Colm O'Regan: 'Enter Sandman' reminds me of happy days moshing in Coachford GAA Hall
Irish Examiner columnist, writer and comedian Colm O'Regan.
It was while watching that I was unexpectedly taken to the Pit. is an award-winning TV series. It’s really good but I’m not going to say you must see it as I know your schedule is full of must-see TV until you die. But you totally should watch it.
There’s a bit in it where a man and his daughter play a song together on guitar. And when I heard the opening bars and the first line I was gone back to a different time.
“DANG-DOWN DO DO DO/DANG DOWN DO DO DO.” (Growly voice) “Say your prayers, little one. Don't forget, my son/To include everyone.”
I wasn’t even much of a Metallica fan but I was a fan when came on in the hall at the Coachford GAA Hall Teenage disco. Especially if it signalled the end of the slow set, the end of a depressing walk (or second walk) around the floor. No more rejection. It was time to mosh.
There was no mosh pit as such. It was just nearer the top of the hall. I don’t even know if we were classically moshing. All I can remember is jumping, bumping, knees and elbows, someone on someone else’s back, with or without combat trousers, green, dark or camouflaged, Benson and Hedges in the thigh pockets, rumours of cans in the toilets, mints for the car journey home, and then that glorious endorphinous thrill and slight panic if you fell and everyone fell on top of you.
“SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN” in one ear as a Doc Marten wedged next to the other ear. Someone’s Uncle Who Was The Bouncer coming in to sort it out. Only temporarily though. EXIT LIGHT ENTER NIGHT!!! The next moshing round might involve the resolution of an earlier fight. Often against someone from Farran. I once got punched as I fell into a mosh. It was almost a balletic experience. A slow motion collapse. We resolved it afterwards. A misunderstanding and he accepted my apology for punching me in the face.
wasn’t the only song. by Nirvana or by the Pixies would get you going. by the Sultans of Ping was another one. You may have your particular favourite. But Enter Sandman sticks with me as the perfect one. The slow build up. The explosion.
TAKE MY HAND WE’RE OFF TO NEVER NEVER LAND. It was the opposite of Everything Bryan Adams Did. It wasn’t the only floor filler. Poor oul Coolio (RIP) kept many a GAA Hall hopping with .
Are teenagers moshing now? Maybe niche music fans are at concerts but the teenage disco mosh meant everyone could take part. 12-year-olds, ravers and hip hop fans, people who would mysteriously embrace Country and Irish in their 20s and still have the marks of a boot somewhere under their oxter.
How is the teenager Terrible Dancing scene now? Or are they all playing computer games while making Tiktoks and taking ket in their rooms before heading off to the gym to crush it while listening to Joe Rogan ask some dude he knows to explain Ukraine. (I don’t know anything about modern teenagers and it shows.)
Maybe they don’t need to. They have their tribes. They can express physical platonic affection for friends with hugs whereas I don’t think I hugged another man that wasn’t my father until I was 26.
But I can tell you this much. If one day, someone far smarter than me writes an opinion piece for the New York Times entitled Why Your Teen Needs To Mosh For Mental Health, and if worried parents start paying €100 an hour to bring children to jump around a hall to jostle someone from Grenagh, I won’t be surprised.
