A mid-june afternoon in Stockholm and The Offspring are scheduled to go up on the big stage at Gröna Lund. Their punk rocker fans start to build queues outside the amusement park. But it’s not just the crowds that grow thicker but also the rain clouds above their heads. We can all feel it in the air – a mix of heightened excitement combined with the announcement of impending rain.
At 20:00 sharp out emerge Dexter, Noodles, Brandon, Todd and Jonah ready to rock and they set the mood with one of the band’s most iconic songs Come Out And Play, a song that this year has turned 30 years old but this afternoon at Gröna Lund it sounded just as fresh as it sounded back in 1994 and even fresher than the rain drops that had just started to fall on the heads of all of us gathered there.
The rain didn’t show any mercy and it just kept getting harder as the concert progressed, turning into a heavy moonsoon-like storm. Only to prove that punk rockers are the real deal, no one moved a centimeter and everybody stayed put, banging their heads to hit after hit delivered by The Offspring.
The concert and the rain came to a high climax when the guitars of Noodles and Jonah started playing the well known notes of, perhaps the biggest punk hymn of all times, Hey Ho Let’s Go, the song written and made popular world-wide by The Ramones. And if this just wasn’t enough, a black gorilla came on stage to rock, as part of the band’s entertaining show.
Perhaps the rain gods were by then satisfied as the rain ceased for the second half of the concert when the fun was just getting started. More hits like Pretty Fly and The Kids Aren’t Alright kept pouring stoking the mosh pit. Why Don’t You Get A Job came in the spirit of a Californian beach party when several enormous beach balls were released for the audience to play with.
The concert was coming to close and the band briefly left the stage only to be pulled right back to stage for the encore by the screaming choir of soaking wet and still eager for more crowd. Before leaving the stage the band expressed how much they loved returning to Gröna Lund and how amazed they were by their hard rocking fans in Sweden.
