NOFX / Alkaline Trio / Authority Zero

live in San Luis Obispo (2004)

Curt

So NOFX comes to the sorta famous Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. This was the last place I would expect NOFX to put on their show from all their previous turndowns to come here.

After waiting about half an hour, the video screen turned on for about an hours worth of anti-Bush video. Authority Zero came on stage and the crowd was pumped up to see somebody on stage that wasn't a video screen. They started fast with "A Passage in Time" followed up by "One More Minute" and the pit started to grow as they tore up through their set. They continued their set with "Everyday" "Skys the Limit" "Super Bitch" and topped it all off with the surf guitar sounds of "La Surf."

Another hours worth of Anti-Bush video came on and then the whole venue went dark and The Alkaline Trio came on stage bursting in with "Armageddon" "We've Had Enough" and the pits started to grow bigger. Unfortunately, some large drunk college guys started to take out the smaller people in the pit. In between songs Matt S. told the big guys to fuck off. They slowed down a bit with "This Could be Love" and "All on Black." Then finished with "Private Eye" and "Radio" as well as a cover by The Damned. The Alkaline Trio are a very amazing band and are very amazing to see live.

Jello came on stage and most of the audience had mixed reactions about him and the political rants. He continued with his talk about the media and the recent Condoleeza Rice issue which was quite humorous. He continued talking about Bush's plan to send people to Mars and also commenting to become the media instead of hating it.

As soon as Jello left NOFX came on playing "Franco Un-American" but followed up with "The Seperation of Church and Skate" which got the crowd going. And for the first time in our small little city, two circle pits formed. Every so often they commented on how bad their visit to Bakersfield was because Eric was pelted by a slab of concrete. They played the song "Idiot Son of an Asshole" about none other than Bush. They continued with classics like "Bob" "Green Corn" "Leave it Alone" "The Brews" "Liza and Louise" "Stickin in my Eye" "Linoleum" "Too Drunk to Fuck" along with Jello Biafra (who is like over 200 lbs now and tries to be as energetic as he was in the Dead Kennedys era.) And a 3 minute version of "My Heart is Yearning" due to El Hefe losing his trumpet mouth piece. They ended the night with Eric Melvin playing an acordian and El Hefe on the trumpet for about 5 minutes.

Overall it was a good show and very humorous. It's good that they are getting people to register to vote but they could take it easy on the one hour ads between sets.