"Back in 1984, school buddies Bryan "Dexter" Holland and Greg Kriesel (Greg K) were devastated at failing to get in to a Social Distortion gig. A year earlier this local band from Fullerton, Orange County, California, had made a spetacular punk rock debut with Mommy's Little Monster, a catchily-named album reviving memories of the Rolling Stones and Sex Pistols. Social Distortion's popularity only heightened the teenagers' frustation at missing their show but at the same time, it spawned an idea which for most other kids from Orange County would have been an impossible fantasy. "WHY NOT START OUR OWN PUNK BAND?" No self-respecting punk musician could argue against this attitude, coming as it did from two nerdy scholars who'd never played an instrument, had never spilt blood carving initials into unwashed foreheads, or stiffed their hair with lacquer borrowed from an unsuspecting mother. Punk was about doing the unthinkable. To hell with tradition, to hell with conservatism and to hell with adult negativism and attitudes that suck. Even so, by the mid 80s, punk's lights had dimmed. The Sex Pistols had died with that icon of self-multilation and spiked hair - spitting Sid Vicious who took one dose too many of his favourite heroin, pick-me-up and dropped dead in New York while awaiting trial for the murder of his blonde heiress girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, a punk groupie and sex symbol of the "lost generation".

Here in Orange County, the well-to-do kids who lived in the wide streets and big houses and were dropped off at Pacifica High School by their professional dads, were a different race to theirclass consious, socially opressed, and sometimes violent British cousins. The Orange County kids rebelled against suburban boredom. No social or financial deprivation here. No struggled against poverty. Speaking to MuCoMo online magazine, Dexter neatly summed up the condition facing his peer group: "The suburbs kill you in a different way. You have so many kids that are just so bored. It's like beeing beaten over the head with mediocrity." Conservative attitudes in Orange County demanded an emphasis on image. That meant you had to: "Look clean cut, drive a nice car, get a decent career." Althought it involved a delicate balance. Dexter Holland and Greg Kriesel forged ahead with their punk dream but continued classes, drove nice cars and worked hard towards a "decent career" for the future. At the same time, they excelled at sport, running for the Pacifica High School cross country team in Garden Grove. They called their fledgling band Maniac Subsidal, bought instruments and taught themselves to play music. Shortly after, the band increased to four when Dexter recruited two of their cross country team mates to form a quartet.

In spite of the distraction of playing gigs, Holland remained a keen student, graduating as class valedictorian which earned him the egghead nickname of "Dexter". Music was a helthy distraction from his academic studies. After high school, Dexter enrolled in pre-med studies at the prestigious USC - not the typical training ground for the lead singer of a punk band! Maniac Subsidal soon underwent dramatic changes when half the band was replaced. First on the scene was Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman, a former graduate of Pacifica High who was enlisted as their permanent guitarrist. "Noodles" earned his nickname by always noodling on the guitar. During the day, he worked as a junior high school janitor. By the time he joined the band, he was already heavily into punk. The final, and youngest member to permanently join the group was Ron Welty. At just 16, he begged Holland to let him substitute for Maniac Subsidal's drummer who had started medical school and was missing lots of gigs. Welty, thought much younger than the rest of the group, won them over with his enthusiasm. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Noodles spoke about his admiration for Dexter's unusual style: "He was a valedictorian, he was such a math geek. So when I first saw him with black hair and plaid bondage pants, I was like, "what are you doing?" But I thought it cool, going way beyond what I thought was society's role for him." For Dexter and Greg, finding Noodles was like discovering a "punk" soul mate. "The Dickies and the Sex Pistols were the first two records I got and they dramatically changed my life," the bespectacled Noodles told MuCoMo. As one writer for Gannett News Service observed, forming the band "was just as bonding as geeks". Dexter readily admits that he was, and is, "a dork". He was introduced to punk by his elder brother who gave him a "Rodney on the ROQ' punk compilation album. Dexter was won over by it and his favourite bands became T.S.O.L., Social Distortion, the Adolescents, and Agent Orange. His high IQ and tall, all-American good looks aside, Dexter seemed to comfortably wear the role of the disillusioned misfit. And he unquestionably adopted the punk credo. "All punk bands back in '84 wrote about was police, death, religion and war" Holland told Rolling Stone. "So that's what we did." Greg Kriesel, commonly known as "Greg K" was a jock in high school. He played baseball and ran cross country. His investment banker father had wanted him to be a lawyer, and since no one in the band had any dream of making music a career, he was serious about law. Dexter had introduced him to punk music in high school, and althought he loved playing in the band, it was still very much a hobby. While working part time in a print shop, Greg earned a BA in Finance at Long Beach State. His house was always the band hang out. To get away with jam sessions you needed a cool mom and deaf neighbours and Greg K's became the perfect location. He pretty much had the ustairs to himself and his mom was great about letting his friends come over to play loud music or listen and just kick back. Ron Welty moved to Garden Grove during high school. His older stepsister introduced him to Holland, who by that time was in his twenties and had been in college for several years, working toward his Ph.D in microbiology. No-one had a commitment to music. Eventually the band changed its name to The Offspring and continued to pratise and play small club gigs whenever it could get them. The band members worked their schedule around jobs and schoolwork.

