Look, I’m not going to mince words: melodic pop punks Bad Religion make music for teenagers. Nothing wrong with that, except I’m no teen. I’m 54, have three ex-wives, a ranch house built over a sinkhole, and some alligator-infested swampland in Florida that’s being squatted on by a mutant family named the Choppers to support, and there’s nothing more I like to do after a hard day’s work than relax in my Regency II Barcalounger with a bowl of mixed macadamia nuts and Valium and a glass of scotch and listen to some old people’s music–say the Angry Samoans’ “They Saved Hitler’s Cock.” But I’m not going to let any generation gap stand in the way of my giving Bad Religion a fair shake, because I pride myself on my objectivity in all matters except the tiny Principality of Liechtenstein, which I hold in deep suspicion because its name starts with the word “Lie.”
Anyway, let’s see what good things we can say about Bad Religion. First of all, the band–Greg Gaffin on lead vocals, Brett Gurewitz on guitar, Jay Bentley on bass, Greg Hetson (Circle Jerks) on guitar, Brooks Wackerman on drums, and Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, Junkyard, Pope Francis and the Fart Eaters) on guitar–has put out like 93 albums since it formed in 1979, so it’s obviously doing something right. Namely, its tunes are fast and supercatchy and pleasing to the normal human ear–which I unfortunately lack due to an adolescence spent being forced to listen to my younger brother’s extensive collection of free jazz skronk (Peter Brötzmann anyone?)–and it knows its strengths (great guitar riffs, excellent melodies, sing along choruses, soaring three-part harmonies) and smartly plays to them.
Much of Bad Religion’s success was due to timing: it had the good fortune to show up at the exact moment when kids were growing tired of listening to hardcore that was all nasty and brutish and harsh, and jonesing for some honest-to-God hummable melodies for a change. The result was an easy-listening, softer and gentler punk–like triple-ply toilet paper–where melody ruled, the lyrics weren’t all surly and mean-spirited, and three-part harmonies were suddenly…nice. This development may make me want to cry “The horror! The horror!” like I did when I came out of an alcoholic blackout to find myself in a movie theater watching hobbits frolic in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but the cold hard fact is Bad Religion does what it does better than anybody with the possible exception of Rise Against, which accounts for the band’s amazing success and longevity.
And although I hate to admit it, Bad Religion has songs (“Dharma and the Bomb,” “Robin Hood in Reverse,” and “Fuck Armageddon… This Is Hell”) that I really truly like, as I do (to a degree) the band’s debut album, 1982’s How Could Hell Be Any Worse, probably because it’s all scuzzed-up sounding and there aren’t any three-part harmonies to annoy me. I also really like the sound of the band’s guitars, especially Brian Baker’s solos, and the fact that Bad Religion is not The Red Hot Chili Peppers, which if there were any justice in this world would spontaneously combust leaving nothing behind but a fetid cone of ash that used to be “Under the Bridge.”
Furthermore, they’re pretty darn smart. Singer Greg Gaffin is a college professor and author who actually uses the word “rugosity” in a song, which must be a historical first and is proof positive he has a giant noodle. Further proof that the band isn’t a free-defecating herd of G.G. Allins lies in the fact that it boasts one song title that’s a George Orwell quote and another that’s a play on a Jack Kerouac book title. (Speaking of Kerouac, I once–true story–had a long talk with his sidekick Allen Ginsberg, and at one point Ginsberg kindly suggested I take a hard look at my drug use. The unmitigated gall of hairy bards! All I’d had were a couple of Placidyl, a little coke, 9 beers, and several joints we’d smoked with a black dwarf.)
I’ll admit I find Bad Religion’s lyrics a bit too cerebral and crammed with generalities for my tastes, and it has no discernible sense of humor. But unfortunately not everybody can be funny, or wants to be, and anyway Bad Religion has what it sees as a more important agenda: it wants to change the world, although to his credit Gaffin is no fool and is often pessimistic about this possibility. Anyway, this tendency leads Bad Religion to play virtually nothing but songs of deep social and philosophical import like “The Voice of God Is Government,” “Only Entertainment,” and “Let Them Eat the World” and calls to action like “The Resist Stance,” “Sowing the Seeds of Utopia,” “Kyoto Now,” and “Shambala.”
