Scene 1: I’m a little kid in the backseat of my dad’s car, and a Bad Religion song comes on the radio. He tells me that they’re kinda like Green Day, if Green Day were “a real punk band.” It will shape my perception of both bands and the genre as a whole well into adulthood.
Scene 2: A friend texts me in the days leading up to the show: “Are you going to the boomer punk gig on Saturday?” I do not need to ask what gig he’s talking about.
Scene 3: I arrive at the venue on a Saturday night for a double-bill of two of punk music’s most revered legends, and find myself immediately befuddled by the scene spilling out from the venue onto the streets around it.
I’ve attended dozens of shows at Revolution Live (many of which have been documented with reviews on this site), but I’ve never seen anything like the scene at the venerable Fort Lauderdale club this past Saturday night. Billed as taking place at “Revolution Live Outdoors,” I assumed this gig, like so many recent others, would take place behind the venue at the courtyard that connects the club to America’s Backyard. This was not the case. Upon arrival, the street behind the venue was closed, the parking lot to its north had been fully cordoned off, and a temporary outdoor stage had been erected. Thousands of people were milling about. This was not going to be like most other Rev shows.
I’ve never been great at estimating attendance numbers, but I’d guess that the crowd for this gig was somewhere over the 4,000 mark. The whole operation felt more like a small festival than a regular show, albeit one with questionable infrastructure and little-to-no breathing room in the packed crowd. Depending on where one chose to settle in among the masses, the sound from the stage ranged from a warbled mess of mumbles and static distortion to something resembling an actual rock concert, as long as the show was audible over the sound of attendees complaining about how long the bar lines were.
Social Distortion, the pioneering SoCal punk outfit that has been performing for more than 25 years under the tutelage of sole remaining original member Mike Ness, is a touchstone for generations of punks dating back to its first albums in the early 1980s. Bad Religion is a decidedly more hard-nosed version of that same SoCal punk aesthetic, and has been part of the scene for nearly as long behind the leadership of singer and sole constant member Greg Graffin. That this is the first time the two acts have toured together came as something of a shock considering what a no-brainer it seems like—not only do they share geographic and aesthetic bonds, but both bands are signed to Epitaph Records.
It seems the bands have been switching off opener/closer duties on a night-by-night basis, and for this show Bad Religion drew the short straw. The group opened the show with a rousing set that clocked in right around an hour, playing through the last dregs of the late-April sunset and covering nearly all of its touchstone tracks, from “American Jesus” to “21st Century (Digital Boy)” and beyond.
Social Distortion took the stage after a half-hour break and tried valiantly to recapture the energy their predecessors had supplied, with mixed results. In its heyday, the group was prescient in its adoption of disparate styles, helping to launch the “alternative music” tag that critics so eagerly slapped onto acts of the 1980s that didn’t fit neatly into a single genre. But the slower and more melodic facets of its sound felt labored following the barrage that was the opening set. Coupled with banter that was near-indecipherable and the omission of “Story of My Life,” arguably the group’s biggest hit, a set that closed with a duo of Johnny Cash covers failed to resonate in the way I’d hoped it would.
As a fan of the music and ethos of both of these bands, I’m happy to see them on the road together for a successful tour that’s undoubtedly securing them a well-earned payday. But I’m unsure whether the ends justify the means—is this still “punk?” If you love these bands and you had a blast at this show, whether it was your first (or 10th) time seeing them live, who am I to rain on your parade? Feel free to flip me the proverbial bird and close this page. But if you were hoping for something that would capture even a fragment of the electric, subversive spirit of the genre that these two acts helped to pioneer so many years ago? I’d guess you left as disappointed as I did.
SET LISTS
Bad Religion:
1000 More Fools
Supersonic
The Defense
No Control
New Dark Ages
Recipe for Hate
Only Rain
Skyscraper
Fuck You
Come Join Us
Turn on the Light
Do What You Want
My Sanity
Struck a Nerve
Sorrow
Infected
I Want to Conquer the World
21st Century (Digital Boy)
Against the Grain
You
American Jesus
We’re Only Gonna Die
Fuck Armageddon… This Is Hell
Social Distortion:
Bad Luck
Through These Eyes
I Wasn’t Born to Follow
Tonight
Cold Feelings
Mommy’s Little Monster
The Creeps
Hour of Darkness
1945
Over You
Warn Me
Reach for the Sky
Ball and Chain
Encore:
Born to Kill
Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash cover)
Ring of Fire (Johnny Cash cover)
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