Punk is Dad, Vol. III

What up, Fam.

So last spring, BP and Kimmel - two of my closest friends dating back to High School - and I bought tickets to see Rancid in Detroit. Rancid, as you may or may not know, is my all-time favorite band, and I've seen them in concert probably a dozen times by now. 

This time on their way through Michigan, they'd be opening up for The Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day, two fellow '90s bands that were much more mainstream back in the day. The Pumpkins definitely aren't relevant anymore, but Green Day is still immensely popular, so we were blown away when we were able to score some pretty awesome seats at Comerica Park - the venue they would be performing at - for a mere $110 apiece.

Fast forward to this evening.

I met up with BP and Kimmel at the hotel Kimmel had booked for us in nearby Dearborn around 3pm this afternoon (the soonest we could check in), and from there we Uber'd downtown to grab some food. I'll narrate the day alongside the following pics and video, but long story short we had a bad-ass evening, even if we did kinda screw up straight out of the gate.

Check it out. . .

Walking into the hotel to check in to our room.

This room was huge, and only cost about $50 per person.

I volunteered to sleep on this pull-out couch, which wasn't too uncomfortable later on in the night, but the lack of extra blankets and an over-zealous air conditioner meant I basically froze to death throughout the night.

The bathroom, which was pretty decent.

Three crusty, old punks.

Awaiting our Uber ride outside the hotel.

Coming into downtown.

We were dropped off right across the street from Saint Andrew's, where, a few years ago, BP and I got to see The Bouncing Souls on a previous Detroit punk field trip.

I had kinda had a late lunch, so I wasn't up for eating just yet, but BP and Kimmel were both pretty hungry. Apparently this is the same bar that BP and I had a few beers at before heading into the aforementioned Souls show five years ago, but I didn't remember it.

Refueling before the show.

Comerica Park was only a few blocks away, so after finishing dinner and our beers, we began our trek through downtown Detroit. . .

Kimmel checks his phone. . . for some reason.

When we were about a block away from Comerica Park, we checked the time and it was only like 5pm. According to our tickets, the doors opened at 5:30pm. . . or so we thought.

Enjoying some pints at a local brewery - one of my favorite past times.

Gotta wear a punk rock shirt when going to a punk rock show.

Little did we know that the 5:30pm start time wasn't advertising the doors opening time - like usual on tickets - but instead, oddly, when the opening bands would start to perform. This is almost unheard of, so clearly we weren't worried about missing any of the opening acts when we popped into the brewery. Besides, there was another band opening up before Rancid, so we assumed we'd be getting to the show fairly early anyway.

Oblivious to our dumbassary at this point.

There were crowds and crowds of people still filing into the baseball stadium at this point. So many, in fact, that we thought we had arrived too early.

Home of the Detroit Tigers.

BP and I opted not to drink at the concert - $15 for a 16 oz beer is a rip-off, plus we didn't want to have to get up and piss every half hour - but Kimmel bought several.

Heading up to our seats. Which, like I said, were pretty awesome.

So at first glance they look like nosebleed seats, but we're actually in the second or third section, and our vantage point was just about perfect for viewing the stage (set up over home plate, kinda.)

Can't complain with this view (this is 0.5x, so it's zoomed out a bit in order to fit everything - the stage appeared much larger in person.)

One of the coolest things about these seats was we had a concrete wall directly behind us, so we could rest our heads against it, and nobody was sitting and talking directly behind us - made for a very comfortable evening.

So when the first band took the stage, we were a little confused. Billy Corgan, lead singer for The Smashing Pumpkins, was on stage singing. At first we figured maybe he was performing with the opening act - The Linda Linda Lindas - for some reason. Giving them a leg up or what-have-you. As the set carried on, and they began to play more familiar, radio-circulated Pumpkins songs from our high school days, we realized - in horror - that we had missed Rancid's set. We were super bummed, but more confused than anything else. Half the stands were still empty when the Pumpkins were going on, it was almost like the promoter's bumped everything up an hour and didn't tell anyone. Later in the evening, I'd check Youtube and see Rancid's tiny half-hour set and was actually relieved we missed them: I've seen Rancid many, many times, and they've always been the headliner and put on a great show, but the video I saw of them opening up to a nearly-empty stadium and only playing for 29 minutes. . . they were just phoning it in, it wasn't very good. Oh well, we'll get 'em next time, I suppose.

