This past Saturday NOFX stopped off at the Showbox Sodo for their second to last show on the second leg of their 2008 tour. It’s nice to see NOFX doing some club type shows instead of big Warped Tour festivals like they normally do these days.

The doors opened at 8:30pm, and we showed up sometime after 10pm. Were able to catch No Use For A Name, however we missed the opening band American Steel. I’ve seen NUFAN a number of times and they’re not a bad band, however I’m not a fan. There’s just nothing about them that jumps out at me. The crowd was into them and they played their “hit” ‘Justified Black Eye’ that was on one of those Fat Wreck Chords compilations.

NOFX came on stage shortly after 11:30pm to the song ‘Welcome to Jamrock’ by Damian Marley. They opened with ‘Dinosaurs Will Die’, which was a bit of a surprise, but a good one for sure. Their set was a nice mix of old and new songs. They’ve been a band for over 20 years, so they have a lot of material. They also played my favorite cover of ‘Radio’ by Rancid ever. In fact, I have to say I like their cover version more than the original. It’s just a lot more fun. There was the typical NOFX chatter between every single song. Fat Mike spent a lot of time talking about his disdain for children, religion and the state of politics these days. They played ‘Murder The Government’ but not ‘Idiot Son of an Asshole’ (a song about our current president). They also dedicated ‘Whoops I OD’d’ to a local kid who was a big fan of theirs who died of an overdose. I saw one of the kid’s friends there holding up a memorial t-shirt during the song. It was pretty cool. They were only supposed to play until 1am, but ended up going over that by a bit and ended closer to 1:30.

All in all the show was great. NOFX had an insane amount of energy, even though Fat Mike kept going on about how drunk he was and how he felt like he was cheating the audience because he couldn’t play so well. The only thing is, I don’t like Showbox Sodo very much. The place was packed and when there are hundreds of people jammed in there it gets really gross as the night goes on. For a rather large, open space it gets really hot and damp and at the end of the night the floor is all wet and there is condensation dripping from the pipes in the ceiling. Not to mention, if you’re on the shorter side, it’s hard to find a good vantage point to watch the show.

*Special thanks to Shawn for the crappy camera phone picture.