feel a foot jab into my back, above my buttocks, and then I feel a hand wrap around my face, and then I realize that a small man has begun to climb me. [audience laughter] He's climbing me like a human ladder, so he can crowd surf. He makes it to the top of my head, his feet are on my shoulders, and he kicks off. As he kicks off, my glasses get kicked off of my face into the mosh pit in front of me. If you've grown up with glasses, it is as if somebody has kicked your eyes out of your skull [audience laughter] onto the ground before you. And so, without thinking, I dive down into the mosh pit, knowing well that I could die. [audience laughter] 

 

But as I'm searching around on the ground for my glasses, something strange happens. I don't get stomped on the neck. As I'm looking in front of me, I notice a light shine onto my hand, and then another light. And before I know it, the entire ground around me is illuminated. I look up, and a circle of mosh-pit guys have formed a perimeter around me, [audience chuckles] and they're holding their cell-phone lights down to illuminate the ground under my feet. They look like angels. [audience laughter] I find the crippled corpse of my glasses, and I scoop it up from the earth, and I hold it close to my chest. A guy offers his hand. He has a lip piercing. I take it, he stands me up, and he says, "Are you okay?" And I say, "Yeah, I'm okay." And instantaneously, the mosh pit reassembles. [audience laughter] These men disappear into the night. But it's completely different now.

 

I'm punching people in the head. [audience laughter] And before I know it, another man wraps his arm around my neck, and he plants his foot above my ass. But then, I look back, I grab his shoulder, I grab his shirt, and I fucking throw that guy [audience laughter] as hard as I can. I watch him shoot up and over the crowd, and he sails away, back into the crowd behind me, and I can see the smile on his face. [audience laughter] Thank you.