I went to Vegas to see Cock Sparrer...
and it ruled. No ragrets as Monster-chugging broskis used to say or whatever.
I gotta admit up front, I generally hate a big ass show. I’ll take being stuffed into a packed (or unpacked) club, hall, or room any day over being in a sea of people with varying degrees of interest in the band playing. That’s not to say I haven’t had fun at bigger fests. I went to Warped Tour in ‘96 and ‘98 and had a good time. I played three of the first four Sound & Fury fests, but back then it was basically just a stacked club show, smaller than the fest pre-shows these days. I actually went to Punk Rock Bowling in 2013 and had a great time but at age 45 and no longer partying, it takes a lot to get me to leave San Diego on a holiday weekend.
But I’d never seen Cock Sparrer, one of my favorite bands of all time, and I said if they were ever playing within driving distance I’d be there.
I missed what I believe was their one and only Southern California show in 2000 and have been waiting for them to return ever since. It never happened. They’ve played Punk Rock Bowling in Vegas and one off gigs in Northern California a handful of times, as well as Chicago and the Northeast, but never came back to So Cal. The boys from the East End of London are ~70 years old now so when they announced that this was their last PRB gig, I figured it was time to finally handle business and make the 5-to-6-hour trek to see them.
Their set was near perfect. They played the entire side A of their classic 1983 LP Shock Troops, opening with “Riot Squad” and ending with “We’re Coming Back.” The crowd seemed to know everything, even the two songs that they played off their 2024 LP, Hand On Heart. The only lull of the set was “Every Step Of The Way” which had the unenviable task of following their ‘90s classic, “Because You’re Young.” I’m sure whatever song Iron Butterfly played after "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" didn’t go over so hot either.
The biggest omissions of the set: “I Got Your Number” from Shock Troops, their 1977 single, “Running Riot,” and maybe “Argy Bargy” for dudes who had been drinking since the day before and still hadn’t slept yet. The band themselves matched that white knuckle energy, going hard for about an hour with minimal stops in their 15-song set. It was an exceptional performance and a fitting send off if it does end up being their last US show west of the Mississippi.
At the big gig I only caught Cock Sparrer and the band that preceded them, Power Trip - a band whose return since the untimely death of their singer Riley Gale has been celebrated by some, and labeled a shameful cash grab by others.
The Punk Rock Bowling weekend kicked off the night before with club shows up and down Fremont Street. I ran into Tony Cortez at Walgreens and he said that Stalag 13 was awesome at the 7 Seconds gig, so shoutout to the Nard, but I had to go see one of my favorite bands ever, Dillinger Four. They were exceptionally tight this time around, probably due being more active than normal in the last couple years, including a recent run of Euro gigs this past April. The set drew mostly from the first three LPs, along with a couple tracks from Civil War, but unfortunately once again no songs off any of the early 7”s. At this point, they’re going to force us to get the old gang together and heckle them hard enough that they play “Holy Shit” again like we did in 2000.
Where other bands from their era now seem to be going through the motions, Dillinger Four have not fallen off at all and bring the same intensity and wit that they did when I first saw them 25 years ago. Respect.
On the 23rd I also got a chance to check out the Punk Rock Museum. I guess the idea of punk in a museum seems weird to some folks since I see that mentioned in pretty much every article about the place. I don’t think readers of this blog would find it strange at all, especially with 185 Miles South doing our own small part to archive things punk related. There was a fabulous exhibit on the Olympic Auditorium called 18th & Grand at La Plaza De Cultura Y Artes in LA in 2023 and 2024 that featured punk and there’s currently an exhibit on Orange County Punk at the Fullerton Museum Center that I haven’t been to yet. These are both dwarfed by the enormity of the 12,000-square-foot Punk Rock Museum.
Over the last few years there has been plenty of discourse about the merit of the place. Some folks just think it’s cool that there’s a spot dedicated to the best music on the planet. Others think the idea of entering through a gift shop to take $100 tours from punk “celebrities” seems ridiculous and the museum serves as another example of the gross commodification of the genre. I’m leaning former, but I’m sympathetic to the latter.
The museum is heavy on first and second wave punk - late 1970s LA/NY/UK and then early ‘80s LA are heavily represented. Black and white photos from photographers such as Alison Braun and Ed Colver cover the walls. If you follow those folks on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a lot of them but it’s way cooler seeing them on a wall instead of staring at a screen while blue light slowly melts your corneas. Some rooms are labeled and have themes, and some are just a mishmash. The first room was almost exclusively dedicated to old Social Distortion memorabilia but then randomly had a surfboard in the corner with a No Use For A Name setlist written on it by Tony Sly. The next room had various punk drum sets and a cool little nook on Suicidal Tendencies.
There was a hallway dedicated to Max's Kansas City and CBGB and another room with a ton more photos. Upstairs there were enclaves on Ed Colver photography, NYC’s now closed St. Vitus Bar, and the Vans® Warped Tour. Beyond an island in the middle of various punk outfits there were other sections that highlighted “crossover,” “folk punk,” “pop punk,” “current,” and “punkers,” whatever the fuck that means. At least we were spared the Snickers rip off shirt worn exclusively by needle-dicks in the ‘90s.
I think the biggest knock on the museum is that there isn’t much context to anything. It feels more like the ultimate punk man cave than a museum. I don’t know if by walking the halls you get any sort of idea where punk came from, how it evolved, the insular pushes and pulls of the different eras or subgenres, or that it was more than a genre of music or a fashion. You definitely don’t get any idea that it was and is a worldwide phenomenon. It’s just kind of just a bunch of cool shit scattered throughout a big ass warehouse and that’s…still pretty cool. But with a reported $5,000,000 invested in this project, I think that there should be a little more emphasis put on the substance of what made punk unique and important through its ~50 year history compared to other genres of guitar rock. I don’t know if the tours necessarily make it more clear either. A reader emailed me saying they did a tour with Scott Ian from Anthrax who apparently showed up 40 minutes late and didn’t know anything about punk other than liking the Ramones when he was a kid and attending CBGB a couple times.
It’s cool that you can play Pete Koller’s guitar, but was it a guitar he used to record Sick of It All’s classic first LP or was it mailed to him in 2019? There are plenty of photos of Darby Crash on the walls, but what peels back the layers to show he was actually a brilliant poet not just a drugged-out freak show? Would you walk away having any understanding about the rise of DIY in the 2nd wave or how early hardcore punk was innovative with its speed, something that heavy metal had to catch up to? I know the running gag about the museum is that international stuff isn’t covered at all, but man, it really isn’t covered at all. Did Fat Mike have zero interest in Welcome to 1984 or the P.E.A.C.E. comp?
Maybe the problem is that punk really isn’t that interesting to the curators of the museum outside of its origins and their specific lane of punk that has existed behind barriers, with green rooms and riders for 30+ years now. In this bourgeois punk bubble maybe the Warped Tour or the commercial success of clown shoe bands like Good Charlotte is more important in the lineage of punk than anything that ever came out of Sweden, Finland, Italy, Japan, or the Netherlands. Actually, hold up. Finland did have some representation, you just gotta buy it in the upstairs gift shop.
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- ZN
That museum sounds even worse than I imagined it to be.
Like, it‘s debatable if punk belongs in a museum at all (I guess there‘s a solid argument as to why it does). But in this form, it really sounds like a cash grab for washed-up punk dads and scene tourists. Who would have thought that the guy behind NOFX… oh, wait.
I haven't been to the museum but maybe some of that context is given during the guided tours?