The Perils of Gig Life

It’s often frustrating how significant the role of the crowd can be at a gig. We all have those experiences, where in the back of your mind you’re focusing on the two disinterested 13 year olds that won’t stop chatting through the acoustic songs. People at gigs tend to fall into certain archetypes; the screaming 14 year olds that won’t let you anywhere near their precious barrier they've had their heart set on since they started queuing outside at midday. The bushy haired individual who won’t stop fiddling with their locks, in what feels like a personal attack at you and your face, as they repeatedly thrust their head of fuzz towards your direction as they dance like what can only be described as a maniac. Worst of all though: the wall. You know the wall; we all have experiences of the wall. The free kick like stance – the barrier of statuesque giants, clutching pint glasses and forcibly dismissing the music they actively paid to witness. The wall creates this blockade of anticlimactic subdued calmness, inducing lower backaches and craning necks, trapping everyone behind them, whilst everyone in front is having the time of their life. Breaking through the wall is not for the faint hearted, it requires a slinky ability to slide into nonexistent spaces, have a grasp of steel as you lead your party through the crowd, and most importantly: elbows that can stab. Hard.

However, an experience I doubt will be in your catalogue of gig experiences involves a girl vomiting in the center of a mosh pit, a group of boys chucking an abandoned jacket onto said vomit and then  sporadically throwing it at people. Thus leading to my newest hypothesis regarding the behaviour of people in social situations: 17 year old boys are the worst.

Of course this is a generalising comment, and so i don’t genuinely hate every 17 year old male in existence. Just the ones I've met so far, specifically the ones in the crowds at gigs, specifically the one’s acting far drunker that the shared fanta bottle of cider would allow. What’s most frustrating about this particular breed of male is their constant obsession with pleasing each other, with making remarks and gestures and acting like buffoons in desperate bids to be the buffoonest of them all. If you aren't being whacked in the face by their arms opening in a messiah like stance, you’re being whacked in the face as they grab each other singing the lyrics at each other, faces inches apart as if the track playing was written about them. Failing these two instances, you’re probably being whacked in the face as they jab their mates into each other laughing like over stimulated hyenas performing some animalistic ritual.

 The vomit jacket debacle wasn’t the deciding scenario, my dislike towards the obnoxious teenage boy started a very long time ago; February 2012 to be exact. NME awards, or as I like to refer to as “the great neon face paint sitting on friends shoulders spitting lukewarm beer at people” of 2012. It was a turning point in my patience, or rather lack of, and vowed to never tolerate the 17 year old male gig goer for as long as I lived. They take many forms, however the most lethal subspecies are the grammar school kind: you have been warned. As critical as this all sounds, when observing them in this climate one thing is discovered, this is their one chance to expel all of the angst and frustration and, uh, stress of being a 17 year old male, launching themselves at everyone, screaming the lyrics badly at their mates in such euphoric outbursts, throwing vomit infused clothing at strangers is all part of being an obnoxious pre-adult. You are lucky if your back catalogue of gig encounters does not involve the dreaded male in question, my advice: avoid at all costs.

(ps, apologies if you find that you are in the above photo, i do not have a personal vendetta against you, i found it on google after searching "teenage boys at gig" and you fitted the bill x)