Moshing : activity in which audience members at live music performances aggressively push or slam into each other. Moshing is frequently accompanied by stage diving, crowd surfing, and headbanging. It is commonly associated with concerts by heavy metal, punk rock, and alternative rock artists, although it occurs at performances by musicians of all sorts of genres.

All sorts of genres… Whoever got excited and wrote this Wikipedia entry obviously didn’t realise just how stretched the word ‘genre’ would be. To this person (unnamed), I have three things to say:

1.Folk Rock

2. Mad-Dog Macrae

3. An eighty-year-old woman in a mosh pit.

(There was also a scotsman. But he deserves only a mention, if not a number.)

On a Thursday night, which is Quiz Night at the pub, Darren comes in with Kate & co. to compete in a men against women stand off of general knowledge. As most of the group appears to have absolutely no knowledge, this often turns out to be quite challenging. Though very entertaining - especially when the Australians are unable to name the Great Barrier Reef.

One Quiz Night, not so long ago, I caught a lift back into Plymouth with Darren after work - and we got to discussing music. This is, at best, a very precarious thing to do in a place such as Plymouth, where the people refer to one another as ‘Lovers’ and comment that you are ‘fit’ without having seen you run ten centimeters. As it turned out, Darren is quite clued up on the live music scene here and was happy to share titbits of wisdom. This conversation spanned the remainder of the journey. He dropped me off at my house and drove off, with me not knowing what was to be in store for me in the near future.

Less than a week later, I received a text message from Darren inviting me to join them at a Folk-Rock gig in Tavistock, a fifteen minute drive from where I work. Ever the cynic, I agreed, warning him that I did have to work that evening. Ever the gentleman, Darren dropped off my ticket at the pub on his way in and supplied Jimmy with directions to Tavistock Wharf. I was to arrive there at 9. At 9:30, I was to be found tearing from the pub with Jimmy in tow, my shoulder bag swinging wildly behind me as I dove into the car. Upon leaving the dead-zone (Meavy has no cell-phone signal) I received a number of texts confirming the location of the group I was meeting. We made our way into Tavistock without incident and Jimmy dropped me off outside the doors to the Tavistock Wharf.

At first, the woman at the ticket counter was most unhelpful. She seemed to want to sell me a ticket, but did not actually have any tickets to sell. This was upsetting her immensely and causing her accent to become incomprehensible. To ease her mind, I explained that I already had a ticket and did not, in fact, need to buy one. She was unable to understand, so I shoved my grammar aside and threw my t’s away and rephrased my situation so that she might understand. It ended up as.

“I go’ one, love.”

…which she understood, and quickly pointed me in the direction of the stage. The place was heaving. People EVERYWHERE. It was like walking into a sardine can. Laughter, people pushing and shoving one another to make their way forward. Shouting. Singing. Too close, unable to breath. Nudged with a walking stick (yes a walking stick). I was trapped. Reckless, I charged forward and I broke through the barrier of people into a suddenly much emptier space.

Surprised, I looked back. It took me only a moment to realise that I had passed through the queue for the bar. The stage was directly ahead of me, and the floor before it much less crowded (as the entire crowd was attending the mass exodus of Guinness from the bar - St. Patricks Day.) Finding Darren was simple enough. He had with him Karlee - Kate’s friend from home, Martin, the drinker of Guinness with longer hair than a samurai warrior, and the Scotsman - who was holding a drink in either hand. He quickly donated one to me and proceeded to glug the remainder of his own. Refreshed, he headed back to the bar for round (unnumbered).

I had arrived during the interval, and did not have long to wait for the band to once again take their positions. Here I must once again pause the narrative for a second definition.

Folk rock is a musical genre, combining elements of folk music and rock music.

Hardly descriptive, but there it is in a nutshell. It is the rest of the acorn tree, however, that must be discussed. The band we went to watch is a well known folk-rock group called Mad Dog Macrae. They have an Irish lead singer, two fiddles, a drummer and another instrument of unknown form and function. They also have on stage with them three bottles of whiskey (to keep their throats from getting too dry) and at least thirteen pints of mixed description between the five of them at any given time - this to keep them from getting too hot under the stage lights (there were only two lights, and they were not very bright).

The music was great, like up-tempo Braveheart after lots and lots of Guinness. The Scotsman started to jive after a while - spilling drink on everyone in the surrounding - and bumping into two old ladies making their way to the front of the crowd. I call them ladies at this point, because I was balefully unaware of the fact that they were proceeding in the direction of a teenage group head-banging and jumping soberly (ha ha - under-age) into one another. As they passed, the Scotsman collided with the more tipsy of the two. The woman shrugged off his apology, inviting him to join her and her companion in the mosh-pit. The Scot quickly advised against this, indicating that her life might be cut short by such a endeavour. The old nan said that it was her eightieth birthday and that if nothing else had managed to do her in by now, there was no harm in entering a mosh-pit. Intimidated (or possibly just very drunk), the Scotsman backed down. The old woman danced away, wiggling her hips like a fifteen-year-old until she reached the group.

Nan entered the mosh…

…and everyone stopped moving.

Which was pretty damnfunny.

Do not fear, dear friends! Do not hasten to assume that the mosh was thus prevented! The Nan managed to get them all moving again, and downed a good deal of whiskey from one of the bottles on the stage.  She did then, as the ever elusive ‘they’ say, get down and boogey. The rest of her adventures must go uncharted, because the band played their first encore (and were too drunk to play their last) and the crown dispersed, taking with them the nuttiest old person I have ever seen.

The rest of the evening was spent laughing at the Scotsman as he hiccuped repeatedly.

Folk-rock mosheep out

=)