The more I learn about metal culture, the less I think I know. It's easy to make invalid habitual assumptions about the fan base and the musical style. In order to broaden my exposure, I attended a local concert.
I am continually (happily) surprised by the diversity. One frequent informant on this topic has been a friend in a band. I gave him the pseudonym "Member of the Metal Tribe."
His band, which he describes as hard rock with metal and punk influences, kicked off a fundraiser for the local roller derby team. Two other bands, one rock/indie/experimental, and one a girl-fronted punk band, played later that night. Since I was struggling to rid myself of lingering bronchitis, I (very regrettably) couldn't stay awake long enough to catch the last two bands.
The cultural stew at this concert was delicious! My informant "Dog" provided awesome photo documentation of the event.
The concert venue was a local dive bar with a disturbingly sordid history. It's the type of place that favors plastic cups and pitchers, presumably because glass can get messy in a rough crowd. My Trophy Husband and I joined the throngs at the door around 9:30 on a Friday night. We paid the $3 cover and pushed into the crowd (approximately 250 people) to meet up with friends.
Roller derby girls wound their way to the bar and hipster guys with man-purses looked witheringly bored. There was a wide array of goatee styles, many facial piercings, a few older stereotypical bar-fly men, and several cowboys. Up near the stage, I saw what appeared to be someone's mom out to support her child's performance.
The beauty of a small city is that we recognized many people: the guy from the ski shop, the girl from the health food store, and several people who looked familiar but were difficult to identify out of context.
Member of the Metal Tribe describes the venue:
[This particular dive bar], as far as local bars for playing concerts go, is actually pretty OK. It's one of the better set-ups I've played. The bar is in full view of the stage sideways (as opposed to behind) so you can see everything when your waiting for the slow service. The management is very hands-off besides being good about booking and the manager seems to be more with it. It's got an actual stage which is nice. Only downfall is there are no monitors; for the uninitiated those are the small speakers that you see on a stage that face the band on the floor. When you are up there everything is so loud and you are mostly in your own sound bubble; so it's really nice to have a monitor so I can actually know what's going on.
We estimated the gender ratio near the bar to be about 80% men, but near the stage it was closer to 50-50. I found it interesting that there was a throng of unescorted women in the front row near the stage. I asked our friend about this:
The row of girls up front? I don't know most of them, or at least didn't know anything aside from first names except for [one band member's] girlfriend. One of them was my roommates girlfriend, she's a bit of an epic level party gal... But no. I do notice the same thing, more girls up front. Which I am cool with! But not for the reason your thinking of. If closer to stage is 50/50 drunk guys tend to behave a little bit better. This was a... more female friendly show? because [the girl-fronted punk band] was there and the roller derby. Next time [the girl-fronted punk band] come through it might worth checking out, or at least hitting up their myspace. I really liked them and they were the big stars of the evening and treated us (and everyone else) so well.
I saw people in various stages of sobriety. Two physically intimidating women were staggering around, arms linked, crashing into people. Cool that they held hands and what-not in public, and the only time anyone gave them a second glance was when they were body-checked by the pair. Otherwise they blended right in.
One clever middle-aged man, whom I've seen around but couldn't place, was waking around with a big plastic pitcher of beer refilling the cups of seemingly random much younger women. I found his transparency funny and also a bit creepy. I passed on the ubiquitious PBR and drank a nice microbrew instead.
I needen't have worried about how I dressed. For one thing, late March is still deep winter where I live, so everyone was bundled up. There was also great variety in clothing style, so jeans and as tee shirt were perfect camouflage.
I asked a member of a different band (pictured below) about a form of non-verbal communication known colloquially as "throwing the horns," and represented in writing like this: m/.
He said (I'm paraphrasing) that palm facing the individual means that the individual is attempting to tickle their own chin. Palm toward the band means that you think they are awesome. He introduced another symbol using two hands: mm/, which means too much rock for one hand (in a good way).
I saw one person who was obviously a "true fan", and everyone near the stage where I was standing seemed to really enjoy the music. The one obvious fan knew all the lyrics and even jumped on stage and grabbed a mic at one point. Lots of people were dancing and jumping around. I thought the music was great, and really enjoyed expanding my horizons. Going to this type of local concert was a fantastic non-threatening way to check out metal culture. I only have one bone (pun intended) to pick--Member of the Metal Tribe introduced one of his songs this way:
"This song will blow your dick off..."
Perhaps the girl-fronted band has a song that will blow my clit off.... I look forward to the opportunity to test that. mm/!
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