Bands: Descendents – SMOKE OR FIRE – MARCH
Date: 29/06/19
Location: Live Music Hall
Promoter: Destiny Tourbooking
The American Punk band Descendents which are among others regarded as pioneers of Pop-Punk as well as Melodic Hardcore are currently on world tour again. I visited their concert on the 29th of June in the Live Music Hall (Cologne). As the name already implies, the Live Music Hall is a great location for live music. It has been a meeting place for artists, music lovers and party-goers for more than 25 years.
The opening act was the Dutch punked-up Rock band MARCH which has a very catchy sound and the powerful female singer Fleur van Zuilen (vocals/guitar).
After that, the American Punk Rock band SMOKE OR FIRE followed with fast songs and Joe McMahon‘s (vocals/guitar) really punchy voice. It’s very impressive that they stand on stage at the Jera On Air festival in the Netherlands on that Saturday – so they played two concerts in two different countries at one day. Joe McMahon also told us that he started playing guitar as a result of the fact that he heard Descendents up and down as he was 15 years old. So it’s pretty fitting that they do the warm-up at this night.
Now the guys from Descendents entered the stage and the crowd totally flipped out. The audience was very mixed, beside mid-fifties who are fans of the first hour there were a lot of younger people who wanted to see the band with the iconic mascot Milo, who is the alter-ego of Milo Aukerman (vocals). Beside very fast and energetic songs like “I Like Food”, “I Wanna Be a Bear”, “Everything Sux” or “I’m Not a Punk” they played a lot of their more tuneful songs like “Nothing With You”, “Without Love”, “When I Get Old” or “Smile”. But no matter if fast and punky or more melodic, you can’t stop dancing with their catchy sound. You can almost feel how much the guys like to interact with the audience. Because of the fact that Milo Aukerman was always very close to the audience and he had some fans holding out the microphone to sing, the concert partly felt like a great hardcore show. It was also real fun when Milo got a huge coffee mug on stage which was handed around by the band members and afterwards they played the song “Coffee Mug”. Despite the summer heat, the atmosphere was absolutely great. Whether old or young, everyone danced, jumped into the air or spent their time in the moshpit. Descendents definitely still know how to do a great kickass show.
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