Descendents

with The Buzzcocks and Grumpster

Doors 6:30 p.m. | Show 8:00 p.m. | 18+

Information | Tickets

Enter for a chance to win passes to this show.

The Current is pleased to offer a ticket giveaway to this concert. Enter by noon (CDT) on Friday, September 20 for a chance to win a pair of passes to this concert. TWO (2) winners will receive two guest list Descendents.

You must be 13 or older to submit any information to Minnesota Public Radio. The personally identifying information you provide will be used only in ways consistent with our privacy policy. See Terms of Use and Privacy.

Descendents

Since first emerging from (and defining) the Southern California pop-punk scene in 1978, the legendary Descendents have released classic after classic, from their landmark 1982 LP, Milo Goes to College, to 2016's Hypercaffium Spazzinate. Now, after issuing a flurry of singles to get fans through the past few years, the band -- Milo Aukerman (vocals), Bill Stevenson (drums), Stephen Egerton (guitar), and Karl Alvarez (bass) -- will be touring in support of a new album. With a very cool twist.

What started with Milo Goes to College now comes full circle on the blistering 9th & Walnut (Epitaph), a "lost album" quietly recorded in 2002 by the MGTC lineup of Stevenson, Aukerman, Tony Lombardo on bass, and Frank Navetta (d. 2008) on guitar. Audiences should be geared up for shows featuring songs spanning Descendents' incredible career, from "Suburban Home" and "Silly Girl" to "I'm the One" and "Without Love," and including 9th & Walnut tracks like first single "Baby Doncha Know" and its incendiary follow-up, "Nightage."

Buzzcocks

In a darkening musical landscape where viral fads and AI-generated fakery share chart-space with the self-absorbed products of the nation's stage schools, Buzzcocks shine out as a gleaming beacon of hope.

A constant, ever-evolving presence over the last 45 years of pop culture, the band's legendary status will be set in stone — literally — with their inclusion in the Music Walk Of Fame in September, joining an illustrious roll call including David Bowie, The Who, Madness and Amy Winehouse.

The band's never-better live shows, meanwhile, are electrifying reminders of rock music's power to inspire, educate and inform. All delivered with an energy and conviction of a band half their age. "It's my lifeblood," says Steve Diggle — 68 years young — of a non-stop touring schedule which over the summer will see them play to thousands of fans across Europe and the UK.

"I've still got the fire in my belly. Some musicians get bored of being on the road, but I'm institutionalised. I've done 50-odd years of staying in hotels. It's what I signed up for. Ever since I saw Bob Dylan in the back of a black taxi in (D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 documentary) Don't Look Back, I always wanted to live this kind of life — being interviewed in the back of a black taxi on the way to the studio."

While most of their punk peers are content to traverse the globe in jukebox-style revue shows, Buzzcocks continue to move with the times, attracting new fans wherever they go. A case in point being the huge all-ages crowd the band pulled at the Iggy Pop-headlined Dog Day Afternoon in July.

"There's not a lot of intellectual or emotional thinking in music these days," observes Steve. "People are being controlled. They'll watch a video of someone falling over a banana skin and think they're being entertained. They don't realise the beauty of words, and the power of music. I'd like to think young kids who come to see us feel the same excitement I got from Little Richard and Chuck Berry. It goes back to the punk thing. It was about attitude and a way of thinking. We had the questions, but we didn't have the answers. But the questions are the important thing."

This desire to challenge both themselves and their audiences was reflected in 2022's Sonics In The Soul. An eclectic mix of gilt-edged power-pop ('Venus Eyes'), Big Star-esque bangers ('Nothingness World'), and Groundhogs-style riffing ('Experimental Farm'), it was both a critical and commercial success — a reminder that Steve Diggle has always been a master songwriter: a Lennon to Pete Shelley's McCartney.

The album also caught the ear of rock royalty. 'Little' Steven Van Zandt put in a request to remix Who-like epic 'Manchester Rain,' while Elton John got in touch with Steve to rave about first single 'Senses Out Of Control,' playing the track on his Apple Radio show.

"Sonics In The Soul was a bridge from the old Buzzcocks to the new," says Steve.

"At the time, a lot of people said, 'You can't carry on without Pete.' But I'd always written my own songs. Looking back, we were like two mountain climbers. We needed each other. But since then I've taken [the band] on and it made it more heroic."

