RIMINI PARK ROCK – Offspring, Pennywise, Good Riddance – June 14, 2016

Tuesday morning I started my trip towards Rimini Fiera to attend the Punk Rock Summer Nationals: tour with bands announced by LP Rock Events such as Good Riddance, Pennywise and Offspring, for the first edition of the Rimini Park Rock. The trip went smoothly and, after finding the ugliest hat on Earth, I arrived at the concert. Good Riddance’s tarpaulin, punk-rockers from all over Italy, old and new friends make me feel right at home.

At 8.00 pm, with an uncommon punctuality, Good Riddance start their show with three great songs that took our breath away: “Letters Home”, “Disputatio” and “Last Believer”. The band from Santa Cruz is in great shape. During the whole set-list, the four members moved around, entertained and tore the whole place apart! The tracks were sung by the majority of the audience, with particular enthusiasm songs such as “Fertile Fields”, “Salt”, “United Cigar” and “Shadows of Defeat”, last song of the incredible 45 minute performance.

After a 20 minute break, Pennywise, the 25 year old punk band from Hermosa Beach, took the stage. They started with “Peaceful Day” and “Rules” and the audience went wild. In their set-list, there was “Perfect People”, loudly sung by fans, and “Territorial Pissings”, a Nirvana cover. The following five songs, “Pennywise”, “Straight Ahead”, “Society”, “Fuck Authority” and “Alien”, established great harmony between the band and the audience and were a crescendo towards the final song, “Bro Hymn” (dedicated to Jason Thirsk), which gave me the goose bumps.
In my opinion, even though Pennywise were great, they were still not as good as Good Riddance. Nonetheless, the audience was enthusiastic and this is how it should be!

After a brief break to set the stage (and take a leak), it was time for the band that everybody was waiting for: the Offspring. The opening songs, “You’re Gonna Go Far Kid” and “Want You Bad”, which replaced “All I Want”, were kind of disappointing. They bounced back with their third song, “Come Out and Play”.
I have to say that the Offspring, after “Americana”, weren’t very exciting: they played a lot of post 2000 and commercial songs. This is what the audience wanted, so I’m not going to complain. The people were in great shape, even though Dexter Holland as always didn’t have much to say, while Noodles, on the other hand, was trying hard to entertain. Nonetheless, the final song was “Self Esteem” and it was spectacular: people jumping, flying and singing…we were only missing people throwing scooters from the bleachers!
After all, I had lots of fun and I can say that, in spite of my personal opinion, the concert was great: 6500 people went home very happy and this is what matters.
I would like to congratulate myself with the organizers and all the people that worked hard for this event. Nowadays, it’s a trend to criticize in a destructive way the organizers, but Radio Punk is different and we want to thank the people that made this concert happen. There will always be some mistakes and it’s important to notice them and help each other out to make things better.
Here are, in random order, top and flop 3s!

TOP 3:
1- Good Riddance were tremendous. THAT’S IT.
2- The weather: the rain was refreshing and it stopped way before the concert started. I bet you never thought about it in this way!
3- A super “Canthc” performs a masterful “cantellata”, fixing a bracelet that I broke like a dumbass! After ten “cantellate”, you reach Macgyver’s level!

FLOP 3:
1- Pennywise didn’t play my favorite song, “Homesick”. I might be the only one who likes it this much!
2- Nothing against Nirvana, but everybody started screaming for them and not for the Ramones! Come on people!
3- I’m putting it in the flop 3, but it’s just a thought: how come all these people go see concerts this big, while it’s full of other punk bands that deserve to be noticed? I’m sure that a lot of us thought about this, especially people who play and organize! (Thanks to my friend Simone from NH3)

Live Report by T.S. and E.Z.
Photo by Andrea “Canthc” Cantelli (www.twitter.com/canthc)
Translation by J.L.