When I arrived at the biggest house of concerts of Latin America with capacity of 9.000 people, there were like fifty kids very close to the stage and a few others scattered on the huge ground. It was 20:00, only 30 minutes before the beginning. I was kind of worried because I thought to myself that the band would never come back again on those circumstances.

Fortunately, when Brian Baker was playing the first chords of American Jesus at 21:00, the place wasn't empty anymore. There were a lot of kids singing and pointing their hands towards the band whose singer was by far the most elegant man in Citibank Hall wearing a social shirt, pants and shoes. "I was drunk last time, sorry about that," Jay said smiling in the first pause of the show. Someone threw a 'coil' (in Brazil we use this funny thing in Carnival or Mardi Gras) in his direction. I don't think he saw it and Graffin ask for everyone to get their digital cameras. "Yeah, yeah, very nice. This next song is dedicated to you, because you are all 21st century digital people."

"123 owowowow," that's Jay in 'Anesthesia'. It's very difficult for him to do serious backing vocals in shows, but I don't blame him, I love his constantly good mood. On the other hand, he did very great serious vocals on the short hip hop part of 'Let Them Eat War'.
After the eigth song, 'Infected', the audience was shouting "Punk Rock Song, Punk Rock Song, Punk Rock Song." The band ignored it. "We'd like to do a song know that restarted everything for us, it is the first song of a new era for Bad Religion." He also said something like the band was lost, with no direction. You all know the song, don't you? After this song they did like the record with 'Prove it', very nice. Brooks played very low then the intro bass drum (?TUTUTU?) of 'Can't Stop It' just to entertain himself, I guess.

When the band started 'Sanity', a girl wearing only black bikini with some tattoos got on stage with a fray full of water and 'caipirinha', maybe Coca-Cola as well, I don?t know. She was walking like if she was in a fashion parade. Two songs later Greg said: "Thank you very much for that lovely girl serving us on stage. I never saw something like that in my whole life. She is the girl from Ipanema." Baker was the first one to be served. Everybody of the band was in shock. I don't remember if he got something, but I saw Bentley getting a bottle of water, Graffin a Caipirinha and Hetson a bottle of water too. I thought it would be the opposite but it's ok. The tray almost fell down near Hetson and then the girl jumped without it towards the crowd very close to me and my girlfriend. The male audience loved it. "Did you see where those guys put their fingers, in her ...? I didn't know what to say to her but I'm sure it could have been worse.

"Obrigado, obrigado. Tudo bem?" Graffin was always saying those words, very funny, specially "tudo bem?". It means "thank you, thank you, is everything fine?" After the 14th song the crowd restarted "Punk Rock Song, Punk Rock Song, Punk Rock Song" and the band ignored it again. "Rio de Janeiro is one of the greatest cities in the world to live (I AGREE!!!) in but we come from Los Angeles and we have a problem down there every year, because every year Los Angeles is burning!!" Instead of "bedlam is dreaming of rain" he sang "Rio is dreaming of rain". Graffin changed a few times the lyrics like in this case. In 'Struck a Nerve' for example he sang "bottle of cacha?a for tonight" instead of "vodka for tonight". Cacha?a is a typical drink from Brazil with which we do the worldwide famous CAIPIRINHA Graffin drank on stage, but I prefer Caipirinha with Vodka instead of Cacha?a, which is a variation of the original one.

After the slow version of 'Generator', 19th song, the curtains closed. The audience started for the third time "Punk Rock Song, Punk Rock Song, Punk Rock Song!!!!!"
"What song we forgot to play?" Greg asked smiling provoking the fourth request for 'Punk Rock Song'. And he did the classic talk you all know: "There's about 240 songs we forgot to play as well". I have a live CD of Stockholm in 1994 where he says "there?s about 85 Bad Religion song we won?t do tonight." If you add those 85 songs in 1994 with more or less 75 (1996 to 2004) the result is 152. So I think his couting is a little bit strange... [Ed. notes: BR has around 250 songs, including the ones off the new album. So I'd say Greg was correct after all.]

"A D minor please," Graffin asked. "Sorry, I don?t have a D minor here," Jay said, but Baker and Hetson did. "We'd like to do a song now that you never asked before but we are going to play it for you now." When the first chords of 'Punk Rock Song' came out the kids went crazy, it was amazing!! "That?s pretty fucking good," Jay said after it and Graffin said before 'Heroes and Martyrs' he would love to come back next year so the audience could sing it with them.

It has to be said that this show was smaller than all the others the band did in Brazil. Two guys with Spanish accent very close to me asked how many songs they played because they saw that I was taking notes in a notebook. I said 24 and then they said it was very good because in Chili and Argentina they did like 22, 23 songs according to their local friends. The other times they did like 27, at least in Brazil. But anyway, the show and the sound quality were fantastic! I totally agree with Graffin's words: "Bad Religion and Rio de Janeiro together, forever!!"

Here?s the set list in correct order:

01 ? AMERICAN JESUS
02 ? I WANT TO CONQUER THE WORLD
03 ? LET THEM EAT WAR
04 ? 21ST CENTURY DIGITAL BOY
05 ? YOU
06 ? THE DEFENSE
07 ? ANESTHESIA
08 ? INFECTED
09 - SUPERSONIC
10 ? PROVE IT
11 ? COME JOIN US
12 ? SANITY
13 ? NO CONTROL
14 ? EPIPHANY
15 ? LOS ANGELES IS BURNING
16 ? STRUCK A NERVE
17 ? SUFFER
18 ? RECIPE FOR HATE
19 ? GENERATOR

ENCORE

20 ? HEROES AND MARTYRS
21 ? FUCK ARMAGEDDON
22 ? PUNK ROCK SONG
23 ? ALONG THE WAY
24 - SORROW


American Jesus




You




Anesthesia




Come Join Us




Suffer




Generator



Big thanks to Henchman for sharing his experience and writing this article!