In 1987, The Offspring paid to release it's own 7-inch single of "I'll Be Waiting" and "Black Ball" on Black Label Records. Althought they printed only 1.000 copies, it took them more than 2 years to dispose of them. Like many young hope fuls, they sent copy after copy to different labels in the vain hope of a recording contract. Instead, rejection followed rejection. But they didn't give up and in 1989, nearly two years later, they finally scored a contract with Nemesis, a small, Long Beach, California, punk label distributed by San Diego-based Cargo Records. They were ecstatic. That same year they also set off on their first cross country tour in Holland's pick-up, sleeping rough in school yards and public parks. All of their out-of-town shows were necessarily planned around vacations and school breaks. From the start, The Offspring's songs were the cry of what Entertainment Weekly called "the embattled Everyteen". In spite of the passage of time, their message remains the same. Dexter, who writes all the lyrics joked that the group remains "about 12 years old maturity wise", so relating to a young audience presents little problems. Self-mockingly, the members profess to be your "average joes" trying to reach average kids and give voice to the feelings of angst and anger in today's teenagers.

With the Nemesis contract firmly under their belt, The Offspring tried desperately to track down producer Thom Wilson to work on their first record. He had produced their favorite albums: seminal recordings by Cali punk greats T.S.O.L., Adolescents. Christian Death, and the Dead Kennedys. The productions had usually been achieved on microscopic budgets, recorded in a matter of hours, and completed in two or three days. But Thom was difficult to track down and Dexter was about to give up and go with another producer when they discovered the producer had quit the business and was now doing soundfor television. They quickly persuaded him to return to the persistence. He told Bud Scoppa who interviewed him for a feature article in Addicted to Noise: "I got a phone call from this guy named Brian Holland, who was in this band called The Offspring. This was in 1989, I believe. "They had spent about four or five months tring to track me down because they were fans of primarily the T.S.O.L. recordings, but also the Vandals, and the Adolescentes and all of that stuff. My name had been on these very influential records for them." With Wilson producing, The Offspring recorded another 7-inch single called "Baghdad" (featuring for cuts: "Get it Right", "Hey Joe", "Baghdad", and "The Blurb") and a 11-song album debut eponymously titled The Offspring. (...) Was this the modern version of punk? The youthful musings on the sorry state of the world emanating from the bleeding heart of a microbiology major studying gene-splicing at an elite medical school.

The Offspring's release was a disappointment. During an online Rockline chat in February, 1995, the band said: "Nemesis put out our record which we recorded ouselves and paid for. They did a shitty job with it. They never pushed it in the least. They refused to press CDs, claiming there was not enough interest. Finally, after a few years, we decided to take the record back, so it's not being pressed anymore." Nemesis only released 5.000 copies of the album so the band began pressing The Offspring again later in 1995 throught Dexter's own Nitro label. (The re-release has different artwork from the original Nemesis album, with a drawing reportedly so similar to an image from the movie Alien that some people suggested that to reproduce the artwork again might invite legal action. Nitro changed the cover art). While The Offspring involvement with Nemesis was frustating, their collaboration with Thom Wilson was rewarding. The group credits Wilson with helping them pare down their sound, getting rid of unnecessary guitar solos, and simplifying drum and bass patterns. Ron Welty told Drum!Magazine (March, 95) that Thom Wilson had really helped him learn to mesh it drumming with the rest of the band's music. "Just making it sound like one thing, instead of a drum part, a bass part, and a guitar part." In 1990, the band was given the opportunity of recording a track for a flipside compilation with Brett Gurewitz who owned Epitaph Records.

