311 and the Offspring
The Never-Ending Summer Tour is aptly named when you consider that co-headliners 311 and the Offspring pretty much made their bones on the festival circuit, playing in broad daylight on sunlit stages surrounded by steaming parking lot pavement. It’s both a measure of a band’s talent and its perseverance when it can come out of that gauntlet of hot mics and hurled debris and still want to get out there with likeminded music-makers for yet another go ‘round. When it comes to putting together a setlist, 311 has nearly 30 years’ of hit singles to choose from, including three chart toppers, and the Offspring have sold more than 40 million albums worldwide.
If you need a reason to see both bands co-headline Mattress Firm Amphitheatre on July 29 that isn’t soured at the thought of listening to countless songs you were already sick of hearing on the radio back in the Stone’s age, consider opening act Gym Class Heroes. Travie McCoy’s darkly humorous alt-pop hip-hop project, which still includes original drummer Matt McGinley, just keeps getting stronger since The Papercut Chronicles dropped back in 2005, highlighted by the still fresh-sounding hit single “Cupid’s Chokehold/Breakfast in America.” They, too, first came up via festivals like Bamboozle and Warped, but they’ve been laying pretty low over the past few years with very little touring, so this is one of those shows where you’re probably a lot better off arriving early than staying late.