Audio By Carbonatix
Get ready, Fort Lauderdale: Off! is coming to town. In the years since the advent of Fucked Up, nothing has tickled the indie-rock blogosphere’s punky bone quite like this hardcore supergroup.
Since 2009, they’ve been pumping out singles — collected recently by Vice Records as the First Four EPs CD — and touring the world.
Off!’s prolific history and mass appeal may have something to do with its aforementioned status as a true-blue punk-rock supergroup boasting Keith Morris from the Circle Jerks and members of assorted postpunk bands like Rocket From the Crypt, Hot Snakes, Redd Kross, and Burning Brides.
In honor of Off!’s upcoming show at the Culture Room in October, we present to you five of the most memorable supergroups in the history of rock (good and bad memories alike).
Cream (Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce)
According to Rolling Stone‘s Jann Wenner, heavy blues-psych power trio Cream was the original supergroup. We see Wenner’s assertion and go one step further to cite Cream as the original power trio and quite possibly one of the first inklings of heavy metal.
Ciccone Youth (Sonic Youth + Mike Watt from the Minutemen)
Ciccone Youth started out as a Madonna-inspired noise-punk larf, but jams like “Macbeth” get into some legit avant free rock.
Wu-Tang Clan (RZA, GZA, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Ol Dirty Bastard, and about two dozen other rappers if you include spin-off groups and farm teams)
This is another kind of C.R.E.A.M. entirely. The Wu-Tang Clan, and the brand’s infinite solo ensembles and entrepreneurial tangents, is such a ubiquitous part of the U.S. pop-culture narrative that it’s easy to gloss over the novelty of their incredible business model. Wu-Tang is sort of a supergroup in reverse: RZA and company established the larger brand as a red carpet on which to roll out their myriad solo endeavors. In collaboration and in their respective projects, Wu-Tang dominates every Best Of list when it comes to hip-hop.
Audioslave (Rage Against the Machine minus Zac De La Rocha, plus Chris Cornell)
Audioslave was an early 2000s butt-rock experiment that even people who like butt-rock couldn’t get down with. The only thing grosser than their music is Chris Cornell’s John Waters stache.
The Transplants (Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and Blink-182’s Travis Barker)
When it comes to the Transplants, the proof is in the pudding. Let’s review a simple band description: Tim Armstrong singing like a poststroke Joe Strummer, over sub-Sublime frat-boy reggae-hop. And Travis Barker is there too.
Off! with Cerebral Ballzy. 7:30 p.m. Sunday, October 23, at Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale. Tickets cost $13. Click here.
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