Review | Patented Punk Bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s Bring Out the Mosh Pit in Bowl’s Season Opener

I chatted with a delightful phlebotomist in the beer line for Bad Religion / Social Distortion at the Santa Barbara Bowl last Wednesday. She was from Santa Maria, was reasonably tatted, and maybe had a nobel prize or something, but I stopped listening and started marveling after I heard she was a phlebotomist. I don’t even know what a phlebotomist does (I assume something with either phlegm or bottoms), but it’s a spectacular word, and now I’d finally met one. There are moments in your life when it’s a good time to die, and that would have been one of them, but it didn’t happen, so I got my beer and sat back down.

Before the concert started I saw three different men take their shirts off to put on a fresh concert tee. Each of them was cartoonishly muscular, as though every muscle had not just perfect definition, but also part of speech, language of origin, and please use it in a sentence. The fourth guy I saw had flames tattooed across his chest, just in case you wanted to know if he was both swole and on fire. Why, yes — yes he was.

Bad Religion started promptly at 7 p.m., and played 22 songs. And then, at 7:15 …

Punk songs are not long songs, and punk bands don’t jam. I’m completely making this up because I don’t actually know, but I’m guessing that a central ethos of punk was never musicality — you just had to learn three chords, how to smack a drum and duck a thrown beer, and you were golden. It’s energy and attitude, and that sticky man-boy energy was in full swing at the bowl.

The mosh pit started small, with a dozen guys slamming in a circle around a bear troll with an unfavorable face to face-hair ratio bulldozing in the opposite direction. By the time Bad Religion performed “Do What You Want” there were a hundred people swirling in a banging maelstrom of flailing body parts. And by a hundred people, I mean a lot of middle aged guys trying not to slip a disc. Also, there was a weird amount of skipping.

Things were thrown — I saw a t-shirt, some overalls, a couple of people. Once every few minutes a beer cup would be launched from somewhere in the audience towards the mosh pit, end over end confettiing out glittering foam. In an accidentally hilarious bit of advertising, the Bowl is very excited about the r.cup reusable cups on their website. It says (all caps sic), “All you do is order, enjoy, TOSS, and repeat,” and, “So, ‘Toss like a boss’ and help lower your concert impact!”

On the other hand, Santa Barbarians throwing environmentally correct cups on the ground? Now that is punk. Anarchy in the SB!

Bad Religion frontman Greg Graffin was in fine form. He looked like a mid-level manager at an engineering company in his Kirkland polo and Dockers (all black, but you know this guy wears a Hawaiian shirt on Fridays), and somehow he made it work while he gestured along to their impishly titled “Fuck You.” They hit most of their hits — “Infected,” “Los Angeles is Burning,” “New Dark Ages,” and “Sorrow.” I’m still humming “21st Century (Digital Boy).”

The audience loved them, even if they were one of the squirrelliest crowds I’ve been in since we put Mentos in Diet Coke at my son’s ninth birthday. The warm up band Lovecrimes started at 6 and the Bowl shows always end at 10, so it was four hours longer than most of these people liked to sit.

There were identical twin women with blunt bangs wearing mod punk jackets in front of me for Bad Religion, who were replaced by a group of leather clad guys for Social Distortion. The guys were less interesting, because none of them matched. Penny Lane and her friend sat off to the side, but they would disappear with a guy with a backstage pass occasionally, and then return to whatever seats were available. A family of five sat behind me — Mom, Dad, two teen boys and a nephew. She happy-screamed about how much she wanted to be in the pit, or for Social Distortion to play “Sick Boys,” apologized for spilling a little hard kombucha on me, and enthusiastically explained all her enthusiasm as nothing but love. She was awesome.

Social Distortion came on at 8:30, and played 16 songs in the same amount of time as Bad Religion played their 22 (I may be new to reviewing, but I fully understand the importance of counting songs, right?). They’re a little more melodious, although both bands have plenty of hard driving songs as well as catchy earworms. They opened with “Bad Luck,” and also blasted out “Mommy’s Little Monster,” “1945,” and “Ball and Chain.”

Mike Ness was slightly distracted between songs, but this is only his third show after he came back from what seems like a successful bout with tonsil cancer. His voice sounded great and his energy was good, so I never would have guessed until he thanked his fans for all of their support following his diagnosis.

Ness, who sounds like a cross between Norm Macdonald and Johnny Cash, made some heartfelt comments. “I love my cars, and I love my guitars. At the end of the day they don’t mean shit. You got friends, you got family, you got love.” He then brought out his son Julian to play on a new, still unrecorded song with the band: “Warn Me.” His son left the stage after a long hug that made even the bear troll a little teary eyed.

Social Distortion ended the show with their cover of “Ring of Fire,” which is a great song, but the title makes me giggle, because I’m a child. But then, the whole show was kind of a child, filled with joy and violence and love, and so maybe it’s okay that “Ring of Fire” makes me think of the morning after spicy food. Anyone know a good phlebotomist?