Brett was a guitarist for what was then California's most sucessfull punk band, Bad Religion. Hoping to build on their relationship with the young punk impresario, they sent him a tape of their new music. He passed on it. The following year they had more sucess. Again they had mailed demos for their next album to just about every punk label they could think of, including Gurewitz. This time he liked what he heard. "It definitely had what people call the Epitaph sound," Gurewitz told Rolling Stone. "High energy, rebellious punk with great melodies and cool economical song estructures." He signed the band. In 1992, Epitaph released Ignition containing 12 rapid-fire, energetic Offspring songs. To the delight of the band members, the album shipped 10.000 copies. Better news was to follow when the label managed to place several songs from the album on a series of videos on surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding. A large section of The Offspring's following was generated by the "OC surf-rat scene" and members of the band were themselves immersed in the skateboarding and surf lifestyle. The pay-off was virtually instantaneous. In just four months, sales of Ignition catapulted from 16.000 to 46.000 - an impressive achievement for an independent punk release. From the first solo beats of Ron Welty's drums on "Session" to the closing strains of "Forever and a Day" The Offspring kick out a driving but melodic form of catchy metal-pop punk that practically commands the audience to sing along. But while the music has an upbeat feel to it, as opposed to the darker, razor-edged sounds more closely associated with hardcore punk, the rebellious nature of The Offspring's lyrics ate the draw which attractthe punk ethos. (...)

At the start of 1994, The Offspring were still a largely unkown punk band trucking from gig to gig. They would take their green bus, fabulously decorated with a Holiday Inn logo (it had previously been used to provide a hotel shuttle service) on the road and pray that it wouldn't break down. Their prayers were rarely answered and from time to time they were left stranded on the roadside. When winter came, they had to put up with a broken heater in freezing conditions. "It was awful, but it would cost too much to fix it," Ron Welty told Mike Boehm of the L.A. Times. He said: "We were punk about it." It was the nearest they got to self abuse. At the time, they anxiously awaited the release of their second Epitaph album, and hoped for better times.

Everything changed for The Offspringin April, 1994, when L.A.'s immensely influential rock station, KROQ, put "Come Out and Play (keep 'em separated)" of Smash, into regular rotation. They played the song every three to four hours, nothing up 52 plays in just one week. Other radio stations around the country followed KROQ's lead and picked up on the song. The obscure punk band from Orange County became an overnight sucess on the national stage. They were an "instant" phenomenon. Dexter, Greg, Noodles and Ron had each became a star. Since then the band has gone from strenght to strenght. (...)

The Offspring spent only $20.000 recording Smash. Producer Thom Wilson arrived exhausted for the final recording session of the band's album having spent a gruelling series of all-nighters mixing for the decidedly non-punk TV special "Perry Como's Irish Christmas". From having togently messagean 81-year-old crooner backed by a 70-member orchestra and large choir, Wilson had now to metamorphose into a punk producer. Where hours earlier he had mixed the strains of a heavenly choir, The Offspring bombarded him with an onslaught of shouted choruses, thrashing guitars, and throbbing kick drums. Because the band had been on the road and had a little time to work on new material for the album, Dexter says he reeled off a lot of the lyrics on the spot during the studio session. They were so fresh that the first pressing of Smash didn't even hava all the lyrics printed on the album sleeve for the simple reason that Dexter couldn't jot them down in time for the print run. He told Addicted to Noise: "The lyrics are put on at the las minute literally, in the studio. It's more out of desperation - what can I write about today?" The collaboration between Wilson and the band was not always an easy ride. The two frequently differed in their opinion on various tracks os the album. The L.A. Times reported on in August that Wilson wasn't overly impressed with "Come Out and Play", until the hook "you gotta keep 'em separeted" was added to the track late in the recording process. Neither did Wilson initially like what was to become the band's second huge hit off the album - "Self Esteem". Dexter told the Times that after the band played Thom the preliminary instrumental track, "he felt it was boring the way it was. He said it made him feel like going out to order a pizza". But once the vocals had been laid down, Dexter says that Wilson changed his mind and considered it a good song. Another thing The Offspring and Thom Wilson disagreed on was the number of albums they thought Smash would sell. When Wilson predicted they would sell 150.000 copies, the band thought he was out of his mind. That was more than double the other estimate, and before KROQ came on the scene. The Offspring happily credits the radio station with breaking Smash (never mind that KROQ airplay statistics called them "a tinny little punk band from OC"). KROQ is not the only heavily listened to it the L.A. area, but it's a well-known fact that radio station programmers around the country follow their lead. When KROQ shows the extraordinary kind of enthusiasm for a new song as they did for "Come Out and Play" spinning it as frequently as they did, then key stations all over the country are bound to follow their lead. And if radio is that hot on a song, MTV must be lurking round the corner. The band's obrigatory video for the red-shot song quickly landed in heavy rotation on MTV's Buzz Bin. Meanwhile, the band members still carried on with the day jobs: Noodles as a janitor, Ron in a muffin shop, Dexter and Greg with their professional qualifications. Dexter's studies were significantly advanced and he was close to becoming a doctor of philosophy in Microbiology.

