I’m going to do that thing again where I insert myself into the story when I do a show review, but I feel like it’s to be expected at this point. Maybe someday I’ll be a “professional” writer, but today is not that day my friends. Some of you may have seen me mention this before, or maybe you heard me say it when I chatted with Jay Bentley a couple years ago, but Bad Religion was my very first punk rock show. It was on the Gray Race tour in April 1996, which seems so late by comparison to have seen Bad Religion for the first time, but it was almost 30 years ago, which just speaks to the band’s longevity and level of importance. Anyway, That show, at what was then the Avalon on Boston’s iconic Lansdowne Street, was my baptism into the world of live punk music, and I guess what has followed over the course of the last three decades is in no small part due to that very show. The band – and especially Bentley and frontman Greg Graffin and guitar wizard Brian Baker – will always have a special place in my heart for that reason. And so to have them not only play right across the street from what used to be Avalon (it’s been combined with what used to be Axis and what used to be Mama Kin into the House of Blues, if you’re interested), at the sparkly-new MGM Music Hall, and for that show to be almost exactly twenty-eight years since my first show AND to have the band co-headlining with Social Distortion, another iconic band that I first saw live in the comparatively late year of 1997, was a pretty special, benchmark show.
Lovecrimes were the leadoff hitter on this night’s lineup, taking the stage to a surprisingly large crowd. If you’ve never been to the MGM, it’s a massive (5000-ish capacity) venue shoe-horned into a triangular lot behind the bleachers at Fenway Park. It’s so close to the lyric little bandbox that the backstage of one venue opens directly into the other. As such, it can be a finicky place to see a show, especially one of the punk rock variety, not just because it’s massive but because the Fenway area isn’t the easiest to get to or park in for less than $50, and ESPECIALLY when there is also a home Red Sox game going on, which thankfully was not the case on this night. So at a place that can be fraught with latecomers, it’s noteworthy that a good crowd showed up early to watch the opener. But Lovecrimes isn’t just any opener. They’re fronted by Mike Ness’s son Julian, who we had previously seen slinging the lead guitar for Jade Jackson’s band just prior to Covid becoming a thing. The similarities between father and son are unavoidable, not just in look and name, but in sound. Lovecrimes possess that same early Social D growl and swagger and they have it in spades. If you close your eyes a little bit, it’s almost like stepping into a time machine to 1983. Backed by Trevor Lucca (D.I.) on guitar, Collin Schlesinger on bass and Josh Roossin (The Jacks) on drums, Julian and crew blazed through a nine-song set that more than set the tone for what was to follow.
Bad Religion were in the two-hole for this particular show. And while I’m always partial to a Bad Religion headlining show, having them play a seventy-five-minute co-headlining spot is certainly sufficient and, to be honest, it helped provide a sonic change-of-pace, with the overdriven rock-and-roll thing that Lovecrimes and Social D do serving as proper bookends. Bad Religion tore immediately into “The Defense” from 2002’s Process Of Belief to kick things off. When you’ve been a band for 40+ years and have seventeen studio albums under your belt, and you’re limited to a 75-minute set, it might be expected that the setlist would be comprised mostly of “the hits,” so the choice to kick off such a set with like the eleventh song from the twelfth album – and a song that was definitely not a “single” from that record – was a pretty awesome one in this writer’s opinion. Bad Religion collectively and individually certainly have more than a few miles on their tires but with the pace pushed by more recent addition Jamie Miller on drums, I hesitate to say you’d almost never realize it…but you’d almost never realize it. Brian Baker and Mike Dimkich serve as guitar-wielding bookends on stage left and stage right, respectively, while Bentley and Graffin patrol the center of the stage with almost as much youthful abandon as ever. The crowd certainly responded in kind as more than a few crowd-surfers who were, *ahem* of a certain age made their way over the barricade at the front of the house. Just like the old days! Personal highlights from the 22-song set included “Fuck You,” “Stranger Than Fiction,” “New Dark Ages” and, my first favorite Bad Religion song, “Generator.”
And then, as the clock turned 9:30, it was the legendary Social Distortion’s turn at the plate (I was going to say that batted cleanup but there were only three bands on the bill and the cleanup spot is fourth and so there goes the baseball analogy train derailing on me). To say that this was a show that had a chance of realistically not happening is not an understatement. You don’t get to achieve legend/icon status without having the bulk of your career in the rearview mirror, and with age and longevity come the threat of realistic health scares, and iconic Social D frontman Mike Ness is no stranger, having gone through a rather public cancer scare over the last year. And so it was equal parts cathartic and, perhaps, tongue-in-cheek for the band to kick things off with their 1991 classic “Bad Luck” to open the show. It isn’t reflected in discography liner notes, but the current iteration of Social D, which features Ness backed by longtime wingman Jonny “Two Bags” Wickersham on guitar, Brett Harding on bass and David Hidalgo on drums is the longest-running one in the band’s storied history. That’s clearly evident in the band’s lock-tight live set, which featured classics like “Mommy’s Little Monster” and “1945” and “Ball and Chain” and “Ring of Fire” sprinkled in with newer tracks like “Tonight” and “Over You” over the course of fifteen songs and 80-ish minutes. It was every bit a triumphant performance that was equal parts 1980s nostalgia and modern, revved up guitar rock goodness.
Check out additional photos from the gig below!
