Yesterday Brad scored two free tickets to a Led Zepplin cover band performance at the Pink Garter here in Jackson Hole. I wanted to go see Zosos' performance last year when they came through town, but I was working or in the midst of a frugal period, so it was a treat to enjoy them last night. We rode bikes the two blocks to Pinky G's and shared a few slices before we ascended into the former theater for the show. I like to imagine it as a gambling den and whore house back in the day when Jackson was a dusty row of houses huddled around a village green, but it was probably never either one.
Even though I do't often listen to the original rockers, I felt the music thrum and pound its way into my cells last night. I might have missed my era - I could almost smell the steaming bodies, reefer like a skunk's spray and the pheremones rising like a cloud from the stage - except I did really smell all that. The band dominated the boards in their painted on jeans, shiny chests exposed through unbuttoned shirts, and the guitarist strutted like a peacock with his double neck guitar and black spandex with white side panels glittering with sequins under the house lights. I thrashed and shook my hips in time with the thrumming rhythm, to the epic drum solo punctuated by a gong and writhed with my man as the sound rose and fell, rose again.
There were a few attempts at croudsurfing last night, in particular two guys who tried multiple times to get up and ride the wave of hands. One guy, relaxed, managed to travel half the distance of the main floor, but the other looked too excited and bounced right off the top and down to the ground. That didn't stop him from trying again, a few more times with less success and diminished crowd participation.
I've crowdsurfed at a few concerts - it's a far different experience to be a young woman surfing the crowd - and it's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. You're popcorn exploding in a pot, bouncing on a trampoline that tries to grope you, connected and yet caught then released by the crowd. You hope no one grabs any parts that don't want to be touched, and at the same time you don't think of anything except this weightlessness, the split second decision to trust the hands below.
I don't remember what show I was at the last time I crowd surfed, but I know why I haven't since. The crowd in that university district venue that night pulsated with some wild energy and I got carried away by hands that weren't gentle, that grabbed rather than sent me across the surface. In the end, an undertow pulled me deep and I slammed to the floor. The surge of bodies kept me submerged and the beer I'd guzzled and humid heat of hundreds of people in motion sent my brain into a tail spin.
That night I discovered I have claustrophobia in crowds and that while I'd love to learn to surf, I'll save my attempts for the ocean and avoid the less predictable nature of humans in a group. I clawed my way off the booze soaked floor and stood, shaken, missing a shoe and my glasses no where to be seen. I found a wall to huddle against and waited out the show until I could make my mole blind way around the hall to reclaim shoe and specs. I found both and relinquished any desire to crowdsurf again. It's entertaining to watch others ride the wave, but I'd rather stake my claim to a piece of the dance floor and thrash my way through a show.
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