Despite missing our favorite band, morale was still high - Green Day was supposed to play for nearly three hours, it was going to be well worth the money we spent.

I don't mind The Smashing Pumpkins - their songs always appear on my curated '90s playlists - but they're not one of my favorite '90s bands. Mainly because Billy Corgan is a giant douchebag who's arguably the most narcissistic person in rock music.

. . . and is voice is the stuff of nightmares.

Most of these videos and pictures are mine, but some are Kimmel's or BP's (and a couple of the later pics are screenshot off of Instagram from other folks' accounts who were there in the audience.)

There was about a half an hour between the Pumpkins and Green Day, so we hit up the bathroom, Kimmel and BP grabbed some more food, and we settled in for a few hours of nostalgia.

Before Green Day came on, they blasted Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' over the P.A. system, most likely to hype up the crowd.

I gotta say, watching thousands of people singing together is a surreal - but inspiring - thing to see. There just may be hope for humanity yet. . .

Never thought I'd see these guys live, they were never one of my 'must see' bands (though I've been a fan for thirty years.) Even if they were, I doubted I'd have been able to afford ever seeing them (some mainstream acts cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars per seat.) For this tour, Green Day was playing their two biggest albums - 1994's Dookie and 2004's American Idiot - in their entirety, plus additional songs. I would have paid $110 just to hear them play Dookie alone, so this was one hell of a deal.

Billy Joe Armstrong, while controversial, is a phenomenal front man.

Halfway through their song 'Longview,' Green Day paused playing so the audience could sing the lyrics. They had done this off and on throughout the first half of Dookie, so this wasn't out of the ordinary. At the time, no one seemed to notice Armstrong and the others suddenly run off the stage, or, if they did, they weren't alarmed by it. But as the audience continued singing, it began to seem like the band was waiting a little too long to kick back into the song. Then the audience stopped singing, and the band didn't return. Then this cryptic message appeared on the screens. . .

All in all, they were off the stage for about ten minutes, during which time the band was shuttled to safety in awaiting golf karts until the 'threat' (a.k.a. the dumbass flying a drone in the stadium) was neutralized. Then they came back out, started 'Longview' over from scratch, and continued on playing through Dookie. Definitely a weird hiccup in the night's performance, but still - kinda cool as far as stories go.

I'm a huge fan of Green Day's first three albums (and, to a lesser extent, their fourth), but after 2001 I'm not fond of their work. I was stoked to see their early material, and would have been more than content in leaving once they were done playing their early, snotty punk stuff.

Their stage setup - lighting, effects, video FX, props, pyrotechnics, etc. - was on point, all evening.

This giant plane (with the dog piloting it, of course), 'flew' around the stadium slowly during one of their songs (it was suspended by a cable of some sort.)

If the plane looks familiar, it's because it's identical to the one that dropped the giant 'dookie bomb' on the 1994 album cover.

(These other vantage points I stole from other peoples' Instagram accounts - you're welcome.)

Later on in the evening, as they played their more rock-ballad sorta crap (which, like I said before, is not my favorite), there was a lot of stuff like this going on. . .

BP was practically falling asleep towards the end of the night.

Crap falling from the sky (confetti or bubbles or some shit, I don't know.)

We had to convince Jon to leave early, because he wanted to stay and watch everything, but BP and I were adamant about peace-ing out a few songs in advance in order to beat the mad rush out of the stadium. We prevailed, and we were able to beat the crowds (and, as a result, we missed 'Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),' which we were more than cool with.)

We were able to backtrack to the brewery we had found earlier, who was closing up in an hour, but was able to sit us at a table and give us a few beers before doing so. From our table, which was directly in front of the bar's front window, we were able to see crowds of people pour into the streets once the show finally ended. We were soooo grateful we had left early.

Kimmel gets us an Uber for the way back to Dearborn (which was pretty painless.)

We were all exhausted at the end of the night, but Kimmel and I had a nightcap of whiskey before we turned in for the night. A fitting end to yet another successful punk rock outing with these two fellow old-timers. Until next time - See ya in the Pit. . . 

- Brian