Fortunately for The Offspring, they took on a new manager, Jim Guerinot, in June, 1994, just as all the hype surrounding Smash began to snowball. (...) He made sure the band wasn't over-exposed, turning down offers of many appearences on prestigious nationwide TV slots. The band credits Guerinot with protecting them by knowing when to say "no". He reportedly turned down Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show, MTV's Spring Break, 120 Minutes, and even the cover of Rolling Stone. But he would not turn down their growing legion of fans. After the release of Smash, the band was on the road for the better part of 18 months, bringing with them Thom Wilson to mix sound on some of their gigs. They played everything from clubs to stadiums, solo shows, and huge festivals like Glastonbury in England

By August, 1994, four months after its release, "Smash" soared above the industry's highest expectations breaking the one million sales mark to reach platinum status. With sucess came the inevitable flak and the start of a mild blacklash which The Offspring tried their best to ignore as their fame spreed. Reporter Mike Boehm, writing for the Orange County edition of the L.A. Times (August 22, 1994) opined: "Hasn't punk rock always been music that lives in opposition to the mainstream, a music of outcasts and misfits shouting warnings, mockery and vilification at the comfy, self satisfied majority? How does that jibe with an album that sells a million copies in four months, with who knows how many units still to move?" Stradom had never been to The Offspring's goal. All they had hoped was that they would do as well as their friends and label mates, NOFX. Fame was out. It "was not supposed to happen," Wasserman told Toni Ruberto of Gannett News Service. "It was really frightening, especially when we saw the record sales and the way the song kept climbing the he charts. When we broke into the Top 200, we said "no this isn't happening". Then it made dramatic jumps until it was in the Top 20, then Top 10. After a while, I stopped looking at charts. It was too weird and far beyond anyone's expectations." A number of critics noted the album's wide appeal. "Offspring's fun teen-age rock is charismatic enough to cross over beyond the hardcore crowd, but never compromising enough to alienate its base of angst-hungry fans. It's a balance that could take it far," wrote Lorraine Ali of the L.A. Times. Just how far no one could yet fully appreciate. Some purists complained that the album was "too poppy" to really be punk. In her MTV Online review of an Offspring show at Roseland Ballroom in New York, Suzanne McElfresh remarked that, "The Offspring's message speaks to the masses, which punk could never do - in fact, never wanted to do". (...)

