MDC are true legends of the Hardcore scene. Originally forming in 1979 as The Stains, in Austin, Texas, they released the infamous ‘John Wayne Was A Nazi’ single before re-locating to San Francisco. Their debut album, ‘Million of Dead Cops’ followed in 1982 and became an instant classic, combining furious hardcore tempos with righteous politically-aware lyrics. At a time when the majority of American punk / hardcore bands were not overtly political, MDC promoted anti-racism, gay rights and vegetarianism in a way that was probably more in line with the UK Anarcho scene of the same era (they later released the ‘Multi-Death Corporations’ single on Crass records.)
Further albums including ‘Smoke Signals’ and ‘This Blood’s For You’ followed in the ensuing years while the band continued to tour, with singer Dave Dictor remaining the one constant presence in a frequently changing line-up. The band were on hiatus between 1994-2000, until Dave, now living in Portland, put together a new line-up to begin touring again, culminating in the release of the ‘Magnus Dominus Corpus’ album in 2004. Since then, they have kept themselves very busy although Dave also found time to publish his biography ‘Memoirs from a Damaged Civilization’. Their latest album, ‘Mein Trump’, was recently released including a re-recording of ‘Born to Die’ which has provided protestors across America with the slogan ‘No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA’.
With their latest European tour bringing them back to London, I got in touch with Dave Dictor to set-up an interview prior to their gig at New Cross Inn. He happily agreed to this but in between times, the tour was beset with problems. Drummer Al Schvitz ( a veteran of the original line-up who returned to the fold in recent years) was taken-ill while the band were in Europe. After a brief hospitalisation and rest, he rejoined the band to continue the tour, but a week or so later he started to get sick again and it became clear that he was not going to be able to finish the dates. Fortunately, the band were able to contact get friends to organise another drummer to stand-in for Al and, with some inevitable adjustments to the sets, they have been able to continue with their schedule. But as a result of this, the interview, which had originally been planned to take place before the gig, gets postponed until afterwards, as Dave and the band huddle together in the tour van attempting to teach their new drummer more of the songs !
Further albums including ‘Smoke Signals’ and ‘This Blood’s For You’ followed in the ensuing years while the band continued to tour, with singer Dave Dictor remaining the one constant presence in a frequently changing line-up. The band were on hiatus between 1994-2000, until Dave, now living in Portland, put together a new line-up to begin touring again, culminating in the release of the ‘Magnus Dominus Corpus’ album in 2004. Since then, they have kept themselves very busy although Dave also found time to publish his biography ‘Memoirs from a Damaged Civilization’. Their latest album, ‘Mein Trump’, was recently released including a re-recording of ‘Born to Die’ which has provided protestors across America with the slogan ‘No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA’.
With their latest European tour bringing them back to London, I got in touch with Dave Dictor to set-up an interview prior to their gig at New Cross Inn. He happily agreed to this but in between times, the tour was beset with problems. Drummer Al Schvitz ( a veteran of the original line-up who returned to the fold in recent years) was taken-ill while the band were in Europe. After a brief hospitalisation and rest, he rejoined the band to continue the tour, but a week or so later he started to get sick again and it became clear that he was not going to be able to finish the dates. Fortunately, the band were able to contact get friends to organise another drummer to stand-in for Al and, with some inevitable adjustments to the sets, they have been able to continue with their schedule. But as a result of this, the interview, which had originally been planned to take place before the gig, gets postponed until afterwards, as Dave and the band huddle together in the tour van attempting to teach their new drummer more of the songs !
No problem, as they’re several people I know at the gig and I’m happy to watch the other bands. The main support comes from Maid of Ace who I’ve not seen before, but I know quite a few people who are fans. They’re an all-girl (all-sisters !) band from Hastings who play an aggressive style of punk that also combines the likes of Motorhead and Metallica to create their own full-on sound. It’s not bad at all, and although I can’t say that any of the songs really stuck in my head, they certainly have a lot of power and presence.
