What is "the pit"?

One of the many overlapping terms between punk and metal (particularly thrash and speed metal) is the pit, or the space reserved for moshing in front of the band. The pit can be seen as a ritualized way for (mostly) young men to express their aggression during a concert. The pit is somewhat dangerous, especially for newcomers who do not understand its complex but very real etiquette, and it is advised that members of the audience know what they are getting into before they jump into the pit.

What is "Moshing"?

Moshing is an activity much like slam dancing and pit diving that originated in the punk scene but was adopted by the thrash and crossover metal scenes in the eighties and continues today, especially in the hard-edge black and death metal subgenres. Key early bands that popularized the mosh were Anthrax, who wrote one of the odes to moshing, “Caught in a Mosh,” and also Stormtroopersof Death, led by Billy Milano, who helped popularize moshing in their song “Milano Mosh.” The practice consists of members of the audience coming together in a large area on the concert floor in front of the stage, usually called “the pit,” and ritualistically bouncing off each other in a manner reminiscent of punk slamming, only occasionall quickly back into the audience or try and go for a victory lap onstage until bouncers throw them off again or much worse, they are brought backstage and ejected from the club. For fans, moshing also serves as a form of release, a way of getting rid of aggression, or as a form of catharsis. As William Tsitsos has noted, there is a distinct difference between traditional slam dancing in the early punk scene and the moshing that dominates today, in that “… moshers’ explanations for their dancing tend to focus more on the venting of individual aggression” (Tsitsos 2006, 125). Moshing is mostly a masculine activity, at last in heavy metal where the pits seem to be more aggressive and less inviting to women, who frequently find themselves groped or even attacked by newcomers who do not understand the respectful attitude that is inherent in a successful pit. To this day, for better of worse, the pit continues to be a place to be entered at one’s own risk, and moshing is still prevalent, depending on the scene and the tolerance of the band and the promoters. Rituals vary from scene to scene and band to band, and some bands openly encourage a large and active pit while others try and discourage the practice for insurance and safety issues. The ritualistic act of stage diving often accompanies the moshing, where a fan lucky enough to get up on stage with their favorite band can try and jump.

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith was born in North London in 1975 to an English father and a Jamaican mother. Originally named Sadie, she changed her name to Zadie at 14. Smith wrote her acclaimed first novel White Teeth during her final year at King’s College, Cambridge. Moving to the US, she studied at Harvard and taught creative writing at Columbia University School of Fine Arts before taking her current post at New York University. She divides her time between New York and London, with her husband, writer Nick Laird, and their two children.

  Smith has received nearly 20 nominations and awards for her writing. In recent years she has branched outm into short stories and critical essays. In an article in The Guardian newspaper she was asked to give her 10 golden rules for writing fiction, which included: “Tell the truth throughwhichever veil comes to hand— but tell it.”

Toni Morrison - Beloved - a Great American Novel

Toni Morrison is one of the America’s most powerful literary voices, and the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), among her numerous other awards. Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 into a working-class Ohio family, she grew up with a love of reading, music, and folklore. She earned a BA from Howard University and an MA from Cornell. She was married for a short time to Jamaican architect Harold Morrison, with whom she had two sons. Morrison wrote her first four novels while working as an editor in New York. Her fifth, Beloved, was widely acclaimed and made into a movie. From 1989 to 2006 Morrison held a professorship at Princeton University. In 2005 she wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner, an opera based on the story that inspired Beloved. She continues to write, and to

speak against censorship and repression of history.

Quotes:

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”

What is a caricature?

We can find caricature in the arts or literature, an exaggerated portrayal of an individual or type, aiming to ridicule or otherwise expose the subject; in art, features are often made comical or
grotesque. Classical and medieval examples of pictorial caricatures survive. Artists of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries have often used caricature as a way of satirizing society and politics. Notable exponents include the French artist Honoré Daumier and the German George Grosz. In literature, caricatures have appeared since the comedies of Aristophanes in ancient Greece. Shakespeare and Dickens were adept at creating caricatures. Grotesque drawings have been discovered in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Pliny refers to a grotesque portrait of the poet Hipponax.

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first artists to use the principles of caricature. These were developed in the humorous drawings of the Carracci family and their Bolognese followers (the Italian 'eclectic' school of the 16th century). In 1830 Charles Philipon (1800–1862) founded in Paris La Caricature, probably the first periodical to specialize in caricature.

KORN - nu metal wave of the early to mid-nineties

KORN- Jonathon Davis (vocals), James “Munky” Shaffer (guitar), Brian “Head” Welch (guitar), Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu (bass), David Silveria (drums). Korn are one of the most popular and respected of the nu metal wave of the early to mid-nineties, and one of the few bands from that time period that continue to produce listenable music to the present day. The band was founded in Bakersfield, California, in 1993, and their first album, Korn, established them as different from the usually more macho metal bands that formed around the same time. Lead singer Jonathan Davis writes lyrics that celebrate the loner and the misfit, providing the soundtrack and outlet for the dispossessed nerds of metal. While bands such as Limp Bizkit were singing empty anthems to misplaced anger, Korn was tying to articulate the anguish that the meekest members of the metal community go through and tried to articulate their rage, not against a nameless machine but at the very real oppressive teachers, parents, and school bullies. Surprisingly, the band, who tour and record infrequently, seem to be as popular today as they were in their nineties heyday, although drummer Silveria and guitarist Brian “Head” Welch both left the band in 2006. Welch apparently left to proselytize as a newly born again Christian. Korn remains one of the more emotional and honest

bands of the new metal scene, and this is probably why they survive as a band to this day.

