Los Angeles, CA - The Palace
November 17, 1998



The Offspring Plays Loud And Fast Show

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Orange County punk-pop-metal act the Offspring began a sold-out, three-night stand at the Palace in Hollywood last Tuesday night with a brief and sometimes powerful performance in support of the new album, Americana.

Although lead singer Dexter Holland promised to play "every (expletive) song that we know" at the beginning of the night, the Offspring played for only an hour, including an abbreviated encore. The group managed to cram 17 frenzied punk songs into the short set, yet murmurs of discontent ran through the crowd when the house lights came on and security guards emptied the club.

Surprisingly, the Offspring played few songs from Americana, and instead focused almost solely on material from Ixnay on the Hombre and Smash, the group's two previous efforts. The set began with "All I Want" from Ixnay and included an extra guitarist/keyboardist/drummer on most of the numbers, particularly the conga-flavored "I Choose." On "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)," the first single from Americana, the band brought out a symbolic representative of the song's central figure, a man attired in baggy jeans and sideways baseball cap who shamelessly mugged and danced throughout the song.

Holland's distinctively high vocals were sharp, but musically the Offspring sounded rusty, as drummer Ron Welty's timing was off and Holland's guitar work on "Gone Away" was badly out of tune. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the show was the brief intermission when the band members distributed cups of beer to the crowd and pulled several of them onto the cramped stage for a contest to see who could leap farthest into the roiling mass of bodies. Soap bubbles filled the air and a masked roadie walked about the stage carrying an illuminated sign that read "Intermission."

The second half of the show was devoted to playing most the Offspring's radio hits including "Come Out and Play" and the anthemic "Self-Esteem," which the crowd sang word for word with Holland. The evening's best moment, though, was a three-quarter speed version of "Cool to Hate," which contains one of punk rock's best bass and guitar riffs. The show ended with a thundering rendition of "Gotta Get Away" and an amped-up punk cover of Morris Albert's schmaltzy classic, "Feelings."

By Mike Dutra, from Mojam Music - November 24, 1998