Live Review : The Offspring + The Hives + Bob Vylan @ Ovo Hydro, Glasgow on November 27th 2021

It’s been quite a weekend. Some months ago, April in fact, when we were still in lockdown and the world seemed bleak, The Offspring announced a winter 2021 UK Tour. This was received with some derision at ROCKFLESH Towers. It’ll never happen, they said. Other, better bands have booked and then cancelled. And anyhow it’s only The Offspring, are they even relevant these days? A little part of me died inside at that one, because I love The Offspring. Much of the 90’s passed me by musically (I’ll come back to that in a bit) but not The Offspring. I first heard ‘Self Esteem’, the “hit” single from their third and breakthrough album “Smash”, on German TV as the soundtrack to a programme that I couldn’t understand about the Isle Of Man TT. I was instantly hooked, tracked it down, bought the album and played it relentlessly. To this day it’s one of my all-time favourite songs. I’ve seen them a handful of times previously, but not for a few years now. So with the release of their new album “Let The Bad Times Roll” (which I still hadn’t bought, I’m obviously not a proper fangirl) and the announcement of some UK arena dates, I was in there. Right? Yeah! (Did you see what I did there!) Well no actually. There was a Manchester date, but tickets sold well on release date. So well in fact that by the time I wandered onto the site to have a look, the ones I wanted has been bumped (by the modern-day pirates that masquerade as Ticketmaster) to Platinum status and an accompanying price-hike to over twice the face value. Which is how I ended up in Glasgow last night, because it turned out that a ticket for Glasgow AND a hotel cost less than a ticket to Manchester. Ho hum.

So anyhow, covid progressed and tours fell like skittles. Everything got pushed back to 2022, or even in some cases 2023. They won’t come I thought, they can’t come. Surely they will cancel? But no. They came, they saw, and they absolutely conquered. Let me tell you about it. I’ll gloss over the drive to Glasgow in the midst of Storm Arwen, or google maps taking me straight to the Premier Inn. It’s on your left it cried, you have arrived at your destination! Erm yes I thought, looking left, but did you not notice the cocking great River Clyde in between where you have brought me and where the hotel is? FFS. So anyhow, I found a bridge, found the hotel and got ready to rock. Which is when the next issue arose. I’m old, I like a seated ticket at arena-sized gigs. I’m short, I like to be near the front. I had a row A ticket that was more or less right at the side of the stage, but the venue for no apparent reason closed that section off and re-seated me. Still Row A, but right at the back. About as far from the stage as it’s possible to be whilst still being in the building. I am Not Happy. But I’m here, and there is rum at the bar, so I grab a large one and settle in to be entertained.

First up we get Bob Vylan, who describe themselves as a performance artist rather than a band. They are a drummer and a singer/dancer/rapper, with a selection of rock-meets-techno backing tracks to play about with. They were political, sweary, good humoured and a bit awed to have got the gig in the first place. They were good at what they did, but it totally wasn’t for me. I appreciated the wordsmithness of the lyrics/raps, I got the right-on messages, but the whole backing track thing left me cold. Might as well watch someone play a couple of records, which at least would be fun to dance to isn’t prime viewing material. They are young, hopeful and seem to have a real buzz about them but they left me totally cold, I couldn’t get into it at all.

Not so The Hives. I thought I knew who The Hives were, despite my 90’s hibernation from the music scene. A friendly chat with the Scottish couple sitting next to me left me thinking that I might have confused them with The Strokes. I remember an in-joke in a Sum 41 video about how popular bands called “The” were. Turned out that the sharp-suited gritty Swedish indie band that I was thinking of was The Hives after all, and they were bloody brilliant. Really great. I recognised several of the songs in an “oh was that them?” kind of way, and of course I knew their That Song, which I always thought was called Because I Wanna, but is actually “Hate To Say I Told You So”. They were tight, they were powerful, they had humour, they had suits so sharp you could get paper cuts on. They even wore spats. Just to put icing on the cake, according to a friend on the barrier that I compared notes with later they even smelled nice! They spat the songs out with machine-gun precision, and they were simply wonderful. It was worth the snowy drive (which we’re not going to talk about are we?) just to see them. My only regret is that I couldn’t get any decent photos of them. Oh that’s not my only regret actually, I also regret not managing to ever see them before.

On to the main men then. Fortified with more rum and realising that as this was a “fun” gig rather than a “work” one, I can’t give you a setlist or a coherent review based on notes because I didn’t make any. What I can tell you is that they played every single song I wanted them to and then some. It was mostly a greatest hits set, but with a handful of songs from the new release thrown in. It was fabulous. The lights, the sound, the band, the crowd, the whole atmos was just spot-on. Highlights? Dexter Holland on stage by himself, spotlighted and playing a piano, doing an acoustic version of ‘Gone Away’ which they have re-worked on the new album. The guitar medley rather than solo where Noodles took us through his musical influences, including Blitzkreig Bop, Paranoid, The Trooper and Highway To Hell. The overblown and obviously rehearsed between-song banter that was irritating but we let them off with. The perfect pop-punk anthem that is ‘Want You Bad’. The new songs that have resulted in me ordering the album tonight. And of course the final encore, the Ultimate Offspring, a singalong version of ‘Self Esteem’ that gave me goosebumps and had me up and dancing. So yeah my colleagues at ROCKFLESH Towers, The Offspring are absolutely still relevant in 2021. They have put out an album whose songs can stand proudly alongside their most well-known, they have defied all the covid odds and done the tour and they have done it all with humour, skill and unrivalled entertainment value. I love them. They may have been angry young men once, whereas now they are slightly peeved middle aged ones, but that doesn’t matter. They still rock. They still have it.

Oh, one final note before I go. In Glasgow, if you are looking for a post-gig junk-food fix, they do something called a munchie box. Don’t do it, you will regret it!