1992: Faith No More, Angel Dust

By Tim Stafford

On my block, the quest to impress the older brothers was eternal. It’s why you would see my friends and me jumping from painful heights and ding dong ditching the neighbor rumored to watch the evening news with a shotgun resting on his lap. 

All we wanted was to hang out. To talk the shit. To hear the stories pushed to the limits of believability. The invitations to hang out were rare and lessened as our older brothers started high school and left us to rot in our car-less existence.

 —

My brother Matt was a senior when I started high school as a freshman. He entered high school as a full-blown hesher with a plethora of Iron Maiden T-shirts, a mullet, and a denim jacket complete with a Metallica back patch. By his senior year, he had morphed into the coolest dude in school. I’m talking, homecoming king, cheerleader girlfriend, invited to all the parties, cool. Matt had modified his hesher ways to assimilate into a preppier, more conservative environment but he never abandoned them. When he decided to let go of his mullet, he had my mom put it into a ponytail before she snipped it off.

He kept it in a cigar box under his bed.

___

I had begged Matt for years to take me to a concert. When Poison played the “World Series of Rock,” I was too young. Metallica tickets were too expensive. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin played at the Vic on a school night. These were all nice ways of telling a little brother to fuck off.

Now that I was in high school he took mercy on me. My brother, flush with goodwill and cash from his new gig bagging groceries, offered to buy me a ticket for Faith No More’s “Angel Dust” tour and take me as a birthday/welcome to high school gift.

—

We shared a room and always went to sleep listening to music Matt scammed from record clubs or bought with his part-time paycheck.  Bands like Dinosaur Jr, Nirvana, L7, and Anthrax were the soundtrack to our slumber. When Matt returned from Rose Records with Angel Dust on CD, it was put into immediate rotation.

Angel Dust is an album better suited for anything besides falling asleep to. I was used to falling asleep to heavy guitar riffs but Angel Dust frightened me. Unlike bands like Slayer and Metallica who were brutal all the time so you got used to it, Faith No More was subversive. They pulled you in with a melody or a catchy bassline then made you feel like you were trapped in a horror movie.

The song that best encapsulates the entire album is “Malpractice.” It is a terrifying song. Mike Patton shrieks, the guitars feedback, and the funky basslines are nowhere to be heard. At the 2:20 mark, the guitars and drums fade out. Keyboardist Roddy Bottum plays a simple, upbeat tinkle on the piano. Mike Patton’s shriek is gone and he instead sings wistfully. It is beautiful. It gives the listener hope. For about 30 seconds then it all comes crashing down into a mangled heap.

I thought about asking him to put on anything else. I didn’t because if he thought I couldn’t handle the album, why would he think I could handle a concert?

—

The Friday before the show, word of the concert had gotten around my school. Kids were curious. They wanted to know how I got tickets. Mostly they wanted to know if I was going to go into the moshpit.

My school was more of a HORDE Fest crowd. More of a, “playing the Spin Doctors on our way to Abercrombie and Fitch” crowd. Neck deep in the Grunge-era, they had seen videos of wild mosh pits with crowd surfing. They heard about a kid from another school whose cousin’s boyfriend was paralyzed from the neck down by an errant stagedive. 

“In the pit? Of course. It won’t be my first time in a mosh pit,” I replied, which wasn’t a flat-out lie but definitely not the entire truth.

—

It wasn’t until we promised to leave him alone that the DJ at the St. Hugh Junior High Spring Mixer capitulated and played “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. By the time the drums came in, the boys in Z Cavarricci pants and the girls with bangs teased to impossible heights fled the dancefloor leaving only a faint scent of Drakkar Noir. 

I’m not sure the minimum number of participants required to establish a proper mosh pit but I’m sure it’s more than 4 which is exactly how many kids stormed the dancefloor and proceeded to jump into each other.  We jumped shoulder into shoulder, looked for someone else to run into, chased them across the empty dancefloor, and repeated. It was exhausting.