After their massive sucess with "Smash", by far the biggest threat to Offspring's credibility with some fans was their decision to leave independent label Epitaph, and sign with the giant Columbia Records, part of the Sony Music Entertainment conglomerate. This was in spite of the fact that, according to wide spread rumors, The Offspring had earlier been instrumental in convincing label mates Rancid not to sign a deal with Sony's Epic Records, but to stay with Epitaph. The cries of "sell out" directed against the band were predicted. But according to The Offspring these accusatory cries were unfair. The band says it turned down offers from a number of the major labels and had firmly decided to stay with Epitaph until they had a falling out with the label head Brett Gurewitz which made it impossible for them to continue. In a nutshell, the band, rightly or wrongly, felt that Gurewitz had misled them about his intentions for Epitaph. Dexter sent a letter to The Offspring's online fan mailing list to explain why the band was leaving Epitaph. The letter said: "Brett's more concerned about making his label big than he is about helping his bands. That's basically what it's about, and why we left." The band was convinced that Gurewitz had been meeting with larger labels to sell off an interest in Epitaph. They said he repeatedly denied it, but then admitted that he wanted to sell part of the company to "raise capital". Dexter told Request Magazine in January, 1997: "He finally admitted that he was thinking of selling part of the company, but at that point we were, like 90 percent of the sales. I felt like we were being sold off, like a fucking commodity... We just wanted to at least make the choice ourselves." The Offspring have insisted over and over again, that their break with Epitaph was not about money. The December 1996 issue of Hit Parade reported that "Smash" is estimated to have put more than $20 million on the label's corporate coffers, and if that is so Epitaph clearly had enough money to pay the band whatever it wanted. But money was not the first consideration, even though Gurewitz apparently offered Dexter and his bandmates a very tidy sum to stay with him and the label. The band says it signed with Columbia for less money and more albums just to get out of their deal with Epitaph (where they owed one more album on a 3-album contract). Aside from their "trust issues" with Gurewitz, the band cited artistic freedom as another reason for their desire to go elsewhere. Dexter told Addicted to Noise: "The main thing was really to have the creative freedom we wanted to have. To do the kind of music we wanted. It wasn't a matter of money or business in that sense at all. We really took less money to leave and go to Columbia. We really wanted to have the artistic control we hadn't had before". Gurewitz responded to his statement in Addicted to Noise: "I've never tampered with my artists' art, never, ever, ever..." He told the webzine that he had never denied meeting with labels, but insisted that it was for a different reason, namely to pick their brains and benefit from the experience of others who'd been there before. "Not, to sell off his company. Bitterly disappointed that his star band had walked, he told ATN of his ambitions for The Offspring. He wanted them to remain career artists with Epitaph. "We're trying to create a Utopian place for recording artists, you know?" The band professes not to mind the part of their deal with Columbia that left Epitaph the rights to European distribution for their new release, including rights for the U.K., Germany and France. "I think it was important for Brett to hang on to this record in Europe because he wanted to get the European side of the label going, as it's still fairly new. That's okay with us. Epitaph has always done a great job", Dexter told Martin Aston of dotmusic (January,1997). As for the band's serrender of their supposed independence, their "indi-cred", and signing on with a corporate monolith, they just don't see it that way. Dexter told music: "We don't see Columbia as authority. We saw how Rage Against the Machine and Pearl Jam had dictated their own deals there, so the vibe was right." But The Offspring are neighter naive nor blind to commercial opportunism. Dexter told Addicted to Noise: "Columbia doesn't have some special affection for our music. They don't have some special place in their hearts for Orange County punk music. They signed us because they think we can sell records." The band achieved the freedom they demanded off Columbia. They say they were allowed to hand in a finished album ("Ixnay on the Hombre") with no input from the label as to song selection, track order, album title, artwork or anything. Questions have been asked whether "Change the World" on "Ixnay on the Hombre", which "rails at phonies and sell-outs" is a dig at Brett Gurewitz. Dexter maintains his right to silence on this. He told ATN: "I'll say 'no comment' on that one. Leave a little of that Offspring mystique".

