NOFX

Ribbed - Live in a Dive (2018)

Daniel James

Time changes people. Once, Fat Mike was an apolitical not really so fat fellow. Now he is Punk Rock's answer to Doctor Frank N Furter, which was subtly acknowledged when I saw Punk in Drublic Fest in Huntington Beach and they introduced NOFX by playing the Time Warp again. I Don't Like Me Anymore goes into this. And I'm not going into last year. Perhaps in a reaction to this, NOFX has released a Live in A Dive of their classic early album Ribbed. The passage of time is shouted out in his introductory heckling of the audience informing anyone under 35 of what Ribbed is. I'm 34 so I miss the cutoff date.

But NOFX still can not suck live and be pretty awesome. . They say playing two songs in a row perfectly is hard going into Showerdays but they play pretty close to perfect for the whole of Ribbed. They didn't get worse live this time. They nod to their early ska songs saying they were trying to sound like Op Ivy going into Food, Sex and Ewe and they change the lyrics to shout out Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The guitar on El Lay is tight and Los Angeles sucks, though the rest of California is good. The Malachi Crunch at the end kicks ass with the complex opening riff.

NOFX is one of my favorite bands still. I personally don't believe punk should control the behavior of people in it too much unless its about Nazis or something. Whatever you think of NOFX, they're not Nazis and they're still fun to listen to. If you're still boycotting them, you should make an exception. The cover art has a really well rendered picture of a condom with a mosh pit full of people bursting through the wrapper if that helps.