I went to the 90s night of the three night stand at Irving Plaza. It was a lot of fun. But it also solidified my theory that old ppl singing about not letting people tell you what to do comes across as pretty sad and pathetic. Not saying that old punks in their mid to late 40s should start writing songs about their 401Ks and ish, but I feel like they've lost their way a bit. "Wrong Way Kids" was the only song from the new album they played that night (I think), and all I could think about the whole time was "Really, dude?" and "Why does he keep pronouncing it 'keeeeds'?" Like from South Park, when Cartman becomes a Latino schoolteacher. 'How do I reeeach theese keeeeds?' Anyway. I thought it was a great show, and they sounded great overall. But everyone is old. I was one of the youngest there. They were too old for a song like "A Walk" when they wrote it, let alone 15 years later.
Wow...really? Wrong Way Kids was my favorite song off the new album. It has this kind of melancholy reflective feel to it, really nostalgic. I like that line where he says, "Kids today are gone away, petitioning the dust/With no one to look up to because they're looking up to us." It's like he's saying that, if our kids and this generation's youth are blowing us off, then it's our fault for not being relevant to them and trying to understand them. So I see that more as a song deliberately intended for older people, appealing to their memories of their youth as well, telling them to remember what it was like when they were kids ("Did you ever want to take bad advice? Did you ever want to go and take it twice?").
On the one hand I kinda see what you're saying, but I don't really see them as "singing songs about not letting people tell you what to do." I mean, they DO do that, but to me there's slightly more than that; it's not *just* "rebelling against authority," it's finding something to believe in on your own, and not just settling for what someone else can find for you. I always felt like they were telling you to make your own life and not follow other people's lead (even their own, like in No Direction, which they played at the show I went to 
). To me, that kind of message (while obvious to some who were lucky enough to find it in their earlier years) is appropriate for all ages.
Also, my show was a Halloween show, so they were deliberately a lot more over the top (Greg Hetson was a woman, someone from MTV if the jokes made were to be believed; I dunno who Graffin was supposed to be, but he implied he was Jim Lindberg from Pennywise. I dunno if he was joking 'cause I don't know Pennywise, but he was speaking with a New Jersey accent in between songs, if that helps; Jay Bentley was a Werewolf, and as far as I could tell Brooks and Brian Baker weren't dressed up). So it had more of that "party vibe" and the focus was more on fun than on overly contemplating the lyrics or anything
"I'm sorry
For all the things that I never did
For all the places I never was
For all the people I never stopped
But there was nothing I could do..."
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Originally Posted by jsmak84