Me, I’m a cynic and don’t think music has ever changed a damn thing, nor will it; the chords change, and in your best music there are only three of them, but that’s about it. I could go on and on about the utter futility of trying to improve the world through music, but suffice it to say it’s a lot like trying to eat peas with a pitchfork. That said, the better devils of my nature actually admire Bad Religion’s quixotic if misguided commitment to fighting social injustice through song, so instead of dissing their idealism I’ll simply repeat the wisdom of my kindly old grandmother, who used to say, “Boy, nothing ever changes. So shut up, sit down and watch Sanford and Son, before I smack you with this toaster.”
Before we get to the show, I have a few things to get off my chest. First, no band should ever name a tune “Frogger.” Second, I loath “21st Century (Digital Boy)” with the same intensity as I do Survivor, which I might actually watch if somebody occasionally failed to survive (as in croaked, horribly, preferably at the claws of a maddened swarm of hermit crabs). Third, I don’t know how a band manages to fuck up a song called “Fuck You,” except yes I do–they throw in more goddamned three-part harmonies. I ask you: what kind of a fuck you comes with three-part harmonies? The friendly kind? Then there’s the regrettable line, “So hold up your head forgotten man” (from “Dept. of False Hope”) which sounds like it comes from a Kansas song, which frankly leads me to wonder whether Kerry Livgren isn’t the real songwriter and secret genius behind Bad Religion.
Anyway, I went to see Bad Religion on Friday, March 22 at the 9:30 Club, missing opening acts The Bronx and Polar Bear Club due to an unplanned and excruciatingly painful hospital visit–should a very small and cute dog ever come charging at you with its owner at its heels crying “Rabies!” don’t put out your hand to pet it assuming that’s the dog’s name–arriving just in time to see the headliners. And honestly, I didn’t like them. I expected to. I really did. I expected Bad Religion live to be a very different cup of punk than Bad Religion on record. I’d expected them to sound rawer and louder, and that they’d stretch out or vary the songs some, maybe indulge in some wild and wooly instrumental jamming. But Bad Religion live is so much like Bad Religion on record it’s almost eerie. The band kicked ass, but they might as well have been playing note-for-note reproductions of their records, and I don’t happen to enjoy their records.
But before I get down to brass tacks, a few brief notes. First, Bad Religion had some bad news: drummer Brooks Wackerman’s mother had passed away, so he was on leave. Fortunately Steve Port of openers Polar Bear Club was kind enough to take over on drums, and he handled the job with aplomb, and in fact listening to him wail away on the skins was one of the few highlights of my evening. Second, I was dead wrong about Bad Religion being a band for teens. Or perhaps I should say they are a band for teens, but the folks who packed the sold-out 9:30 Club seemed mostly to be people who’d fallen in love with the band when they were teens two decades ago.
On a positive note, almost all of the songs were real short. Also, Bad Religion didn’t play “Frogger.” And I actually liked 3 of the 30 songs–which comes to a whopping 10 percent like rate–namely “Robin Hood in Reverse” (which is more of a pop song than a pop punk song), “We’re Only Gonna Die,” and “Fuck Armageddon… This Is Hell.” And I loved Brian Baker’s solos–and totally forgive him for being in Minor Threat since he’s given up straightedge and become a real human being–even if they were mostly too short. And the band can really play, even if what they’re playing isn’t my cup of punk. Bentley played a big booming bass, and like I say Mr. Polar Bear was killer on drums. I wish they’d seen fit to play “White Trash” and “Dharma and the Bomb,” but alas, Life doesn’t give a shit what you want, unless it happens to be Death.
