OFFSPRING
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Like Fugazi, Ian McKaye’s venerable D.C. hardcore-based outfit, the Offspring are your college English major/high school math nerd punks. Fugazi is the epitome of the uncompromising, avowedly indie outfit achieving success on its own terms. Reeking of righteousness and firmly on the side of every liberal cause, Fugazi members lie awake at night worrying about dying or about women being harassed on the street. The Offspring, similarly, transcend the mere politically correct. Their concerns about the state of the world include gangs at school (in the radio hit “Come Out and Play”), random highway violence (“Bad Habit”), and a list of social ills that would do Sassy proud (“Not the One”). While they unquestionably play punk rock, the Offspring and Fugazi have nothing in common with the nihilism and self-destructiveness of punk’s hallowed past; instead, they concentrate and work hard. That’s paid off for the Offspring: their album Smash, talisman for a new generation of punk fans softened up by Nirvana, sits in the top five; with more than two million sold, it’s the largest-selling release ever on an independent label.
There certainly wasn’t a 70s punk revival happening the Monday the Offspring sold out the Vic. The band’s early support came out of the boisterous male skate-rat contingent, giving them some underground credibility. But at this show the fans ranged from junior high to college age and seemed to patronize the Gap and Sears. Many of them were female. (Mall chicks like the Offspring’s combination of punk energy and warm voices.) The band themselves looked like an older version of their audience, healthy and fit, evincing an implicit “straight-edge” punk credo–a bad attitude, liberal politics, an aversion to drug use, and a deep love for the skateboard. No mohawks or leather jackets here; in their place were the baggy outfits that can be seen on almost any rock video and singer Dexter Holland’s baby face and blondish braids. When they weren’t drinking their Evian water they splashed it on the crowd, and they smiled with an unpunklike cheeriness and tore into their songs with a melodic, chanting energy. Skateboarders have a word for the combination of graceful technique and unexpected tricks: “shredding.” That’s what the Offspring were doing at the Vic.
