What do you get if you cross the Pet Shop Boys, Damien Hurst’s granddad and the fat brother from ‘My name is Earl’?
The Descendents.
Having been billed to me as the forefathers of punk, I expected more than four middle aged men in middle aged men beer garden outfits. I wasn’t ill informed though, their sound has been echoed and in many cases poorly imitated throughout their thirty three year career.
I am not a punk, nor am I that big of a punk fan but like most of my age group, I have heard of a lot of the bands. I have a particular fondness for The Vandals and The Dwarves but there are not many more that I could name off hand. I was kindly bought the ticket by my friend (Mighty Ducks Chris) who was visiting London for the bank holiday and as live music is ALWAYS a wonderful thing, I was more than happy to accompany him.
The first support band, Teenage Bottle Rocket, have a much more entertaining name than their sound. My heart did break a little when the lead singer announced that he had named his son ‘Milo’ after the lead singer of The Descendents and the majority of the audience ignored him. The lead singer was charming, in a fan boy kind of way and you couldn’t ever question his joy at opening for his heroes. Overall they were enjoyable and their enthusiasm carried them further into my heart than I was willing to let their music penetrate my ears.
Dead to Me rocked up, or should I say punked up, on stage next. The most I could bring myself to say throughout the first few songs of their set was, ‘the singer is a very angry young man’. I just wanted to hug him because clearly he’d never been hugged before. Their music was tolerable in the main and in what I suspect were accidently isolated incidents, they produced both lyrically and musically quality songs. It was just a shame that they didn’t slow it down, soften it up and show the crowd the obvious spirit that was in their hearts.
As the expected time on stage for the band that everyone had come to see came and went, fans got anxious, the support crews got anxious and Eric Melvin from NOFX got merrily pissed. A cheer worthy of their heritage greeted the band as they walked on but it was soon oh too obvious why the anxiety was present. Within thirty seconds of The Descendents appearing on stage, lead singer Milo threw his microphone to the floor and stormed off stage, a look of horror on his face.
It was swiftly explained that his voice had gone the day before and this immediately divided the audience. One half frustrated because having waited so long for the band to make a UK appearance they were now facing a cancelation and the other half feeling betrayed by a band who knew they couldn’t provide what they had advertised yet hadn’t postponed the show.
The show went on though. Not the show that anyone had expected and what many argued, a show that they didn’t pay for but as all pointed out, it was unique. The band were joined by members of both support bands and Eric Melvin at different stages of the set and Milo valiantly tried to sing on several songs but he just provided a death metal interlude into a reasonable set from a band struggling on. An absolute highlight for me was when they brought on their long serving soundman to sing a couple of tracks. He looked like the Shermanator’s dad (American Pie) but he did rock as hard as anyone. Kudos to him.
I cannot really comment on The Descendents as I cannot honestly say that I heard them play. I liked what I heard and I wish I had heard them in their hay day but it would be unfair to criticise. I hope to see them again though because in there, between the coughing a spluttering of an obviously upset front man, there was a definite spark and something worth seeing.
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