NOFX. Bad Religion. Social Distortion. Hot Water Music. Lagwagon. Swingin’ Utters. Less Than Jake. Propagandhi. Bouncing Souls. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Sick of It All. Pennywise. Operation Ivy.
These are a handful of the bands on the t-shirts of the kids at the Good Riddance show last Wednesday night. These are the bands whose CDs littered the floor of my used Honda Accord when I was seventeen, stuff the bands whose lyrics I learned with my Chuck Taylored foot controlling my speed through the back roads of Kentucky into Cincinnati, screaming along while my car’s speakers buzzed from too-loud volume into a bad neighborhood to find a venue or a house or a basement where mostly boys made more music in an effort to sound like the bands I was already listening to in my shitty car. These were the bands I grew up with. The bands I listen to now with a pang to my nostalgic heart, the bands who sometimes still play now, who go back on tour through the country because they miss their music just like I do.

Ah, Good Riddance. Thank you.

I showed up to the Sinclair last Wednesday just in time to catch The Flatliners, an energetic punk band from Ontario, Canada. Immediately, the seventeen-year-old living inside my nostalgic heart beat for them, reaching out to Scott Brigham’s catchy guitar, smiling at Chris Cresswell’s raw yell-singing, blast beats coming from Paul Ramirez’s kit. I hesitate to call them pop punk because no one wants to be called pop punk because there’s stigma and some kind of negative connotation and while I hesitate, screw it. They’re pop punk – good pop punk – while leaning towards a harder edge, reminding me a lot of Rise Against.

Santa Cruz’s Good Riddance opened their set with “Last Believer,” which is kind of like high fiving their fans for coming. That song, off their ’96 release A Comprehensive Guide to Moderne Rebellion, is already a hopeful anthem and immediately induced the crowd to rush the stage, the kids spitting words back to singer Russ Rankin, fists in the air, plastic cups and beer cans casually flying skyward and back into the pit from where it came.

Good Riddance’s set was the kind a fan of their music would’ve hoped for, including tracks from all over their discography, too, pleasing anyone familiar with their albums, from “Heresy, Hypocrisy, and Revenge,” to “All Fall Down,” to “Darkest Days,” to “Shadows of Defeat,” to “Steps,” to “Shit-Talking Capitalists,” to “Think of Me,” to “Pisces/Almost Home,” to “Yesterday’s Headlines,” on and on and on.
Rankin casually reminisced between songs about the last time they were in Massachusetts, saying, “The last time we played Massachusetts was in Cambridge in 1995. Also? No one else anywhere understands why you guys like Dunkin Donuts so much.” (Which, truthfully? Is true.) Fans called for their favorite song to be played, Rankin sometimes shaking his head and saying everyone should’ve put their requests in on their Facebook page, that, “We’re not one of those bands that can play any fucking song – we’re not Aerosmith. We haven’t played in, like, fifty fucking years.”

Which, you know, fair enough? I guess?  Weird to scold some kid for his song request, but, sure, whatever.

Their set, though, was awesome and everything I’d hoped it would be. That seventeen-year-old kid inside me that always wanted to see Good Riddance and never thought she would is finally satisfied.