Pogo Dancing. Do The Robot !
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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 chaffed nipples. God knows what happened to the girls.
Pogoing to the Jam at the Roxy.
Click to hear audio clip of 'Pogo Dancing'
"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
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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.
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