The Los Angeles Times' blog czar Tony Pierce went to see Rancid and Rise Against on Saturday night at the Forum in Inglewood. He came home with more questions than answers, but he also had a wisdom tooth pulled in the afternoon, so take what he says with a grain of salt. We allowed him space to rant below. We're not quite sure if we were allowed to say no.

1. Why was Rancid opening for Rise Against? Sure, the Chicago quartet Rise Against is good, and put on a highly energetic, hard rockin' show. But hasn't Rancid already paid its dues? Isn't "...And Out Come the Wolves" something that will live on as one of the more perfect albums of the '90s? As good as Rise Against is -- especially live -- have they ever released anything comparable to any Rancid album?

2. Why is a punk rock show being held at the Forum in Inglewood? While it's true that the venue used to host great heavy metal shows, classic rock events and even its fair share of pop gigs, has there really been a truly successful punk show there since the Butthole Surfers opened for Nirvana in 1993? Therefore, if an arena is what this event called for, wouldn't the Sports Arena near USC have been a better choice? Hey, it might have even sold out.There were whole rows of seats empty at the Forum, as reflected in the above picture.

My longish profile of Rancid has finally seen daylight and it should give you all you need to know about the band's eminently enjoyable new album, "Let The Dominoes Fall." But, as we have pondered before in these pages, there is one last thing to ask of Rancid in these boomtown days of rocker reunions. And that is the possibility of ever seeing an often-dreamed-of reunion of Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman's late-'80s ska-punk band Operation Ivy. Will it ever happen? Your probably definitive answer after the jump.

Many of the new album's best songs have a sense of nostalgia.

When Tim Armstrong's brother Greg first returned from military service in Iraq, the Rancid frontman knew something was wrong. After all he'd seen in the war, Greg couldn't relate to his family and friends the way he used to, and Armstrong could tell that the pain of re-integrating into civilian life had created a gulf between them.

So Armstrong wrote a love song for Greg, telling his brother through his lyrics that even if "the war seems to follow (him) home," there's still hope to one day "fix up them old cars and ride them into the sun."

"When we went into Iraq, our country wasn't at war, 150,000 military families were," Armstrong said, leaning in across a crouch inside the Los Angeles offices of Epitaph Records, the band's longtime label. "It's hard to talk about, so this is my way of telling my family that I love them. When I played this song for my dad, he was in tears."

The stark and tender folk track "Civilian Ways" is on Rancid's new release, "Let the Dominoes Fall," which came out Tuesday, and it's a quiet centerpiece to an album about returns -- of a soldier from war, of a country from eight years of the Bush presidency and from Rancid's own six-year hiatus.

During that time the band members tried out solo projects, doing albums that included rap crew side projects and mainstream pop collaborations. But after more than a half-decade apart musically, the East Bay quartet is ready to reclaim its singular sound.

KROQ's annual Weenie Roast bash typically reflects the core tenets of the radio station's musical ethos: The '90s were alternative rock's Gilded Age, skate punk moonlights as pop music and L.A. produces one good local band every year.

But this year's event, held Saturday at Irvine's Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, showed a surprising bit of daring from the station's tastemakers, who let the toothsome dance hall punks Rancid carry the headlining slot. No Wave weirdos Yeah Yeah Yeahs delivered a strong turn, and several young L.A. bands made the case that our local indie scene still snowballs into the nation's mainstream rock.

Excepting Weezer's always-welcome volley of power-pop, the titans of the '90s were nowhere in sight.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs are probably the strangest band to earn prime Weenie Roast real estate, though they do have one genuine smash hit ("Maps") and probably another in the synth-driven single "Zero." The trio's fractured art-pop translated unexpectedly well to KROQ's beer-and-board sport crowd.

Jimmy Eat World's workmanlike emo was a more traditional fit, as the Arizona quartet has a serious fix for anthemic guitar-pop sugar. Singles like "The Middle" and "Sweetness" made strangers hoist Coors Lights to the heavens, but the band satiated its loyal MakeoutClub.com-era fans with deep cuts from its 1999 album, "Clarity."

