Pennywise, Face To Face, The Menzingers @ The Palace Theatre, Melbourne (04/04/2013)
Coming back to Melbourne for their reunion tour, the Palace theatre was packed out with mostly 25 – 35 your olds awaiting the return of one of the most influential punk bands of the 90’s – Pennywise.
After seeing The Offspring a couple of weeks ago at the Palace, I was looking forward to seeing some more punk in such a great venue. I managed to catch the end of The Menzingers, who sounded really solid for the songs I was able to listen to.
Next up was Californian outfit Face to Face. Frontman and the only original member of the band Trever Keith walked out in a white shirt and black suspenders, which looked pretty cool. They played hard hitting punk rock from start to finish. Their stage experience was definitely noticeable and Trever added some humour to the show constantly contradicting himself saying either “If you don’t like us I don’t care, flip us off” and “I do care what you think, I’m back paddling. What do I have to do to get you to like me, take my shirt off?”
Pennywise walked on stage and played three of four songs in quick succession. The energy in the room exploded and the mosh kicked in. I was really impressed by Jim Lindberg’s up close and personal on stage demeanour. Between songs he said, “Seeing T-shirts in the crowd, it seems to me we all listen to the same music” He then listed some iconic punk names including the Misfits, The Descendants, The Dead Kennedys, NOFX as well as some Australian bands including Frenzhal Rhomb and Bodyjar.
After playing one of their fan favourite songs Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge pumped into the riff to AC/DC’s TNT. The mosh did the classic TNT fist bump to the “oi, oi, oi’s” and it was a really cool addition the show. This wasn’t their only cover. They played their version of Nirvana’s Territorial Pissings and Men at Work’s Land Down Under. I stood there thinking that it would be awesome if they did a cover of every Australian iconic song. Imagine a Pennywise Khe Sanh cover!
The highlights were their rebellious songs with angsty messages like Fuck Authority and Society because songs like those define was the punk movement from the 70’s the 90’s was all about.
They finished off with Alien before coming back with Bro Hymn as an encore. The encore was seemingly cut short by people with back stage passes coming on stage, it was pretty chaotic at one point with one guy almost knocking Fletcher over. This annoyed me a bit… People with backstage passes that are allowed onstage for the encore, (if they were allowed on stage) shouldn’t take away from the experience of everyone else in the theatre. These people became the vocal points of the encore, not the band which I think is a shame.
Despite this, it was a great show. It seems that most punk outfits from the 90’s including blink 182, the Offspring, The Descendants and more have toured Australia in the past 6 months and have proved without a doubt that punk is still alive.
Ryan Hyde
After seeing The Offspring a couple of weeks ago at the Palace, I was looking forward to seeing some more punk in such a great venue. I managed to catch the end of The Menzingers, who sounded really solid for the songs I was able to listen to.
Next up was Californian outfit Face to Face. Frontman and the only original member of the band Trever Keith walked out in a white shirt and black suspenders, which looked pretty cool. They played hard hitting punk rock from start to finish. Their stage experience was definitely noticeable and Trever added some humour to the show constantly contradicting himself saying either “If you don’t like us I don’t care, flip us off” and “I do care what you think, I’m back paddling. What do I have to do to get you to like me, take my shirt off?”
Pennywise walked on stage and played three of four songs in quick succession. The energy in the room exploded and the mosh kicked in. I was really impressed by Jim Lindberg’s up close and personal on stage demeanour. Between songs he said, “Seeing T-shirts in the crowd, it seems to me we all listen to the same music” He then listed some iconic punk names including the Misfits, The Descendants, The Dead Kennedys, NOFX as well as some Australian bands including Frenzhal Rhomb and Bodyjar.
After playing one of their fan favourite songs Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge pumped into the riff to AC/DC’s TNT. The mosh did the classic TNT fist bump to the “oi, oi, oi’s” and it was a really cool addition the show. This wasn’t their only cover. They played their version of Nirvana’s Territorial Pissings and Men at Work’s Land Down Under. I stood there thinking that it would be awesome if they did a cover of every Australian iconic song. Imagine a Pennywise Khe Sanh cover!
The highlights were their rebellious songs with angsty messages like Fuck Authority and Society because songs like those define was the punk movement from the 70’s the 90’s was all about.
They finished off with Alien before coming back with Bro Hymn as an encore. The encore was seemingly cut short by people with back stage passes coming on stage, it was pretty chaotic at one point with one guy almost knocking Fletcher over. This annoyed me a bit… People with backstage passes that are allowed onstage for the encore, (if they were allowed on stage) shouldn’t take away from the experience of everyone else in the theatre. These people became the vocal points of the encore, not the band which I think is a shame.
Despite this, it was a great show. It seems that most punk outfits from the 90’s including blink 182, the Offspring, The Descendants and more have toured Australia in the past 6 months and have proved without a doubt that punk is still alive.
Ryan Hyde