Rancid Plays No Bones Fresh Punk

Rancid

at Avalon March 2

Punk today has a higher profile than anytime since the late 70s. Thanks to bands like Green Day and Offspring, it sells bigger than ever before. This unprecedented popularity has done wonders for Epitaph Records, an independent label which boasts two very successful punk acts: Offspring and Rancid. At a time when so many musical acts are labeled "rock influenced by punk," or "pop flirting with punk," Rancid could probably be best described as "punk flirting with punk-with a heavy dose of punk."

Rancid's second and most recent album, Let's Go, is quite simply a snarling, slamming, two-fisted punkfest. Playing to a sold-out crowd at Avalon last Thursday, Rancid made it clear that their album is the result of real ability, not just talented production. Indeed, their performance had a sort of manic energy that could not be captured in a studio.

Another major advantage of a live Rancid show is the chance it offers to see what the band looks like. Many punk rockers these days have close-cropped hair--often dyed some horribly unnatural color. This style inevitably makes them look silly and cute, a far cry from the mohawk and leather fashion sensibilities of the original 70s punks. Rancid could certainly be called silly looking, but they are not cute in the traditional sense of the word. Guitarist/vocalist Tim Armstrong, formerly of punk/ska act Operation Ivy, sported a leather jacket, combat boots and spiked mohawk that was pushing six inches. Lars Fredriksen, the other guitarist/vocalist, has an even more interesting fashion sense: white shirt, red suspenders, and bright blond hair sticking straight out eight inches in every direction. Fredriksen looked like the genetic mutation of a character from "Fraggle Rock," some sort of sea-urchin-meets koosh ball.

Together with the thundering drums of Brett Reed and the impressive throbbing bass lines of Matt Freeman, Armstrong and Fredriksen kicked off their set with their newest single, "Roots Radical." The audience, already more than warmed up by the opening sets of Waterdog and Daltonic, went nuts. The floor of Avalon instantly became a massive pit of flailing kids moshing their brains out.

The second song, "Radio," tells the story of a teen falling in love with music. "Radio" is one of the best songs on Let's Go, and Rancid's performance more than did it justice. While it's not the most original theme for a song, the band pulled it off with a kind of potent excess, as Armstrong snarled, "Here it is/ Here I am/ Turn it up fucking loud/ When I got the music I got a place to go." Their next song, the speedy "Nihilism," was performed equally successfully. Armstrong announced the song as being about Frederiksen's hometown. Perhaps not surprisingly, Frederiksen didn't seem to like his hometown very much, as he sang of "broken homes and broken bones."

The songs which Rancid played from their self-titled debut album were on the whole less successful and less memorable. One of the best tunes of the evening, however, was "I Wanna Riot" which is currently only available on an Epitaph compilation CD, and as the b-side to "Roots Radical." A slow ska tune, "I Wanna Riot" came as a welcome relief to the slamming intensity of the rest of the show. The amazing thing was that the audience seemed to need it more than the band, which exhibited no signs of fatigue, even after racing through song after song. It's not the most cerebral of songs, but after all, this is a band that spells head H-E-D in its liner notes.

Toward the final third of the set, Rancid started to slump. They hit rock bottom with a song about a kid punker who is misunderstood by his parents. It was slow, boring and trite. Fortunately, the slump was short-lived. The crowd needed something pretty exciting to re-ignite it, and got it in the form of the hit single "Salvation." The song generated a furious energy, which was carried through to the end of the set with songs like the oh-so-touching love ballad "Gunshot," and one of the evening's best, "Sidekick." "Sidekick" describes sheer male fantasy: fighting crime alongside a superhero.

Overall Rancid's performance was an overwhelming success. In future shows, the group will certainly benefit from more material to fill in some of the gaps. Rancid is a band of unparalleled energy and spirit.

"I had a dream I was a vigilante's sidekick/ My name is Tim/ I am a lesser known character," Armstrong screams in "Sidekick." If Rancid continues performing as well as they did at Avalon, they won't be lesser known for very long.