04 May SunFest Friday Night: Headliners The Offspring Went Classic, But Still Sounded Fresh

Many audience members last night at the festival’s Ford Stage weren’t even born when Friday night’s headliners, the Offspring, started as a band. The punk-rooted Southern California act has charged along continuously for nearly 30 years now, and probably most impressively, with largely the same, unbroken lineup.

The band is, of course, still fronted by the perpetually blond Dexter Holland, but he’s also still joined by Greg K. on bass and Noodles on lead guitar. With that longtime friendship comes an absolute ease on stage — it never once seemed that the band was ‘performing’ with a lot of effort, instead, coming across like a bunch of friends onstage.

Well, a bunch of friends with a couple decades’ worth of hits. The band enjoys a kind of funny position — their best songs have always been about youth and accompanying youthful fury, but they’re not exactly kids. Some of the earliest material has crossed into almost-timeless territory — notably songs from the band’s arguably best album, 1994’s Smash. Which mean they’re almost a classic rock act but one that, by the demographic makeup of the crowd at their set, appeals strongly to under-18s as well as, perhaps, their grown-up,  formerly punk-rock parents.

Perhaps wisely, then, Holland and company stuck to the biggest hits from the beginning, ever the dutiful entertainers playing everything their fans really wanted to hear. That meant blasting out of the gate with “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid,” a later song — from 2008’s Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace — but still a massive radio hit. From there, things got unabashedly ’90s, with “All I Want” (from 1996’s Ixnay on the Hombre), to, yes, the band’s breakout hit from Smash. Later, they revisited Ixnay on the Hombre again with “Gone Away.”

Interestingly, though, these songs fit easily into a set that also included new material along the same, high-powered, uptempo rock lines. Setting aside the group’s novelty hits over the years, those anthemic guitar rippers are really what Holland and friends do best. It’s what keeps the band still going in 2013, and what keeps fans born after Smash was even released still packing its shows.

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