Hey this is your chance
To do the
pogo dance
So get your both feet up off the ground
What goes up - must come down.
Pogo Dancing
Its the greatest
thing that's going round.
Pogo Dancing
Why move from side to
side
When you can jump up and down.
Pogo Dancing - Vibrators (1976 RCA)
Imagine the scene its 1976 and Rick Wakeman (ex
Yes) is churning out another endless keyboard song to an appreciative
audience sitting stoned, dressed in flares and with long hair. Now
travel in time to the punk thrash gigs of today with stage diving etc.
How did we get here ? I'll tell you.
Don't blame it on the sunshine. Don't blame it on
the moonlight... just blame it on the pogo.
The punk
movements very own dance and very practical coz we all know when we are
squashed up the front the only way is up (and then down of course). A
good dance when fuelled by amphetamines and bloody knackering not to
mention the bruised chest and chafed nipples. God knows what
happened to the girls.
"Pogoing
was very violent and very painful. People were not quite crushed to
death, but serious injuries occurred. If you've got a hundred people all
jumping up and down very frenetically together, you're going to get
people hurt, and that was part of it. I was frightened of pogoing except
with people that I knew well, because it was dangerous. Yes, performers
leaping off the stage into the crowd and glasses being thrown and
instruments being thrown. It was all very violent and very dangerous,
and thats why I think it was so attractive to people."
So who if anyone
invented the pogo. Severin of the Banshees reckoned it was Sid Vicious. "We
first met him at one of the concerts . He began bouncing around the
dance floor , the so called legend of the pogo dance. It was merely Sid
jumping up and down, trying to see the band, leaping up and down because
he was stuck in the back somewhere."
Whatever Happened To The POGO?
I'm
asking you...yeah you out there reading this! What the
fucks happened to PUNK ROCKS 'Pogo' ? Our very own intrinsic, energetic form of
epilepsy. Driven by the sheer
beat of the music blasted out there in front of ya!! Be
it in the confines of your own bedroom (snigger), down the
local flea-pit or at the 'mecca' i.e.. 'The Punk
Gig!' As we religiously watch or listen to infamous
old/new classics blaring out the speakers. It's that easy
any old cunt can do it! But NO! we have to resort to safe, corporate slightly disco-ish leg kicking, arm
swinging banality that was aped from Siouxsie Sioux
or Richard Jobson. Helped along with the odd push or
shove if we're feeling really rebellious.
It's a disgrace
to the music being played, which was meant (well some of
it) for high altitude assaults on the lampshades and
ceilings of sweaty little dives everywhere you hear
it! 'Pogoing' is a lot more fun as well. This high
octane exercise even enables you
to view (or gob on) the bands in question
without obstacles in your view, which is where it
originated from. Once you get the hang of it approximately
just after Johnny has spat out "I am an
Antichrist!" .Then however you may find
you get slightly knackered quicker than you first thought, usually mid-song (please remember this is a form
of energetic sweat driven power that may require a wrap
of speed if your gonna dance all night). If you've only
got your wits for company simply grab the shoulders
of the bouncing baby in front of ya and you will find you
have got yourself an accelerated launching pad! Which
enables you to reach new heights and targets!
Fuckin'
hell it was that good they wrote songs about it and named
record labels after it! It's all very well doing this
moshpit type of street violence or pushing each other
around like kids in a playground. But it just don't look
so good and is only for the uninspired or faint hearted. So come on you Punks lets see a bit more pogoing
at the gigs! Not that drunken, shuntin' or even
worse...standing still like statues. You'll have a good
laugh in the process and within a few 45's you'll
have mastered it. Fuck what the rest of the bores think, real punk music demands
it. There are some things in
Punk Rock you just can't assimilate!
This article by Peter Don't Care (The Suffragette Fanzine July 1997)
The
Robot
'C'mon everybody and listen
to Chris
There's a great new dance and it goes like this
.... Its called doing the Robot.'
The Saints 'Doing
The Robot'
"The robot ...was
both more expressive and less spontaneous ....It
consisted of barely perceptible twitches of the head and
hands or more extravagant lurches (Frankenstein's first
steps ?) which were abruptly halted at random points. The
resulting pose was held for several moments, even
minutes, and the whole sequence was a suddenly, as unaccountably,
resumed and re-enacted." Hebdige - Subculture:meaning &
Style
Sources used in this
page are personal recollections and Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs,
You'll never be 16 again - Peter Perrett. Photos by Annette
Weatherman and Erica Echenberg of pogoing down the Roxy Club.