Buzzcocks have always been about innovation, experimentation and taking risks. In 1977, the band's self-financed debut Spiral Scratch EP gave birth to the independent sector. A primary influence on everyone from Orange Juice to Green Day, the string of timelessly melodic hit singles which followed (including Diggle-penned classics 'Promises' and 'Harmony In My Head') brought radical ideas to a Top Of The Pops audience — reflecting influences ranging from Bob Dylan to Harold Pinter; Samuel Beckett to Stockhausen.

"I had a Stockhausen box set," he says of his listening as a teenager. "I had the box room at home and I'd record my mum doing the hoovering and play it back. I loved the idea of white noise. We always had that discordant, uncomfortable element in Buzzcocks."

For Steve and his bandmates, punk wasn't so much a wake-up call as a signal that other people across the country were feeling the same way.

"I didn't need Joe Strummer or Johnny Rotten to tell me what was going on," he explains. "Buzzcocks were probably the most philosophical of all the punk bands. I loved The Clash and The Jam, but most of them were just there for the party — writing songs about getting a job. We'd read the existentialists. We were interested in the complexity of life. It was deep thinking wrapped up in a pop song. Rather than being linear, we were using abstract images to create a mood — the same way James Joyce did with Ulysses. That inspired a song like 'Fast Cars.' At 17 I'd seen my best mate die in a car crash, and it gave me a different perspective. The Joyce thing of only knowing the meaning of life through knowing the meaning of death."

While punk is widely considered as rock's Year Zero, the truth is that Buzzcocks were simultaneously tapping into a far older tradition, stretching back via Chuck Berry and Little Richard to the Delta Blues.

"We were white blues," explains Steve. "My theory now is that instead of the cotton fields, we had the cotton mills, where kids would be sent up chimneys and made to work 18 hours a day. That was our blues — the white trash of Manchester."

Having toured the world and released three classic albums — Another Music In a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, and A Different Kind Of Tension — in quick succession, the band imploded in 1981. A successful reunion of the classic line-up (Pete Shelley — guitar vocals; Steve Diggle — guitar vocals; Steve Garvey — bass; John Maher — drums) in 1989 led to a non-stop touring schedule prior to Shelley's death in 2018.

However, the band's next chapter promises to be their most exciting yet. "I'm halfway through the new record, which is going to be called Attitude Adjustment," says Steve in conclusion.

"It's a step on from Sonics In The Soul. It feels like an exciting new era, and a new spirit. I can't wait to get out there and play these songs to people. It's not about ego, for me. I'm a working-class kid, who always loved music. I never thought I'd be involved in it. But I've got my chance, so I'll give back as much as I can, because I believe in it as much as I always did. We're the holiest church in rock 'n' roll."

With Steve Diggle as High Priest, Buzzcocks are still the band to believe in.

[Paul Moody, July 2023]

Grumpster

Bay Area punks GRUMPSTER released their self-titled third album on April 26, 2024 via Pure Noise Records. Speaking about the new album the band said, “Grumpster is an album mostly about mental health. It’s about the ebbs and flows of mental health, depression, anxiety, love, physical health, etc. This collection of songs is all about lived experiences, feelings, emotions, and how it felt to exist in general over the past couple of years.”

Growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, with Green Day’s Dookie in heavy rotation, Donnie Walsh learned guitar on his own and fell hard for East Bay punk in all forms. In 2015, as a teenager, he plotted a trip out to San Francisco with a friend, scoping out the stages where bands like Operation Ivy and Crimpshine got their starts. Soon after returning home, Walsh bought a one-way ticket and decamped west permanently, picking up odd-end jobs, including at Guitar Center, to pay the bills.

Within a few months, Walsh crossed paths with Lalo Gonzalez Deetz, a guitarist from nearby Albany in whom they found a kindred spirit. Impossibly, when the pair got together to jam, they discovered they’d written near-identical songs, down to the chord progressions. Scouring the scene for a drummer who could match their preternaturally shared tempo, Walsh and Deetz eventually got in touch with Noel Agtane, a Bay Area native who’d drummed around town, across church bands, indie-alt group Oh My Heart, and pop-punk band Triples Alley. After getting a sample of his intimidating blast beats, the pair asked him to slow it down and were rewarded with the steady, studied, powerhouse percussion they’d been hearing in their heads all along. Since the release of their album Fever Dream, the band have added guitarist Alex Hernandez.

Grumpster have been on one long upswing, four fast friends crafting rambunctious, mosh-ready, deliciously deadpan punk that they say stays friendly despite its edge – smiling big means showing some teeth, after all.