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By Kristin Fiore

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Not many men with advanced degrees and receding hairlines can bring down a house packed to the rafters with wild twenty-somethings.

But singer/songwriter Greg Graffin has always done things his way - from his "too intelligent for the masses" punk to his heavy dabbling in biology and PC politics. And, on Saturday he led Bad Religion through a meager but raucous hour-long performance at The Palace.

Though the show was packed with the usual two-minute punk anthems and crowd surfing, it lacked the blatant stupidity and rebellious antics of younger (or more desperate) punk bands. No guitars were smashed, no ambulances arrived and Graffin's stunts were restricted to hurling plastic cups of ice water at the sweat-drenched audience. His sincere, emphatic delivery of issue-laden lyrics - punctuated with frequent chest-pounding, arm flailing and finger-pointing - was enough to keep the crowd riveted.

Not that he gave them a chance to wander. Songs done as tightly and cleanly as their album versions followed each other in a rapid-fire manner, broken only by jocular chatter and the newest Olympic event, the Graffin Plastic Cup Toss.

He seemed unusually friendly and upbeat, especially for a punk gig, cracking jokes and offering tongue-in-cheek apologies for not playing all the song requests. After Graffin's comments ("Someone please remind our friend here that we did 'Latch Key Kid' last night") and in-jest slams aimed at the previous band, drummer Bobby Schayer would break out the vaudeville "da ... da ... tssss" drum punctuation.

Despite Graffin's supreme showmanship, one could almost sense his age as he roamed around the stage wiping his glistening brow, expending borrowed energy, his light grey shirt increasingly invaded by the dark grey stain of sweat. The sweltering stage lights were dramatized by a backdrop of ecstatic, demonic creatures whose hues flashed, as the lights did, from burning reds and oranges to cool blues and greens.

But Graffin was no match for the crowd, whose bottlenecked exit through the Palace's steamed-up glass doors spurred a security guard to comment, "What, was it raining in there?"

Though Graffin seemed to be having so much fun that he might have paid to get into his own show, the audience was a sea of chaos. Save for a few pockets of sedate beer sippers and Hollywood lameshits, the audience was pogo-dancing, (politely) moshing and singing along to almost every song, all of which was encouraged by Graffin. They even joined in the cup tossing, pelting each other with ice, possibly in a vain attempt to cool off.

Old and new classics like "Suffer," "Recipe for Hate" and the unusually aggressive "Them and Us" garnered extra shouts of approval and more frenzied dancing, especially the evening's favorite,"Stranger Than Fiction." Shadows of flying legs and arms often obscured the view of the band as bodies were indiscriminately passed around overhead.

Graffin often took on the role of preacher and politician, adamantly wailing phrases like, "We can take them on" (from "Them and Us") above the din of the crowd. Fans enthusiastically responded, joining in on whatever hookline and call to arms the current song was driving home.

The punker's role as the instigator, the outcast or the rebel was ever-present, as Graffin asked his fellow El Camino High School alumni at one point, "Do people still beat you up if you've got short hair?"

He may or may not realize that Bad Religion has been around for so long, that for quite a while kids got beat up for having long hair. Everything comes full circle, though, and punk is again - or for the first time - a marketable and central form of music.

Bad Religion survived the genre's dry spells, and though they have not reaped the monetary success or mainstream popularity of many of the bands they inspired, such as Offspring or Green Day, they are much more respected and recognized as punk veterans who have spent 16 years at the center of the punk scene. Still, like any successful band that had to work its way up, the band has been put through the "sell-out" wringer. This sort of unfair criticism has plagued the band since its signing with Atlantic Records at the turn of the decade. Guitarist Greg Hetson mocked the "sell-out" proponents by wearing a plain-wrap-style shirt that bore the hated phrase.

Petty complaints and all, Bad Religion have a lot to live up to.

Though they offer nothing shocking (they don't need to pull that trick) and occasionally fall into their own formula (to the extent that one exists), they somehow avoid being dull and hackneyed. Even heavy-handed messages or riffs and progressions that are suspiciously similar take a back seat to the sheer power and energy of the music's unique vocal harmonies and driving rhythms. And for every clichéd or overly preachy phrase, there are a handful of insights and intelligently crafted arguments to chew on.

The main complaint at Saturday's show, identically uttered by two disgruntled fans, was, "That was fuckin' short!". The main complaint, that is, until the fans woke up on Sunday with stiff necks and the sweat of 50 strangers on their clothes.

CONCERT: Bad Religion played at The Palace in Hollywood on Saturday.