Friday night, I was at a punk rock concert in Cro, standing between sweaty, gyrating rock stars and a head banging, fist pumping audience. Lyrics only filled the gaps between the distorted power chord-driven riffs of Blink-182 and Green Day. As soon as Blink-182 opened the concert up with “Damnit,” the crowd erupted into a frenzied mosh pit.
The Friday Night Live [FNL] event was a battle of the bands of two cover bands: Green Day and Blink-182. The bands not only emulated the sound of Blink and Green Day but they also took on the style of the punk rockers they were impersonating. In the Blink-182 band Jon Markson and Andy Stein-Zeller wore backwards baseball hats typical of the skater-punk look of Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge. The members of the Green Day cover band, with the exception the bassist who looked like a cross between Gandalf from Lord of The Rings and a hog farmer, wore black collared shirts and ties similar to those worn by Green Day during their early years.
The bands took turns playing two sets of four songs each. The Blink-182 band played eight of Blink-182’s best known songs including, “All the Small Things,” “What’s My Age Again,” “Rock Show” and “Dumpweed.” About 85% of the audience sang along to Blink’s pop punk anthems. However, the Green Day cover band performed fairly unknown songs in their set. In the beginning of the show Dave, the lead singer of the Green Day cover band, warned the audience that they were not going to perform any songs from American Idiot or 21st Century Breakdown.
As a result, the energy and audience participation died down a considerable amount during the Green Day sets. Although the band performed songs like “Longview,” “Minority,” “Insomnia” and “Basket Case,” in between these popular songs they played songs that few people could sing along to. Even if the performers don’t like all of a band’s radio friendly hits, they need to remember to sacrifice their personal tastes for the enjoyment of the crowd. And while Dave did a great job matching the singing style of Bradley from Sublime in the last FNL event, he struggled to imitate the vocal intonations of Billie Joe Armstrong.
The most impressive thing about the concert was the enthusiasm of both the bands and the audience. Andy, the bass player for Blink-182, constantly spun, danced and sometimes flailed around the stage. He even sacrificed some bass lines to pull off a dance move. Being a part of an audience where everyone jives to the same music creates a sense of community that few experiences can match. The Green Day band let the audience choose the last song. “Basket Case” beat out “When I Come Around.” When it was over, the entire crowd chanted “One more song,” and the host responded with “Not going to happen.” This is a shame because the addition of an encore would have pumped up the crowd and would have enhanced the ending of the battle.
With no more songs to play, the show ended, but not before an audience poll was taken. The band that managed to receive the loudest cheer from the audience would win the battle. From my position in the room, I thought Blink received the loudest response. However, for the second concert in a row, the bands tied. When an event is advertised as a battle of the bands, I would’ve liked to see a definitive winner be chosen at the end of the show.
In addition, while the FNL Cover Band Battle concerts attract fans of these famous bands, it would be nice to see some original songs mixed in with the set list. Doing a complete set of covers disables the creativity and innovation that new bands add to the sphere of music. These cover bands do an excellent job of attracting a broad audience to the concerts and music scene at Conn. But we must not forget that new music should be appreciated and celebrated as well.
Thanks for the nice write-up Mark. We had a great time honoring some of our favorite bands of yesteryear. In regard to your statement that “we must not forget that new music should be appreciated and celebrated as well”, each and every member of the two bands have devoted a significant amount of time to writing and performing original music on campus.
Just because original music doesn’t permeate a cover band battle-of-the-bands is no indication of a lack of interest in original music, from neither the performers nor the audience. My songs have no place along side classics like “Dammit”. It would be de-suturing and contradictory to what the performance was all about, honoring those musical entities that influenced us.
Good thing we have people like you who want to listen. Keep supporting our music scene.
Thanks for the write up! I’m glad that the voice was able to cover the event. I feel as though I should clear some things up though.
Our set was actually comprised entirely of songs that were indeed hits on the radio for Green Day, save for 1. The main discrepancy was the fact that they were hits from earlier albums from the 90’s. Simply put, what we were doing with this battle of the bands was trying to pay homage to the pop-punk of the 90’s and bring back the feelings/fun that we all associated with it. To me, sticking to older Green Day tunes felt more conducive to that end, especially since Green Day as a band experienced a marked shift in style with the onset of the 2000’s. I do hear what you’re saying however, and I realize that some in the crowd may not have been able to sing along to the lesser known tunes. Ultimately though, I felt that the crowd enjoyed the older tunes just as much as they would have enjoyed ‘American Idiot’ (I believe someone was crowd-surfing during ‘Worry Rock’) The energy of this style of music translates into a good time whether or not the audience knows all the lyrics of the tunes…And frankly, if kids in the audience didn’t know songs off of Dookie and Nimrod but did know songs off of American Idiot and whatever-else, I would encourage them to listen to Green Day’s older music and I stand by my decision to play some for them.
Also, there is tons of original music on campus, but a cover band show is no place for it, and mixing original songs in with a set like this would derail the entire theme of the show and would just be silly.