By Kristin Fiore
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Not many men with advanced degrees and receding hairlines can
bring down a house packed to the rafters with wild
twenty-somethings.
But singer/songwriter Greg Graffin has always done things his
way – from his "too intelligent for the masses" punk to his heavy
dabbling in biology and PC politics. And, on Saturday he led Bad
Religion through a meager but raucous hour-long performance at The
Palace.
Though the show was packed with the usual two-minute punk
anthems and crowd surfing, it lacked the blatant stupidity and
rebellious antics of younger (or more desperate) punk bands. No
guitars were smashed, no ambulances arrived and Graffin’s stunts
were restricted to hurling plastic cups of ice water at the
sweat-drenched audience. His sincere, emphatic delivery of
issue-laden lyrics – punctuated with frequent chest-pounding, arm
flailing and finger-pointing – was enough to keep the crowd
riveted.
Not that he gave them a chance to wander. Songs done as tightly
and cleanly as their album versions followed each other in a
rapid-fire manner, broken only by jocular chatter and the newest
Olympic event, the Graffin Plastic Cup Toss.
He seemed unusually friendly and upbeat, especially for a punk
gig, cracking jokes and offering tongue-in-cheek apologies for not
playing all the song requests. After Graffin’s comments ("Someone
please remind our friend here that we did ‘Latch Key Kid’ last
night") and in-jest slams aimed at the previous band, drummer Bobby
Schayer would break out the vaudeville "da … da … tssss" drum
punctuation.
Despite Graffin’s supreme showmanship, one could almost sense
his age as he roamed around the stage wiping his glistening brow,
expending borrowed energy, his light grey shirt increasingly
invaded by the dark grey stain of sweat. The sweltering stage
lights were dramatized by a backdrop of ecstatic, demonic creatures
whose hues flashed, as the lights did, from burning reds and
oranges to cool blues and greens.
But Graffin was no match for the crowd, whose bottlenecked exit
through the Palace’s steamed-up glass doors spurred a security
guard to comment, "What, was it raining in there?"
Though Graffin seemed to be having so much fun that he might
have paid to get into his own show, the audience was a sea of
chaos. Save for a few pockets of sedate beer sippers and Hollywood
lameshits, the audience was pogo-dancing, (politely) moshing and
singing along to almost every song, all of which was encouraged by
Graffin. They even joined in the cup tossing, pelting each other
with ice, possibly in a vain attempt to cool off.
Old and new classics like "Suffer," "Recipe for Hate" and the
unusually aggressive "Them and Us" garnered extra shouts of
approval and more frenzied dancing, especially the evening’s
favorite,"Stranger Than Fiction." Shadows of flying legs and arms
often obscured the view of the band as bodies were indiscriminately
passed around overhead.
Graffin often took on the role of preacher and politician,
adamantly wailing phrases like, "We can take them on" (from "Them
and Us") above the din of the crowd. Fans enthusiastically
responded, joining in on whatever hookline and call to arms the
current song was driving home.
The punker’s role as the instigator, the outcast or the rebel
was ever-present, as Graffin asked his fellow El Camino High School
alumni at one point, "Do people still beat you up if you’ve got
short hair?"
He may or may not realize that Bad Religion has been around for
so long, that for quite a while kids got beat up for having long
hair. Everything comes full circle, though, and punk is again – or
for the first time – a marketable and central form of music.
Bad Religion survived the genre’s dry spells, and though they
have not reaped the monetary success or mainstream popularity of
many of the bands they inspired, such as Offspring or Green Day,
they are much more respected and recognized as punk veterans who
have spent 16 years at the center of the punk scene. Still, like
any successful band that had to work its way up, the band has been
put through the "sell-out" wringer. This sort of unfair criticism
has plagued the band since its signing with Atlantic Records at the
turn of the decade. Guitarist Greg Hetson mocked the "sell-out"
proponents by wearing a plain-wrap-style shirt that bore the hated
phrase.
Petty complaints and all, Bad Religion have a lot to live up
to.
Though they offer nothing shocking (they don’t need to pull that
trick) and occasionally fall into their own formula (to the extent
that one exists), they somehow avoid being dull and hackneyed. Even
heavy-handed messages or riffs and progressions that are
suspiciously similar take a back seat to the sheer power and energy
of the music’s unique vocal harmonies and driving rhythms. And for
every clichéd or overly preachy phrase, there are a handful of
insights and intelligently crafted arguments to chew on.
The main complaint at Saturday’s show, identically uttered by
two disgruntled fans, was, "That was fuckin’ short!". The main
complaint, that is, until the fans woke up on Sunday with stiff
necks and the sweat of 50 strangers on their clothes.
CONCERT: Bad Religion played at The Palace in
Hollywood on Saturday.