It was a bright and sunny day, Shawn and I, drove down to the docks for the day’s festivities. First goal: find a parking spot –
as we were waiting for a place to park something happened. Greg Hetson, guitarist in Bad Religion, stepped out of a cab, in
front of Shawn’s car, well, most of you might not care but it means a whole hell of a lot to me.
We parked and walked to the venue, got in (fucker took my stub-I collect them by the way!) and looked around-there was
skateboarding, bungee jumping, and countless other activities taking place. They had punk karaoke on one of the stages, two
members of NOFX and two members of Bad Religion played the tunes and you could sign to go up and sing, it was pretty
cool! We watched a couple of independent punk bands and walked around and at a definite moment in our lives we set
ourselves in the crowd to watch NOFX’s set, and with the exception of the sound guy who wanted to play with the controls,
they kicked very much ass. Every band played for 30 minutes, which wasn’t all that spectacular but thinking of how long a punk
song is… They played some classic songs from their old albums, the crowd went completely bananas. We then checked out
The Cherry Poppin Daddies, they sounded great and they played completely in sink with each other, it was really cool! The
horns sounded clear and the band was really tight “Who is that whispering in the trees,…” yeah, you know it. Rancid were
pretty cool, but I must say they did not move around like they used to, must be old age! If you have ever of The Specials, this
band is worth checking out live, they sounded great and the sun was setting when they started their set. We unfortunately made
the mistake of checking The Reverend Horton Heat out, but man does that guy need to retire or hide under a rock-I really
didn’t like his stuff, to bland I guess.
Then came the ultimate wait for Bad Religion, I stood almost completely in front – waiting. Shawn came to find me after a while.
They came on stage and the crowd was ready to accept them, boy did they kick some major ass! They started with “We’re
only gonna Die” and every one in the crowd starting moshing. As I was moshing I was noticing that I was getting further away
from the stage but that is okay, I had a lot of fun. They played songs like “Stranger Than Fiction”, “Parallel”, “Generator”, they
were really fun. Shawn and I decided to leave after their set, we like The Deftones, but we were beat and we could hardly
stand anymore.
*** – long wait for the good bands, one beer tent and one water tent for 40,000 thousand people.
By Joel Aubin