The House Of Blues in Boston has recently been cited by Police for a violation as the result of a “mosh pit” in a recent Flogging Molly show. At the February show “60 concertgoers engaged in an ‘aggressive mosh pit dance’ during which people were running ‘and colliding into each other’. No injuries were reported but a police inspector said this violated safety rules and the club was cited because security did not intervene. Makes you wonder if said Police Inspector knows step one about concerts since.. oh I don’t know the early 80′s Boston MA police Spokeswoman Nicole Grant had this to say according to National news outlets “Dancing is a First Amendment right, but the behavior itself is a violation especially when it becomes dangerous and a public safety hazard.” The House Of Blues has no been ordered to put up illuminated signs forbidding “moshing”. To me… there are two kinds of dancing that is qualified as “mosh” or “slam” or whatever you kids call it. First there is the type I grew up with, which is pure fun and chaos… like depicted in this “Welcome To Boston” video I found on youtube. (I thought it was appropriate) Although a lot of that dancing depicted is more of the “hardcore” or “metalcore, whatevercore” variety… I like the fact that most of the footage is shown in little basement clubs or rented halls. This type of show, may see police interaction from time to time, but for the most part those shows are pretty underground. Now places like House Of Blues… they don’t really do “underground” shows all that much. I mean they may feature a big “punk” or “altternative” band, but it’s almost always someone on some type of label or a band that tours bigger than most. They may feature an artist that still claims to be independent but still gets decent radio play and sells out venues without getting big label bucks. These bands are the type that may headline festivals or have a tshirt at Hot Topic, but may actually never see much profit from them. These bands attract the worst type of showgoer to me, Joe Typical. (This may offend some of you) Joe Typical lives a good life. He has a 40 hour a week job, bought that big screen HDTV, has a late model car that he keeps trading in. Has all the channels, high speed internet, an iphone, good laptop. He has spent his life going into debt to keep up with the Jones’s and damn it… it’s time to go see a show (or “concert” as he calls it). Joe Typical has heard a couple of bands on his satellite radio and what do you know? Looks like a big tour is coming through where Joe Typical can see that band and a couple more he has been hearing on his edgy satellite radio station. So Joe goes to the “concert”. He pays things like a parking fee to put his car on a lot that is a half mile away. He allows security to look through his wife’s bag, he submits to a patdown, he pays his fifty plus dollars for a ticket and goes into the band area. Sometime into the band’s set, Joe figures he is going to dance like those crazy people. So he prepares himself to run into the open area the kids now call “the pit” and he attempts to try what he has only see others do, so Joe leading with his shoulder like a ram on the discovery channel, seeks to bump shoulders with another hapless person who has no idea what music or dancing is about. But hey… it’s Joe’s personal rock experience… who are we to judge? You can see what I’m talking about here Now THAT kind of “dancing” I wouldn’t mind ending. Not that it’s dangerous, just that it’s stupid. I’m sure everyone wants to ask what I think about this… The answer is… obviously the police inspector is wrong, this has been going on for years, but if you let the heat die down, everything will go back to normal. The problem is this has made national headlines and now to save face the police have to stick to their guns. Underground shows in basements, CWV’s, American Legion Halls, will see little effect to this because underground stuff pops up all the time, the big venues are the ones you have to worry about, and that’s not much of a problem to a guy like me. In my day a pit was something we barbecued meat on.