so what do i remember from last saturdays dubstep/hiphop/d’n'b party in athens….

let me tell you why I think this party went totally bad, despite the fact that it seemed to have a pretty powerfull atmosphere at some points. first the djs gave us hiphop. more focused on showing off than doing a proper mixing (the sound was amazingly bad), this part of the party luckily ended soon after we arrived. then someone played surprisingly interesting dubstep. for like… three tracks. and then he switched to some wobble stuff, which heated up the crowd to encourage them to start pogo dancing as soon as the first breakbeats came up. well believe me, i am not at all against mosh dancing at electronic beat parties, but if the place is small like this, 4 hools kicking around people can spoil the fun for everybody. and they did indeed, most of the not so strong people left at this point and the upperclass hools and some punx turned the place in a hc concert. congratulations… well a dj who sees this happening should react accordingly in my opinion, and play some more deep stuff to get the audience back together. instead the mentioned above posers jumped around on stage, played more fast break stuff and took pictures of the mosh pit.
so imagine a place where you get constantly kicked nevertheless you stand totally aside, have an incredible bad sound (the PA was not right for the kinds of sounds that were played, it couldn’t transport the grooves, instead it was really loud in the mid’s, so our ears were hurting until 2 days later), and some posing DJ’s on stage who celebrate this situation even more. some time around 5-6 i finally had some space to dance and some nicer dubstep was played, obviously too nice for this party, or was it because the space started to get empty (?) well it closed down 20 minutes later…. this last set starting showed that the dj’s would be capable of playing some exiting stuff, exiting not in the sense of fast and spectacular like the dead and cliche stuff that we witnessed but exiting music that really gets people into the mood of celebrating and dancing.

painting by dan witz

the weapon of criticism cannot in any case replace the criticism of weapons (karl marx)

so here is dr0fn0thing’s guide how to crash a mosh pit. it is a pretty nasty advisory, but might come handy when faced with pogo hools taking over a whole space instead of staying in a compact mosh pit.

1. a mosh pit is established when some hools in the crowd start pushing each other, in a ping-pong effect they create a little area of constand movement and pushing.

2. according to the 80′s (or was it 90′s?) pogo theory of karl nagel (one of the formerly central figures of the german anarchist pogo party) now a common structure gets established: center area for people who feel like pushing and get pushed, a ring around them of volunteers that only push as to keep the central crowd compact, an outer ring (the rest of the people) who engage in other activity.

3. you cannot crush a pogo/mosh pit from the outside, since the outer ring is only in the position to push towards a compact mosh mass, so pushing from there won’t change anything.

4. well it’s a dirty job, but indeed you have to go to the inside. you have to act counterproductive to the pogo force. remember: they jump and walk and push each other with the shoulders and hands. so what you have to do is to stand still (stand with a streched legs a bit opened, which will give you stability and raise the chance that people stumble and in a chain reaction the whole pit will fall) and raise your elbows, the only party of your body that the others don’t want to meet because it hurts.

5. that should end the pogo enthusiasm after some moments.

violent dancing is nice if people can decide if they want to get involved, if you just do it to hurt others either everybody will leave or someone will take measures against you.

here there is always struggle. it’s the eternal war. (ingeborg bachmann)