OFF! is officially very big, I am gonna see them in a few weeks at the Roxy but they were also playing a show at Amoeba on Tuesday night, and man, was the line really long!! I didn’t really expected it, I saw them at Vacation Vinyl when there were 20 people on line, but I guess all this Black Flag nostalgia has found its way to OFF! Hardcore is not dead, and a very male middle-age crowd which wanted its late afternoon punk fix, had invaded the place.
OFF! has a new record out, ‘Wasted Years’, a Raymond Pettibon artwork (take this Greg Ginn!) a tour with Cerebral Ballzy and a cool, cartoonish (and bloody) poster to go with, and they may be on route to big success seeing how many guys had ditched their daytime job to be on line in the middle of the afternoon. Black Flag may be a current Los Angeles obsession, there is not a show I go to where I don’t see one of these famous t-shirts, and that’s why someone in the crowd requested, ‘Nervous Breakdown’,…’ Do not mistake me for Henry Rollins, Do not mistake me for Henry Rollins’ repeated several times Keith Morris. He always talked with this half-pissed tone so I am still not sure what to think. Is Keith Morris talking to Henry Rollins? Is OFF! part of Henry Rollins’ radio show? While Rollins didn’t want to have anything to do with it, Morris was/is part of this Flag thing – and so the Nervous Breakdown request wasn’t out of hand, but they (Dimitri Coats, Mario Rubalcaba and Steven McDonald beside Morris) were here to play OFF! songs.
Despite the late afternoon torpor, the heat (it was 90F yesterday), OFF! live is still very efficient, some old-school punk, with aggressive moves, very short songs that reach you like bullets, and Morris’ monochord voice, more pissed-off than ever. I was quite far from the small stage, and there wasn’t any usual dive/surf moves, people certainly can’t do that in the store, but you could tell the crowd, stuck between narrow CDs rows, was moving nevertheless. But just tell me, with this eternally bright sun, where do this darkness and this anger come from? I believe Keith Morris lives in my neighborhood, I stumbled on him a couple of times at the Silver Lake farmers market, and this is a charming place to live… But he has never stop raising his fist against the entire world, the police, people, screaming songs like ‘I won’t be a casualty’, ‘Hypnotized’, ‘Exorcised’…
There wasn’t anything new there compared to their previous album, it was still the same sound, the same assaults with Coats and McDonald’s muscular and dynamic performances. But there also were slower songs (‘Hypnotized’ was one of them) and the rhythm changes, the songs weren’t firing rockets anymore, it was muddier but people still loved it, filming the hell out of the show with iPhones from every corner. Don’t get me wrong Keith Morris is still angry, very angry, still talking about the old days, Aerosmith anyone? still plugging an ad for The Gun Club… now how long can they do that? Morris is 58 but he still looked possessed on stage and after the show, they were signing the LP after the show like real rock stars.
For pictures of the show, go here.