Discography:

• Korn (album) (1994)
• Life Is Peachy (1996)
• Follow the Leader (Korn album) (1998)
• Issues (album) (1999)
• Untouchables (album) (2002)
• Take a Look in the Mirror (2003)
• See You on the Other Side (2005)
• Albumul Korn fără nume (2007)
• Korn III: Remember Who You Are (2010)
• The Path Of Totality (2011)
• The Paradigm Shift (2013)
• The Serenity of Suffering (album) (2016)

Child 44 - Tom Hardy's gloomy thriller

Tom Hardy adds another accent to his repertoire in this gloomy thriller, a grim saga of child murder and statesponsored intimidation that’s equally as bleached of colour as it is of joy. Set in Stalin’s Russia, its complex story finds Hardy’s disgraced intelligence officer hunting a killer his government won’t admit exists: an Orwellian scenario that allows director Daniel Espinosa to supply traditional genre thrills, as well as more thoughtful musings on how character is shaped under a suppressive ideology. Gary Oldman and Noomi Rapace lend solid support; at two hours plus, though, it’s a bit of a slog.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born to French-Canadian parents in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. He studied at Columbia University where he met Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs who would become fellow leading lights of the beat generation. Kerouac dropped out in his second year then joined the merchant navy, before turning to writing as a profession. From 1947, he became increasingly attracted to the whisky-drinking  hobo lifestyle and began his wandering across America and Mexico, often visiting various other beat writers. Those voyages across the North American landscape were relayed in his various roman à clef writings, friends’ faces only thinly veiled as protagonists. Kerouac’s alcoholism led to cirrhosis and his death in 1969.

In the postwar United States, a generation of middle-class youth became increasingly reluctant to follow the societal pathways of their parents based on materialistic goals. Instead, they adopted a meandering, spontaneous form of existence in their quest to find true meaning in life. Some of them became known as “beats”: a collective of poets and writers who sought kicks, spiritual refuge, and excess in alcohol, drugs, and sex; they also delighted in jazz.

On the Road details a series of journeys that Kerouac took between 1947 and 1950. In the book they are narrated by Sal Paradise (identified with Kerouac himself) who is often accompanied on his travels by Dean Moriarty (the writer Neal Cassady). A number of other beat generation writers also appear in the book, disguised by name only, such as Allen Ginsberg (“Carlo Marx”) and William S. Burroughs (“Old Bull Lee”).

Quotes:
“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 to wealthy parents in New York City. Like his main protagonist Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger attended several schools before graduating. After spending a year in Europe, he studied at Columbia University, taking a writing
course led by Whit Burnett, editor of Story magazine, who became his mentor early in his writing career. Salinger was drafted into the US Army in 1942 and continued to write despite suffering from a “nervous condition.” The Catcher in the Rye thrust Salinger onto the world stage as a literary celebrity. However, he resented the attention and became reclusive and far less productive. By the time of his death in 2010, The Catcher in the Rye remained Salinger’s only full-length novel.

The Catcher in the Rye is narrated by 17-year-old Holden Caulfield. He is liberal with his parents’ money, and relentless in his commentary on the human condition, sexuality, and morality. He has little regard for authority and seems careless about his self-destructive trajectory.

But Holden Caulfield is much more than a teenage rebel. His frank admissions of deceptions, imperfections, and contradictions reveal a bemused individual who is hankering after childhood
innocence, suffering grief, and growing painfully aware of the contradictions of adult life. He is a compelling antihero—an ambivalent, vulnerable figure— who can be sensitive and witty as well as immature and vulgar. Caulfield’s casual disregard for honesty and disdain for societal norms are mitigated by a genuine confessional impulse and surprising tolerance for some of the diverse characters he encounters throughout the course of the novel. Caulfield is also an easy victim. He is bullied in his dormitory at school, and ripped off by a pimp working the elevator in the New York hotel. In his confusion about women and sex, he unconsciously seeks out kindness and familiarity. Having paid for a prostitute he asks if they can simply “talk.” He strikes up a conversation with two nuns, despite his atheism, and they insist he is “a very sweet boy.” Inevitably, Salinger’s dirty realism caused controversy. Some critics dismissed the novel as puerile and maudlin. But Salinger gained cult status in the years following its publication, further fueled by his reclusive lifestyle.

