There was a time, just a few years after Green Day and then Blink-182 exploded into the music mainstream, that it appeared that skate-punk labels like Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph Records would become the biggest of the indies. Both labels had plenty of obscure bands, but also best-sellers like The Offspring and NOFX that garnered significant attention in the music world. While they may be the companies that sold the most records and got the most attention, another Southern California punk label has left an equally indelible mark on the punk (and now, the entire alternative rock) scene: Hopeless Records.
The label started out with a 7″ release by shock-punks Guttermouth and would continue on with increasingly high-profile punk artists, including Dillinger Four and The Queers. Around the ’00s the label dipped into the growing metal and post-hardcore scene, releasing early albums by future major label stars Avenged Sevenfold and Thrice. While the label has continued down the path of releasing more radio-friendly and scene-friendly groups like All Time Low and signing on groups that were a bit past their prime like The Used, Yellowcard and New Found Glory, at its root will always be snotty, gritty, mile-a-minute punk rock. And that’s what this weekend’s 25th Anniversary Show at The Regent in Downtown Los Angeles was all about.
Some of the label’s earliest bands got things started. Digger and Nobodys reunited for blistering sets of their manic pop-punk, full of galloping rhythms, chugging palm mutes and snot-nosed vocals. Also performing at the early onset of the show was a band with a name that probably wouldn’t go over as well in the Me Too era – Schlong. In fact, much of the night was reminiscent of an earlier era when punk rock was mostly a boy’s club – particularly when gazing across the theater and realizing the vast majority of audience members were over 30 and male. For once, there was a shorter line to use the ladies’ room than the men’s.
Next up was Guttermouth, a band who has shown no signs of slowing down from their troll-ish antics of yesteryear that saw them banned from nearly every venue on an Australian tour and removed from the 2004 Warped Tour for mocking bands and printing pro-George W. Bush flyers. Lead singer Mark Adkins led off the set by asking a member of the audience whether they were “retarded or just autistic” before launching into one of the band’s blistering skate-punk anthems. Somewhere during the set, Adkins managed to catapult himself off of the stage, all the while his bandmates giving him the side-eye – though, after all of these antics, they’ve got to be at least a little bit in on the joke, right?
After Guttermouth came 88 Fingers Louie, a technically adept punk band that released a few singles on Fat Wreck Chords before three LPs on Hopeless Records. The band combined emotional lyrics with Mr. Precision’s riff-heavy punk rock style, creating a sound that was influential if never very commercially viable. However, as a small bit of trivia for rock radio fans, Mr. Precision and former member Joe Principe did form Rise Against in the wake of 88 Fingers Louie’s breakup in the late ’90s. While Mr. Precision would eventually be fired from the band (legend has it over his long, flowing Metallica-circa-1982 hair, a claim denied by Rise Against), Principe is still a vital member of the modern rock titans.
Finally, Dillinger Four was set to perform. They would eventually graduate to the larger budget and exposure that comes with releasing albums on Fat Wreck Chords, but their two albums on Hopeless are among the best in punk history. While there have been louder, faster, more intense, more socially-conscious, more subversive and more drunk bands out there, there are none that combine these virtues as adeptly as these four boys from Minneapolis. Like much of the audience, they’re no longer “boys.” However, during their set, they were able to whip up a frenzied pit full of audience members who most certainly collectively thought to themselves the next morning, “I’m too old for this shit!”
Dillinger Four started out with “A Jingle For The Product,” a perfectly-fine track from their Fat Wreck Chords debut Situationalist Comedy, it wasn’t until their second song that things really started to get going. That track was “Super Powers Enable Me to Blend in with Machinery,” a track that came from Midwestern Songs for the Americas (Hopeless Records’ best-ever release, sorry Avenged Sevenfold), and was also featured on the label’s seminal Hopelessly Devoted To You compilations. As the band painted a vividly droll picture of the bus commute home from a dead-end job, the audience (who can probably relate now that they’re in their 30s) shouted along with the chorus, “Fuck ’em all!” Other songs from this album that were played include “21 Said 3 Times Quickly,” a song with incredible dynamics and vocals from all three singers, Patrick Costello, Erik Funk and Bill Morrisette. “Mosh for Jesus” is also from that landmark album and it’s an all-out assault until it hits the chorus, where once again the additional vocalists created a punk rock shout-along, to which the audience obliged.
They, of course, played their most popular song, “¡¡NOBLE STABBINGS!!” from Situationalist Comedy, though this was a die-hard audience that knew the lyrics to the most obscure songs on Versus God. Unsurprisingly, this one was a huge sing-along as well. Speaking of songs from Versus God, making appearances halfway through the set were “Suckers Intl. Has Gone Public,” “Let Them Eat Thomas Paine” and one of the band’s absolute best songs “Maximum Piss and Vinegar.” After wrapping up the set with a couple of bangers in “The Great American Going Out of Business Sale” and “Doublewhiskeycokenoice” (a song from which it’s been alleged Green Day ripped off the riff for “American Idiot”) sandwiching “Gainsville,” the main set was over. There were plenty of fists up in the air and gruff shouts to “Doublewhiskeycokenoice,” only to be topped by the fists-in-the-air response to “O.K. F.M. D.O.A.” to open up the encore portion.
Dillinger Four Setlist:
“A Jingle for the Product”
“Super Powers Enable Me to Blend in with Machinery”
“¡¡NOBLE STABBINGS!!”
“folk song.”
“21 Said 3 Times Quickly”
“Mosh for Jesus”
“Suckers Intl. Has Gone Public”
“Let Them Eat Thomas Paine”
“Maximum Piss & Vinegar”
“Doublewhiskeycokenoice”
“Gainesville”
“The Great American Going Out of Business Sale”
Encore:
“O.K. F.M. D.O.A.”
“D4 = Putting the “F” Back in “Art”.”
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