Californian punk superstars The Offspring bring the noise, and the fun, to deepest south London at their huge outdoor show.
In November of last year, during The Offspring’s rollicking show at a sold-out O2 Arena in London, Noodles, the band’s guitarist, made the audience laugh by claiming the 20,000-capacity venue was in fact filled with more than a hundred thousand people. In a sign that this once deeply underground punk rock outfit are today a slick enterprise, just seven months later, in the warmer weather of Crystal Palace Park, he cracks the same joke again. According to his figures, this time, there were “one point two million” revellers in attendance.
In truth, with very little recourse to sharp elbows and mumbled apologies, one can get close to the stage from which the American punk rock stalwarts pump forth evergreen bangers such as Bad Habit, Want You Bad, and Come Out And Play and Self Esteem (the night’s opening and closing songs, respectively) with relative ease. The quest for refreshment and ablutions, on the other hand, is far trickier.
While The Offspring and their undercard – a line-up that includes an excellent Dropkick Murphys and SoCal punk rock neighbours Pennywise – perform in Crystal Palace Park, at the other end of this long outdoor space, the bar and toilets seem to be closer to Roundhay Park, in Leeds. Perhaps displeased by the facilities, or by a PA system lacking sufficient wallop, a number of ticketholders begin their journey home while the sun is still in the sky.
As such, this isn’t quite a show for the ages. Notwithstanding a couple of notable exceptions – a timely blast of Three Lions and mystifying but still enjoyable cover of Taylor Swift’s Love Story – The Offspring’s summer dog and pony show bears surprisingly close resemblance not only to its equivalent edition at the O2, but also to the set that removed the roof from Wembley Arena in November 2021. Elsewhere, in a sign that time and tide wait for no man, during moments at which his voice ascended to the top of its register, frontman Dexter Holland’s pipes are also a little bit pitchy.
In terms of material and presentation, though, at their core, The Offspring remain expert in making smart music that at first glance can seem gloriously and knowingly dumb. If punk rock in its first flush was an inner-city phenomenon, what followed was an “uncool” suburban voice that these sons of Orange County mimic to a tee. Bearing an admittedly striking resemblance to Come Out And Play, the sound and sight of the witty and perceptive Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) blasting forth into the outer fringes of South London explains entirely why Dexter Holland and Noodles have maintained their grip on popularity for more than three decades now.
As such, what is overall a somewhat underwhelming night in the English capital is hardly sufficient to damage The Offspring's reputation in ways that matter. A little spring cleaning of the set itself, and a few notches of volume from the PA system, should buff out those dents nicely.
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