Nothing against Nikki Lane, but her bus getting stuck in Philadelphia was ideal for X-Fest II Friday night at Stage AE, setting up a straight run of classic Warped bands in Social Distortion, Anti-Flag and Reel Big Fish.
It was the best local showcase yet for Anti-Flag, a band that is way undervalued in its own hometown. If they’re not doing a mid-afternoon set here at Warped, the political punks are usually playing to a few hundred at Altar Bar or Mr. Smalls. This was their first shot at a big outdoor stage in front of thousands with the sun going down and the stage lights going up.
A-F made the most of it, coming out to Styx's "Renegade" -- nice local touch! -- and following through with a ridiculously high energy and high-spirited performance. By process of elimination, Anti-Flag is about the closest thing out there to the Clash (vintage 1977), having built a stable of fiery anthems, only bolstered by the new album "American Spring."
Bouncing around the stage with thrashy but polished punk rock, Anti-Flag railed against Bush's response to 9/11 ("Turncoat"), the complicit media ("The Press Corpse") and the potential nightmare of the American Dream (new song “Fabled World”).
Anti-Flag bleeds passion and righteousness, as always, but the band makes it a lively good time, thanks to bassist Chris #2 acting as the perfect screaming hypeman to rally the troops and get the circle pits moving.
Declaring that “Anti-Flag would not exist without Social Distortion! Anti-Flag would not exist without the Clash!,” the band marked the birthday of the late Joe Strummer with “Should I Stay or Should I Go” (yes, a Mick Jones song), before breaking out the Clash-like new song “Brandenburg Gate” and then bringing it to a roaring punk-as-hell climax down in the crowd on “Die for the Government.”
Social D, the band that launched the outdoor side of Stage AE in 2011, returned even stronger Friday night on a tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of the self-titled third album that broke the Orange County, Calif., punk band to a wider audience.
Frontman Mike Ness, the only member left from that era, explained that in the mid-’80s his beloved punk scene was going through a bad phase. “All of a sudden there was a rule book for punk rock. I called it the punk police. ‘You're gonna grow your hair out? That’s not punk. You're gonna wear that tonight? That’s not punk. You're gonna play a Johnny Cash song?...”
His response was to write an album that was punk enough while also tapping his country/rockabilly roots and daring to venture into boy-girl territory (another punk taboo, he noted). It has variety and there isn’t a bad song in the bunch, making “Social Distortion” -- with tracks like “So Far Away,” “Story of My Life” and “Ball of Chain” -- a perfect, straight-through concert set. They extended some of the songs, like “She's a Knockout,” adding more Chuck Berry-like guitar heroics.
They probably could have taken a bow and returned for an encore, but Social D tacked five songs onto the main set, dragging down the pace a little too much with Hank Williams’ “Alone and Forsaken,” “This Time Darlin’” and a cover of “Wild Horses” we really don’t need from Social Distortion.
Holding back on the Johnny Cash cover from the album set was a good move, though, as “Ring of Fire” was the perfect nightcap, putting everyone back in good spirits and sending bodies flying toward the stage. Spotting an 8-year-old boy in the crowd with a flat cap and a Social D T-shirt, the singer brought him up to the stage for a tender moment where he told him to pay attention in school (not-so-punk) but to not believe the history books (very punk!).
Reel Big Fish, following sets from X Ambassadors and Drag the River, was the usual goofy fun from ringleader Aaron Barrett, who led the band through covers of The Offspring, a-ha and Van Morrison (he called “Brown Eyed Girl” his favorite Everclear song), a punk/soul/square-dance/metalcore mashup of “S.R.” and playful ska-punk originals that are aging surprisingly well.
Scott Mervis: smervis@post-gazette.com; 412-263-2576. Twitter: @scottmervis_pg.
First Published: August 22, 2015, 1:09 p.m.
