![[image]](offspring1.jpg)
OFFSPRING Take it to the Limit at Sacramento
Memorial Auditorium March 31 By Randy Cohen
Offspring performance at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium was as wild as it gets. With everything from a naked fat guy prancing around the stage to five mannequins resembling the "Backstreet Boys", having their heads blasted off with a baseball bat by lead singer Dexter Holland that took great glee in throttling the faux-ensemble with a plastic Whiffle ball bat. With tons of wild screaming kids climbing on atop of each other in a maze of crazy motions of energetic explosion fun, "Offspings" makes their live concerts surreal fun. It's not new nor is it the latest fad, but most of the fans do get what they pay for to have a wild time of dancing and listening to some fast pace music that makes you what to run into the wall for the hell of it. Offspring's is that kind of music similar to "Greenday" "Rage against the machine" and a dozen other bands that almost make the ceiling fall on you and still come back for more. When you drop your kids off at these concerts there is no guarantee that they're coming back in one piece. The whole atmospheres is to have fun and not take the music serious if you do you get suck up in it and end up wandering around in a daze.
Offspring has quite a list of
hits in their treasure chests and they are here to stay for an along time. But
only the mosh pit seemed appreciative. The show was 20 minutes old before the
mild screamer ''Gone Away'' got the kids (and their parents) in the seats
hopping. The Offspring get the fans pumped up. The beauty of the Offspring's
satirical hit, ''Pretty Fly (For a White Guy),'' is that it not only pokes fun
at the band, it also rips the fans -- and they don't seem to know it's a carbon
copy of the chord progression used on the earlier Offspring hit ''Come Out and
Play.'' The cut is a spoof on white suburban kids who borrow Daddy's Visa card
and head to the mall, where they spend big dollars to look like they're from
the 'hood.
Teenage and predominantly Caucasian, the
kids accessorize their flared denim with the best duds a high school allowance
will buy .It would be tough to find a better description of the
packed-to-the-back crowd Wednesday night at the Memorial Auditorium in
Sacramento. This little Orange County punk band has made a living off hits that
cross into heavy beat territory. Though they only found commercial fortune in
the mid-90s, the Offspring had been a staple of the southern Californian punk
community since 1984. Singer/guitarist Bryan 'Dexter' Holland (b. 1966) and
bass player Greg Kriesel (b. 20 January 1965, Glendale, California, USA) After
selling 14 million copies of crossover hits from their last two albums,
''Smash'' and ''Ixnay on the Hombre,'' the Offspring really are trying to push
the punk again with ''Americana.'' The band's fan base, however, is ga-ga for
the ska-rock; the confusion is their best-known songs aren't really punk at
all? The Offspring have the chops to be a good California punk band: The
searing rips through ''Have You Ever'' and ''Walla Walla'' from ''Americana''
prove it. Until the band stops promoting bilked melody lines from the Beatles'
''Life goes on'' as original thought on ''She's Got Issues,'' or -- worse yet
-- closing with goofy covers of ''Feelings,'' few will find it.
