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[Help Help Hooray] The Age-Old Question of When to Throw Horns

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Hype Hype Hooray is normally a go-to resource for philosophical analyses of popular music, but today it is Help Help Hooray, a go-to resource for music-related personal advice. Have a music-related problem you need help with? Email knoxroadblog@gmail.com!

I was at a Toro Y Moi show with my roommate, let’s call him “Dirk,” and right in the middle of “New Beat” where he breaks back into that synth lead like crazy, Dirk starts throwing horns in the air. I get that it’s a high energy moment, but I just feel like the horns don’t belong at a Toro Y Moi show, ya know? Should I sit him down and talk to him about it, or should I just forget about it? Help!

Help Out Right Now Soon!

This is a very tricky issue, HORNS. Throwing horns, or extending one’s index and pinky fingers while tucking the rest together, then thrusting that hand in the air, has roots that reach back into ancient superstition. “The Sign of the Horns,” aka “Devil Horns,” aka “mano cornuto,” was thought to ward off evil or else summon Satan or else imply cuckoldry. Like every other combination of raised and lowered fingers, it has several different meanings across cultures and over time.

In rock culture, the meaning of the horns is more vague. The sign’s first appearance is debatable. Gene Simmons, Ronnie James Dio, Ozzie Osbourne and even John Lennon have received credit for bringing the horns to rock ‘n’ roll. The horns gained popularity in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s at heavy metal and otherwise “hard” rock shows, but have since infiltrated shows of all genres, from Big & Rich to Britney Spears.

To throw horns or not to throw horns, that is certainly a big question at a show. On one hand live music is all about uninhibited freedom to enjoy the music, to let it flow through you and to truly experience it. On the other hand, it can be embarrassing for everyone when you’re the only person throwing double horns to Laura Veirs. It’s always best to test the temperature of the audience. If you start to feel that macho, fist-pumping energy that summons the horns, by all means throw them up. Just know that throwing unwarranted horns is a major concert faux pas. I won’t necessarily judge you but there are plenty of people, like you yourself, HORNS, who will.

Judging by your reaction, and the energy of the music, it sounds like your roommate did in fact throw inappropriate horns, HORNS. But let’s not judge too harshly, lest we wind up getting lost in the energy of a show and throwing unwarranted horns ourselves. It happens to the best of us.

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Art

Podcast Painkillers

Editor’s Note: Please welcome new Knox Road contributor, Art Tavana. Art is based in L.A. and will be writing long-form, short-form and everything in between. Enjoy his first piece about our favorite kind of people. [Image via Lovato Design, photo by Joslyn Baker.]

Music snobbery is rooted in the blind pursuit of a transient experience; a temporary fix predicated on unearthing new music during the incubation phase of an artist’s career. But unless you’re Lester Bangs discovering Astral Weeks for the first time, it usually amounts to wasted hours on SoundCloud listening to bands that sound like shit Robin Pecknold wrote during a moonshine-induced bath in the backwoods of some mountainous terrain in the Pacific Northwest. While the archeologist (i.e. Indiana Jones) is rewarded with recognition in ’80s adventure movies and gooey diary entries from starry-eyed college girls who have a thing for bull-whips — the music snob is fulfilled with the momentary experience of listening to a band with 12 ‘Likes’ on Facebook that some tattooed baristas might find ‘interesting.’ It’s the experience of downloading a mixtape by a rapper named Jonwayne, who takes you back to a Brian Eno record during a daytime nap, followed by wondering why you’re listening to Beethoven’s Ninth, drunk, and writing about a band that sounds like the Savages, but looks like the Bangles. Coffee with condensed milk and a side of KCRW’s Morning Become Eclectic is routine. The need to break through the doors of perception and find something different becomes habitual.

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