Now I know for sure how I want my car stereo to sound. Yes, I just took a big leap and got a decent deck installed a couple of weeks ago. But just one week ago I stood 10 feet away from KMFDM and their enormous speakers concussing my torso with The Ultra Heavy Beat. It was a Thursday night, another day of work the next morning, not feeling highly motivated to rock out, only there out of duty and guilt from missing their show a couple of years before, they’re getting old and probably just milking the retro tour scene. No. Sascha and Lucia have a stunning, super-human presence on stage. The two guitar dudes flanking the stage brought and brazenly brandished the Rock (not Dwayne The Rock). And the acoustic drums decimated any idea that they’d be weaker than juiced up electronic beats. I woke up out of a lull in life right there. I remembered how much of a kick I got out of all the KMFDM records, how much I loved standing right in front of erupting loudspeakers (with tissue crammed in my ears for protection), and I started to get little twitches for wanting to hop, and dare I say at my age, thrash around into other people.

Standing right there in front at an industrial/headbanger show I forgot that, as sure as the Pope shits in the woods, people will start shoving around, then sloshing beer on the ground, then breaking out in outright moshing. Yeah, I woke up from my lull in life right in no-mans land, and with a little delayed reaction I ducked and bobbed out of the way of elbow and cranium smashes. I think I reasonably dismissed the thing with moshing as being worn out and cliche. A couple of decades ago it might have had some significance to show how angry, fearless, or chemically tweaked you were that you would bash into innocent bystanders. A mosh pit would break out spontaneously and a riot of army boots, black t-shirts, Mohawks and face piercings would erupt with audible bone fractures.

I must have always gone to the mellower, more hippie-inclined concerts because the mosh pits I knew were all about breaking out of your shell and having fun politely tussling around. If someone slipped on the floor or caught an elbow more solidly than you intended, you would apologize, help them up, and gleefully smile with a twinkle in your eye. At the KMFDM show, just on the safe side of the mosh pit, I could distinguish both philosophies present in the fray. The older, gentler demographic tended to carefully thrash around, with consideration and respect for the other old-timers. However, there were a few apparently younger thrashers who were there just to fuck shit up, indiscriminately. They marched into the middle, stomped/head-butted/jabbed with intent to cause grief and dismay. Naturally because I’m older I could not identify with that approach and it reminded me of how I feel about playing basketball with younger guys who tend to be more recklessly aggressive, like a loose canon. What kind of amplifier wattage and sub-woofer diameter will I need in my car to get a sense of fear for broken bones?