The DJ held up his end, played the song all the way through, then made the logical transition into “Now That We’ve Found Love” by Heavy D. and the Boys. Our mosh pit was replaced by the kids who could spin, pivot and jump in rhythm as their gold nameplates bounced against their chests.

—

I did not feel like my previous mosh experience had adequately prepared me. I was still 5-foot-nothing, 120 pounds, with no stamina. I wanted to impress my brother. I wanted him to know I was cool. That, I too, am in no way annoying but actually very cool to have at a party. I did not want to go into the mosh pit but I had to prove myself.

The line to get into the Aragon Ballroom wrapped around the block. I had imagined it full of meathead dudes in sleeveless t-shirts and denim vests who would call me a wimp before smashing my face in.  I was too young to realize that Faith No More had effectively ostracized 90% of their audience when they released Angel Dust. They weren’t metal enough for the Metallica crowd and they weren’t pop enough for everyone else. Who were they left with? A line full of mostly skinny weirdos with bad dye jobs.

Once inside, I was relieved to see the Aragon Ballroom resisting the mosh pit phenomenon. The dancefloor was covered in rows of heavy, steel folding chairs clipped together to maintain rigid uniformity. They remained unmoved throughout the entire opening band’s set. That band, Helmet, though very moshable was not able to get past the steel line of defense. The chairs passed their first test and though I spoke disapprovingly of not being able to do my favorite activity of moshing, I secretly applauded their effort. 

—

When it was time for Faith No More, the lights went dark. The ceiling of the Aragon Ballroom was designed to make you feel like you were in an open-air courtyard in rural Spain. The balconies glowed warmly and artificial stars twinkled overhead. Then they launched into “Caffeine.”

From atop the chairs we stood upon, I could see heads and limbs scrambling about towards the stage. Then, like a pro wrestling match gone awry, I saw chairs tossed up into the air. Matt nudged me with a grin on his face like, “Check that out!” I nodded back like it was no big deal but I’m sure you could see my knees shaking if not for the X-Large tour shirt Matt bought for me when we walked in.

—

The chairs were a pipe dream.  Mike Patton recognized this as such and announced they were taking a chair collection. Chairs were torn apart and smashed to pieces. Pits of various sizes opened up all around us. A couple of Matt’s friends jumped into the pit that opened up to our right.

His friends disappeared into the pit and reappeared moments later panting, grinning, and telling us to get in. Matt told me that if I wanted to he wouldn’t tell our Mom. There was no backing out. I waited for an opening, said the tiniest of prayers, and jumped in.

This was much different than the St. Hugh Mixer. I’ve heard people describe moshpits as a communal experience. I’ve heard them described as cathartic exercises where one gives up the idea of the self and allows themselves to become one with the masses. My experience was more like getting stuck in a dryer full of hammers.

There were dozens of people running in a counterclockwise circle. My strategy was to not touch anyone. Unfortunately, there were others who were more than willing to make contact. A knee crashed into my hip. A fist into my back. My left foot found a puddle of beer and sent me crashing to the floor. I lay there in the fetal position, the music reduced to a dull muffle, when a stranger on the edge hooked me by the armpits and pulled me out. Nothing was broken. I wasn’t bleeding. Task completed, I staggered back to my brother and watched the rest of the show.

He never told Mom.

—

At school on Monday,  kids wanted to know everything and I got carried away. My 30-second excursion into the pit turned into a 30-minute odyssey. I rode the crowd: back to front and back again. I would’ve high-fived Mike Patton if that dick security guard hadn't gotten in the way. 

My classmates, smelling the bullshit piling up, went to my brother for verification. My tenuous reputation hung in the balance. My brother, the cool guy. The certifiably honest guy. He looked at me, he looked at them and spoke the god’s honest truth.

“Tim in the pit? I didn’t see him in the pit because he was too busy stagediving.”

Tim Stafford is a poet from Lyons, IL. He is the editor of the Learn Then Burn anthology series on Write Bloody Publishing. His first collection of poetry "The Patron Saint of Making Curfew" was released in 2021 by Haymarket Books. Tim has seen Faith No More 4 times, every time with his brother.