Kings of Leon had a similar hugeness to its choruses, and even inescapable goofy love-god tunes like "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody" seemed refreshed by night breezes and a few thousand lighters in the air.

The grotty punk quartet Rancid has a long-anticipated new album coming out soon, but the band largely stuck to its considerable catalog of steel-toed hits like "Bloodclot" and "Roots Radicals." The band has only gained vitality with new drummer Branden Steineckert and its live set was like watching a gang of rowdy old sailors pulling into port -- singing gang-chant odes to their own longevity and spirit and maybe leaving a black eye or two in their wake.

The Airborne Toxic Event and Silversun Pickups illustrated different paths to fame (and whatever counts for fortune in today's music industry) for L.A. bands. Airborne, a new Island Def Jam acquisition, got there from its bleary Brit-rock earnestness. Silversun Pickups kicked around Silver Lake for years before striking gold with one of its oldest singles, the raspy crowd favorite "Lazy Eye." Each act was in good form at Weenie Roast, especially the Pickups, whose gauzy guitar thrash easily hit the cheap seats.

Weezer's early evening set was the one nod to the KROQ formula and while recent albums have indulged front man Rivers Cuomo's yearning to be a genuine codpiece-rock god, the band's brisk performance pleasantly reinforced why they get to play stadiums. "Say It Ain't So" and "The Good Life" still sound like nothing else on the radio.

This year's Weenie Roast, which closed out with TRV$DJ-AM offering up grindable exit music for the crowd, suggested that mainstream rock fans have broader tastes than KROQ sometimes gives them credit for. But it also proved that, sometimes, a dip in the status quo can be rather fulfilling.

-- August Brown

Photos: Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (top) and (bottom, from left to right) Lars Frederiksen, Branden Steineckert, and Tim Armstrong of Rancid peforming at KROQ’s Weenie Roast at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Irvine. Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times

Maybe they'll call it the Weezer Roast? Or just a Rancid Picnic?

Weezer, Kings of Leon, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jimmy Eat World, Rancid and Silversun Pickups are among the headliners for the KROQ-FM (106.7) Weenie Roast Y Fiesta at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on May 16.

Tickets go on sale at 5 p.m. Thursday (May 7).

The other announced acts on the bill: Cage the Elephant, Asher Roth, Anberlin, Hollywood Undead, White Lies, the Airborne Toxic Event, Big B.

The Weenie Roast began in 1993 with a show featuring Stone Temple Pilots, Dramarama, X, The The and Terence Trent D'Arby, believe it or not. Last year, Metallica, the Racontuers and the Offspring led the bill, one again reinforcing the show's Mad Libs approach to live-music booking.  

The concert is a fundraiser for a number of charities, including Heal the Bay, the Surfrider Foundation and the AIDS Services Foundation Orange County.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: Rivers Cuomo. Credit: Bryan Haraway / Getty Images

Rancid never gets enough credit for writing really great love songs. The veteran East Bay punk band's lengthy career has seen plenty of thrash and spittle on its albums, but they're always leavened with more tender tunes such as "Corazon de Oro" off "Life Won't Wait" and "She's Automatic" from "... And Out Come the Wolves."

Rancid's forthcoming seventh album, "Let the Dominoes Fall," is, upon a first listen this afternoon at the Epitaph offices in Silver Lake, an album of love songs. That doesn't mean it's sonically anemic or overly flowery, or that co-frontman Tim Armstrong's time in the pop trenches softened him up.

On the contrary, six years after the band's last album, "Indestructible," Rancid sounds as vital and in command of its streetpunk-via-smoky dancehall chops as ever. The group's recent stand at the Fonda with new drummer Branden Steineckert underscored this well.

And the love songs on "Dominoes" are odes to many unexpected things -- the city of New Orleans, a brother returning from war, and Rancid's own longevity in a punk scene, one that has ever-shrinking room for bands unwilling to marginalize themselves to a genre or give themselves wholly over to pop.