Dead Kennedys and Flipper Keep Punk Alive at The Observatory North Park
Some bands mellow out with age. Dead Kennedys and Flipper apparently never got that memo.
The two punk institutions rolled through The Observatory North Park in San Diego on September 6 for a night that felt less like watching bands preserve their history and more like watching them prove there is still plenty of life left in it.
Flipper were easily one of the biggest surprises of the night.
Flipper were easily one of the biggest surprises of the night.
With Justin Pearson taking over vocals, the current version of Flipper is a strange collision of different generations of punk that works incredibly well. Pearson, already a massive part of San Diego’s own punk history through bands like The Locust, brought exactly the kind of chaotic energy you would expect from him.
He did not feel like someone stepping in and trying to imitate an earlier version of Flipper. Instead, he completely threw himself into it and made the songs his own.
Behind him was founding member Steve DePace on drums, with Sean Shimmer on bass and Jon Kelly on guitar. Together, they were insanely fun.
There is something especially cool about seeing a band that dates back to the late 1970s still feel genuinely unpredictable onstage. Flipper have never been the cleanest or most conventional punk band in the first place, and this lineup leaned into everything weird, noisy and abrasive about them.
Pearson was the perfect person to put at the front of it.
By the end of their set, it was hard to think of Flipper as simply the band opening for Dead Kennedys. They absolutely killed it on their own.
Then it was time for Dead Kennedys.
A band like Dead Kennedys comes with an unusual problem. These songs have existed for decades, and the voice originally attached to them is so distinctive that it would be easy for another singer to fall into simply doing an impression.
Current vocalist Ron “Skip” Greer avoided that.
Greer brought his own personality and delivery to the material while still understanding what people came to hear. He never made the performance feel like he was trying to erase the history of the songs or pretend to be Jello Biafra. Instead, he found a comfortable space somewhere between respecting what came before him and actually performing the songs like they belonged to the band standing onstage right now.
That balance made a huge difference.
Dead Kennedys are well into the veteran stage of their career, but watching them play North Park, you would not have guessed that the crowd was there to politely celebrate punk history.
The floor was moving.
A spinning mosh pit ripped through the middle of the room as the band tore through a catalog that still feels ridiculously effective in a packed venue. The crowd screamed along, bodies bounced off each other and the entire floor seemed to move as one giant circle.
It was exactly the kind of environment these songs belong in.
More importantly, the band still sounded like they were having fun playing them.
There can sometimes be something strange about seeing a legendary punk band decades after the scene that created them. Punk especially is built around youth, urgency and refusing to settle down, which makes the idea of bands carrying that music into their sixties and seventies almost contradictory.
But that was also what made this show so much fun.
Nobody needed Dead Kennedys to pretend it was 1980 again.
The people in that pit were not standing around examining a museum piece. They were getting slammed into each other, shouting lyrics and watching musicians who helped build American punk continue to play those songs in the environment they were made for.
Flipper accomplished something similar earlier in the night. With Pearson screaming at the front of the band and DePace still holding things together from behind the kit, their set connected two completely different eras of underground punk without making either one feel forced.
That became the theme of the night.
These bands have changed. Their lineups have changed. The people standing in the crowd have changed.
The energy has not.
For a pair of bands whose histories stretch back nearly fifty years, Flipper and Dead Kennedys managed to make The Observatory feel sweaty, loud and completely alive.
And judging by the circle pit spinning through North Park, punk still has a little fight left in it.
