Social Distortion, Descendents and The Chats Prove Punk Still Belongs to Everybody!
There was a point Saturday night when I stopped trying to count the crowd surfers.
It was useless.
One would disappear over into the hands of security and another would already be coming from somewhere near the middle of the floor, carried forward by a packed crowd of close to 3,500 people inside The Bomb Factory in Dallas. There were teenagers, twenty-somethings, people who had probably been seeing Social Distortion since cassette tapes were still a reasonable way to buy music, and a noticeable number of dads standing alongside their daughters.
The Chats
That last part stuck with me. Because for all the talk about punk being angry, rebellious or confrontational, what happened at The Bomb Factory on August 29 felt just as much like something being handed down. The bill itself almost made that inevitable: Australia’s The Chats, Descendents and Social Distortion. Three generations of punk, three very different versions of it, sharing one stage.
The Chats
The Chats had started out the night but didn’t play like an opening band. They came out fast, loud and wonderfully abrasive, running through a 14-song set that included “Panic Attack,” “Ticket Inspector,” “6L GTR,” “Identity Theft,” “Smoko” and “Pub Feed.”
The Chats
There wasn’t much easing anybody into the evening. The Chats essentially kicked the door open and told Dallas to catch up. Their stripped-down Australian punk works particularly well in a room like The Bomb Factory because there isn’t much distance between the and the audience. They play with the velocity of a band that sounds a little dangerous, which was exactly what this crowd needed.
Then came Descendents.
The Descendents
There is something inherently funny about watching a band whose catalog includes “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” play that song decades later and somehow make the argument even stronger. Perhaps none of us really have.
They ripped through 24 songs, from “Everything Sux” and “Hope” to “Clean Sheets,” “Nothing With You,” “‘Merican,” “Suburban Home,” “Bikeage” and “Smile.” The pace rarely let up long enough to think about how long this band has been doing it.
The Descendents
Punk has always had a weird relationship with age. It was built around youth, impatience and the idea that whatever came before you was probably bullshit. Yet here were Descendents proving that getting older doesn’t necessarily mean becoming tame.
Milo Aukerman doesn’t need to pretend he’s 22. The songs don’t need him to.
The Descendents
“When I Get Old,” once practically a joke about some distant and unimaginable future, lands differently now. So does “I Don’t Want to Grow Up.” Time changed the context without ruining the songs. In some ways, it makes them that much better.
You could see that story playing out in the audience too.
The Descendents
Before the show I met Clay Stringer, who had brought his daughters Emily and Olivia. When I asked Clay how he had managed to turn his daughters onto bands like Descendents and Social Distortion, his answer was far less calculated than I expected.
“They kind of just did it themselves,” he said. “We’re always listening to music.”
Then one of his daughters quickly corrected the historical record.
Social Distortion
“They played it a lot for us when we were younger,” she said, before admitting she had once been “forced to watch a Descendents documentary” when she was about nine.
Apparently, that’s all it took to draw her in and make her a fan. Asked what eventually connected her to Descendents, the answer wasn’t nostalgia. It couldn’t have been. These weren’t her memories from 1982.
“Some of the lyrics relate to me,” she said.
Social Distortion
That sentence probably explains punk’s staying power better than most long essays about punk ever will. Clay’s daughters also listen to hardcore, Bad Religion, Circle Jerks, K-pop, Spanish music, Japanese music, Russian music and just about anything else they can find. One described having a playlist around 50 hours long. Punk isn’t the only thing they listen to. It’s simply part of their musical vocabulary.
That matters, because these bands are no longer being preserved only by the people who were there the first time. Parents are introducing them to their next generation of fans and although time has past since many of the songs were created, the vibe and lyrics still stick the landing and test of time.
Social Distortion
Social Distortion then tops off the night.
The tour comes behind Born To Kill, their first studio album in 15 years, released in May, and the Dallas show balanced that new chapter against songs people in the room have carried around for most of their lives.
Mike Ness opened with “Born to Kill,” then the band moved straight into “Ring of Fire,” Social Distortion’s longtime transformation of the Johnny Cash standard into something that sounds completely at home in their world.
Social Distortion
What continues to separate Social Distortion from a lot of punk bands is that Ness has never really sounded interested in staying inside punk’s boundaries. There is too much rockabilly, blues, country and straight-up American rock and roll in the bands DNA. That has always been their advantage. “Machine Gun Blues” rolled with that swagger. “Ball and Chain” sounded enormous.
But the moment that stayed with me happened later.
Social Distortion
Before “Story of My Life,” Ness talked about the song and what it had become over the years. And standing there listening to several thousand people prepare to sing it back to him, the title suddenly seemed almost absurdly appropriate. Ness wrote his story. Then people borrowed it for their own. That is what songs do when they survive long enough. Eventually the songwriter loses sole ownership of them.
“Story of My Life” belongs to the kid who discovered Social Distortion last month. It belongs to the guy who first heard it in 1990. It belongs to somebody remembering a breakup, a bad decision, high school, an old friend, a dead friend or some version of themselves they barely recognize anymore.
And Saturday night, it belonged to a father standing next to his daughters.
Social Distortion
That may have been the real story of the show.
Punk didn’t look young or old inside The Bomb Factory. It just looked and felt like love. Love for bands, for music, for the feeling it gives you as you feel the sound waves crash against your body, or the hands that lift you above and across the audience into the hands of security, to take a minute to breathe, then wash, rinse repeat.
The encore drove the point home with “Reach for the Sky,” “Dear Lover” and “Don’t Drag Me Down,” three songs built around survival, damage and refusing to disappear.
Social Distortion
The Chats represented what punk still can become. Descendents showed what happens when you keep going. Social Distortion showed what happens when the songs keep going even further than you do.
Clay Stringer probably summed up the generational part of it without meaning to when he said his daughters had “kind of just” found the music themselves. Maybe that’s how this all survives.
Social Distortion
Parents put the songs on. Kids roll their eyes. Somebody gets forced to watch a Descendents documentary at nine years old. Then one day Dad is standing beside his daughter at a Social Distortion show while another body sails overhead. Then suddenly it becomes part of their story too.
Social Distortion
Setlists
The Chats
Billy Backwash’s Day
Dead on Site
Paid Late
Panic Attack
Nazi March
Temperature
Ticket Inspector
6L GTR
Ross River
Drinking for Two
Struck by Lightning
Identity Theft
Smoko
Pub Feed
Descendents
Everything Sux
Hope
I Don’t Want to Grow Up
Clean Sheets
I Like Food
Nothing With You
Rotting Out
Myage
Victim of Me
When I Get Old
Weinerschnitzel
‘Merican
I’m Not a Punk
Good Good Things
My Dad Sucks
Coolidge
Coffee Mug
Without Love
Suburban Home
I’m the One
I Wanna Be a Bear
Thank You
Bikeage
Smile
Social Distortion
Born to Kill
Ring of Fire
Untitled
Tonight
No Way Out
The Creeps
Mommy’s Little Monster
The Way Things Were
Machine Gun Blues
Don’t Keep Me Hanging On
Partners in Crime
Ball and Chain
Through These Eyes
Story of My Life
Encore
Reach for the Sky
Dear Lover
Don’t Drag Me Down