 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
The Offspring headlined a diverse night of throwback alt-rock at Shoreline Amphitheatre that demonstrated how fun and entertaining a concert can be when both the band and the audience share a high level of enthusiasm and appreciation for each other.
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
For The Offspring, the fun didn’t start with their set. After the end of feature act Jimmy Eat World’s set, the audience was treated to a fun series of interactive video and crowd participation moments designed to keep connection and enthusiasm up. It was my first time seeing such an all-out effort at keeping the crowd involved during an intermission and it worked incredibly well! Featured bits included their roving gorilla moving throughout the audience for interactive trivia and giveaways, merch launchers, and fan cams that included “kiss cam,” “booty cam” and the very popular “give ‘em the finger” cam. It played well with an audience that included many in their forties and fifties, but also a large number of young kids and teens enjoying a concert night with the family.
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Taking the stage to one of their biggest hits “Come Out and Play,” the band had the crowd up and roaring from the get-go. The band delivered a straight from the book version of the song, before lead vocalist Dexter Holland handed over his guitar and took the mic to crisscross the stage as the band ripped through a blistering “All I Want.”
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
“Want You Bad” started off with Holland singing as Jonah Nimoy (yes…he’s the grandson of Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek “Spock” fame) accompanied on organ. Holland’s semi-tender opening led into a fury of fast guitar by the strings and rocket attack by drummer Brandon Pertzborn.
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
The end of the song brought pyro and then the first of many fun interactions from Holland and Noodles about and with the crowd. “NorCal! You gotta’ love it! You guys are already going off,” Holland told the crowd. “You’re so close. This is either the best night of my life or I’m just incredibly high from all the weed smoke that’s coming up on stage here.”
“Could be both!” Noodles exclaimed.
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Throughout The Offspring’s performance, the screen behind provided many amusing graphic moments that seemed to be inspired by a blending of the cartoon style of The Simpsons and Beavis & Butthead and provided extra fun graphics all night. For much of the middle of the set inflatable skeleton heads with upper torso served as a background on either side of the back of the stage. The performance was augmented by the skulls’ lighting changing and smoke emitting from their mouths at various times of the performance. Unfortunately for the photos included here, the skulls were inflated before “Staring at the Sun” – well after the first 3-song photo limit had been reached.
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
After they blasted through several more songs – including “Bad Habit,” Morse, Holland and Noodles took time to roam the stage greeting the crowd. “Mountain View. You are un-f#$king-stoppable right now!” Noodles shouted. “There are more people here than there were last night…. They are telling me we are setting a record with 1,315,222 people here tonight!! World record!”
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
“It’s not just how loud they are. It’s how much they are singing. Are you hearing the singing coming from these guys?” Holland asked. “And how well they are singing?”
“Beautiful! Their tone, their timing, their pitch,” Noodles said. “It couldn’t be better! A choir of earth-bound angels here in Mountain View tonight!” Holland conducted a singalong for the intro of “Bad Habit” before pyro exploded, and the song took off at full fury.
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
The band then went through a handful of covers. Beginning with an Ozzy tribute with the first few verses of “Paranoid” (“Everyone here over twelve years old was stoked with that,” Noodles said) and then delivered a more extended version of “Crazy Train” (with Nimoy unleashing the famous Randy Rhoads solo) before covering the lesser known “In The Hall of the Mountain King” and finishing up the medley with an impressive cover of The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.”
 |
| The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Returning to their catalog, the band rocked through “Gotta Get Away” and then Pertzborn delivered a quick, but powerful drum solo that took me back to concerts of the 80’s and 90’s where solos were far more common. The skulls deflated, a piano was brought out center stage and Holland took the stage under a solo spotlight. In the night’s most sensitive and touching moment, he told the crowd, “I want to do something special. A little different tonight and play one of our old songs on piano. This is a song about loss and having someone very close to you pass away – which is what was happening to me when I wrote this. I was struggling with that loss and wanted to write a song to help me through it. I believe music has the power to heal.” Holland asked the audience to light their phones in memory of someone as nearly the entire crowd raised their phones with the flashlight blazing. “This is something very special,” he said, emphasizing the moment. He then set off a solo version of the song on piano with fog covering the floor of the stage and light spreading dramatically over him. It was touching and a reminder of the power of music to bring our shared humanity forward. Toward the end of the song, the entire band kicked in powerfully for a chorus as sparks shot up and rained down across the stage before Holland finished the song solo on piano.
 |
| Fans of The Offspring @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
From there on, the concert was a series of more lighthearted fun. Giant 6-foot beach balls flew into the crowd as the band played the ska-influenced “Why Don’t You Get a Job.” Streamer cannons and giant, bendy inflatables were raised for “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” (after Noodles had conducted a Freddy Mercury-like operatic sing back with “Fuck Yeah” as the verse). The main set ended with a thunderous version of “The Kids Aren’t Alright” before the band came out for a two-song encore that started with “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid.”
“It just keeps getting better and better!” Holland exclaimed.
“It started out being the best one already and it keeps getting better and better exponentially,” Noodles added. “This gathering of humans tonight is the best thing that has happened in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.” The huge beginning of the final encore song “Self-Esteem” started off powerfully when suddenly the sound of guitars cut out as the drummer continued until the band signaled him to pause. “We were rocking so fucking hard. We broke the stage.” Holland and Noodles told the crowd. “You guys have to stop rocking so hard,” Holland warned the crowd before resuming the closer successfully and the band brought the night to a perfect end. “You guys rule!” Holland announced as streamer cannons fired off and the band exited the stage with feedback reverberating through their final bow.
 |
| New Found Glory @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
Earlier in the night, New Found Glory opened the show - playing at the front of the stage in what Jordan Pundik shared was a bit of a confined space for him. Between his constant motion and the leaping of bassist Ian Grushka and fill-in guitarist Dan O’Connor, it was a crowded scene. During their third song, “Hit or Miss” Pundik roamed up and down the main aisles – interacting with the crowd. “I had to get out. We were too squeezed in there.”
 |
| New Found Glory @ Shoreline (Photo: Sean Reiter) |
The band maintained a light spirit as they went through hits such as “All Downhill From Here” and “My Friends Over You” despite the weight hanging over the band. Founder and lead guitarist Chad Gilbert is missing current dates as he has had a setback with a return of cancer forcing him out of action again. The band didn’t let it stop them or turn down the tone, but Pundik told the crowd, “This goes out to our guitar player Chad who is at home as he’s battling cancer. He’s kicking its ass and he reads all his messages so send him a note.”
Thanks for reading and while you're at it, you can follow us as well here: Instagram | Facebook.
