When I drove up to Salt Lake this weekend, I did so with the intent of seeing the Dropkick Murphy's, screaming some lyrics in my heavy imitation of a Southie accent and god-willing bleed a little from my eardrums. I was not expecting to be served an plate of punk rock hors d'ouevres two nights prior. Little did I know I had a date with destiny courtesy of the Casualties.
The Casualties are a "real" punk band from the nineties. Not punk like Green Day; punk like Sid and Nancy. They were performing in the Salt House, which in a venue/warehouse I had never heard of. It's unclear to me if the Casualties had played bigger venues in their heyday or the Salt House was par for the course for bands with ever expanding earlobes.
I ended up seeing the Casualties because I'm a lemming. I stopped in Salt Lake to see my buddies Aaron and Spencer on my way up north, and that's where they were heading. For the record, they are not punks. They're essentially hipsters with a scholarly appreciation of bands like the Casualties. So off we went. Needless to say, I was not "dressed appropriately". I was actually dressed unusually preppy: jeans and a light green polo shirt. Amidst a sea or gauged ears, liberty spikes, studs, tattoos and anti-establishment sentiment, I stood out like any of the other concert goers would have stood out at the College of the Cardinals. While I was initially self-conscious at the lack of metal in my ensemble, I was assured that punk music is all about rejection of style and social norms. So in a way, I was the most punk rock of anyone there.
The noise certainly did not disappoint. I stood in the back, away from the speakers and the mosh pit; both of which terrified me. The Casualties consisted of two mohawked guitarists, and a front man who looked like the love child between Kurt Cobain and the one of the Gorillaz cartoons. The stage/platform they were playing on was cramped as it was, only complicated by the apparent punk tradition of allowing members of the audience to climb onto stage and stage dive. It was surprisingly democratic. Though the mosh pit was at best five rows deep, those involved seemed to get the best of it.
I was on my way to bathrooms to check for bleeding from my eardrums, the front man stopped his yelling over power chords to begin just yelling at the audience. After a short preamble he got to his point:
"We hate racists! (Cheer) We hate Cops! (Cheer) We hate rapists!"
So much for controversial stances from our punk rockers. I'd suggest at least throwing in some solidarity of WikiLeaks or something, just to keep the squares on their toes. By the time the thrashing had started up again, one guitarist's mohawk had gone completely flaccid.
I did try a bit of moshing. I found it surprisingly satisfying. The precepts essentially echoed that of being an offensive lineman: keep your feet shoulder width apart, hands out front, put your weight forward. Were it not for the occasional flailing limbs into my face it would have been an utterly amiable experience. Given the amount of spikes, piercings and loose hangings earlobes it really seems like there should have been more carnage than there was.
Once I'd had my fill youthful mistrust of authority I went outside with the smokers, ironically, to get some air. At that point a group of concert goers violently dragged another out of the venue in a full-nelson. Apparently the punks self-police. Although it wasn't clear what somebody had to do to get expelled from this type of thing, I was definitely sure not to do anything that might get me full-nelsoned out.
While the concert died down--the lead singer declined to rejoin the band on stage for the encore--Aaron and I surveyed the crowd and noticed a studded 10 year old repeatedly jumping off the stage. Apparently his parents had dropped him off. While this is insane for several reasons, we couldn't help but admire the kid.
"That kid's gonna be able to kick both our asses by the time he's 14." Aaron remarked truthfully.
So the message of this post is that if you know that kid: do NOT mess with him.
