RIP: Rock Singer

[Base]

Rock Singer Dead After Stage Dive

 

Can I just say... OW!!!!

 

Kinda puts a serious edge on those side-splitting 'everybody get out of the way of Jack Black stagediving in Rock School' type moments, doesn't it...!

[Alndln2]

I hate coming off like a smart-ass,but since they were unknown I'm guessing there was hardly anyone in the audience?

[Base]

Oh God, I feel terrible now for spitting a mouthful of apple at the screen laughing at that...

[blue2blue]

I have a quite sardonic (but hardly profound) song about the tragic aftermath of stage and amp tower diving called Rubber Room Rock. I once posted the lyrics to it someplace, fairly trite juvenilia about the difficulties of slam dancing in a straight jacket...

 

... and someone posted saying, yeah, that happened to a friend of theirs and they had serious permanent head injuries and would never be the same. It sort of took the steam out of what I'd intended to be a light-hearted cautionary whose message was: don't do really stupid, dangerous stuff.

[Jeff da Weasel]

A punk rock kid I went to high school with nearly managed to kill himself from a stage dive as well. Fractured his skull. Nice one.

 

Look, I know music is exciting and all. I've been known to goofily leap from my stage while playing, but with the intention of landing on, say, my feet as opposed to my head.

 

Just seems like the better way to go, yes?

 

- Jeff

[Super 8]

Senseless death.

[blue2blue]

 

Originally posted by Jeff da Weasel A punk rock kid I went to high school with nearly managed to kill himself from a stage dive as well. Fractured his skull. Nice one. Look, I know music is exciting and all. I've been known to goofily leap from my stage while playing, but with the intention of landing on, say, my feet as opposed to my head. Just seems like the better way to go, yes? - Jeff

 

 

... and probably not other people's heads. But there are those that count cushioning their fall on the skulls and spongey little backbones of their audience.

 

As someone who was involved in LA punk in the early days, I was disheartened to see the change in the attitudes of the audience when the "HB's" started coming in right at the beginning of the 80s. "HB" initially stood for "Huntington Beach" -- where a lot the long hair "surf dudes" started shaving their heads and adopting what they perceived to be "punk attitude" -- but they were often despised by the first wave punkers in LA, who, after all, had had a nice friendly -- and intimate -- scene which was soon invaded by hundreds and then thousands of those we'd later call "headbangers." (It wasn't all just Huntington Beach kids. After a while the suburban white kids in the South Bay started developing the same pack mentality as the OC kids. The Valley kids, as usual came onbaord much later.)

 

The sign that the original scene was pretty much over was in a LA Times Sunday mornining Calendar (entertainment section) piece on the new "phenomenon" of "slamming" or slam dancing. (Of course, the other kind of slamming would also take hold of many in the scene. Another thread, there.) It was a big lead article and it was hilarious, since, for one thing, I had never until that time heard any punks call the early moshing "slamming" or "slam dancing." At all. Ever. And I lived that scene until a motorcycle wreck took me out at the end of 80.

 

But as soon as the Times article came out, it was like pushing a button and all these surfer-dudes (most of whom no doubt couldn't stay on a board) turned skins started coming out of the woodwork and filling the front of clubs with their testosterone-poisoned 'antics.'

 

 

Went to the Whisky just the other night did a little dance that I learned in the Times surf punk made a grab for my date smashed my beer bottle right in his face Singing, la la la la la la la...