Rancid @ Soma

I wasn't going to bother writing about this show but i remembered someone wanted to read about it. So, here goes. Got to soma. this time i actually took stock of how large the place really is. soma is a converted movie theater into a venue, with the width of the main room being what used to be the length from front to back of the theater and the length being the width of about 7 movie theaters side by side...in other words the place is huge, with an alleged capacity of 2400 (which i don't believe because that would mean its the size of starland ballroom which is not even close to as big as this. I got there, not remembering how big rancid actually is, being the last time i saw them was at BB kings, and before that at CB's. the show was sold out, and the place was packed. buck o nine was playing and was pretty cool, i dont know anything about them. they finished, and i snagged a spot with my back against the sound board so i could lean on it, a favorite spot of mine in my advanced years of late. after a while of tim shaw setting up gear, he came out and flashed a light to cut the house music.

t. armstrong comes out and starts singing and playing the intro to Radio, while the rest of the members take stage behind him (more or less). after this, they pretty much played the standard rancid set, nothing too special except rejected from the first record, and I wanna Riot from the b sides record, and knowledge. armstrong spent most of the set attempting or pretending to play his guitar and not singing, alternating feigned dancing with sitting on the drum riser. i guess its okay since he wrote the songs and is now 42. lars sang most of the songs except for the freeman songs, which matt sang himself. tim sang for a few parts along the way. as far as song quality: they played nihilism and it sounded okay. Salvation took me a while to even figure out what it was, and it was played poorly. However, the Matt songs they played from let's go were great: tenderloin, black and blue, gunshot. Freeman played a very extended bass solo on matt freeman, awesome. i got offended by the west coasters singing olympia, WA. unfortunately, they only played one song from life wont wait (Hoover st). they played for over an hour, closing with ruby soho and coming back for a 1 song encore to play timebomb (weak). freeman and lars were killing it up there though, which was cool, even if matt's mic was turned up too much for his raucus voice.

in the end, it was cool to see rancid, even if i wasnt that into the performance and it was such a huge venue. i can't wait to go see them again.