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Rating: Finally, after sacrifices, lies, plans, and agreements, the 16/06. An insignificant date? For many, yes. No, it's not my birthday, but the date that saw Bad Religion play after 3 years (those snobby bastards! The last was the concert held at the Indipendent Days in Bologna) in our "sunny" country, specifically at the Rolling Stone, known to everyone I imagine, as is its location: Milan (a stroke of luck, because my city Piacenza is 40’ by car away).
It's difficult for me to make a brief overview of these "little men’s" careers, and I think it's pointless anyway. For the younger and the ignorant, the advice is to take a look on the usual Wikipedia, which as always is a good starting point to educate oneself. Certainly, many, not caring about the rest, will remember insistently the contract with the Atlantic Records (a division of Warner), yes, it’s true, they are half-whores.
The interest in the supporting band, Vanilla Sky, was low among the crowd, so we took it easy. We arrived while the aforementioned were performing their annoying “Umbrella”, made even more annoying by the loss of three cans of beer that the bouncer at the entrance caught us with, damn him! (and damn Rolling Stone, 5€ for what they call a medium, a glass of water in which they probably pissed…).
After the previous ordeal, we went to find our spot: people were already packed under the stage, we managed to be 3/4 rows away, but very much to the right. Those half-sluts obviously made us wait. Meanwhile, movements on stage were scarce, everything was already prepared and set up, every now and then Greg or Brian would sketch a couple of chords, Jay dusted off the bass, but nothing more.
They were making us wait a bit too long, but at the peak of my annoyance from waiting, there he is, professor Graffin enters the scene followed by Greg, Brian (the guitarists, if it wasn't clear), Jay (Bass) and Wackerman (Drums). The prof. cannot abstain from saying a couple of courtesy jokes, but it doesn’t last long, they start with "21st Century Digital Boy". The audience (us included) immediately unleashes the accumulated frustration, not holding back for even a second... exceptional. We sing every word while pushing and getting pushed at the same time: it’s everything I wanted.
I obviously wasn’t there to count the band’s mistakes or memorize the event's setlist, I focused on having fun, but overall I had the feeling of a band in shape (despite their age): the first part of the concert was very intense: few breaks and one song after another. I thought they wanted to exhaust us, to tire us out completely so that they could justify more breaks and less intense songs in the second part, also marked by a greater number of talks from the prof. Fortunately, there were pieces of less recent creation, rightly signature songs of the Californians: pure ecstasy when "Fuck Armageddon... This Is Hell" started, a syringe in the vein of new strength "I Want To Conquer The World" (and at that moment it was needed) and alright, the inevitable "No Control", "You", "Suffer" and others. Perhaps the main flaw of our favorites lies in the standardization of the performance, which certainly doesn’t shine for original ideas or reinterpretations (if not sporadic) of the songs, but we’re fine with it anyway. As far as I'm concerned, a convincing performance. And practically the whole Rolling Stone seemed to be satisfied. Too bad that a friend of mine felt sick and that made me miss the last quarter of an hour of the concert.
Great Bad Religion!
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