Dancing in Camden Town
Camden Town is a neighborhood in London that is one of the few places that can say it gave birth to a type of music. Punk rock emerged from several club scenes in the seventies and London was one of them. Yesterday I arrived in London for the first time ever at 2pm. By 9pm I was in Camden Town waiting for the clubs to open. I grabbed a pint at The World’s End. I listened to some music coming out of a portable stereo at the underground station. Grabbed a bit to eat at Wagamamu and then made my way over to Underworld at 11.
Waiting in line to get in was the first time I’d ever heard anyone yell “Oi” like it was just a thing that people say sometimes. Ladies in checkered skirts with chains connecting their earrings to their noserings waited in front of me. Men with unlaced combat boots and leather jackets waited behind me. I didn’t look out of place in my jeans, flannel and checkered Vans but compared to the rest of them early arrivals I was phoning it in.
The club has two full bars, a recessed dance floor and several side rooms partially insulated from the sound. Right from the start the DJ was playing some that were near and dear to me. From “Chop Suey!” to “Blitzkrieg Bop” I was able to sign along with just about everything they played. And as the evening progressed from one song to another the dance floor started to fill with people. I wasn’t ready to join yet, at least in part because I was there alone, so I watched from the raised railing above the dance floor as silly young men danced goofy faux disco dances trying to entice their female counterparts onto the floor. While watching this play out I noticed a sign posted saying no stage diving and no crowd surfing. Any club that has to make a rule about that is certainly my kind of place. It’s also probably the kind of place where people take rules as little more than polite suggestions.
If you’ve never been to a punk club or a live rock concert you may be unfamiliar with what a mosh pit is. A mosh pit is when a group of people begin dancing together in such a way that they are repeatedly slamming into each other. A well ordered mosh pit has a circular perimeter and a central arena. The dancers at the perimeter are ensuring that the pit remains contained to one area and makes sure that people who don’t want to get hit don’t get hit, to the best of their abilities. You can rest at that edge, only occasionally pushing someone back towards the center. Then when you’re ready you step forward and join the fray. You slam into the other dancers and push them off of yourself. They slam into you and shove you. Occasionally someone goes down, at which point the dancers channel their violence into care as they lift the fallen dancer and throw them back into the chaos.
The mosh pit is a place of consensual violence. It forms quite simply and quite naturally as a consequence of the music and of the flow of the dance. The first sign of a pit forming is an empty circle. Maybe it’s a group of friends standing that way so they can see each other while they dance. Maybe it’s a group of strangers who don’t know each other well yet and are giving each other space. The message is clear though. The circle communicates to everyone the intention for violence. Some of the people who formed it may even opt to leave the dance floor once they realize what’s going to happen soon. Because inevitably, someone steps forward and starts jumping up and down, turning and shouting favorite lyrics like a dervish. Once someone steps into the circle’s interior while it’s not empty the fighting has started.
I watched the pit form at Underworld Camden over the course of half an hour. The revelers flirted with the idea but backed away from it several times. The DJ was incredibly good at their job. They used the tempo and emotional content of the songs they played to help build the tension. When the pit finally swung into full gear it was a release and a fulfilment of a promise.
Right as I was about to join in the fun I got pulled away by a young chaos pixie I had met earlier that evening. She wanted to go smoke and she wanted some company while she went. I’m not one to turn down such a request and soon found myself back on the street chatting a bit with some young punks. A bit of gossip and a bit of flirting. At one point me and the other guys were exhibiting feats of strength by picking up and passing around the young lady. This was, of course, at her request and insistence. Talk turned to philosophy and ethics when someone asked where I worked. After a bit he said, “oi mate well you’re a good one, even if you do work for evil bastards”. I took the complement as it was intended and went back in to dance.
The floor was packed by the time I got back in and the pit had moved to the far corner of the room. Getting through the crowd was easy enough and I soon found myself in the thick of the fight. It was still playful at this point, involving more pushing and chest bumping than hard and fast slams. We danced that way for half an hour until I saw something that I had never seen happen in a mosh pit before.
One of the couples at the perimeter had taken a few steps back and were making out with her back against the wall and his hand up her skirt. Another woman in the pit noticed and was about to say something snarky to them when I intervened. “They’re just having fun, let’s keep the pit away from them”. She shrugged and turned towards the dancers. We made a wall and each time one of the dancers would come barrelling towards us we’d preemptively shove them back lest they disturb the couple fucking behind us. Two other dancers realized what we were doing and helped build a wall. They kept going for two more songs before deciding to take their fun somewhere else. They thanked me silently on their way out with high fives and hugs.
The intensity rose and fell over the next few hours and I made friends. Friends whose names I will never know. There was the guy who laughed all the time and there was the woman who raged harder than any of the men. There was the guy who was only there because his girlfriend wanted to be in the pit. I picked up dancers when they fell and I danced with everything I had in me. It was clear that several of the young bucks I was dancing with were getting tired but when the fat middle aged guy hasn’t stopped moving in ninety minutes it becomes a point of pride. At this point in the evening several of the dancers had figured out what I was doing and had silently volunteered their services to help.
I wanted the pit to get as big as possible. This meant moving it and expanding it. Merging smaller pits that are on different sides of the dance floor is difficult but not impossible. It’s all about moving people through your presence and through the dance. Some people you move away from you and others you pull towards you. You don’t have to move all two hundred of them individually. That would take too long and by the time you moved the hundredth one the first wouldn’t be where you left them. You scan the crowd for keystones. When building a pit I find it easiest to move the women first. They’re going to be your strongest support. The women in the pit didn’t come to fuck around. They want some good clean violent fun and god dammit they’re going to get it!
So when I saw a woman nearby the pit looking at us as though she wanted to join if only her more passive friends would come with her I saw an opportunity. Move the pit that direction a bit. The perimeter can be moved several feet in any direction fairly easily. The circle wants to burst. You just put your back in the direction that you want the pit to move then you let the dancers win a bit more. You ease the tension in the direction of travel and the pit moves that way as non-combatants make space for the dance. It took two songs to move the pit enough that the hopeful young woman was at its perimeter. That’s all it took though. Once she could join the perimeter she did and she brought her group of friends with her. Later that evening a pipe in the ceiling above her burst and started raining down on her and her white T-shirt. She yelled “fuck it”, high fived me and kept dancing.
When the pit encompassed half of the dance floor and had nearly a hundred people in it the DJ decided to see whether we really meant it or not. They played Bulls on Parade. Usually, when I’m tipsy and feeling animistic I channel snake or coyote but the DJ played that song in such a good spot that I felt like I had horns. Thirty of us at least were charging at each other. I caught an elbow to the face and the crown of my head clipped someone in the jaw. The floor was slick with sweat and beer and I went to the ground for the first time of the evening. Two dancers reached down and lifted me up then patted me on the back. When the song ended we came together in the middle and had a giant group hug.
I was spent. Everything I had went into that song and I left the dance floor knowing that I couldn’t find a better note to end the night on. So yeah, punk rock is still alive and fucking well in Camden Town!
