Our best friend at the moment, Watcho! has written a great story about his Bad Religion experience last weekend!

It began innocently enough with a slow Friday. The boss gave my co-worker the day off and we were leaving early, he to fly his airplane around the city, me to drive the 3.5 hours to Corpus Christi, TX to see Bad Religion play their first ever show in that city. However, the Houston Police department and a random member of the Cranked-up Trucker's Union had other plans. For those not familiar with Texas roads and highways, to get from Houston to Corpus Christi there is but one route: US 59 South. In the city it's an enormous 12-lane monster, and just at the outskirts it drops down to 2 lanes each way. My office is right on the freeway, so I was only 30 seconds away from hurling myself towards Bad Religion at 80 mph.

Alas...

Half an hour before I got off work, a semi speeds down the highway unaware of the officer in blue calmly aiming his radar gun at him. The policeman starts up his car, hits the lights, and pursues the truck. The truck flees. Big Red hauls ass down the freeway swerving between cars, delicately raising the forces of physics that will be his demise. The afore-mentioned point in the highway where the lanes decrease in number proved to be more than Scooter Joe could handle. The truck slammed into the guardrail, bounced across the lanes to the other guardrail, and promptly overturned. Optimus Prime was dead.

Immediately, and with total disregard for the level of rock they were obstructing, the highway patrol closed the entire freeway. I was forced to turn my car around and go home. Graffinism denied.

That was Friday.

The voracious march of time brought me eventually to Sunday, and Bad Religion eventually to my home town. The venue was familiar, a club which has stood in the same place for 26 years called #'s (Numbers) that Bad Religion had played before, and I had even worked at from time to time. The first time I saw BR was in this building, a February night in 1995 for the Stranger Than Fiction tour with SNFU. 9 years later, they returned in aged glory.

I avoided seeing From First To Last, largely because I think playing dress-up and being "dark" is a bit overdone. My impression from seeing the singer at their merch booth was that this band represented Mr. Brett's desire to have an AFI copycat on Epitaph.

Next was Rise Against, who I suppose are a competent enough band, but didn't exactly make me feel...anything. They had the crowd chant "fuck George Bush," and gave BR a lot of props for "like, being political." Then they added that BR was "fuckin' awesome, man." The kids in the crowd seemed to like them, I thought their songs were too long, and I was right.

Dear Rise Against,

You aren't in fucking Pink Floyd, so finish the song already. If you knew how to write a catchy tune, you wouldn't have to put movements into your punk suites to make them work live.

Sincerely,

Everyone Who Doesn't Have a Fat Wreck Tattoo

At this point I became aware of a phenomenon that is rather common in the punk scene, and that is the need to listen to punk music inbetween seein punk bands. Sure, I found myself singing along to some of the Fear, Clash, and Damned songs that were playing, but I would have much rather have heard, well, anything else. Punk rockers who only listen to punk rock are absolutely boring to me. Go buy a Public Enemy tape, kids.

An hour passes...

I can't personally speak for the delay in getting BR on stage, but I can say with some certainty that Mr. Bentley was shitfaced drunk when he got there. Perhaps it was my keen senses, honed in many years bartending at various drinking establishments that clued me in, or perhaps it was the fact that the first words spoken from the stage were "I'm really drunk." Jay would mention this, and his need for drinks (Brian Baker to Jay: "define 'need.'") many more times during the night.

The show itself was superior Bad Religion. The three microphoned members talked to the crowd and to each other, and Mr. Hetson seemed to be having a laugh as well. I have never seen Brooks Wackerman seem more "left out," and it was also the first time I truly missed Bobby Schayer.

Highlights included Jay officially supporting Houston baseball ("...and fuck St. Louis") and Graffin responding "no one cares about the Houston Astros basketball team," which caused one audience member to shout "they're better than 'No Substance.'"

Jay often felt the need to change his lyrics as well, much to the amusement of Graffin. This included, but was not limited to shouting "NO SEX" repeatedly during 'The Defense,' and replacing '21st Century Digital Boy''s "don't know how to read/live" lines with "don't know how to fuck/swim."

Greg Graffin teased the audience, who were begging for water in the front of the crowd, that they didn't play the song "Water" live. Jay and Brian began riffing (badly) on their instruments and singing "WATER....WATER," and then Jay told us it was the b-side of the Australian 7" Belgian single. I hope superfabietto is able to track it down.

BR did treat the crowd to an encore, something I've rarely seen from them. Apparantly it was to begin with 'Struck A Nerve,' but Brooks said that he couldn't remember how it went. Really. The band laughed it off and went on into the finale.

I would love to end this with a romantic description of the crowd leaving the club en masse, dissipating one by one until none were left, and maybe even incorporating an appropriate BR lyric, however I just got in my car and left.

The set list, a bit out of order in the middle, accurate song list.

Bad Religion, Houston, TX @ #'s, October 17, 2004:

Overture/Sinister Rouge
All There Is
Modern Man
Athiest Peace
No Control
Kyoto Now
Los Angeles is Burning
Let Them Eat War (feat. Tim of Rise Against doing the Sage Francis part)
Supersonic
Generator
God's Love
Suffer
The Defense
Come Join Us
21st Century Digital Boy
Recipe For Hate
You
Epiphany
Prove It
Change of Ideas
Social Suicide
American Jesus
Infected
Sorrow
-------
Do What You Want
Fuck Armageddon This is Hell
We're Only Gonna' Die

Thanks to Watcho! for this news!

(Please submit more stories like this!)