MINDY ROSS/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Brandon Boyd of Incubus played songs from "Make Yourself" and their upcoming album, "Morning View," while on the main stage.
By Mary Williams
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
KROQ can be really cruel sometimes.
To stage a 10-hour-long outdoor concert in the notoriously hot Inland Empire, in August no less, is to create an unnecessarily uncomfortable endurance test for the participants.
And yet when the local radio station planned the KROQ/Levi’s Inland Invasion, held Saturday at the Blockbuster Pavilion in DeVore, this was apparently deemed a good idea.
Sure, it gave the viewers a weak sense of accomplishment to merely survive the 100-degree heat, but it didn’t make the experience any better.
To make matters worse, the first few hours dragged by with mediocre bands on the side stages as the only entertainment. The main stage acts didn’t start until after 4 p.m., opening with a lackluster performance from the sluggish Long Beach Dub Allstars.
Once the heat broke and better bands took the stage, however, things turned around. KROQ’s ability to throw together an impressive lineup of some of the most popular bands on the air finally paid off, about five hours after the doors opened.
MINDY ROSS/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Pennywise singer Jim Lindberg performed at Saturday's concert.
Weezer, Pennywise, Social Distortion, Incubus and Offspring all helped to pick up the mood, and the cranky, sunburned, tired audience was rewarded for their efforts.
KROQ improved on their usual festival-style show, usually seen in the annual Almost Acoustic Christmas and Weenie Roast concerts, by allowing the bands to play longer set times than usual. Rather than half an hour, bands were given 45 minutes or, in the case of closers Offspring, an hour to perform.
While it was nice to see more of each band, some sets still felt rushed. Pennywise, in particular, seemed to have a hard time running on schedule.
They apologized to the other bands for talking too much and slowing things down, and later announced that they were told to get off the stage, presumably after their set ran long.
The only band that seemed like they took their time was the Offspring. Rather than racing through a set list, the band made room for banter between singer Dexter Holland and guitarist Noodles, as well as interaction with the audience.
During their encore, Holland even came onstage with a fire hose to spray the audience with water, a gimmick that consumed more time than the other hurried bands could give.
Even though tens of thousands of people showed up, the concert was, unlike its predecessors, the Almost Acoustic Christmas and the Weenie Roast, not sold-out.
This means the millions that didn’t attend are either much smarter than those who willingly drove to arguably the hottest place in the world, or they didn’t realize how much they were missing.
After all the abuse the audience took from Mother Nature that afternoon, the all-star lineup that followed was a nice reward.