Descendents At MTelus

Downtown Montreal on a Saturday night is a thing of legend.  Rather appropriate as the city hosted Descendents this past Saturday night.  Upon my arrival at the MTelus, things seemed rather calm and I made the mistake of thinking that it was going to be an easy going kind of night.  I mentioned to security that they were probably happy to have an easy evening on their hands as a bunch of grey beards like myself weren’t going to cause that much trouble.  He gave me a look as if I was crazy and said “Eric, this is a punk rock show.  It will be crazy.”  With my eyes opened by his words, I took another scan of this docile crowd.  Suddenly, I saw what he saw.  The torn jackets, painted faces, pierced body parts and multi-coloured hair set was in attendance.  And they have may have been rather calm at the moment, but underneath that calm was a bubbling of energy.  The closer we got to show time, the louder the crowd became.  The closer we got to show time, they more they began to move around in anticipation.  The closer we got to the show, the wilder they became.  Why?  Because The Descendents were in town and about to rip the roof off of the building.  It was already an epic evening before our headliners had even hit the stage.  The Descendents came out of the wild late 70s punk rock movement in Los Angeles and are just as wild today as they were then.  Their first two albums, Milo Goes To College from 1982 and 1985's I Don't Want To Grow Up are stone cold classics.  Their 1996 return, Everything Sucks gave us their opening track for the show.  ‘Everything Sux’, a song that is almost 30 years old, yet many would tell you is just as appropriate today as it ever was.  What followed was a machine gun like procession of their best known hits, most served in short bursts of high energy rock.  I believe that the final count was 34 songs.  Earlier this year I got to shoot ZZ Top, but only for one song.  I think I had more shooting time on that evening than I did during the three songs I got to photograph on this night.  And my security guard friend was right.  The crowd was bouncing, swirling and surging all night.  I stopped counting after the fifth body surfer was escorted past us in the pit.  He and his co-workers certainly got a good work-out that night.  All of the photographs were taken at f/3.2 while using various different shutter speeds, ISO settings and focal lengths.  Here are the rest of the photographs that I took of Descendents while they performed on the MTelus stage.

If you would like to find out more about Descendents and their music, you can do so by following the link to their Facebook page.  If you would like to see the photographs that I took of Mattstagraham and The Buzzcocks, who performed earlier that evening, you can do so by following the respective links.  A big thank you goes out to Descendents' management group, Evenko and Christopher Gonda of V13Media for getting me a pass to shoot the show.  As always, it is very much appreciated.  The songs may be short, but their power and message have stood the test of time.   Descendents only have a few more shows scheduled for this year, but they are sure to be back on the road again soon.  Don't you dare miss it when they play a town near you.