How to Instigate a Mosh Pit

As I arrived at Amherst College’s first live show of the season, sponsored by their radio station WAMH, I discovered that no one was in the mood to have fun. Amherst College paid thousands of dollars to set up a stage, hook up lights and an incredible sound system, and bring in musicians from DC, yet everyone in the crowd sat 20 yards away from the music on a hill. 

I am not oblivious to the Amherst College alternative music scene. There are approximately four people on their campus that care about live local music. These people get the funding and space from the college to bring in Smith, UMass, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire students to dance. There have been multiple occasions where I attended a show in the front room of Marsh house, only to find that everyone in the room had the same story as me—we did not go there. 

I thought this time would be different. That everyone would get excited about the objectively bad emo band after going so long without live music. I was wrong. Just as Smith’s culture has remained relatively the same in the past two years, despite our loss of institutional memory, Amherst students still do not care to dance. 

In response, I made it my mission to change their culture. When the (much better) opening band played, I made my first attempt to mosh. Moshing by yourself is no easy feat. Luckily, this past year I had many occasions to unconventionally mosh. I have made it my party trick to turn any dance party, no matter how small, into a mosh pit. 

My favorite mosh, socially distant moshing, happens by pretending to ram into someone who pretends to feel your push from six feet away. Another crowd-pleaser was moshing with my two roommates in our kitchen. This act does not have to involve music, a crowd, or anything that one would expect for a mosh pit. Now, with the skills I acquired over the pandemic, I put my plan into action. 

My first mosh pit involved myself and a couple of casualties from the side lines. Amherst students did not like my excitement. My second attempt attracted two of my friends and one freshman from Amherst who clearly was not acquainted with their culture. 

When this freshman pushed me, memories rushed back to me of the punk show I went to on New Year’s Eve 2020. I got punched in the jaw at that show by a 300-pound bearded man, knocking me back several feet. I flashed to scenes from when I was a camp counselor, and the children I took care of started a band. I organized the entire camp to mosh by pushing a 12-year-old into his friend. I was flooded with images of sweaty basements in Amherst filled with students pushing and hitting each other while mediocre bands played a cover of ‘Twist and Shout.’

Later on in the show, after I held hands with the one cool freshman of Amherst College and invited people sitting on the lawn to come dance, we got the crowd going. By using two slightly-more-down six-foot men as my punching bags, as the emo band played the theme song for the children’s television show ‘Drake and Josh’ for the second time of the night, I slowly got more and more people to dance.

At one point, my shoe got lost in the crowd, and I had to make the choice: Do I ditch my other shoe, or do I find my blue suede Doc Marten Loafer in the crowd of preppy students? As soon as I kicked off my other shoe, I got stomped on by the crowd. It was awesome. 

[Image: students dancing at live show. Photo by Bella Levavi ’22]