Oingo Rodeo (Sketch)

In the course of my usual social media distraction, moshing a.k.a (slam dancing) has come up a couple of times in the last week. Here is one instance.

It brought back one of my favorite concert memories, represented in this sketch.

In 1983, Oingo Boingo played at a now defunct mega-club in Phoenix called Graham Central Station in 1983. It was a huge place. I hated going there. They had two venues in the same big building: a bar that was exclusively country music, and a larger concert venue for big shows.

Sometimes touring acts would play the larger side – acts that ordinarily wouldn’t be in tobacco-spitting distance from a country music club.

During the Oingo Boingo show, a couple of guys from the country music side – cowboy hats and all – penetrated into the Oingo Boingo show to check out what was going on. They didn’t look like they approved.

The cowboys got a little too close to the periphery of the slam dancing, and one of them got slammed.

The cowboy looked really pissed off, and readied himself for a fight. When it happened again, he pushed the slam dancer hard into the crowd, and pushed his chest out ready for more trouble. But nothing happened; nobody fought back.

I saw the two cowboys look at each other and had huge grins on their faces. They realized that they could grab any slam dancer they wanted and hurl him back into the rest of the dancers – and then do it again – and it was okay. And they proceeded thusly.

They probably hated the music, but I bet they never had more fun at a concert.