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New York, NY - Irving Plaza December 8, 1998 Offspring: Punks Laugh As They Battle Phonies The men in the Offspring are real punk rockers. That's why they can make fun of phonies like the one in "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)," the band's fiendishly catchy new hit. The song derides a white boy who adopts black styles to look tough but ends up a fool in his baggy jeans and fake prison tattoos. While the band performed the song on Tuesday night at Irving Plaza, Guy Cohen, the actor who plays the fly white guy in its video, struck some stupid gangster poses before proving himself an actual punk by stage-diving into the crowd. Inviting that comedian onstage, the Offspring betrayed a costly insight: In 1998, real punks often seem like a joke. "Pretty Fly" may be caustic social satire, but it's also a sign that white rockers feel threatened by the current black music renaissance. The Offspring thrive not by stressing their earnest side, which seemed more powerful when punk ruled the airwaves not long ago, but by mining a comical vein. Punks have always been partial to low humor, but the Offspring push the laughs to the limit. Humorous guests at Irving Plaza included Cohen, Calvert Deforest -- famous as Larry (Bud) Melman -- and the wiry backup singer and band jester Chris Higgins. When the group took a midshow break, a gigantic roadie in a rubber mask waved a sign flashing "Intermission." Earlier, Dexter Holland, the band's robust singer, had fans carry him through the club so he could give the sound man some beers. That joke backfired: some boys in the crowd grabbed the cans and downed them with an urgency only under-age drinkers feel. Those slurping boys represent the Offspring's primary audience, and they get the band's dumb jokes but they feel its anger, too. That rage mounts on the new "Americana" (Columbia/Sony), with songs like "She's Got Issues," which ridicules a neurotic girlfriend, and "Why Don't You Get a Job?" a diatribe against freeloading that borrows its chorus from Paul Simon's "Cecilia." Kevin (Noodles) Wasserman's tuneful but crunchy guitar playing anchors the band's electrified take on military fight songs, while Holland's thunderous bawling evokes adolescent uncertainty over whether everyone else in the world is an idiot, or is it just you? The members of the Offspring know that feeling well. When the band abandoned the independent label Epitaph for Sony in 1996, many punks denounced them. Now enjoying a success based on finding the humor in the sense of insignificance that traumatizes its fans, these 30-something players have grown cynical. At least they realize the real punks can be as foolish as fly white guys. By Ann Powers, from "The New York Times" newspaper - December 10, 1998 |