The Never Trust a Hippy Tour.

So on Monday I had the incredible pleasure of getting in a car, driving to Southeast D.C. (that’s the nice side of town) and catching a pretty bitchin’ punk rock show. What was the occasion you ask? It was NOFX’s Never Trust a Hippy Tour, but more importantly it featured The Lawrence Arms! Yay!! Yeah so it was a lot of fun and the following post is a general run down of how the show went.

Firstly I got there an hour early. For some reason the doors opened at 7 and yet no band took the stage till 8:30. That was pretty lame on the club’s part in my book. However, it could have been really lame if I had not spent 10 minutes of that time talking to the incredibly awesome man in the above picture: Mr. Brendan Kelly. He plays bass and sings for The Lawrence Arms, and is arguably one of the nicest people I have ever met. Why do I say that you ask? Well after staring at him for about 15-20 minutes like a creepy stalker, and having given up any chance of getting the courage to talk to him, he actually approached me. We chatted about nothing in particular, but if you are interested in The Falcon, Brendan had nothing but great things to say about the up coming album and if I may misquote: “I’ve never heard anything like it. There is going to be a little bit of everything, some ska, some punk, some glam rock, and selling out”. At the end of our chat he promised to play The Devil’s Takin’ Up names for me, and if I may once again misquote him from when he played the song: “This song is for the kid(s?) who downloaded our CD weeks in advance”. I thought that was really awesome. And now on to the actual bands.

The Loved Ones were the opening act, and I have to say I enjoyed myself. They are a pretty generic punk rock band, but the guys were really into it and pretty funny in between sets. To compare them, they sounded like a much more badass old Green Day or a much harder version of The Methadones. If that sounds appealing IM (RaHoustoun) and I’ll send you their new CD.

Next up was the reason I was there, which would of course be, The Lawrence Arms. As far as performances go, they played a very good hard rocking set, and I greatly enjoyed myself and was hoarse by the end (I even took pictures!). However, I also had some problems. For one thing there was a five foot barricade between the stage and crowd, and the stage was huge so a band of three people looked really isolated and weird. Secondly, the people in front of me were total assholes who figured the best way to enjoy the music was to basically dry hump at a crazy speed and shove my arm as I tried to take pictures. And finally, they only played for 30 fucking minutes! That is an absurdly small amount of time, and while they did play a load of songs I loved (and was surprised to hear) there were also a lot of greats that they left off the list. I would post a set list, but I am unsure if anyone actually cares. Once again IM me if you want that.

The final band was NOFX. This would have been cool if I was still 14/15 and stupid. I mean they opened with their 18 minute “epic”, The Decline, and that was really cool, but they pretty much sucked the rest of the night. Between their terrible jokes, asshole comments “I know some of you may believe in a God, and I just want to say YOU’RE WRONG!” not so great songs, and the general way the crowd responded I did not have a good time. To rub salt in the wound, they had an hour and a half to play which is fucking absurd. Especially since most of that time was spent making their lame ass jokes and sounding like close minded liberal dicks.

Overview: Thirty minutes of Lawrence Arms + a ten minute conversation with Brendan + A pretty rocking performance by The Loved Ones – NOFX = A pretty decent way to spend a Monday night. I would recommend you check this tour out if you have some extra money and want to watch two bands who genuinely put all of their energy into their music and one who is comprised of a bunch of fat immature (to steal a quote from them) “idiot sons of assholes”.

Alex