NOFX – Gig Review & Photo Gallery 26th January @ Festival Hall, Melbourne Vic

NOFX
Festival Hall, Naarm/Melbourne VIC
January 26, 2024
With Something Something Explosion & Bodyjar

Dearest Something Something Explosion,

Sorry I missed your set on 26th January 2024 from Festival Hall in Melbourne. These fucking West Gate Bridge works are slowly murdering this town and the government is appropriately to blame. I owe you one, but listened to your Propaganda Machine EP and it fucking rocked my rotten socks clean off. It’s clear frontwoman Grace Drummond has a roaring but kind of lovely vocal rage, and your band’s from Ocean Grove which will coincidentally play a brief and strong role later in this review. If you guys ever wanna bush bash the dunes near 5W beach path to smoke weed and listen to 90’s punk, it’s my shout. Missing your set was my loss, not yours. GO LISTEN TO SOMETHING SOMETHING EXPLOSION. They were good enough for Fat Mike to wear their shirt his whole gig, so y’know… fucking hell!

Inveterate and indelibly great Emo skate punk icons Bodyjar opened their set with another wonderful joke regarding reclaiming Festy Hall from new owners Hillsong church (aka That Weird-Shouting-Jesus-Cult-Our-Very-White-Rich-And-Evangelical-Ex-Prime-Minister Gave-Heaps-Of-Your-Tax-money-To), not unlike both Area 7 and The Living End did a few months back when I saw them there on an equally exciting but less final bill. They also called Kyle Sandilands a cunt and played “old fast shit” like ‘Windsok’ and ‘Get Out of My Head’ to open the set like it was still last millennium. What a delight! I forgot how much them and extraordinarily underrated punk outfit Game Over sounded alike back in the day. Go dig them up on old Care Factor Records ‘Punk-O-Clock’ compilations ASAP if you’re unfamiliar.

Jar frontman Cam Baines is a solidly good human. I remember him working at PSC Skateboards across from me at JB HiFi, Highpoint Shopping Centre around the end of last decade. He merrily signed their live album with some dumb quote for a mate upon request and was always happy to shoot the shit about times of old. The great thing about passionate punters following the songwriters from youth well into our mid-to-twilight years is that their songs and stage presence immediately feel like old friends. Well, they really are – ’One In a Million’ was the soundtrack to my first kiss behind the oval at Collendina Caravan Park down the Bellarine Peninsula in 2005.

Speaking of which, Bodyjar once played a gig there to not many folk (including me and my barely legal homies) just so they could invite the whole gig down the road to Tim from For Amusement Only’s house afterwards. What transpired was fucking wild, and probably the best night of my life. This is how entrenched we can find ourselves with dedicated local outfits amongst a very tight and equality-driven scene we all stumbled in to through underage-Freeza gigs or drunk-ass punk clubs back in the day. This music shaped much of who we were and how we felt during vital formative years, and any opportunity to see it all live again – grey and/or missing hair be damned – the better. It can remind us of simpler, kinder and happier times, and bolster our perception that there’s hope for the future. Good Punk is nothing if not strongly truthful and eternally hopeful.

There were a couple of Mohawks in the crowd looking as sharp as ever and the structurally threadbare old wooden floor that folks once stood on to watch The Beatles play was already packed by the time The Jar started. It felt like 20 years ago for all the right reasons. “Anyone remember Glue?”, and similar questions about old venues were replete throughout the set. Bassist Nick Manuell expressed the awesome community around NOFX and bearing witness to it across the quarter century they have played gigs together. A really amazing and fucking wild story about a scene of punk bands travelling Earth together like true futuristic nomadic bards or theatre performers weaves deeply through our local punk culture on a global scale. Someone do a doco! I just wrote you the one-line synopsis.

What else is there to say? Bodyjar played the fucking shit out of all their hits to the point where all members were hoarse and flushed; leaving it all on the stage with the same energy of men in younger skin. OG bass player Grant Ralph did a guest spot, and it was flawless like they’d never stopped touring. The dude immersed himself in a past life so seamlessly it deserves academy consideration. Nice one, Grant!