What’s more, Bad Religion gave good value for its money, playing a 30-song set. Unfortunately said set included “21st Century (Digital Boy),” which caused me to vomit on a guy next to me wearing a Crass t-shirt. Fortunately he was too busy singing along to notice, and I snuck away leaving a guy in a Bad Religion t-shirt to take the fall. Another thing: I realized, listening to “Los Angeles Is Burning,” that I hate Greg Gaffin’s vocals. As I noted about Skip Greer of the Dead Kennedys a while back, Gaffin has a voice completely devoid of personality, and more importantly, one that is incapable of injecting the kind of anger appropriate to a song like “Los Angeles Is Burning.” Here L.A.’s on fire, and he might as well be singing about how he simply adores manatees. The same goes for “Fuck You,” which was wrecked by Gaffin’s bland vocals (he could have been saying “Hiya,” not “Fuck you”) and those ever-present three-part harmonies. But then Bad Religion isn’t in the anger business, it’s in the inspiration business, which call me a cynic but puts them on the same level as the real estate scammer who sold me that swampland in Florida without informing me of the Choppers or their suspected complicity in several horror movie-style axe murders.
What’s more, I’m no fan of the lyrics, as I discovered listening to “I Want to Conquer the World,” which included such high-falutin’ howlers as “Is your fecundity a trammel or a treasure?” and “I’ll do away with air pollution and then all save the whales/We’ll have peace on earth and global communion.” Then there was “You,” which boasts the worst lyrics since “Puff the Magic Dragon,” namely, “There’s a place where everyone can be happy/It’s the most beautiful place in the whole fucking world/It’s made of candy canes and planes and bright red choo-choo trains/And the meanest little boys and the most innocent little girls/And you know I wish that I could get there.” To which I could only reply, “Oh dear.” In “Dearly Beloved” Gaffin sang, “I can’t relate to you.” To which I mentally responded, “Right back at you, guy who wants to live in world made of candy canes.” Then there was “American Jesus,” with its lyrics, “I feel sorry for the earth’s population/’Cause so few live in the U.S.A./At least the foreigners can copy our morality/They can visit but they cannot stay.” Was he being a jingoistic asswipe or ironic? That I can’t tell isn’t good and is proof positive that having a gigantic brain can actually be a hindrance to writing good lyrics. At one point in the evening Gaffin said, “People think we’re a political punk band. We’re a philosophical punk band,” but their philosophy seems to me to be on a par slightly lower than that contained in Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind.” And it occurred to me at about the same time that that’s what Bad Religion is: the Kansas of pop punk.
Between songs Gaffin said, “I was saying we gotta get back to DC. Those people are judgmental in that town.” I felt like he was speaking directly to me. Because I judged and found lacking “No Control,” “Modern Man,” “Recipe for Hate,” “Suffer,” “Sanity,” “Them and Us,” “Anesthesia,” “Generator,” New Dark Ages,” “True North” (a truly terrible song), “No Direction,” “Epiphany,” “No Control,” “A Walk,” “Vanity,” “Infected,” “Dept. of False Hope”–you get the idea. I’d like the opening of a song, and then either Gaffin would come in on vocals or the band would shift into its patented, cookie-cutter easy-listening punk pseudo-thrash, and it would be so much for that. Let’s face it: this is a band that actually managed to make nada of a title as promising as “The Hippy Killers” (which they didn’t play Friday, by the way). One can only imagine what a band with a sense of humor, or some pent-up bile, might have done with such a title. And that’s my real problem with Bad Religion. Their songs sound pretty much the same and their vocalist is a soporific cypher, so without something to hang on to–some really funny or smart lyrics, for instance–there’s simply nothing there for me.
At one point Gaffin sang, “Come join us.” Sorry, but I can’t. I just can’t. No, I think I’ll just sit here in my Regency II Barcalounger with a bowl of mixed macadamia nuts and Valium and a glass of scotch and listen to some old people’s music–say No Trend’s “No Hopus Opus.”
Photos: Richie Downs
