STILL PUNX
Bad Religion, Social Distortion keep punk alive at Stage AE
It was old punks night at Stage AE on Friday with two bands that have provided us decades’ worth of great tunes and even better Tshirts and patches. Although no strangers to Pittsburgh, Social Distortion and Bad Religion have never been fellow travelers here, or nearly anywhere, for that matter.
“We weren’t here that long ago — you look familiar,” Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin said, greeting the crowd. “Glad you could be here on this historic night: Social Distortion and Bad Religion on the same stage has never happened on a North American tour, till now.”
Somehow, the two SoCal bands, which go back more than 40 years, didn’t tour together until a trip to Australia
in ’22. They would have hit the U.S. last year had it not been for Mike Ness’ bout with tonsil cancer.
Happily, the Social D frontman is good to go and back in the trenches.
Bad Religion was up first to bash through 20 songs in just over an hour. The band’s four players, including original guitarist and Epitaph founder Brett Gurewitz and bassist Jay Bentley,
set a breakneck pace and it was Graffin’s job to keep up while squeezing in his stream of sociopolitical lyrics.
The 59-year-old frontman and academic — looking professorial, as always, with his black T-shirt, white hair and glasses — is still up to that challenge and will certainly be aware when he’s not.
Bad Religion is the very definition of a straight-on, no-frills, four-chord band but with some four-syllable words thrown in that are best absorbed at home with the records.
They have 17 albums but none since 2019’s “The Age of Reason,” so they had time for all the “hits” — “Los Angeles is Burning,” “American Jesus,” “21st Century (Digital Boy)” and my fave, “Sorrow” — played in a Ramones-style blur.
They went all the way back to ’82 with the hardcore song “We’re Only Gonna Die” and up to 2019 with “My Sanity.” They did it all without a single mention of Trump.
Social Distortion is revisiting its first