Circle Jerks Still Hard, Fast and Smartassed at Tipitina's

The Circle Jerks’ front row, by Victoria Conway

The crowd was a big part of the story Sunday night.

The sold out Circle Jerks’ show Sunday night at Tipitina’s felt like an event. The sell out was certainly part of the story but not the whole of it. The Circle Jerks were a very good but not great Los Angeles punk band, liked but not loved or revered like X or The Germs. Sunday night, you could hear the debt hardcore owed to The Circle Jerks, whose songs often refused the anthemic impulses that titles like “When the Shit Hits the Fan” and “Live Fast Die Young” falsely signaled. Guitarist Greg Hetson’s riffs could often be mistaken for the parts heavy metal rhythm guitarists play in between the signature riffs that define their songs.

That’s not to say The Circle Jerks weren’t good. Actually, they were excellent, generating the sound of energy. Their songs were made to fuel movement, and the band—original members Hetson, singer Keith Morris, and bassist Zander Schloss, joined by drummer Joey Castillo—were really tight, probably tighter than in their heyday. Morris was oddly orderly, telling us up front that they would play 32 songs, telling us when that they learned to replay the songs in bunches, telling us when the time came in the show where he thanks the opening bands and the audience, and he let us know when there were five songs left. When they came out for an encore starting with a cover of The Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You,” he specified that they had three songs left. In a show with songs that were rowdy in concept and execution, that came off as charming.

The Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris, by Victoria Conway

So what made the show an event? I have theories starting with Tipitina’s. Punk bands played a lot of smaller, lousier venues, and The Circle Jerks in that space came with an air of validation, like we were right to think that this was meaningful music. A room the size of Tipitina’s also made it possible to see how many people co-signed your tastes, whereas shows in VFW halls and the like reinforced the feeling your tastes were too radical for broader acceptance.

The Circle Jerks contributed in a structural way because they haven’t been celebrated in the way many of their punk contemporaries were. Going to see them on Sunday didn’t mean going to see someone whose lyrics contained poetic touches or wisdom people recognized and celebrated later, nor were they the inventors of something. Smartass aggression is the through line in their catalogue, which is good but not exactly distinguishing. Really, The Circle Jerks played straight to those of who like their guitar rock loud, hard, fast, and anti-social. Period. It’s not that the songs don’t have content. Morris really found 32 ways to say society’s fucked up on Sunday night, and while he’s a good lead singer, hard/loud/fast/scornful was the story.

But that’s a sound that doesn’t occupy the space in the music marketplace that it once did, and although there are signs of a comeback, electric guitars in general don’t have the currency they once did either. One friend just wanted to hear some loud guitars, and being surrounded by people who felt the same gave the show a Gathering-of-the-Tribe vibe. The gathering came carbon-dated because The Circle Jerks’ tour is celebrating the 40-year anniversary of the release of their second album, Wild in the Streets. Fortunately, the band is still potent enough to make that time temporarily irrelevant. At a distance, they didn’t show the passage of time as clearly on their bodies, and they could get fans who saw them 40 years ago to at least bang around and push, while younger fans occasionally got up to body surf. The show never got too rowdy and gave a lot of people a chance to feel like punks, not in an identity/ethos way but in the simpler, more adrenalized way. They got a reminder of why they liked punk in the first place.

Greg Hetson, by Victoria Conway

Morris explained that the tour was supposed to come to New Orleans in 2020 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their debut album, Group Sex, but COVID forced them to not only cancel that tour but wait around until the 40th anniversary of its follow-up. That context, combined with the recent spike in the newest Omicron variant, made being inside maskless at Tipitina’s uncomfortable. It’s a measure of how thoroughly punk fans have internalized the Born To Lose aesthetic that few people masked despite all that.

It’s tempting to attribute a lot to nostalgia, but the show and the crowd’s response had more commitment than the word connotes. The Circle Jerks’ core anger was too present for even a trickle of self-satisfaction to creep in, and the crowd seemed accurately plugged in—not delusional where their ages were concerned, but not so gray and meaty that they wanted their punk more comfy.

It’s fair to point out that these people could hear the 2022 incarnations of punk if they were better plugged in to venues that largely fly below the radar, and that those back rooms and indie spaces are the true homes of this music. But for a night, unreconstructed, unglamorized and unlionized punk popped its head up in an accessible space, and two or three generations of punk filed out for it.