The Adolescents’ fans are a bunch of wild ones, they are very colorful, wearing full punk outfits and Mohawks, but some have a certain violent tendency…During all these years I have been to Amoeba, I had never seen a fight but there’s a start for everything and two big guys, totally wasted by the way, fought on the sidewalk just next to me, when we were all waiting online to get inside the store. And they were not joking! It took some time for the Amoeba security to intervene, one was getting seriously beaten up in the face, and the crowd was cheering up! Man, I almost got scared! Something tell me that the Adolescents shows in clubs must be a lot of fun with this kind of jerks around, Really, punk is not dead in LA, I can tell you!
Okay, I may pass on future shows but I nevertheless managed to get inside Amoeba, despite the million of punks on line, despite the chaos. The Adolescents had attracted a huge crowd for their in-store at Amoeba on Wednesday night, organized for the release of their last album, ’La Vendetta… è un piatto che va servito freddo’ which came out February 10th on Frontier Records. And it was not really surprising, the band is a Southern California punk legend, some heroes of the 80s just like Black Flag or the Descendents, voted the N° 1 best Orange County band of all time by the OC Weekly, and the crowd was a mixed bag of old-school punks and kids wearing worn out denim jackets covered with T.S.O.L and Social Distortion patches.
The Adolescents released ‘La Vendetta’ to celebrate their 35th anniversary, and the artwork of the album – a cartoon representing a homeless beating a policeman-fat-head piñata – is a straightforward explanation of the Spanish title (vengeance is a dish best served cold), as their songs put social injustice and police brutality center stage. In their hometown Fullerton, the unpunished crime of homeless man Kelly Thomas, who was beaten to death by the cops a few years ago, has obviously inspired the title song of the album.
Tony Cadena, Steve Soto, Dan Root, Ian Taylor and Mike Cambra gave a good example of what they call vengeance, if they weren’t that extraordinarily dynamic on stage, the crowd was difficult to contain at some point, and Amoeba security guards were patrolling the rows non-stop, as if they were waiting for a riot to happen. But beside the previous violence outside, some chaos in the air, and some skateboards sneaked inside the store, as they had escaped Amoeba security, things stayed in control.
The Adolescents played a lot of songs, some had a true hardcore spirit, other ones had a more melodious side, these vocal harmonies were almost surprising, contrasting with Cadena’s guttural voice, but the aggressive riffs and angry screams were well present as were the fists in the air. ‘So many great songs to choose from’, said Cadena talking about the band’s extensive catalogue, ‘It’s great to be me!’… ‘especially with the good looks to go with,’ joked another one. He had welcome us with a ‘Thank you for quitting your job to be here’ and he left us with a ‘Now go back to work‘, but before, they had to play their song ‘Amoeba’, the most appropriate anthem ever, considering the place,… You definitively can call their songs anthems, even though people were not singing along, as all of them were raging anthems for social justice, local and international tragedies (Fukushima) and lost friends.