Nothing breaks the mid-week slump like a good old-fashioned punk show, and the Circle Jerks’ show on Wednesday, July 20, was the perfect thing to celebrate being halfway through the work week and one step closer to the weekend. This stop at The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC – part of their 2022 tour with Negative Approach and 7Seconds – found the bands and fans fighting a heat wave, but it didn’t seem to slow any of them down.
Negative Approach opened the show with a beautiful juxtaposition of subtlety and strength, sauntering casually onto the stage and then tearing straight into their trademark furious sound without a second of banter or polite preamble. For a band with only one official studio album, released nearly 40 years ago,
Negative Approach has an impressive catalog of songs, and the crowd seemed to know them all. Decades may have passed since John Brannon first took the stage with Negative Approach, but he hasn’t backed down at all, hunching over the microphone with his shaggy mop of dark hair curtaining his face as he snarled his rage out into an audience that was all too willing to eat it up and spit it back at him. The pit was an entity of its own, with bodies being passed hand over head, lit up occasionally by the jarring lights of the security staff positioned on the sidelines. The bursts of light made it feel as if a storm was raging inside, with Brannon’s voice and the low, frenetic music the thunder that echoed off the rafters. Through it all, guitarist Harold Richardson kept his back to the crowd, focused on what he was there to do: to play the kind of music that feels like a catharsis, like breathing after leaving the scene of an accident, relatively unscathed but well aware of the damage that could have occurred.

While Negative Approach was almost a solid wall of sound, broken up only a couple of times with commentary from Brannon (most notably when he paused the show to make sure everyone in the pit was alright, leading to some discussion of a missing contact lens, which speaks to the true ethos of punk rock), 7Seconds shifted the energy to something no less fast-paced, but more upbeat and almost poppy, at times. Kevin Seconds is a charming and self-deprecating frontman, and combined cheerful wit with smart political commentary – not enough to turn this into a political rally, but enough to let one know exactly where they stand on the moral issues facing our society – as he and the rest of the band bounced from decade to decade, highlighting 7Seconds’ evolution from one of the original hardcore punk bands on the scene to now, where they embrace a variety of styles and play whatever the hell makes them happy at the time.

And then the lights came up again, and the music of Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass filled the air. The scene could have come from a Jim Jarmusch film: The big band soundtrack played over a sea of people mostly dressed in black, sweaty and angsty from two sets’ worth of beer and close proximity, the sign out front reading NO SPIKES NO CHAINS while the massive fan overhead spun as hard as it could and tried its best not to fall. The crowd pressed toward the stage before a single band member stepped on, moving like a sea turtle migration or some warped wedding march, one slow step at a time.

By the time Circle Jerks took the stage, the audience was more than ready to go. This is a band that has been a pivotal force in American punk rock for more than 40 years; in fact, the tour was originally set to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Circle Jerks’ debut album, Group Sex. And here they finally were, at long last, after being postponed for three months thanks to lead singer Keith Morris’s illness back in the spring. The crowd was restless but polite as Morris walked them through the reasoning behind the Herb Alpert tunes, the trials and tribulations of touring during a pandemic, and then almost without warning they launched into their first song and the crowd exploded like a well-thrown Molotov cocktail through the window of some well-deserving politician – not that anyone should condone that kind of thing. The pit was a manic centrifuge, elbows and knees spinning and bodies flying, ejecting those who spun close to the edge.

Circle Jerks presented carefully curated blocks of songs, with pauses in between for Morris to regale the audience with stories behind the songs and the tour. From the time he co-founded Black Flag back in the late 1970s, Morris has been a staple on the punk scene, and despite his alleged rigid work ethic back in the early days, he maintains an almost puckish presence on stage, acknowledging his tendency to be a slacker and grinning through his stories like a kid spinning a tale for his teacher to put off taking a math test. It’s this kind of charm, combined with stellar musicianship and sharp social relevance, that have kept Circle Jerks from falling through the cracks as new music comes along. Listening to their set is a surreal form of time travel, past and present combined, hearing the messages even in their older songs and thinking fuck, how are we still dealing with all of this?

How are we still dealing with it? By listening to the same songs that have gotten us through it for years. By showing up at work the next day, bleary-eyed and yawning, nursing the bruised ribs we got from staying in the pit well past our age. By continuing to do exactly what Keith Morris reminded the crowd to do as they closed out their outstanding performance on Wednesday night: Question Authority.
Negative Approach, 7Seconds, and the Circle Jerks provided the perfect blend of catharsis, disconnect, and inspiration for a midweek show in a jam band town in the mountains. It’s hard to say if anything brings hope to the world these days, but if anything does, it’s that these guys are still out there screaming about what’s important and inviting us all to scream along.
Photos by Glen Brown



























