Death and grief are prevailing themes in The Catcher in the Rye. After Holden’s brother dies, he
smashes his hands in rage; his classmate is bullied and comes to a tragic end; and the very title of the book refers to stopping (catching) children running through fields before they fall off a cliff. It is likely that the loss of numerous young soldiers in World War II influenced Salinger to write this compelling first-person narrative, which remains an enduring portrait of the teenager in crisis.

Quote:

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

A a heavy metal band - Disturbed

Dave Drainman (vocals), Dan Donegan (guitar), Fuzz (bass), Mike Wengren (drums).
Disturbed are a heavy metal band with a debt to early metal and mainstream thrash-like bands such as Pantera. The band started out in Chicago in the late nineties. Drainman’s unique vocal style helped gain them a huge following in the Midwest, eventually getting them signed in 2000 to the small Giant label, who released their first album, The Sickness. While the first album is a relatively good
low-budget affair, the band had access to a larger production budget once they moved over to music giant Warner Brothers, and the second record is miles above The Sickness with payer and liberation” proving that Donegan is a first-rate metal guitarist and that Drainman’s “I gargled with broken glass before this song” and then suddenly clear singing voice knows how to work a song. The band even manages to end the record with the power ballad “Darkness” that manages to be spooky instead of cheesy. The next two records seemed a bit less focused (Ten Thousand Fists in particular)and seem almost as though the band, in trying some electronic touches, was becoming a bit more concerned with mainstream airplay, or at least interested in creating downloadable ringtones for emo metal kids. Although Disturbed was often lumped into the new metal field by critics, their music was actually much heavier than one would assume. The first two records in particular are well worth investigating.
Their cover The Sound Of Silence hit number one on the Billboard Hard Rock Digital Songs and Mainstream Rock charts, and is their highest-charting song on the Hot 100, peaking at number 42. It is also their highest-charting single in Australia, peaking at number 4.

Rock band of the 1980s - Bon Jovi

Jon Bon Jovi (vocals), Ritchie Sambora (guitar),David Bryan (keyboards), Tico Torres (drums).

One of the most successful groups from the “hair metal” era of the 1980s, Bon Jovi’s particular blend of pop sensibility and working-class lyrical themes, along with a string of MTV videos showcasing Jon Bon Jovi’s good looks, gave them a wider appeal and longer career life than almost any of their direct peers, to the extent that they have continued to enjoy a viable career into the new millennium.

Jon Bongiovi (his real name) got his start through his cousin Tony Bongiovi, who owned the famous New York City recording studio The Power Station. After recording a series of demos at the studio, one of them, “Runaway,” became a local hit on New Jersey radio. Bongiovi subsequently put together a band featuring his longtime friend keyboardist David Rashbaum, drummer Tico Torres, bassist Alec John Such, and guitarist Dave Sabo. The band soon became the object of an

intense bidding war between a number of record labels. Ultimately, the band signed with Polygram in 1983. Before the release of the band’s debut, Bongiovi changed his name to Bon Jovi, Rashbaum changed his to Bryan (his middle name), and Richie Sambora replaced Dave Sabo (who would later go on to success with Skid Row).

Released in 1984, Bon Jovi was a success with “Runaway” replicating its previous success as a hit single on a national scale. Unfortunately, Tony Bongiovi sued the band, claiming that he had served to develop their successful sound. The suit was ultimately settled out of court. The band’s sophomore album, 7800 Fahrenheit, released in 1985, also did well. Seeking a higher level of success, the band

hired professional songwriter Desmond Child to collaborate on new material, which was subsequently test marketed to teens in the New York/New Jersey area. All of Bon Jovi’s R&D paid off with the 1986 album Slippery When Wet, which would go on to sell over nine million copies. Aided by a series of lush performance- oriented videos on MTV, the album made the band superstars. Featuring two number 1 hits in “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and the

top ten “Wanted Dead or Alive,” the album became the quintessential album of the pop-metal/hair band era.

Psycho - one of Hitchcock's best films

For a film routinely rated as one of the scariest of all time, it's strange how few actual scares there are in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. There's the shower scene - a 45- second, 70-shot slasharama that freaked out a generation. There's the scene where private investigator Arbogast (Martin Balsam) gets surprised on the staircase, not to mention the big reveal in the basement with its double whammy of extreme taxidermy and transvestism.
For the most part, though, Hitchcock's classic isn't about scares at all. It's more about dread: a lurking, pervasive terror that steps even its most innocuous moments in pure fear. It's there in Janet Leigh's eyes as she makes off whith $40,000 of stolen bills, and in Anthony Perkins anxious nail biting as he waits for her car to sink into the swamp. It's there in the sunlight, in the shades of the traffic cop who becomes Marion's implacable stalker.
Movie murder wasn't invented in 1960, but it was definitely perfected and Psycho is the best exemple.
        
      Cast:

• Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates
• Vera Miles as Lila Crane
• John Gavin as Sam Loomis
• Janet Leigh as Marion Crane
• Martin Balsam as Detective Milton Arbogast
• John McIntire as Sheriff Al Chambers
• Simon Oakland as Dr. Fred Richman
• Frank Albertson as Tom Cassidy
• Pat Hitchcock as Caroline