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| Tony Adolescent and Tim Napalm: Survivors of the 1998 Adz/Hormones Tour Of Texas! (Photo snapped by someone backstage at Scoot Inn on my phone.) |
Live
review: The adolescents
Wed.,
mar. 13Th, Scoot inn, Austin, Tx.
(Yeah,
it's a bit late. What the fuck...?)
The
crowd's rather thick, and so's the air, bearing the heat 'n' humidity
more befitting Austin in July than during SXSW. A young idiot two
humans to my left unzips his worn Hot Topic black stretch jeans,
pulls out his plug, and begins hydrating the concrete and every leg
within splashing range with his whizz. A big OC-circa-1981-looking
bruiser roughly my age grabs the uncouth youth and begins
administring an instant ettiquette lesson with fists and boots,
screaming about what a jackass he is, then hurls him out of the crowd
and into the arms of security.
The
bruiser turns around, sees me, and grins, “Whoa! You're Tim Napalm
from The Hormones! I love your band!”
Three
songs later, Adolescents singer Tony Brandenberg yells from the
stage, “Is Tim Stegall still here? I though I saw him earlier...?
Oh, there you are! Hey, Tim!” And straight into “Amoeba....”
It's
2013, and The Adolescents still stand tall and proud. There's no
longer an Agnew to be found among the six string section, but the
current manners of the Gibsons (whose names escape me) handle the
crunch and octave runs beautifully. It almost doesn't matter: If Tony
and bassist Steve Soto are on the stage, it's gonna be The
Adolescents up there, and they're gonna be great. This is loud,
proud, vintage punk rock at its tightest and most powerful. The blue
album classics are so tuneful and brilliantly constructed, they never
grow moss, always sounding amazing whatever year they're being
played. And any new noise The Adolescents conjure will rock just as
hard. And they're gonna play hard, with passion, ferocity, and
commitment.
But
it's 2013, and Tony B. is a school teacher when he's not an
Adolescent. And he and the band flew in especially for this Converse
and Thrasher co-sponsored
SXSW day party, were raging through their set, and were to be back at
the airport in a matter of hours, whereupon Tony would be up a few
hours after that to
take his class on a field trip. Adulthood does not stop, even when
you're perpetually Adolescent....
There's
those who would sneer at all this, sneer at the idea of a classic
punk band playing the hits for a perpetually moshing crowd of
umpteenth generation punks not even born when these songs were new.
Fuck 'em. Punk did
change the world, in a very small but still significant manner. Punk
created a world within The World in which we can go wild and think
and live differently. It became modern, urban, electric folk music, a
sphere within which raw, honest expression can live and breathe,
where musicians of resilience and power can be working musicians
making some semblance of a living out of screaming out their pain and
world view. What is so wrong with that? No, it's no longer The
Revolution. But we won it, even if the rest of the world doesn't see
it that way. And as long as it still affords a place for a band as
great as The Adolescents to live and breathe and thrive, I'm all for
it. It's enough for me.
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