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Punk Rock Bowling report: Saturday at the festival

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Flag lead singer Keith Morris performs with the band during the Punk Rock Bowling & Music Festival in Downtown Las Vegas on Saturday, May 28, 2016.
Photo: L.E. Baskow
Jason Bracelin

The human exclamation point ticked off the various maladies endured by he and his bandmates, from breathing issues to cancerous growths. It was like a trip to the hospital, but with vehemence and bayonet-sharp sarcasm substituting for bedpans and I.V. drips.

“Can a 60-year-old with emphysema catch his breath without being hooked up to the oxygen machine?” Flag frontman Keith Morris wondered, bug eyes bulging. He asked as much early in the band’s headlining set at Punk Rock Bowling on Saturday night, shortly before addressing some of the medical issues weathered by bassist Chuck Dukowski and singer/guitarist Dez Cadena.

Morris’ words registered as both a wink and a warning. “The end is coming close for us,” he announced later.

But, really, is the end coming for these pioneering punk lifers? Or are they coming for the end, confronting the Grim Reaper as if the dude was just another would-be authority figure to be dispatched with?

2016 Punk Rock Bowling: Day 1

Watching Flag perform on Saturday, their lineup rounded out by drummer Bill Stevenson and guitarist Stephen Egerton, the latter scenario seemed the more likely of the two.

Flag’s repertoire, culled from the late '70s/early '80s catalog of Black Flag, of which everyone in the band except Egerton was once a member, is posited on going eyeball-to-eyeball with ills both individual and societal and refusing to be the first to blink.

Lyrically, they acknowledge their fears as a means of better understanding them, candidly addressing depression, ennui, alienation and pop culture pabulum in tree-trunk dense jams vacuum-packed with anger and dissonance.

On Saturday, this bunch seemed less diminished by age—despite what Morris’ stage banter might suggest—than invigorated by it: The passing of time has given them more stuff to be pissed off about, and they took it out on the tunes themselves, the cascading drums of “My War” and the slicing guitars of “No More” particularly concussive and thrilling.

“I’ve got nothing to do but shoot my mouth off,” Morris howled on “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” his tongue an automatic weapon with endless targets to blast.

As Flag performed, Dukowski sported a Bernie Sanders T-shirt adorned with the Black Flag logo—pro-Sanders gear with a punk rock bent was a frequent totem on Saturday. Though Punk Rock Bowling is in its 18th year, and sixth as an outdoor music festival, there's a decidedly different edge to it this time, a more palpable sense of urgency and purpose, as Dukowski’s stage wear underscored. Saturday’s show had more than just the festive aura of a punk rock family reunion, as it normally does, it also came freighted with a slightly more resolute vibe, attributable to today’s sweltering political climate.

Yeah, the festival has taken place in an election year before, back in 2012, but milquetoast Mitt Romney inspired little of the righteous rage that punk rock piñatas like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan have in the past. That’s all changed this election cycle with Donald Trump polarizing a nation—and galvanizing plenty of Saturday’s performers.

Shawn Stern, frontman for pro-choice, anti-authority veterans Youth Brigade, chided Trump for refusing to debate Sanders and lamented the resurfacing of superficial political divides by way of introducing “What Are You Fighting For?” a song originally released in 1983. “The same sh*t going on then is still going on now—actually, in some ways it’s worse,” noted Stern, who along with his brother, drummer Mark Stern, oversees the festival. “I don’t believe in the political system,” he added later, addressing the crowd. “But I believe in you to make change.”

A similar sentiment was voiced by Dick Lucas, singer for British anarcho-punk mainstays Subhumans. Lucas, who delivers his words like a prizefighter does his fists, critiqued Trump’s stance towards potentially limiting Muslim immigration. Then he tore into “This Year’s War,” a song about the cyclical nature of military conflict.

Despite Punk Rock Bowling’s more topical bent this go ’round, it didn’t entirely define the day—nor was everyone on board. “There is no revolution,” Bronx frontman Matt Caughthran spat on “Heart Attack American,” which opened the band’s bracing, bare-knuckle set, one of the day’s best.

Between fitful bursts of hard-edged rock and roll scuffed up with punk vigor, Caughthran spoke of scoring a bag of cocaine the night before, and he played as if the stuff was still coursing through his system, storming into the crowd where he sang a pair of songs while getting lacquered in fan sweat.

Said fans are always a big part of Punk Rock Bowling’s boozy charm, and on Saturday, they provided plenty of reassuring sights: Punk rock couples dancing hand-in-in hand to the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated,” which blared through the P.A. prior to Flag taking the stage; young girls rocking old D.R.I. T-shirts; the generally relaxed, accommodating interaction between attendees and what authority figures were present, from a uniformed police officer giving fist bumps to crowd surfers while The Bronx played to a security guard quickly dismissing one of his underlings for getting too physical with a female fan during The Exploited’s rough-and-tumble set.

Speaking of The Exploited, in a way, that band's performance embodied the day’s alternately combative and festive atmosphere. Sure, there was some class consciousness sprinkled throughout the base, bombastic rippers, which bordered on metal with over-driven thrash riffing and a ceaselessly headbanging bassist, but for the most part, the Scottish ruffians favored the more primal pleasures of endless “Sex and Violence.”

“F*ck politics,” singer Wattie Buchan bellowed at one point, continually cracking himself upside his mohawked head with his microphone. “And f*ck you.”

Yeah, punk rock may be all grown up, but that doesn’t mean it always has to act like it.

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