Score: *****
Check out a video of the whole, 33-minute video performance here:
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I got the idea to do a post on 311’s live show just randomly today — actually I have a pretty fond memory of seeing them at the 2000 Q101 Jamboree but typically don’t run across too many public accolades of their live performances. The critics can be pretty indolent of praise for them, too, offset nicely by the fact that they have an entire festival devoted to them in a city (New Orleans) that is neither their primary locale (Los Angeles) nor the city in which the two vocalists were raised (Omaha).
Two things make 311’s live performances more than the sum of their parts, and, you might say, heartier than the average listen to one of their studio albums might indicate. One is stage presence and the other is sound. Nick Hexum, on guitars and vocals, and SA Martinez, the other vocalist, beholden to the classic high-rapping sound that opens “Down”; are a very model in awkward, white-boy dancing. At one point, during one of the songs, their seemingly pointless kinetic motions became so infectious that it gave a sense of transportation into another world, which is exactly what music is supposed to do, in the first place.
Regarding the sound of this band, I’m not sure if this indoor KROQ gig just perfectly catered to their genre interface (I’m not ruling it out), but the rudimentary innards of this music absolutely sparkled, within this setting. For instance, P-Nut’s bass, in this performance, is prominent and magnificently funky, but not overbearing. The live drummer Chad Sexton steals the show during one of the songs with a killer drums solo and in general ingratiates himself to the performance with some glove-tight grooves that provide some welcome thunder to all of these tunes. Most importantly, Nix Hex chimes in at the show’s opening with some killer grunge sound for the “Beautiful Disaster” [1] opener (think Bleach-era Nirvana), foiling nicely with Tim Mahoney, who seems to favor wah-wah pedal and all things more psychedelic, on his exact sonic exploits.
I thought about including “set list” as one of the band’s live strengths, but, truly, some dabbling in “What Was I Thinking” and “Large in the Margin” and slightly less emphasis on ubiquitous, time-honored singles might have helped this cause. Regardless, give them credit for assembling a song lineup that did cater of the people who became fans of them with “Amber”; who might not have as much of a taste for grunge-rock as us early-years 311 constituents. They bring “Amber” alive to a reasonable extent, in this performance, with P-Nut’s bassline emerging as funkier than on the studio mix, and Nick Hex seeming to embrace as if it’s still one of his favorite brainchildren. Elsewhere, “All Mixed up” and “You Wouldn’t Believe”; among others, helped to solidify this as a great rock set peppered with classic, hummable gems that most people would know.
The band played two songs in this set that I didn’t recognize. One was “What the?!”; a hidden gem from 2019’s band installment Voyager, and the other was “You’re Gonna Get it”; which they referred to as a “new song,” and for which I couldn’t find an owner album on a cursory glance at their Spotify. Both songs were monumental successes, with the latter, ironically, to a greater extent grafting out an abrasive, “grunge” blueprint, with its instrumentation and effects. So, in other words, as a wiser man than myself was said, “You must be a muneca if you’re still standin’ still.”
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[1] This song is notable, to me, for soundtracking my high school mixtapes, for, perhaps, spawning the “Beautiful Disaster” sweat shirt I saw on a coworker one time, which granted I think was musically non-specific, and maybe, just maybe, lending some meaning to the name of my blog.
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