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I saw the best punk show of the year tonight, c/o No Age, in Camden, where they rocked the 1200 people at the legit venue, walked across the street and played punk covers to 100. I watched them learn “Where Eagles Dare” in the back hallway–someone dialed up the tab on their iphone and they found someone with it on their iPod, and 5 minutes later they were playing it to seething swarming ebullient punx. The floor very nearly got broken from people bouncing, so everyone sat down so we didn’t fall into the basement; it was a pig pile pit, people laying on each other singing along and finger pointing. . . . You know, you see them play to a ton of people, and in that context, you know, they are a great band, a fun band. But you see them play a party, to die hards and drunks who are screaming “PLAY D.Y.S!” (Dean obliged with the chorus of “Wolf Pack”), 100 kids packed tight all the way to the ceiling (there was crowd surfing aplenty), suddenly, they are so much more than a band, they are everything–they are everything everyone says they are–everything we wished and waited for.
And if you think Hopper sounds a little hyperbolic towards the end there, odds are you haven’t seen that band in a live setting. They really are something else.
