Rancid
Hometown: Berkeley, California
http://www.rancidrancid.com/
Friday, July 10, 2006
Emo's (Austin, Texas)
Also: Street Dogs, Complete Control
Rancid Tour Schedule
Rancid Concert Photo Gallery
In the documentary film
Punk: Attitude, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders states that "punk" only lasted 100 days back in the 70s. If that in fact is the case, no one bothered to tell the band Rancid, currently ripping through a 100+ show cross country tour over the summer and fall, including a two-day gig at Austin's Emo's. That's a lot of days crammed into a tiny tour bus. Lotta bad food, hotels. That's pretty old school punk, if you ask me.
This show was in Emo's open air stage area, half of which is covered, but the open air didn't mean cool refreshing breeze, Austin's neverending heat wave roiling all. This was purely a punk show, by definition. There was no mosh pit. The whole audience was the pit. Loud, fast, long, this was a great old fashioned get in there grind 'em up and sweatfest.
Rancid played for more almost two hours, covering a number of songs from their catalog (they say they are picking from 150 songs each night and each set is different), including a number of acoustic songs towards the end of the set. I kept pushing into the crowd taking a few pictures, then getting slowly pushed back, then trying to work my way up again. Luckily everyone who saw me with my camera kind of helped out, but I always seemed to end up behind the same tall guy.
Unfortunately in all that slamming and crowd surfing I wasn't really able to keep track of the set list (I was too busy trying to duck the steel-toed boots), but Rancid seemed to play forever, stopping only to save a fan from being crushed and again later to gear up for the acoustic set. They wandered all over their music catalog, covering most of their charted songs as well as a number of crowd favorites. They did cover most of their songs from "
...And Out Come The Wolves." Tim and Lars were defintely the real energy focus coming from the stage, but Matt and Brett slogged away in the heat, not missing a beat.
This is a great band to see live if you want to go see a punk show in a small venue, but be prepared for the crowd. It's not often you get to see such a big name band playing small clubs. If you get a chance to see Rancid, this would be the tour to do it.
Unfortunately I didn't make it into the show in time to catch either opening act. Thanks to Bill at Emo's, Rancid's tour manager, and Rancid for hooking me up with the photo pass.