WE LOST MOSHING
I am a grime fan, which is my main genre above anything else. Experiencing the music live was, is and will always be a massive thing for me. I remember seeing Grime live for the first time at Lovebox 2018, seeing Novelist and then Skepta. The whole of BBK came out, the whole place went mad, moshing, shouting, gunfingers, losing voices, all of that. I remember doing this same thing at Eskimo Dance at Printworks (RIP), Wireless and Boxpark Croydon, but recently, I’ve been at grime shows in the crowd thinking something has been lost.
People aren’t moshing, they are not shouting lyrics as the MC says them or pointing gunfingers while an MC is spraying on the mic and making gun noises forcing the DJ to wheel up the track. No one is going mad and I leave the show with my voice well intact. Now, we politely wait for a MC to get to the end of their verse or song and then applaud them. I was at Big Zuu and Capo Lee’s show last year and I remember Big Zuu literally having to tell the crowd to go mad and start moshing, not because he sensed the hype building in the room, but because of the lack of that kind of energy. This isn’t just an issue within grime but an issue with most music in London.
““People in Tbilisi, they really know how to party, you can really feel the energy. People dance a lot, they shout, they scream and they talk to you.””
SIBLING RADIO resident Soft Power did an interview talking about the music scenes in Tbilisi and London, in which she commented on this saying “People in Tbilisi, they really know how to party, you can really feel the energy. People dance a lot, they shout, they scream and they talk to you. Sometimes in London, depending on what party it is, I don’t get that same energy” and I agree with her. Thinking about the reasons why, I don’t know if it is because there are a million things to do in London so we are overexposed to everything and have become desensitised, or because people take out their phones, recording the show so they can post on their stories and show others what we are doing rather than doing it, or we don’t do anything because we are being recorded all the time and don’t want to be the internet’s next meme. I don’t know why but I can tell you for sure something is off here.
There is one place I have found that old energy though. That moshing energy, that screaming the lyrics energy, that leaving the dance sweating through your tee energy and that is in the punk and noise rock scenes. I’ve spent too many nights over the past 5 years at Windmill Brixton seeing the likes of Aliens Chicks and Soft, screaming lyrics I don’t know but am learning on the way and doing everything I was doing at grime shows pre-covid apart from the wheel ups and gunfingers. I’m not saying that all grime fans leaving London or starting to go to punk shows is the solution, I’m not here to provide solutions, I’m just writing about the world I see.