The Offspring
While some may know American band The Offspring best for being ‘pretty fly (for white guys)’, thanks to their eponymous 1998 hit, the group are also one of the best-selling punk rock acts of all time. Having sold over 32 million albums worldwide, the California band are considered one of the leaders of the Nineties’ punk revival.
The Offspring have come a long way since their creation, when cross-country team-mates Dexter Holland and Greg Kriesel were refused entry into a Social Distortion concert and resolved to start their own band. The next logical step was to recruit their high school janitor, Noodle, to play the roles of lead guitar and alcohol-provider. The trio then took on 16-year-old drummer Ron Welty and played their first gigs in 1985. MTV helped usher The Offspring into the big time in 1994, when the single ‘Come Out and Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)’ became a huge video hit. The 1998 album Smash sold over 11 million copies, the most ever for a band on an indie label, and singles ‘Pretty Fly’ and ‘Why Don‘t You Get a Job?’ were among the top internet-pirated songs of the year.
Eight studio-album releases later, the original three are still together, now joined by drummer Pete Parada, and they continue to fuse punk rock, hardcore punk, and Nineties’ grunge. The group No Children will open The Offspring’s Barcelona show (which is part of a tour whose title is an unfamily-friendly way of saying “Stuff is messed up”); but while the bands’ names may cancel each other out, you can rest assured there will be a show, and a seriously grown-up one at that.
The Offspring
Razzmatazz
August 10th
€28 in advance; €32 on the door