On the final Wednesday in August, the great residents of Buñol, Spain, collect in the primary sq. to throw tomatoes at one another. No one is solely certain why, both. All most individuals care about is that it’s enjoyable to pelt pals and strangers with tomatoes, so the La Tomatina Festival turned an annual factor. (For the report, it appears thus far again to about 1945, when there was some sort of brawl that devolved into the throwing of vegatables and fruits.)
Speaking of throwing issues: In Denmark, single folks aged 25 are doused with cinnamon by family and friends on Valentine’s Day. No one is aware of why aside from it’s at all times been a factor. Same factor with tossing new child infants off the 50-foot Sri Saneswar Temple in India. The tykes are caught by folks holding an enormous fabric beneath. It’s simply custom, the origins and functions of which have disappeared into historical past.
Rock music has been round lengthy sufficient to have its personal inexplicable traditions and behaviours. Let’s have a look at a number of.
Holding lighters aloft at concert events
We’ve all been to a present the place sooner or later folks maintain lighters (and now cellphones) within the air throughout the gig. Where did that come from?
The reply goes again to the Toronto Rock’n’Roll Revival, a one-day live performance held at Varsity Stadium in Toronto on Sept. 13, 1969. John Lennon was a last-minute addition to the lineup, impetuously deciding to play his first-ever present outdoors The Beatles. Lennon was nervous to the purpose of being sick, so MC Kim Fowley urged the gang to create a cool and peaceable vibe by bringing out their matches and lighters to show the stadium right into a blissful candlelit panorama.
It labored. Lennon got here out, performed his set with Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band, and went again to the U.Okay. to announce he was achieved with The Beatles. We’ve been bringing forth hearth (or a minimum of mild) at exhibits ever since.
The “Freebird!” Guy
Chances are you’ve been to some present the place somebody insists on yelling “Freebird!” as a extremely inappropriate request at a non-Lynyrd Skynyrd present. Why?
Blame Kevin Matthews, a Chicago radio DJ who had a operating bit the place he’d encourage his listeners — referred to as Kevheads — to yell “Freebird” at any live performance, irrespective of who was onstage. And so it started. The Chicago Symphony, Florence Henderson (the mother from The Brady Bunch) and Jim Nabors all needed to endure the calls for because of Kevheads. You can nonetheless hear these calls in the present day nearly anyplace, be it at a efficiency of Mamma Mia and even at a hockey sport.
Umlaut bands
You know the sort: Mötley Crüe, Queensrÿche and, after all, Motörhead. “Rock dots,” as they’re typically identified, are Swedish and German in origin and technically referred to as a “diacritic,” which is a sort of accent. Why would anybody use them? Because they appear cool, overseas, Gothic and unique.
As far as we all know, the primary band to make use of umlauts/rock dots on this method was Blue Öyster Cult for no goal aside from it appeared like enjoyable. They might have been impressed by Amon Düül, a psychedelic band from the ’60s who had been, in actual fact, very German. We may also embrace the American hardcore band Hüsker Dü — besides that they use umlauts appropriately. “Hüsker Dü” is definitely Swedish for “Do you remember?”
Long hair for male rock followers
Long hair on males has gone out and in of fashion over the centuries and was typically the goal of scorn. In 1842, The London Saturday Journal wrote: “Many vagrants are musicians, but it does not follow that all musicians are vagrants. It is expected of musicians nowadays to wear long hair as an appendage to their talent.” An extended screed towards lengthy hair adopted.
Fast-forward to the Thirties, Nineteen Forties and Fifties, when brief hair was culturally enforced. White males who didn’t hold issues trim had been thought-about all the things from effeminate to subversive to unhygienic. But then alongside got here rock ‘n’ roll within the Fifties and its rebellious attitudes, expressions of private freedom and new trend kinds. Long hair signalled a person’s membership within the new counterculture, societal pushback be damned.
After The Beatles and their moptops, tresses on males started flowing longer and longer. This continued till the punk backlash of the center Nineteen Seventies when lengthy hair was thought-about an outmoded hippie attribute. Still, lengthy (or a minimum of longish) hair on males continues in the present day, even when meaning such unlucky kinds because the mullet.
Headbanging
Any steel present options members of their viewers violently shaking their heads in time with the music. How did that grow to be a factor?
This just isn’t a brand new factor. If we go method again into music historical past, an identical exercise was related to Islamic music within the Sufi custom. Qawwali music from India, Pakistan and Iran has additionally employed headbanging-like actions. Both may be traced again centuries and are associated to worshippers falling into trance-like states.
Modern headbanging may need begun with Jerry Lee Lewis and his behavior of flicking the curls off his face as he pounded on his piano. It turned one thing of a signature transfer so followers started to mimic him.
Maybe we will level to a 1969 North American tour by Led Zeppelin the place followers — particularly punters at some exhibits in Boston over a number of nights that January — had been seen banging their heads on the stage in time with the music.
Moving deeper into the Nineteen Seventies, the identical behaviour was seen at Black Sabbath exhibits, AC/DC gigs and Motörhead performances. In reality, Lemmy favored to take credit score for the time period itself, saying that it was derived from the sight of individuals “Motörheadbanging” at their concert events.
Stage diving
There are two kinds of stage diving. The first is when a performer leaps off the stage into the gang. The second is when a member of the viewers clambers up onstage and dives again into the gang. Let’s start with the previous.
The first rock performer to leap into the gang may need been Jim Morrison of The Doors, who’s reported to have gone airborne from the stage between 1967 and 1969. The first actually documented stage diver needs to be Iggy Pop, who was making it an everyday apply throughout exhibits with The Stooges by 1969.
As for viewers members stepping into the act, the primary documented crowd taking part in stage diving dates again to Aug. 8, 1964, when followers had been leaping off the stage at a Rolling Stones present within the Netherlands. That’s so way back that nobody was calling it “stage diving” but.
Finally, an unsolved thriller: The particular viewers participation lyrics with Billy Idol’s Version of Mony Mony
I can’t repeat them right here, however at any time when somebody performs Billy Idol’s rendition of Tommy James’ Mony Mony, the gang will erupt with a profane chant that continues usually all through the track. There are slight variations within the chant based mostly on geography (Ontario is totally different from Colorado, which is totally different from Texas, which is separate from what they chanted within the U.Okay.) however nobody has ever labored it out. I’ve achieved some critical research into this pre-internet meme however I’ve by no means been capable of finding a proof of the place it got here from or the way it unfold across the globe. I’ve even put the query to Idol himself and he claims to don’t know.
Any different questions?
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Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.
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