Feels like with a second-last (but still kind of last as it was the first of two final night shows… you know what I mean) NOFX gig, we’re witnessing a crew of chosen family in the middle of its largest and definitively final, globally-spanning, cult-like odyssey. A calling that has brought them varied wealth, happiness, pride, and acclaim, but also deep controversy, suffering, and insane, ambitious effort. A true compulsion that’s stood against the very fabrics of time, space, culture, and generations of increasingly easy-to-offend kids. Whatever the case, these are thought-provoking and unapologetic artists and weirdos all so very themselves that it borders on the supernatural. They have kept it up since John Farnham wasn’t even that famous! It is an honour to watch this clan of marauding, anti-authoritarian folks do the very thing that made them who they are most of their lives for one last time (until they reform in a few years lol nah nah, but can you imagine?) With so many other heyday acts coddling together lucrative tours, why the fuck wouldn’t you? Anyway, this is probably it for realsies. Fat Mike seems very serious about it, and he’s nothing if not a man of principle.

It’s a superhuman effort to be as loaded as these guys can get and still play insanely fast and complicated punk songs. I’ve done it, it’s fucking difficult, and I’m not nearly 60. These men are superhuman in skill and resilience, but there’s no Olympic commentators and global broadcast to truly put over just how physically impressive it is to play thousands of ruthless, loud, and messy shows across the Earth for the better part of half a century. Insanely commendable, anomalous, and impressive.

The set was a King-Gizzard-level endurance test of punk-rockery several decades after most of these songs were written in much more supple and youthful shells. To play a two-hour set with only one senior pee break in the middle is otherworldly by this point. Worth noting that this reviewer – a 105kg, 6’3” Viking-looking mother fucker – can wear a short pretty dress resplendent with kitty cats on it to the gig without being harassed or scoffed at. NOFX gigs are a safe space for everyone except dickheads and anyone who proudly works for the government. Mike’s newfound queerness, a pride flag, and a clump of whatever minorities always have a home at these gigs.

Having written about NOFX and interviewed Mike extensively over the last 20 years, I’ll be very sad to see them go. Despite only chatting to the guy three or so times (and a decent chunk of his mates), it’s flattening to think we’ll never experience a deep and raucous limbic resonance like a NOFX gig offers ever again. In a time where so many bands around their age refuse to head down under anymore – because of narrower profit margins – these guys turn up to give us a show far away for one last gargantuan go. It’s veteran dedication not shared by many modern outfits.

These emotionally charged, politically aware, contrarian, lewd, angry, anarchistic, self-aware contrite, and intelligent songs changed or aided many punter’s approach to and understanding of the gross and wilful corruption that winds through countless facets of our modern world. At a vital age, Mike, Smelly, El Hefe, and Eric Melvin’s lyrics, licks, and sentiment influenced a couple teenage generations’ perspectives on acceptance, protest, justice, and self-expression. The world is better for hearing them, and blistering, devastatingly real songs like ‘The Idiots Are Taking Over’ have never been more vital in this fucked up modern world of shit like billionaires and genocidal war.

NOFX have hung the same tiny Wolves In Wolves Clothing banner behind stage since that album came out. Someone’s been packing it in their suitcase the last 18 years. A wondrous running gag for those who recognise it. Another deep cut was playing Damian “Junior Gong” Marley’s brilliant album opener ‘Confrontation’ as the band’s entrance music. It samples former-WCW pro wrestling champ Goldberg’s music; a form of entertainment as enshrined in Festival Hall since the end of world war II as their terrible old red plastic seats. Nice one, playlist maker! I see you.

I’ve gotten excited and written way too many words for an old punk with a full-time job, so here’s the actual gig in tasteful dot points:

1. They didn’t really play that much from the two full albums promised on the bill, which was fine because the ancient classics were why most folks were there anyway.

