No stronz at this gig - music bloggers not welcome

A minor fascination of recent years have been the ever-evolving straplines to gigs where the event organiser or venue is making some kind of "this is the type of event this is" declaration. For example, this from Villa Vegan in Milan.

Yes, that's right - "no cops // no bundles // no machi // no bullshit". Or so their website says. Actually, like almost everything you see in English translation in Italy (including all sorts of official announcements from the city or regional authorities), this is pretty ropily done. Fasci is fascists (from fascio, meaning "bundle of sticks"), so er, don't turn up for a gig in Via Litta Modignani if you're a bundle of sticks. You won't get in! Stronz doesn't really mean bullshit either, I'm told, more like "asshole" (ie a type of person). Anyway, lazy Italian-English translations aside, the whole business of announcing the "ethic" of the place is kind of interesting. I've been to quite a few gigs in the UK where they have stuff about "No dickheads" (how did they even know I was coming ...?). On the one hand this is surely overkill. These semi-underground/DIY-type shows aren't massively likely to attract right-wing macho thugs (what music do they go to? Maybe stadium concerts, where they also watch their football). But the organisers must know this so it's really just a bit of "open-code" messaging - "this is who we are, we hope and expect you're like us, come to this event, we're cool people, this will be a great show ...".  

So, OK, I can live with it. I like places with er, cool people, and I don't like fascists myself. Cops and bullshit? - no, not so much either. Funnily enough though, plenty of things I go to these days do in fact feature quite a few "machi" - they're the burly blokes who dominate the mosh pits, smiling as they maniacally charge into each other (and those nearby) and generally upsetting the rhythm. I've previously railed against the mosh pit warriors on this blog so won't bother doing it again, but it's noticeable to me that on the rare occasions that the mosh pit switches to being women-only the whole atmosphere changes and then the freaky dancing becomes fun to watch and not just a tired ritual between people who ought to stick to rugby ("no stronz, no rugby" might be a good strapline for Villa Vegan in future). Personally, I'd like to see more out and out "twee" gigs where gentle swaying is about as rowdy as it gets and the predominant vibe is camply ironic not punch-the-air pugnaciousness - but, we are where we are. Anwyay, the future of gig ethics straplines? Maybe we need some new ones. "No people who write over-obvious straplines to their gigs"? Or even (gulp), "No bloggers who criticise our shows while sitting on their computers but who never organise anything and never will because that's the only kind of stronz they're fit for  ...".