#8158

If you don't get the energy high in your first or maybe at a stretch second song you're gonna struggle to pick it up any higher than that

wheedling and begging does not work very well if you haven't got that energy. makes you look desperate and it's a bit of a bummer. to tell people to get moving you need to have their buy in so you need to have that energy high to begin with and then hype people up as they run out of energy and get knocked around more. if you've had people moshing before and now they're flagging you telling them to get moving will be better received

related, no one likes being told they suck. if you're playing a heavy show and you accusatorily tell your audience they're not moving or tell them fuck them they're not gonna be pissed or offended or anything, but you're not gonna bait them into moving for you. genuinely you would probably get more movement by praising the people who do move or otherwise hyping up your audience. plus if you spend your entire set getting frustrated about a lack of movement and then thank the audience at the very end it's going to ring exremely hollow

if you're halfway through your set and no one or very few people are moshing consider dropping it. you can try salvaging it by playing something where you demand everyone to get in super tight and jump but if people don't do it then there's not a heap you can do

at the very start first thing get people in close to the stage and refuse to play until you've got them in thick. tell everyone to take two steps in. close proximity means they're more likely to form a push pit and keeps people engaged AND it breaks the ice of invading personal space. in normal life people don't usually press up close to each other and headbang violently or shove each other, so you want to remove that personal space barrier. think like you're a HR manager trying to get office workers to do a trust exercise

circle pits are also great for getting energy high or picking up flagging energy because it gets people moving in a way they wouldnt usually and naturally dissolves into a push pit. you'll lose people around the stage but hopefully by then you'll have people flailing around and will have dispersed the chill people to the back and the violent people to the front. from here you can try for a wall of death or side to side or something like that

if people never mosh for you look Within. it would probably help to open with something with an obvious or heavy beat (easier to get into) and if your opener doesn't get movement it may not be getting people hype. consider something heavier or bouncier. or maybe you're just not very good, which is something you can work on

people show up for acts they like and mosh to songs they know because they know the parts and, if you're cool, can share the mic for the lyrics. if you're playing local keep at it and engaging the crowd. also show up for other local bands and mosh hard for them. grab the mic if it's offered. if you're not meeting the people attending your shows you can't do banter and you don't have friendly people in the audience ready to start shoving. (if you're touring then it's doubly important to get people in close to compensate for this lack)

unfortunately it's as simple as the fact that he's a) canonically an ex-crustpunk who made canonically horrible punk music in a band called mucous membrane, meaning that song is far too polished for him (no hate, I listened to that song a lot back in my Spotify era and it's pretty perfect as a pop-adjacent song goes), and b) I don't know if he LIKES to play with fire. He likes to stick his fingers in places (he would say it's because he's a bastard but it's because he's ultimately a good bloke, even if he's not a nice bloke) but he also gets burnt a lot and then mopes around about it.

(I've somehow managed to unlock Quick Reader Juan again and I need to feed it. I already blitzed the entirety of Witch Hat Atelier and I don't think The Secret History will hold me long.)