2. Mike presently has chlamydia in his stomach and no clean clothes because laundromats were shut on Invasion Day.

3. The band was acutely aware it was Invasion Day and got Senator Briggs on stage to sing ‘Kill All The White Man’. It was just the best. Fuck Australia day and fuck racism.

https://twitter.com/ToddGingell/status/1750869559547179298?t=nPMXoB1By3iTqnhzgAzKlQ&s=19&fbclid=IwAR0D4_1ZvXNjDS70i0beF8hYRGCsqUOuyCpaj3kBT36RENrOdn87ADMZxwc

4. The band were deeply gratitudinal and as shamelessly talkative as possible between songs. You kind of feel like backstage and onstage melded together a long time ago in terms of dialogue and comfort.

5. There were too many funny quotes to adequately repeat here, but a philosophical rant about celebrities’ sex-choking themselves to death and how they definitely aren’t alone when they do it was fucking hilarious. Michael Hutchence and David Carradine’s estates may file a lawsuit.

6. Keyboardist Karina is completely a member of the band. She sang, she pranced, she played the fuck out them keys, and she’ll be deeply missed after the half-dozen or so times Australia’s seen her tour live.

7. The band was acutely proud of themselves for rarely fucking up despite not really practising a few songs at all.

8. ‘Fuck The Kids’, ‘Franco Unamerican’, ‘The Idiots Are Taking Over’, ‘The Moron Brothers’, ‘Linoleum’, A cover of Rancid‘s ‘Radio’, Briggs with ‘Kill All The White Man’, and ‘Don’t Call Me White’ all seemed to go off the hardest.

9. Mike said we should pee during their break too, but don’t go to the bathrooms to do it. I saw this exact thing happen at No Sleep Til festival over a decade ago. Two completely naked men that had been non-stop crowd surfing the whole mid-arvo NOFX set were the only two people left standing when the mosh cleared afterwards. Both were still nude, casually talking over some Jack Daniels tinnies, and no-hand pissing in the middle of the showgrounds. No one cared. When the fuck’s that happening in today’s world? Bring it back, y’know?

10. There was a big, extended acappella accordion finish after a slightly-altered ‘Theme From a NOFX Album‘ closed out the set (“We’re over 60 and we’re doing fine”, etc.) It was a real earnest treat, and as the band milled about casually with friends while Melvin wandered and played his squeeze box freely, it was clear that they weren’t so very ready to just say bye and fuck off with our money.

I will miss NOFX deeply. We all will. As I write this, they’re on stage at the same place for round two, and I can’t imagine anyone not having an as fun, bittersweet, and dead-set bloody ripping time as I did.

To close (in appropriately punk fashion) fuck the kids, fuck NOFX, fuck you, fuck not giving a fuck, fuck complacency, fuck the west gate tunnel project, fuck everything, think for yourself, challenge authority, and stay punk even if your dearest bands eventually die and you’re nearly 40. Now fuck off.

Review by Todd Gingell

Setlist

Set 1:  

1. 60%
2. Seeing Double at the Triple Rock
3. Leave It Alone
4. Perfect Government (Mark Curry cover)
5. Franco Un-American
6. Idiots Are Taking Over
7. Six Years on Dope
8. My Orphan Year
9. Mattersville
10. The Man I Killed
11. Reeko
12. Benny Got Blowed Up
13. 100 Times F*ckeder
14. Leaving Jesusland
15. She’s Nubs
16. 13 Stitches
17. The Moron Brothers
18. F*ck the Kids
19. F*ck the Kids (Revisited)
20. Juice Head
21. Instant Crassic
22. Can’t Get the Stink Out
23. Radio (Rancid cover)
24. Linoleum

Set 2:

1. Pharmacist’s Daughter
2. Lori Meyers (with Karina Deniké)
3. Scavenger Type
4. The Separation of Church and Skate
5. Don’t Call Me White
6. Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing
7. Kill All the White Man (with Briggs)
8. The Brews
9. Whoops, I OD’d
10. Theme from a NOFX Album

Photo Gallery by Adam Portelli. Insta: @adam.ellia
Please credit Wall of Sound and Adam Portelli if you repost.

Something Something Explosion

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‍Bodyjar

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NOFX

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