RISE AGAINST/RANCID + The Riverboat Gamblers @ Parc Jean Drapeau

By Brian Hastie - Drive Home: Countdown To Armageddon - 06/18/2009

The constant, hours-long rain spell that befell Montreal did little to dampen the spirits of those who showed up for the Riverboat Gamblers/Rancid/Rise Against show at Parc Jean Drapeau, on Ile St. Helene. The crowd appeared to be predominantly youthful and seemed eager for the proceedings to start and jockeyed for position in front of the stage well before the start of the show.

The Riverboat Gamblers had the tough task of waking up a largely fed-up crowd with their brand of punk rock, pulling out multiple cuts from the newly-released Underneath The Owl. Tracks such as "Victory Lap" and "A Choppy Yet Sincere Apology" woke much of the crowd up as singer Mike Wiebe's version of a punk rock croon went to work, slowly turning a largely unanimated crowd into a slowly-swaying mass of partially-pleased concert-goers.

Rancid divided up their setlist between songs from their latest record, Let The Dominoes Fall, and songs from their extensive catalogue. Kicking things off with "Radio", off of 1993's Let's Go, the band's mixture of ska and street punk kept the crowd going through their 50 minute set. The midset trio of "Olympia, WA", "Salvation" and "Bloodclot" very clearly demonstrated why Rancid reached the level of popularity they've continued to maintain through the last decade-and-a-half. The band has the ability to craft songs that hint at pop sensibilities, covering them up with a healthy dose of punk rock chord progressions and gravel-throated singer Tim Armstrong's near-conversational delivery. These elements manage to win over fans by stepping over genres and grab equal doses of pop sheen and punk rock sensibility.

The band continued to roll out the hits ("Fall Back Down" from 2003's Indestructible, "Time Bomb" and "Maxwell Murder" from 1995's And Out Come The Wolves) as the crowd ate it up, enthused to hear something familiar. They capped things off with their biggest hit, "Ruby Soho", which had several rows of excited teenagers singing along, shrugging off the newest torrent of rain that fell from the skies.

The headliners took the stage a little after dark, kicking things off with "Ignition", from 2006's The Sufferer And The Witness. Following that, Rise Against's set was largely a carbon copy of their December 2008 CEPSUM performance, only transposed to an outdoor venue. The band played almost all of the hits (ignoring "Swing Life Away" while playing "Give It All", “Prayer of the Refuge" and all of the singles from the band's newest record, Appeal to Reason) and a selection of older songs from their four prior full-lengths. The band went through largely the same set, beat by beat, as the December show, playing the same songs in the same manner (moving into the acoustic portion of the show at about the same mark as well as closing with the same songs) and left little to surprise. The upside is that they were consistent; the downside is that it felt like they were consistently going through the motions.

As the show progressed and I realized that perhaps I was reliving the exact same show I had been witness to months ago, my mind began to wander and concern itself more with the context in which the music was presented and less with the concert before me.

Is the band's message being lost in the static of the pop-punk music that envelopes these songs? Can Rise Against truly consider themselves to be efficient messengers of the causes they support when they've progressively stream-lined their musical approach to the point where they receive extensive radio play and major backing from a large record company? It is a question with many tangents and variables, and is also the same problem that befalls many politically-active bands who outgrow their humble roots and branch off into something bigger, signing with a major record company and claiming to be fighting the machine from within.

This is also a question that also concerns itself with the integrity of a band which decides to, in the eyes of some, co-opt their very vision into something that can be sold as a mere commodity, to be enjoyed and used and tossed without a second glance at the actual lyrical content

Issues like this are of special concern to those involved in the discourse of punk rock (both consumers and producers), a discourse which concerns itself partially with the very notion of "selling out", that is to say going corporate and becoming a vessel for the society that punk rock bands largely fight to change through social action. This feeling of going with the flow is largely detrimental to the spirit of a lot of the work Rise Against has done in the past. Handing out plastic Rise Against-adorned bags to Warped Tour attendees (which occurred in 2006) gave me pause for thought and planted the seed of this very struggle in my head.

Watching the sea of kids (with the occasional older person popping out) sing along to every word singer Tim McIlrath put out there made me wonder if anyone was truly listening to the content of the words and not merely the melodies by which these words came out. It is a question that troubled me, and as the strains of closer "Ready to Fall" gave way to the usual post-concert lull, I felt like it would be one only time could answer.

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