Live Music Roundup: Wednesday, June 17
Seminal, reunited punk band the Germs play Neumos tonight with Poison Idea, Krum Bums and the Bloodclots. It's hard to know how to feel about this, since the Germs broke up after original lead singer Darby Crash made good on his promise to commit suicide— and he must be rolling in his grave to know that an actor from E.R. wound up replacing him for a millennial band reunion— but uh, times have changed. A lot. Washington Post article aside, I still think David Berman said it best: "Punk rock died when the first kid said, 'Punk's not dead.'" If there was any residual doubt that bona fide punk rock might still have a pulse, well...this proves it doesn't. It's dead, and no amount of voodoo is gonna bring it back. And while I commend the people who continue to try and revive the genre, that's exactly what punk music made after the early '80s is: revivalist. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Still, if you crave o.g. punk rock but missed out on the whole thing (most likely 'cause like me, you weren't born yet), this is as close to it as you're going to come. Anyway, the show starts at 7 p.m. and costs $13 in advance, and in spite of my mixed feelings about the whole thing, I have to admit that it'll probably be a pretty fun show regardless.
The Tragically Hip at the Moore Theatre, 8 p.m., $35, all ages
That rarest of all North American beasts—the cult band that's also a household name—the Tragically Hip have gotten over twenty five years of mileage from what at first appears to be a fairly pedestrian classic rock-derived approach. Closer inspection, though, reveals that the Hip almost always manage to put a fresh twist on meat-and-potatoes rock, and usually put a twist on the twist with each successive album. A venerated institution in its native Canada, the band doesn't quite command the same popularity in the U.S. as other proud Canadian exports like Rush or, say, Labatt Blue, but its perennial underdog status enhances its other attributes. And, for better or worse, through frontman Gord Downie's densely cerebral lyrics, the Hip serve as a continuing reminder that, though we mostly speak the same language, the U.S. and Canada truly do exist in two different worlds. SABY REYES-KULKARNI
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