Fuck Armageddon, This Is Bad Religion!

Howdy folks! Been a while since I've posted on the ol' blog here-- Been far too busy fucking and sucking my way through the day. That's all about to change though, since I'm no longer working regular hours (read: homeless), and as a result of which I've decided to spend more time writing on this thing.

As some of you may have intuited from the title of this post, Bad Religion is going to be heavily featured on this blog all week long. There's a lot going on in the utopian world of Bad Religion (including multiple shows/orgasms in NYC), so I figure each day I will focus on a different story about the band.

Note: If you haven't figured it out by now Bad Religion is a pretty big theme on this blog. (So is "get me payed", but unfortunately Google remains unimpressed by my five followers. ) If you have no idea who Bad Religion is, then I suggest you go to your local ravine and throw yourself into it, because you're a fuckin' idiot.

Right, so for those of you who were unaware, Bad Religion recently decided to play three shows at Irving Plaza in NYC to celebrate their thirty years as a band. The idea is that the set of each show would consist of songs from each of the albums released during each decade of their career-- The first show being songs from their 80's albums, the second show being songs from their 90's albums, the third show being songs from their 00's albums.

The first of three shows took place in the middle of last week, and needless to say, I was in attendance amongst the the sea of concert-goers. The show was sold out, and there was much anticipation as to what kind of obscure songs would find their way into the setlist (namely, would they finally play something from their rare [and arguably terrible] prog rock album, Into The Unknown, which the band themselves have pretty much disowned entirely at this point?)

I've gone ahead and typed out the setlist by album (not by order that they played them in-- A couple tall boys of Bud into the show it became apparent that there way no way I could remember the order of songs, let alone my own date of birth) below:

How Could Hell Be Any Worse?
We're Only Gonna Die
Slaves
Latch Key Kids
Part III
Fuck Armageddon This Is Hell
Yesterday
Frogger
Along The Way

Into The Unknown
Billy Gnosis

Suffer
You Are The Government
How Much Is Enough?
Suffer
Delirium Of Disorder
Do What You Want

No Control
Big Bang
No Control
I Want To Conquer The World
Sanity
You

Against The Grain
21st Century Digital Boy

Recipe For Hate
American Jesus

Stranger Than Fiction
Infected

The Process Of Belief
Sorrow

The Empire Strikes First
Los Angeles Is Burning

New Maps Of Hell
New Dark Ages

The Dissent Of Man
Devil In Stitches
The Resist Stance
Wrong Way Kids
Avalon


Looking at this list, two things will probably become apparent, the first being that they played a decent amount of songs that occurred after 1989, particularly from their new album "The Dissent Of Man". I suppose the band wanted to promote the new album a little bit, as well as throw in a couple of fan favorites for those who would not be attending all three performances. As much as I enjoyed these songs, I kind of wish the band had just saved them for another night, in order to make space for some more of their lesser-played songs from the 80's era. "Latch Key Kids" and "Yesterday" sounded particularly awesome, but it was somewhat disappointing that the only real rare song that they played off "No Control" was "Big Bang". What, no "Henchman" or "Anxiety"? All in all the set was great though, and their songs from "How Could Hell Be Any Worse" sounded miles better than they do on the album. I was kind of hoping they would play their song "Bad Religion" as well, because even though it's not their best song, it is, uh, the name of the band, dude.

The second thing that should be instantly apparent from this list is that they played Billy Gnosis from Into The Unknown. Let me repeat this for emphasis: THEY PLAYED BILLY FUCKIN' GNOSIS. The result was... awkward. The song itself is by no means one of their best songs, but what made it exciting to see what the rarity of it. When Bad Religion gets up and plays "Generator", you know that they've played it at every show since 1991 (except this one), and whilst it is awesome every time, you know that the band themselves probably can't distinguish one performance of it from the thousands of other ones. That would be like asking someone "Hey man, you remember that time you checked your email that one day five years ago?" Uh, no.

What made this song (and by extension, the entire show) awesome was the shared experience of it all. You know Bad Religion will remember playing Billy Gnosis during their 80's era show in New York City in 2010 because as Greg Graffin said, they've never played it before. Jay then corrected him and said they played in once in 1983, but even that was long enough ago that I was -1 years old.

Overall the show was badass, and highlights included the crowd chanting "Ten more years!" instead of "One more song!" before the encore, and the most hilarious old man a row or two in front of me. This was a guy who looked like he was about in his 50's, bald on top with brownish grey hair on the sides, the type of guy who probably wears Polo Ralph Lauren with khakis on the weekends in his suburban home. Picture this, and then picture him wearing a faded blue denim jeans jacket with matching faded blue denim jeans-- The type of thing that was probably commonplace at a punk show back in 1983, but today really just makes you look dated and out of touch. I get the impression that this guy heard that a band he liked as a kid in the 80's were playing, and decided to go check it out for nostalgia. It was as if he literally dusted off his old jeans jacket from thirty years ago while his kids rolled their eyes in embarrassment. What made the entire thing so funny (and by funny I actually mean heartwarming) was that for any of the songs that were written after 1988 he pretty much just stood there looking motionless and confused, but for every song prior to '88 he had his fist in the air singing every word. It was like literally just stopped listening to them one day. It kind of gives hope for the rest of us that maybe when we're fifty years old we'll be able to do the same thing... which I think will make the members of Bad Religion about eighty.

Anyway, here's Bad Religion playing Billy Gnosis, for all the suckers who weren't there: