Concert Time: Rancid!

Hey all,

Wednesday night one of my all time favorite bands came in concert, Rancid. Almost 10 years ago I saw Rancid perform at the Van's Warped Tour, and it was weird to kind of come full circle. Rancid, for me, has one of the best and deepest set lists in punk rock. Having been together in various forms for about 20 years, they have some great content to pull from, and they did not disappoint.

First a little back story. I got tickets for the show some time back with the intent of catching the show with my pal Bill. Unfortunately he couldn't attend after I got the tickets so I was gonna go with by brother, who also couldn't go. I pretty much ran through my friends list and struck out. Even Edwin, my co-worker, who was going to go canceled at the last minute, so I ended up catching the show alone. Kind of sad I know. I at least managed to turn a profit on the extra ticket. The show was sold out and I scalped it for a slight bit extra. It paid for the gas to the show at any rate.

My thinking was that I already paid for the tickets, there is no reason why I can't go by myself and have some fun seeing one of my favorite bands. So I did and I had a lot of fun.

I missed most of the opening act, The Riverboat Gamblers, to start with. I ended up working late and left straight from the store (luckily I had an extra change of clothes for just such an occasion!) The part of their show I did see however, was pretty good. I may do an I Tunes search later to see if I can find any good stuff out there.

Rancid fucking owned though! Starting off the show with Fall Back Down, they cut through almost their entire And Out Come the Wolves album. With especially scorching versions of What I Think About You, Ruby SoHo, Journey to the End of the East Bay, and Olympia, WA. They also hit some great tracks off of Let's Go, including one of my favorites, Sidekick. Doubly impressive was them playing tracks from their Operation Ivy days, a treat I wasn't really aware that they did at shows any more.

I had two slight complaints on the overall show. One, is they didn't play Dope Sick Girl or my favorite song, Red Hot Moon. But those are minor, playing so much else I shouldn't complain. The second was the encore. They came back out and only played one song. Mind you, it was a scorching version of probably their biggest hit, Time Bomb, but I was kind of hoping for a few more tracks. Maybe it was just because I was so into it.

All in all I had a blast and would love for them to come back in concert after the release of their next album in September. Oh! I almost forgot to mention me accidental punching a girl in the face.

Yeah, I felt kind of bad about that. The show was playing at The Marquee, not a huge venue but good sized and it was packed to the gills with people. As they started playing Knowledge I was pumping my fist in their air to the beat. Unfortunately, I was pumping it a bit more out than up, and accidentally hit a girl in the face. Of Course I immediately apologized, but honestly she was like don't worry it's cool. Then she walked towards the bar. Thank God for impaired judgement! I quietly moved to another section of the floor, and finished the show.

I had a ton of fun and I can't wait until my next show!

Thanks for reading!

End of Line.
Gerrad!