The Offspring performing May 18 in Santa Barbara, Calif. Photo from .
As I sat, swayed, danced, and bounced through the , one song kept bubbling to top of mind: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s “Whatever Happened To My Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Surrounded by the next generation of punk rock girls and boys, happily bouncing and pogo-ing to the tunes Saturday at , I tried to share the bliss they were feeling.
But I missed any sense of urgency, or riot, or anger, or passion — or anything that should be part and parcel of a rock show. My inner Jack Black (in the guise of Mr. Schneebly) kept ribbing me with the same disgust we, the first MTV Generation, felt when we realized we’d been hoodwinked, and our rock ‘n’ roll had, once again, been appropriated by The Man. Not so with the kids — they played right along most of the day and night — though not obliviously so…
Saturday’s Big Gig, sponsored by Channel 93.3 (another station sucked into the cloud of Clear Channel, and well on its way through the end game of musical homogenization) in and of itself wasn’t bad. The lineup featured local wonders Flobots, Boston’s Dropkick Murphys, new sensation Paramore, and the Offspring, along with the Spill Canvas, Dropping Daylight and Skyfox. There was a Locals Only stage, which featured a lineup of five up-and-coming bands including Life in Electric, the Heyday, Rough Draft, For Love of Ivy and Saving Verona.
Like just about any festival with competing stages, it was impossible to catch more than a glimpse of the bands when both stages were filled. Fortunately, the Locals Only stage was closed and breaking down before Flobots hit the main stage — providing the chance to focus. Flobots is currently riding a swell of popularity and media attention — most of it deserved, due to their creative lyrics.
The band definitely had agendas, from legalizing weed to being anti-war, and they conveyed those messages, albeit sufficiently vague in any real direction. The problem is that their brand of hip-hop isn’t really all that new (a recurring theme throughout the festival). With the exception of some unique instrumentation (you might even call it a dub of the Denver Sound) centered on the excellent, creative viola of Mackenzie Roberts, stylistically, we could have been seeing any one of a number of hip-hop bands in the vein of Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul.
Adequate renditions of “Handlebars,” “Rise” and “Fight With Tools” were bracketed by calls to action and unity — but they fell short of really activating the crowd beyond any hand-swaying and clapping along. Gone are the days of screaming the lyrics of the latest “Rock Against Bush” (or “Insert President HERE”)” anthem, because you feel at one with the band’s rage. Where’d that rage go?
Strike one.
Next up, Dropkick Murphys, who put on as powerful a show as you can when you specialize in Irish drinking songs powered by Oi!-charged hardcore. Don’t get me wrong — Dropkick Murphys were definitely the most fun of the festival. They were responsible for a significant, happy mosh-pit on the walkway between the two lawn seating areas of Fiddler’s Green. It’s always good to see a pit where the kids are actually slamming and laughing together, where everyone accepts it as part of the party, rather than something between an inconvenience and a reason to have to beg the bouncers to not throw your buddy out ’cause he messed up one of the 10,000 pristine white ball caps in the audience.
Murphys fans have a blast most of the time, and seem to lead a good portion of the crowd — at least up in the cheap seats (as noted by Murphys singer Al Barr, calling us all “Cheap f***ing bastards!” in an appreciative Boston accent) — into a happy frenzy.
Paramore an obvious audience favorite, next hit the stage. This is the band a good 75 percent of the crowd probably came to see, and the crowd was rewarded (again) with a perfectly adequate set. Paramore, led by newfound super-firecracker Hayley Williams, put on an energized, 50 minute set. Williams sets a high bar for shared band energy, seemingly all over the large stage, all the time. And the band did well backing up her powerful vocals. Sadly, they backed it up with a sound that continues to grind out from band after band over the past five to ten years, masquerading as punk.
The band sounds just like the latest incarnation of Fall Out Boy, or 30 Seconds To Mars, although Hayley’s presence brings back some distant flavors of a band from the early ’80s (and I’m definitely dating myself here) called Quarterflash. Again, it’s not the band’s fault — they’re playing what they know, and what they know well. Problem is, we all know it all too well — and this young audience doesn’t realize what it’s missing.
Strike two.
Finally — and I mean finally in the literal sense, since the break between bands was well over 40 minutes — Offspring hit the stage, the crowd erupting in a half-hearted cheers. Offspring deserve better than that, but I could understand the crowd’s indifference. To this crowd, the band’s hits (“Come Out and Play,” “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” and others — werer closer to classic rock than what they’ve been taught is modern rock.
In between songs, Dexter and Noodles carried on canned parlay, seemingly trying to re-energize the majority of the crowd who were by then two shades into their post-festival exhaustion and preparing for the traffic mess. Most of the kidding around fell on the crowd like rain, until Noodles mentioned that he “smelled a lot of pot” — which garnered some cheering — by those who weren’t stoned.
The band (again) performed adequately, but is that what a rock ‘n’ roll festival is supposed to be about? Words like “adequate” shouldn’t be taken lightly by any self-respecting rock ‘n’ roll lover (and, if you’re a punk band worth your own lucre, you wouldn’t even be reading a review of your show anyway). Like the Offspring song says: “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” Problem is, I don’t think they even know it…
Strike three.
Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer and regular Reverb contributor.
