MARCI VON SAVOY
Four founding fathers of punk rock packed in a motley crowd at Club DV8 in Salt Lake City Wednesday night.
Punk rock gave artists the opportunity to sing about alienation, frustration, anger and pain, said Social Distortion’s vocalist Mike Ness at Wednesday’s show.
The band began their national mini-tour in November after a four- years remission to promote their sixth album, “White Light, White Heat, White Trash.”
“It’s never worked for me to make a record, go out on tour and come home and write another one. I have to live life for awhile, otherwise what am I going to write about … the tour?” Ness said in a press release.
Ironically, Ness who dropped out of high school his senior year to produce Distortion’s first album, is the epitome of “white trash” himself, but even this tough guy has a heart. Ness wrote track seven off of their new album for his grandmother.
“I’ve felt the loss of loved ones: my grandmother, my mother’s mother, passed away in December ’93. She was the pillar of the family, the strong one and her death came out of nowhere. ‘When the Angels Sing’ is about that loss. My feelings came out more in that song than what I felt in the actual funeral,” Ness said in a press release.
Clad in his white, ribbed tank top, Ness had to dig deep into his old-school punk files to arouse the crowd.
Though the tunes off of “White Light, White Heat …” were received, they did not affect the crowd like the slightly older hits from their self-titled album, such as “Sick Boys,” or “Ball and Chain.”
Social Distortion opened up their set with The Rolling Stones cover, “Under My Thumb” — a hidden track on their new album — and closed with a tribute to the man in black, also known as Johnny Cash.
“White Light, White Heat, White Trash,” although produced in a neo-punk, Green Day era, was built upon what Ness described as the first punk wave inspiration in 1975-1979. The album is reminiscent of the primary punk bands influences: The Ramones, The Clash and the late ’70s and early ’80s punk sound. The album veers far from the alternative trend, which seems to sneak its way into newer punk rock.
“Alternative music has become so marketable that a lot of it has become imagery,” Ness said.
Social Distortion ended their tour Thursday in Las Vegas