"I don't feel like a rock star and I hope that never happens", Noodles told Toni Ruberto of Gannett News Services in June, 1995. The rest of the band have repeatedly endorsed his sentiments. They just aren't on a star trip. Quite the opposite in fact. On a number of occasions they have been embarassed to find their own idols opening for them, as happened on the Smash European tour when Social Distortion opened for them at their Camden Underworld show in London. When Dexter found out at another of their gigs that the promoter had The Offspring headlining and The Ramones opening for them, Dexter told Joey Ramone that the band would gladly take the opening slot. But Joey just laughed and the line-up stayed as the promoter had wanted it. (...) It seems that Dexter's high school ambitions of becoming a doctor have been put on hold. Sucess allowed him to start his own label-Nitro Records, which he set up in 1995. Rather than opting for the ritzy L.A. digs favored by most west coast labels, Nitro is housed in typical low-key Offspring fashion-in an office park just off the Garden Grove freeway in Orange County. It was started by Dexter and Greg K, but Dexter now runs the company. It gives him a chance to help out other Orange County punk bands who he feels didn't get the breaks they deserved. That's something Dexter feels very strongly about. He doesn't intend to sign lots of bands, just a few so that he'll be able to give each one the attention it deserves. Some of them are: Guttermouth, AFI, Jughead's Revenge, Vandals and One Hit Wonder. While helping other O.C. bands, Dexter and his bandmates keep their own career in sharp focus. After taking some time off so they could recover from the rigors of touring, and to enable them to make a start on new material, the band went back into the studio in the fall of 1996 to work on their first album for Columbia Records. This time they wanted a different producer. They had worked with Thom Wilson for more than 6 years and felt the need for change. Dave Jerden was their first choice. He was well known for his work with many major artists, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Rolling Stones. According to Bud Scoppa in Addicted to Noise, Dexter was interested in Jerden because he: "...had produced the artistic and commercial breakthroughs by Jane's Addiction and Alice in Chains." But it was Jerden's no-bullshit, blue-collar, seemingly ego-free attitude towards the art of record production that proved to be the deciding factor. Jerden knew little about The Offspring and didn't jump at the opportunity to work with them. He was busy working in the Bahamas, so Dexter flew down to meet him. (...) Jerden took the job. According to the producer, he and The Offspring cut a lot of songs. But when it release on Ixnay on the Hombre, Jerden says they made a decision to put out a record that Offspring fans would expect. Jerden says he has no idea if the other material will ever be release, but claims no matter what happens with Ixnay, he and Bryan (Dexter) did the best job they could and they both really like the record. Of course, with the immense sucess of Smash and all the publicity surrounding the band's jump to Columbia, The Offspring knew that there would be an inordinate amount of attention paid to their first Columbia release. The bulk of the pressure came down on Dexter who admits that, although he tried not to think about it, he was well aware of the scrutiny his lyrics would be under. Whereas in the past he was able to compose instant lyrics on an as-needed basis in the studio, he was also aware that he was not catering to a mass market. Now the pressure wan on. He would have to turn out songs that would appeal to millions. On a certain level, the band knew there was no way they could avoid a backlash on the release of Ixnay on the Hombre. When the album debuted at #9 on the national album charts, some critics described it as "disappointing" and "a tentative debut"... this for a band who had never had an album debut anywhere NEAR the Top 200 before. The band took it in its stride. Punk purists were largely justified in their claims that record had shifted away from the hardcore center. Even the album's producer had admitted that (...). Noodles discussed what he saw as the malaise behind the new punk generation: "Our generation has to deal with AIDS and the fact is that you can't have the traditional family anymore because both husband and wife have to work to support a nuclear family. A lot of kids think that you might as well work in McDonald's and be a stoner or a slacker because there's no point in going to college, in trying to raise yourself up..." The band says they had punk icon Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys recite a "Disclaimer" at the beginning of "Ixnay" because: "We just get a lot of letters from parents that are just irate and telling us that we are the genesis of all evil", Noodles told Janet Stevenson of the Toronto Sun in January, 1997. "It's because we use words like dumbshit and motherfucker. We say the fuck word and so we're bad. It's arrested adolescence, I think, I've come to that conclusion." Nevertheless, Dexter's lyrics still address the ills of society, sometimes with more humor than perhaps punk is supposed to allow, and sometimes taking a jab at the very negativism and elitism of punk itself. (...) Some reviewers gave the album a hard time calling it "punk lite" or saying that it is "bubble gummy" and "not punk at all". (...) Interviewers did talk about the Offspring's music, but another thing that came up repeatedly was Dexter's new short hair! When asked why he had cut off his signature braids (which he at times had to truck under his hat to avoid being recognized) Dexter told Norway's Topp Magazine it was because he was tired of washing it every day. To Kerrang! when asked the same question in February, 1997, Dexter explained: "Jeez, it was time for a change anyway. My hair was awfully smelly. Maybe it'll move a bit of the focus back to the music... it's not about the hair, dudes, it's about the tunes." These same feelings had been discussed with Addicted to Noise when he outlined the group's ethos: "You gotta keep perspective on what's important in being a band. It wasn't always just how many records you sold. It was the fact you could go on tour, meet some people, have a live show, connect with an audience. We did it because it was fun." And while it continues to be fun, Offspring are likely to be out on the road or in the studio thrilling fans for a long time to come."