Chickens! Concert Series #23: Bad Religion

Bad Religion (with The Bronx and guests) played at the Odeon this past weekend. A good, if sweaty, venue to be sure. The opening bands were nothing special, just blah, blah, loud noise, blah, blah, all songs the same, one relatively decent ballad, blah, blah. The thing is, I went The Bronx's myspace and listened to some of their music and I didn't mind it, it's fine in smallish doses, but I don't really like the lead singer. I don't think they translate well to concert form (the ability to control the volume might have something to do with it?) and the lead singer is much screamy-er and in the forefront in real life. That's getting into screamo territory, which I don't appreciate. While I am generally a fan of noises and the things that make them, I do require a selection of multiple forms of noises to hold my interest for any length of time. At least with heavy metal screamings you have the occasional sweet guitar solo, but I digress. One mustn't generalize too much.

Anywho, Bad Religion was awesome so that's OK, even if D had troubles getting beer and hates people now. I especially liked the little acoustic set they did as part of their encore, it was a pleasant surprise that provided good contrast. And I appreciate the politically relevant yet blasphemous lyrics (although they say they are more about anti-conformity than anti-religion and often use religion as a metaphor), so all's well that ends well I say. There is a quite interesting little blurb to read on the myspace page about the band and their music and their new album. Also, I love this quote: "I think a lot of our fans are just angry nerds like us,"Gurewitz says afterwards. "And that's really who we write for. Being a humanist and an intellectual is about as rebellious as it gets these days." Funny times, reminds me of a Simpsons episode. Anyway, here is a clip from the acoustic part of the show:


Some Band History:
Bad Religion formed in 1980 while the boys were still in high school. They are credited with being one of the most influential punk bands of their day. Since then they have recorded fourteen albums (their newest album is called New Maps of Hell) and toured extensively around the world. The original members were Jay Bentley (bass), Greg Graffin (vocals), Brett Gurewitz (guitars) and Jay Ziskrout (drums). Bentley and Gurewitz have rejoined Graffin for the current tour (though Greg has been the only constant since the band was formed).

Fun things to learn and know:
Greg Graffin was recently honoured with the "Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism" by Havard University's Humanist Chaplaincy. Greg's academic background includes a double-major undergrad degree in anthropology and geology from the University of California, a master's degree in geology from UCLA, and a PhD in zoology from Cornell U (his thesis topic was "Monism, Atheism and the Naturalist Worldview: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology"). Also, while at Cornell he founded the Cornell Evolution Project, the "first major study of the beliefs of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists regarding traditional religion, naturalism, and the philosophical implications of their scientific work". Currently, among other things, Greg is a professor of Life Sciences as part of UCLA faculty of biology.