first act, a canadian outfit that leapt on stage right on time. (punctual punk rockers? what the what?) lead singer jumped around and had the high pitch scream thing down. all in skinny jeans and playing fast-fast-fast. for his in-between patter he joked about our quartet of champion sports teams and got booed for being a mapleleafs fan, lol. he also just couldn't gush enough about how "nice, kind and gentlemanly" were the other guys in the other bands on the tour. he was effusive in his thanks to the crowd.
rancid was up next and they killed. they weren't the headliners, so the set was on the short side, but they packed it with standards like "time bomb" and "ruby soho" plus some new stuff, like an acoustic beauty that included a stand-up bass and a mandolin. owner's only complaint was it wasn't loud enough. he was right.
last, the headliners, rise against, whom we didn't know, but it was clearly "their" crowd. they were good, but we didn't stay to the end.
now. here's the thing.
the owner and i rocked away many nights of our misspent youths in smelly smoky clubs. the floors were sticky, the bathrooms toxic and the music ear-shattering. boston and cambridge were both throbbing with live music every night, cheap, if not free. we each had our favorites and saw more than our share -- spending plenty of mornings after with ringing ears and hoarse throats. yeah, aerosmith and the cars were on the radio, but i was at the rat and jack's having my skull split by the dead kennedy's, the circle jerks, the cramps, the pogues, social distortion and sonic youth. the clash, elvis (the skinny angry english one, yo) and x. i was at several ramones concerts that devolved into riots with really pissed-off cops. the on-stage destruction wrought by the plasmatics (chainsawing televisions and driving onstage in a car wired to blow up) made townsend's guitar-smashing look like kid's play. (btw? wendy o. was wearing electrical tape on her topless nipples a generation before you saw a microphone, lady gaga, you poseur.)
england and the states were in the grips of thatcher and reagan. everything was fucked. these musicians were young and royally enraged. they cursed, they drank, they spat at the audience and they overdosed. they smashed stuff. "fuck you!"on the floor? moshing and crowd surfing. very drunk revved-up guys colliding and tossing each other around -- really hard -- a testosterone-charged raging bull of a crowd. fights broke out, people got hurt, bones got broken and there was blood. guys from the band often leapt into the crowd, or the crowd would muscle its way onstage. mayhem.
last night? yeah, the kids knew the words and they did the fist-in-the-air pumping. there was a barrier between the crowd and the stage and a long line of guys in polo shirts(!) behind that. kids would get airborne, passed along, laughing, and then gently handed off to the waiting arms of security, who toddled them off to the sides. when a guy fell down moshing, somebody offered him a hand and a pick-up. girls were down there, laughing and kind of dance-pushing, danger-free. the mohawks all wilted by the middle of the night. (psa: ya need glue for those danger spikes, kiddo, not aquanet.) nobody got punched, nobody challenged security and i don't think anybody got thrown out.
is there no more angry youth? life is too soft with i-phones and $200true religion jeans?
a little googling today: the guys of rise against, besides being members of peta, are identified with the "straight edge" movement. they don't smoke, drink, engage in recreational drugs or casual sex. it was a hall full of "nice kids", with lots of boys likely on ritalin. the tall guy blocking my view actually let me stand in front when he saw how small i am! instead of head-banging me, the guy to my left just shoulder-bumped me in the beat!
these are not gonna be the kids who write something like "debby gibson is pregnant with my 2-headed love child,", "dr. fucker, m.d.," and sure as hell won't re-do "too drunk to fuck." none of them even reacted to elvis or ian drury on the pa between bands! i'm guessing cuz they were too busy texting their elsewhere friends to be involved with what was happening then and there.
sigh. does this make it a better world? unless you're mormon or amish, i always thought youthful rebellion and shocking the olds was "normal". boundary-pushing and limits-testing. the only limits these kids seem to press are on the x-box.
yeah, back in the day. i r old.
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