POWER PLAY: POOR BEHAVIOR LEADS TO NEED FOR RULES

All it takes is for a few obnoxious fools who can't follow the rules of common sense to ruin a good thing for everyone else.

A reminder of this came when I got my tickets to this Sunday's concert in St. Louis featuring the band Everclear. In large, unfriendly letters on the tickets is a stern warning: "No Body Surfing."

To adequately explain what body surfing is to those of you unfamiliar with the modern rock club scene first requires the definition of the following terms:

-- Moshing: An alleged form of dance in which participants violently fling themselves into each other to the strains of loud, crunching and up-tempo tunes. Not an activity for the squeamish, frail or legally sane.

-- Mosh pit: The area of a club to where moshing is restricted. Also possibly the name of a really nasty barbecue joint in Dexter.

With that all explained, body surfing is when moshers lift their fellow pit denizens up above the throng and pass them around the crowd.

Yeah, it may all seem rather silly, but no more so than previously popular dances such as the twist, stroll, jitterbug, fox trot or the waltz.

Dance on the whole is something I've never particularly been able to understand nor enjoy, much to the unhappiness of past girlfriends. The whole concept of dance seems ridiculous -- except for slow dancing with an attractive member of the opposite sex, which has its obvious positives.

As for other partner type dancing, I don't want any part of it. I don't at all mind looking and acting silly in public, but I like to engage in forms of public silliness with which I feel comfortable.

And concerted group dancing such as country line dancing is too abhorrent to even discuss in the pages of a family newspaper such as this.

Dance as an art form or performed as entertainment is the most puzzling. What is the lure of spending hour upon hour working out a routine of synchronous moves, gyrations and odd gestures? Some people, including professional dancers, NFL cheerleaders and U.S. senators engage in such complex maneuvers for careers. The latter group, of course, does this in a more metaphorical and confusing fashion. While I can respect the hard work involved, when I see a dance routine I am left wondering exactly what the whole point it.

Moshing, however, is more a symbolic expression of anarchistic ideals than an actual dance. While the mosh pit is a single collective, each individual in the collective freely does his own thing. Anarchy at its finest.

Actually, that isn't really true -- it's just a good way to burn calories.

However, the whole thing is starting to be ruined, as the caveat on the Everclear ticket indicates.

Until about five or six years ago, moshing, or slam dancing as it was then known, was a pursuit enjoyed by only a small segment of people. As such everybody understood the rules and rarely did people get intentionally hurt.

While slamming is an inherently violent activity, the average thrasher doesn't try to hurt anyone. Like football, wrestling, shopping on the day after Thanksgiving or any brutal physical activity, however, injuries invariably crop up.

Whenever someone did attempt to purposely inflict pain, the retaliation from everyone else in the pit was so severe that the offender quickly learned his lesson. It was just informally understood that their were some things you didn't do.

When moshing crossed over into the mainstream, however, clubs and concert venues began to impose more and more rules.

Stage diving -- climbing on the stage only to jump off onto the crowd -- was the first thing clubs outlawed. As more people started engaging in the activity, more injuries were bound to occur, and, most unfortunately, more lawsuits. This is a prime example of people willingly taking part in potentially harmful behavior but not taking responsibility for their actions.

Mosh pits on the whole are becoming increasingly unfriendly places, mainly because many newcomers do not care about the unwritten rules. As a result, those who mosh with the intent to maim have grown in number and self-policing efforts are not always effective. So naturally clubs are cracking down.

The need for formal rules in this area is indicative of the growing number of rules imposed in all areas of society.

Things for which rules were never previously needed because everyone accepted and respected unofficial standards of behavior are suddenly restricted because some fools insist on crossing the bounds of common sense.

Marc Powers is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.

COLUMN DAYS TO CHANGE

Marc Powers' column will not appear next Wednesday. It will resume the following Saturday and continue weekly on that day. Heidi Neiland's column will regularly appear on Wednesdays.