since 12/22/98
10/14/98 The Palladium, Worcester, MA: Disount, Snuff, ALL, Less Than Jake
I hate the Palladium and most of the people that work there. That said, this show was fun until I got kicked out for tripping a bouncer.
Discount opened up. They are excellent, melodic, female-fronted pop. They played a lot of newer stuff, off "Half Fiction" (which is out no for $8 from KAT Records), including "On the Counter", "Clap and Cough", "Soup", and others. Their set lasted about thirty minutes. Alison (vocals) has a beatiful voice and really seemed to enjoy the audience and got into it. The only negative part about Discount opening up was that I wanted to punch the dickhead in the back who kept shouting, "Take off your clothes", "Get naked!", "Show us your tits", and other assorted stuff like that.
Snuff went on next and played an eclectic blend of punk, ska, calypso, hardcore, cajun, and possibly some other stuff. Snuff is an extremely talented band, but they are hard to enjoy live as the drummer sings, which doesn't allow for much stage presence. They played songs such as, "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads", "Arsehole", "Nick Northern", "Etc." and about forty minutes of others.
Next, ALL took the stage. Now if you don't know who ALL is, you should go slap yourself in the face and then buy something by them, or if you're cheap, go listen to the Descendents and pretend to be cool. They are the Descendents, without Milo. I caught them during the Warped Tour 1998, and they were much better inside a club (even if the club sucks). They played "World's on Heroin" (probably their best known song), "I'll Get There", and a lot of other puncrock tunes.
Less Than Jake put the crowd into a wild frenzy with their blend of punk and ska, with a hell of a lot of 80s metal influence. Maybe with their increase in popularity, they've changed, but this show was completely different than any of the previous times I had seen them. They threw very little free stuff out into the crowd and all their merchandise was more expensive than I had seen it before. The dancefloor was quite violent and I got punched, kicked, shoved, crushed, and my hat was knowcked off three times, but aside from that, it was coolyo. The tour was in support of their new Capitol Records release, "Hello Rockview" and they played a lot of songs off that. "Last One out of Liberty City", "Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding", "All My Bestfriends are metalheads", "Nervous in the Alley", "History of a Boring Town" (I swear that they plyed this twice.), and maybe a few others. From earlier releases, they played "Automatic", "Liquor Store", "Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts", "My Very Own Flag", "Where the Hell is Mike Sinkovich?" and I forget waht else. Then as I was skanking (or attempting to amongst the masses), I kicked a bouncer, and he stumbled (this was right after Less Than Jake commended the bouncers for being totally cool.), and he grabbed me, threw me to the floor and when I refused to get pushed around, he twisted my arms to make me stand, and I got thrown out. Then when I was on the street, I tried to communicate to somebody inside so that I could get my bag and the kid who I was bringing home, and some bitch made me get away from the door and made the kid inside get away from the door to. Oh well, I hear they finished with "Jen" and it was good.