December 13, 2003

not so silent night

We were on the freeway, slightly late because of traffic heading into the city, when we heard Lars from Rancid being interviewed. He said they weren’t going to be checking punk rock passes at the door — punk is for everyone. He got into the scene because he was a messed up kid and found others who were messed up just like him in the punk rock scene.

Because we were late we missed the first band. I wasn’t too bummed. Rancid was second on the bill. Those guys still rock it old school. I was almost bitten by the “mosh pit bug” when they started playing. They played a good mix of all of their twelve year history which was nice. At one point a fight broke out in the pit and they stopped the music. “I don’t give a f*ck if this is a Live 105 show or not — there won’t be any fighting while Rancid is on stage! If you feel like fighting, go into the bathroom, jerk off then come back out here and join us for a good time.” The crowd, of course cheered and they returned to the music.

Iggy Pop was never a guy I spent much time listening to, but he’s a legend and it was great to see the master contortionist live from about 50 feet away. I knew more songs than I thought and enjoyed the ones I didn’t know.

Act four took twice as long to setup as everyone else. They had to get all the keyboards, steel drums, turn tables and other stuff setup just right. My guess is that someone was also probably backstage sorting through the M&M’s too. Once Offspring finally did get on stage they played the usually favorites with one or two tossed in from Ignition for good measure. Overall: unimpressed.

The next band could have come out, done one song and I would have paid $35 for it. Just the fact that Jenkins, Navarro and Perry were all present was good enough for me. Perry made a grand entrance after some jamming by the other three. I love the way Perry asks these questions of the audience and they turns them around so that the expected answer is the wrong answer. Then segues into the next song. I have now officially seen all of my top three bands live.

Oh, and at the end — after the encore, which I didn’t think was going to happen — Dave Navarro did a little prostration, Buddhist style. It was beautiful... the whole night was beautiful.

posted @ 1:17 PM

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