Rancid will be performing July 11 and 12 at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle with Transplants and Noise on the 11th and Transplants and The Interrupters on the 12th.
Rancid’s now classic album And Out Come the Wolves was first played in Seattle around 1997 by KNDD (a station that used to play punk but now plays the formulaic crap every other station plays). The first song I heard by Rancid was “Time Bomb” and I was intrigued. Then I heard “Ruby Soho” and was completely blown away. Rancid was pure punk and looked the part as well with their mohawk hairdos and tattoos.
“Ruby Soho” is a song about a relationship falling apart because they want different things out of life. The topic is typical but the song is anything but. Rancid play with the anger and power in the way punk was intended to be played.
Although this video shows Rancid performing live (but not in front of an audience) and just casual scenes of the band in various activities, the video is very unpretentious and a proverbial breath of fresh air in a sea of vids that are now over produced, phony and possess the depth of a bottle cap.
Rancid broke around the same time as other punk acts like Offspring, Blink 182 and Green Day but unlike those bands, Rancid plays with a harder edge.
Rancid are now “seasoned professionals” but their music sounds as fresh as it did when it first came out. I have seen them three times live — twice at festivals and once at their own show. Rancid is in my top ten of bands that came out in the nineties and And Out Come the Wolves is one of the best albums to come out in that decade. They are as close to The Clash as any band can get.
