{"id":483385,"date":"2026-10-03T01:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T01:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483385\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T01:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T01:54:21","slug":"social-distortion-roars-through-hollywood-homecoming-at-the-palladium-san-gabriel-valley-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483385\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Distortion roars through Hollywood homecoming at the Palladium \u2013 San Gabriel Valley Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Distortion<\/a> was born in Orange County in 1978, but as its founder Mike Ness<\/a> reminded the sold-out crowd inside the Hollywood Palladium on Thursday, Oct. 1, it quickly found a second home in the now-gentrified neighborhoods outside the venue.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial Distortion<\/a> cut their teeth in Hollywood,\u201d the singer-guitarist said halfway through the first of two nights at the Palladium. \u201cJust underage kids hanging out in the clubs and bars and basements, underground clubs, as we watched a scene flourish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no rules,\u201d Ness<\/a> continued. \u201cThere was no Flock cameras, I\u2019ll tell you that. And there were no ICE \u2026 either.\u201d<\/p>\n

As fans cheered, Social Distortion jumped into \u201cThe Way Things Were\u201d as images of punk rock kids and handmade gig flyers flashed on the video screens behind the band.<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion\u2019s lead singer Mike Ness performs with his band at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Descendents<\/p>\n

Descendents performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Descendents<\/p>\n

Descendents lead singer Milo Aukerman performs with his band at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Descendents<\/p>\n

Descendents performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

Fans watch the Descendents perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Descendents<\/p>\n

Descendents performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion\u2019s lead singer Mike Ness performs with his band at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A concert-goer crowd surfs as the Descendents perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A concert-goer crowd surfs as the Descendents perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A concert-goer crowd surfs as the Descendents perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A fan watches The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Fans<\/p>\n

Fans watch The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A fan watches The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Chats perform at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social Distortion\u2019s lead singer Mike Ness performs with his band at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

Show Caption<\/p>\n

1 of 25<\/p>\n

Social Distortion\u2019s lead singer Mike Ness performs with his band at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 1, 2026. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News\/SCNG)\n<\/p>\n

Expand<\/a><\/p>\n

Social Distortion has played regularly around Southern California for years, often with extended runs in Los Angeles and Orange County. But the current Born To Kill tour is different in one key way.<\/p>\n

This time, the band has a new studio album to take on the road, \u201cBorn To Kill,\u201d<\/a> its first in 15 years. Maybe we\u2019re imagining things, but the new songs, which fit seamlessly alongside the classics, seemed to come together for a particularly fierce performance on Thursday of 17 songs over 90 minutes.<\/p>\n

The title track of \u201cBorn To Kill\u201d kicked off the show, its lyrical nods to David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop underscored by the recording of Bowie\u2019s \u201cRebel Rebel\u201d that brought the band to the stage. \u201cRing of Fire,\u201d which Social Distortion covered on its 1990 self-titled album and has played regularly ever since, had the crowd singing along loudly for the first of many times in the night.<\/p>\n

That set the template for the rest of the night. New songs \u201cTonight\u201d and \u201cNo Way\u201d were followed by \u201cThe Creeps\u201d and \u201cMommy\u2019s Little Monster\u201d from Social D\u2019s 1983 debut \u201cMommy\u2019s Little Monster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Way Things Were\u201d from the new record slipped into \u201cLude Boy,\u201d one of the band\u2019s earliest releases as part of the 1981 punk compilation \u201cHell Comes to Your House.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not gonna lie,\u201d Ness said by way of introducing the latter number. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a bad example for the youngsters here tonight because at the time I wrote this, it was about the glorification of the use of drugs. But I\u2019m here to tell you, almost 41 years later, without a drug or alcohol or anything, that that life was not all what it was cracked up to be, people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was nothing but misery, and this is a song that kind of comes with a warning,\u201d he continued in his trademark raspy drawl. \u201cMuch like a cigarette pack, it says you might get cancer with smoking.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the deal: what you didn\u2019t want to do is take a couple Quaaludes, take six or seven beers, and run into your arch enemy,\u201d Ness said. \u201cYou take a great big risk, people, of getting your left ear bit off in a parking lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

[If that sounds like a particularly specific example of the dangers of Quaaludes, youngsters, it\u2019s because it actually happened to Ness in a fight outside Cuckoo\u2019s Nest in Costa Mesa in the early \u201980s.]<\/p>\n

After another pair of new songs that sound so much like classic Social D, you might not notice their recent vintage, the back run of the main set focused on fan favorites.<\/p>\n

\u201cBall and Chain\u201d had the audience singing loudly as Ness and guitarist Jonny \u201c2 Bags\u201d Wickersham<\/a> traded guitar riffs. [Like Ness and Wickersham, bassist Brent Harding, drummer David Hidalgo Jr., and touring keyboardist David Kalish were terrific on Thursday.]\n<\/p>\n

After \u201cThrough These Eyes,\u201d Ness paused to thank fans for getting out of the house on a weeknight to come to the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realize you could have stayed at home on your couch watching back-to-back episodes of \u2018Judge Judy,\u2019\u201d he said before slipping into an introduction of the main-set closer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusicians are kind of like reporters,\u201d Ness said. \u201cThey see things, they observe things, and then they write it down on paper and bring it to you.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re like the evening press,\u201d he added, and then kicked off \u201cStory of My Life,\u201d with its reportage from the front lines of Mike Ness\u2019s many journeys.<\/p>\n

After the break, Social Distortion returned for a trio of songs in the encore, opening with \u201cReach For the Sky\u201d and \u201cBad Luck,\u201d two more rowdy singalongs.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t Drag Me Down,\u201d a song Ness has said reflects his anger at racism and discrimination of all kinds, and the ignorance that allows it to persist.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that it\u2019s immigrants that make the country,\u201d he said by way of introducing this final number. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve got to be honest. If I lived in a [bleeped]-up country, with corruption, poverty, violence, terror, and I had a chance to sneak into a country to make a better life for my family? If I had a chance to do that, I\u2019d [bleepin\u2019] do it in a heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier, the Descendents<\/a> blazed through about 25 songs in 50 minutes. The band formed in Manhattan Beach at the end of the \u201970s is one of the few true peers of Social Distortion still going. And their fandoms seem to overlap closely as well, the same faces singing along to both bands\u2019 sets, and in some cases, crowd surfing during both sets, too.<\/p>\n

Songs such as \u201cEverything Sux\u201d which opened Descendents<\/a> set, and \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Grow Up,\u201d which followed soon after, have a bratty, fun Southern California punk attitude that contrasts nicely with Social Distortion\u2019s more serious sound. Highlights included \u201d \u2018Merica,\u201d \u201cCoolidge,\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m The One.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Descendents, the young Australian band the Chats played a 30-minute set of their entertaining brand of garage punk, with fans again moshing and crowd surfing throughout a run of songs that wrapped up with \u201cSmoko\u201d and \u201cPub Feed,\u201d two of their best-known songs here thanks to the goofy fun of the music videos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social Distortion was born in Orange County in 1978, but as its founder Mike Ness reminded the sold-out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2644,48,52,51,47,50,49,6998,420],"class_list":["post-483385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-concerts","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-music-concerts","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}