If you go to enough shows, especially of the general-interest music festival variety, then you've seen the banana costumes. People like to show up in banana costumes, or in other attention-grabbing Spirit Halloween getups, and jump around. Maybe they want to go viral. Maybe they like the idea of becoming part of the performance. Maybe they're just animated by the pure spirit of whimsy. But in certain situations, the banana costume will not make you any friends. In certain situations, it'll make you a target.
On Friday night, Terror's huge North American spring tour had its big finale at Toronto's Lithuanian House. That tour had a huge lineup of openers, with Pain Of Truth, End It, and Start Today all on board, and it hit a lot of larger venues. Someone showed up to the Toronto gig in a banana costume. This unfortunate individual found himself on the wrong side of End It, the Baltimore bruisers who released the impressive full-length debut Wrong Side Of Heaven last year.
In a video posted on the r/Hardcore subreddit over the weekend, End It call out the bananaman. Frontman Akil Godsey said, "Banana guy, come to the front. Fuck are you doing, my n***a? No no no no no. You don't get rewarded for doing that shit. He wanted the attention, and now he has it. The bassist (I don't think it's Pat Martin anymore) added, "And now, everyone here has to kill you."
Godsey offered End It's setlist to anyone who would "strip the banana... I'm just saying! You was asking for attention, now you got it!" Within a few seconds, that banana got peeled. On Reddit, the original poster wrote that it was "pretty hilarious" and added, "I saw banana guy outside between sets. Poor dude was sulking, Said he was beat up and sore. He said he was more sad about not having the costume anymore [shrugging emoji]."
Perhaps this requires some additional context. In certain music scenes, people love to do wacky stunts, like the thing where everyone sits down in a moshpit and pretends to row a boat together. But in the realm of down-the-middle hardcore, people hate that shit. I hear many, many complaints about people who come to shows in colorful costumes, looking for attention. Given that these shows tend to be full-on physical rituals, if not all-out brawls, it's not exactly a shock that a banana-costume guy might find out that he's in the wrong room at the wrong time.
On his Instagram story the next day, the banana guy, who posts a lot of photos of himself in the costume at shows, wrote that the whole episode was "exactly the opposite of what Hardcore is supposed to be... I was an unwilling participant, attacked and clothing removed at the direction of a band I paid to see... What would you do?"
This isn't the first time a hardcore band has called out a banana guy from the stage, and I doubt it'll be the last. The r/Hardcore subreddit has made a lot of memes out of this particular incident.
On Twitter, Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner weighs in.
Personally, I have zero feelings about bananamen at hardcore shows. People should do whatever makes them happy. But main character syndrome is a real thing, and people do get sick of it. If you really want to rock a banana costume at a hardcore show, just know that you are putting yourself at risk.
