Social Distortion February 4th

Dr Desert Flower and I went to see Social Distortion last night at the Tempe Marquee, with our friends Alan & Tory.  While the tickers were not expensive - just $38 a piece - it was lame that they charged $5 to park 2 blocks away and across the street since their parking lot was inadequately too tiny to handle the sold out crowd for Social D.  While $5 is not much, it's the principle of the thing, to make me walk, and then charge me anyways... but I digress.

The crowd was mostly younger than us, but there were a few "older folks" there as well. the opening band (the Flaming Tones) were OK. We stood on the general admissions floor to stage left, about 60 feet from Mike Ness, and a massive mosh pit broke out about 15 feet away from us, where shirtless testosterone males pushed and shoved each other for most of the concert.  I had on my steel toed black leather engineering boots, which have very little grip on a beer slickened concert floor, so I declined to join in the fray.

The music was good, the sound quality at the Marquee was slightly garbled and sub-par, and the lighting was nothing to brag about.  Occasional wafts of cannabis smoke drifted through the crowd, and most of the fellow concert-goers were well behaved and courteous.  The only disappointing thing was that the concert lasted less than an hour.  9 songs until the first set was done, less than 45 minutes into the concert.  4 song encore later, and Social Distortion left the stage, the house turned on the lights, and they channeled everyone through the two tiny front doors - instead of the rear fire exists that lead directly to the over-flow parking garage 2 blocks away.