Papa Roach – Manchester Academy, 11/10/09

It’s not often I wish my youth away – however, I am insanely, intensely jealous of the generation of troubled youths that grew up just before me at around the turn of the 90s, and had the likes of Nirvana for company. They had the cream of the angsty teenage crop. Even the generation that followed them were reasonably lucky – Britpop aside, they had Rage Against The Machine, who were all-encompassing in their desire to rage against any and all conventions, to the delight of their impressionable audiences. When I were a lad – said Ivor, looking over his large-print newspaper and emptying his pipe into the fire – all we had were the likes of Slipknot, POD, Funeral For A Friend, Creed and – of course – Papa Roach. We didn’t even have any high-profile deaths to unite us all in morose futility. Overall, our generation fucking sucked.

Then - Papa Roach in 2000

But still, you go to war with what you’ve got, and my peer group at the time were left to pick one of the bands du jour. I went with Papa Roach. After all, they were mostly harmless, and at least pretended to be on the same page as the impossibly insolent little shits they claimed to “speak for” (from the comfort of their solid gold Lotuses and mansions in Beverley Hills). I could have done worse.

I’m not sure what compelled me to go and see Papa Roach live. Perhaps it was a misplaced sense of nostalgia – perhaps it was a Wellsian attempt to visit my past self and warn him of the inherent dangers of listening to such rubbish. Whatever the reason, I made a few calls, and before I knew it, my name had been added to the pestlist for their recent show at Academy 1. Now, I missed the support act, for a number of reasons. The primary reason being my all-encompassing fear of turning up prior to the doors opening and being seen in public with the sort of people who would queue to see Papa Roach.

I walked into the Academy – one of the better venues of its size in the country – to find I had entered some sort of time machine, and had been transported back to 2002. It warmed my heart to see so many youngsters who will no doubt cringe, as I have cringed, when they’re handing over their passport in five years’ time (once they’ve taken out the lip ring, ditched the eyeliner, cut the hair and altogether abandoned this silly nonsense) only to have customs officials in Germany make serious enquiries as to the gender of the person in the picture. But for now, I’m sure they feel like they are misunderstood and unique, so who am I to bash them. The frightful mundanity of the world is yet to fully envelope them, and it would be remiss of me to knock them for it (I refer exclusively to the younger members of the audience with this good-natured metaphorical ruffling of the hair – some people were old enough to both know better and father children who would, by now, be old enough to know better).

Now - Papa Roach in 2009, looking like a right bunch of tarts

Well, Papa Roach graced the stage, and frankly, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wasn’t as familiar with the new material as I was with the material I had practically memorised as a youth, but Papa Roach have not strayed from their roots in the interim. A few tattoos have been picked up since the Last Resort video, as well as what appears to be the work of a professional stylist, but they cannot be accused of phoning it in. Almost a year ago, I had the misfortune of seeing Alkaline Trio, a band who clearly should just pack it in before they stop caring completely. Papa Roach have clearly been touring long enough to know how to whip a suggestible audience into a frenzy, and seemed to enjoy themselves as they did it. They may not be the most credible act in the world, and there is something a bit silly about them, but they’re great entertainers and I would heartily recommend their act to anyone who has ever had more than a passing interest in them, if only for the inherent nostalgia value.

Basically, Papa Roach know what they’re doing – they’ve been around a surprisingly long time. Infest was released a smidge under ten years ago. The scowling little shits in the Last Resort video are all adults now, and a good handful of them – unless they really did cut their lives into pieces – have almost certainly gotten proper jobs and houses and families since (unless they’ve all been living in hiding due to constant calls of “aren’t you that guy from the Last Resort video who scowled a lot”). Like a lot of people, I first heard Papa Roach in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (the modern equivalent of overhearing an exciting new band in a record shop). The youngest of the people who attended last night’s show would have had a hard time racking up a respectable score in aforementioned game, as they would have still been in nappies when it was released. This said, Papa Roach have aged very well. Their music will probably always appeal to a certain kind of group, and is imbued with a certain timelessness that makes it appealing to a certain type of person at a certain age. It’s aggressive, embittered, and is served up in a wholly acceptable pop-punk package. I can get behind that.

All I wish is that their fanbase wasn’t made up of quite so many startlingly young people. It’s enough to make a man feel twice his age. Or worse, twice the age of the pre-pubescent proto-punks that went cascading over the barrier last night like an unstoppable waterfall of baggy black clothing and greasy hair.

Ivor Marlow