Lars Frederiksen of Rancid shows fell on the older side of the generation gap at Red Rocks on Thursday. Photos by Joe McCabe.

The generation gap rarely looked as broad and deep in the usually tight-knit punk family as it did Thursday at Red Rocks. On one side, Rancid sat as an intractable reminder of punk’s basement-show past, its blue-collar ethics and meat-and-potatoes songwriting. On the other, Rise Against loomed large, flanked by walls of video screens as its hardcore-fueled pop punk squeaked messages of positivism and hope between the guitars. It wasn’t so much “My Generation” versus “Your Generation,” as much as grit versus glamor, glued-together fanzines versus flashy websites, anti-heroes versus budding rock stars.

Frontman Tim McIlrath tipped his hat to the Red Rocks audience as his band’s largest American audience ever, and he led his band through a set polished for such a conquest. He and guitarist Dan Precision knew how to work the spacious stage like pros; McIlrath jumped between the drum riser and perches placed atop stage monitors like a born jukebox hero, as Precision scampered about, literally jogging from end to end at times.

The band’s product wasn’t quite up to its presentation. It struggled through an atrocious live mix that let Brandon Barnes’ kick drum drown out nearly everything else. Precision and McIlrath’s guitars were usually lost almost altogether, popping up for a few bars and fleeting into the distance.

Amid the sound troubles, the band got out of the gate fast, hitting fans with a 20-minute barrage of skate-punk that ran together. Midway through the set, Rise Against pulled it together, saving the night with its radio hit “Ready to Fall” and “Re-Education (Through Labor),” while borrowing viola player McKenzie Roberts from hometown heroes Flobots to help flesh out “Hero of War.” Although Rise Against had a few moments of success, the glamorous new school failed to rise to the occasion more often than not.

Rancid took a more direct approach and stole the stage out from under the headliner. Stage lights blazed at full as the band sizzled through a no-frills set. Pulling but a pair of songs off its just-released “Let The Dominoes Fall” (“Last One To Die” and an acoustic version of “East Bay Night”), the set was dominated by favorites from the mid-’90s: “Time Bomb,” “Ruby Soho” and “Roots Radicals.” Approaching the set exactly the same way as it would a club show, Rancid’s back-to-basics methodology shouldn’t have worked in a setting like Red Rocks, but it did. Score a victory for the old ways.

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Matt Schild is co-founder and editor of Aversion.com, which has been grumpily chronicling the underground since 1999. He’s also written for most all of Denver’s weeklies at one point or another, as well as wracking up bylines in an ominous number of failed glossy music rags.

Joe McCabe is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb.

MORE PHOTOS: Rise Against

Rancid