The whole show some camera guy was filming HR as though he were juggling fire. Rarely did he swing over to guitarist Dr. Know, who was certainly more interesting, from what I could see when said camera person wasn’t cockblocking my view. Really, though, the show was still amazingly powerful because the music was amazingly powerful, despite HR’s pacalolo o.d. Except, perhaps, the two extended roots jams back to back, which made me wonder aloud why I didn’t bring a book to fill up the down time. After 15 minutes of the same “I’m not nearly stoned enough to be into this” oonka-oonka, they flew into “Pay to Cum,” which is sort of like being woken up from a deep sleep by the sound of a V2 rocket bomb.

Now, onto what I really want to complain about: the pit. People, there’s a reason why pits have evolved into being circles. You get to keep up with the speed of the song, and you still get your contact in, but it’s not like a goddamned lineman’s drill at football practice. Which is exactly what my newfound homie, Scottie, said to me as we commiserated about being the only two people at the Bad Brains trying to get things moving in a circle: “It’s not a fucking football game.” The idea isn’t to knock someone over and high five your blocking bros. I thought for sure at an old school show like the Bad Brains things would get moving in a circle--I mean, think of the “One World, One Love” reggae symbolism here. I expected a room-clearing, Hallraker-style tornado. Instead, what I was greeted with was a bunch of frat boys and natty dread wannabes who’d clearly jammed way more Rage Against the Machine than Black Flag back at the dorms, and are probably hacky-sacking on the lawn of SF State as I write this. If you’re going to be in a bonifide punk rock pit, you should have to take a fucking class or something. Better yet, just pick up a copy of the Circle Jerks’ Wild in the Streets (Frontier, 1982) and check out this little guy:

Drawing by Shawn Kerri

It’s called skanking, folks, and it comes from the little back and forth hustle of Jamaican rude boys. The “mosh” came in with speedmetal fucktards who just wanted to break someone’s nose, though I’ve got to say I’ve seen more stylish pit movement at a Slayer show than with some of the Woodstock II-weaned weenies last night. I know it was a formative moment in your teen years to have a violent epileptic seizure in the midst of a few thousand shirtless macho men while a woman was raped as Fred Durst and his special bus crooked cap exhorted y’all to “Break Stuff,” but hardcore is transcendent music. As Black Flag put it: “Rise Above.” It’s not locker room tough guy belly-bumping, it’s more akin to whirling dervishes, reaching that higher plane through the inherent power of the circle. The circle brings you together with the other people in the pit--you’re expressing yourself but you’re not just doing your personal Anthony Kiedis solo “wacky funkateer” herky jerk by your lonesome. You’re getting the “a little bit of action” you need, in the words of the UK Subs, but you’re not being a goddamned spaz. And the pit moves at the speed of the song being played, my arrhythmic friends.

Speaking of “breaking stuff,” some frat house party boy started doing the Durst dance during the first two chords of one of the songs--without realizing that he wasn’t jumping on his mommy’s bed in front of the full length mirror, and was, instead, in a room full of 600 people--slammed the back of his knotty head into my nose. This immediately induced the sensation of watery eyes, wide open sinuses, that feeling of wind blowing through the center of your face, and a slight trickle of nostril blood. And, lo and behold, upon further examination in the broad light of day, it appears as though my proboscis is rather out of alignment, i.e. the guy broke my nose. Let me be clear about this: I’m not upset that my nose is broken and I’m not as pretty as I was the day before yesterday. What I’m upset about, in my curmudgeonly punker purist kind of way, is that my nose was broken by someone doing the crossover rap-metal stomp at a fucking Bad Brains show. Sadly, in a (post) post-Nirvana world, the punkers are now the jocks, and the mohawks no longer stand in front of the On Broadway hurling bottles at the hair metallers across the street at the Stone, but everyone revels in how goddamned ironic they are.