MDC assemble onstage and promptly launch into their set. The way they perform the songs, both old and new, would never let you to think that this line-up had been playing together for just a handful of shows. They’re fast, tight and as powerful as you’d want them to be, blasting through classics like ‘Corporate Deathburger’, ‘I Remember’ and even ‘Chicken Squawk’ in rapid succession. But in the middle of the set, there’s a special surprise. Due to their set being unavoidably shorter than usual, they’ve asked their friends The Restarts to play a short set in the middle of this one, and so the three of them jump onstage, borrow MDC’s equipment and run through a handful of their songs. As a bonus, it’s a great show of support and the unexpected change of pace also brings something else to the gig. The Restarts sound good as well, obviously enjoying themselves and putting everything in to the music. After 10 or 15 minutes, they hand back the instruments and MDC return to complete their set. ‘John Wayne Was A Nazi’ goes down as well as always, while ‘Born To Die’ has everyone singing along with the new lyrics. All too soon, the gig is over but MDC had overcome their unfortunate circumstances to deliver a great set.
MDC assemble onstage and promptly launch into their set. The way they perform the songs, both old and new, would never let you to think that this line-up had been playing together for just a handful of shows. They’re fast, tight and as powerful as you’d want them to be, blasting through classics like ‘Corporate Deathburger’, ‘I Remember’ and even ‘Chicken Squawk’ in rapid succession. But in the middle of the set, there’s a special surprise. Due to their set being unavoidably shorter than usual, they’ve asked their friends The Restarts to play a short set in the middle of this one, and so the three of them jump onstage, borrow MDC’s equipment and run through a handful of their songs. As a bonus, it’s a great show of support and the unexpected change of pace also brings something else to the gig. The Restarts sound good as well, obviously enjoying themselves and putting everything in to the music. After 10 or 15 minutes, they hand back the instruments and MDC return to complete their set. ‘John Wayne Was A Nazi’ goes down as well as always, while ‘Born To Die’ has everyone singing along with the new lyrics. All too soon, the gig is over but MDC had overcome their unfortunate circumstances to deliver a great set.
Afterwards, I hang around for a while and then Dave finds me so that we can go ahead with the interview. With the venue still busy, we head out to the bands’ tour van and I start by asking what had happened with Al and how they had coped with the situation…
‘Well, we started the tour but after a few of the dates, he wasn’t feeling well and we ended-up taking him to a hospital. They checked him out and said that if he rested for a few days, he should be able to continue. So we had to cancel a show, but after he’d rested he said that he felt alright and we decided to continue, but we’d also try to go at it kind of slowly. We were playing half-sets and then doing acoustic stuff and whatever, to give him a chance to get his strength back. I mean, thank goodness it didn’t happen in Bulgaria or Romania or somewhere like that ! But however we tried to takes things easy, it was still a hard tour. We had five or six hour drives between venues in Serbia and Hungary, so it could be really fucking horrendous. But he made it all the way through that and it wasn’t until last Wednesday, I think, when he came up to me and said, Dave, I really don’t feel so good, I don’t think I can do it anymore. So I arranged for our roadie to take him to the hospital and sure enough, where he had been getting better it was now coming back. It’s the sort of thing that comes from smoking, unfortunately… we were just so glad that it wasn’t cancer or emphysema ! So he had to have an operation and they cut out some of the bad tissue, but they said there was no way he’d be getting back on the tour. The first time he’d been sick, they thought he was going to be able to carry on with us after a few days rest and that it was just a speed-bump, but this time they said that he’d need to rest for at least a month. That’s the world we live in. So, he’s started chewing on nicotine gum and we all hope he’s going to get himself back to full strength. Unfortunately, nicotine is a very tough addiction. It’s actually a lot worse that some of the things that are illegal, but the companies that produce it are still allowed to make profits from it. And it seems that the people who own those companies have a disproportionate say in what they can get away with. I mean, when marijuana was originally made illegal, it was the tobacco companies that were lobbying for that to happen, but now that it’s being legalized in some States, you just know that they’re going to move straight in on it. It’s been made legal now in Oregon, so me and a few of my friends grow legal, medical marijuana and we had a nice little thing going on. People had to go through a Doctor to be able to get it from us, and we had to go through a certain process to get registered to grow it. They inspected our rooms and made sure we were doing things properly. But now, anyone can grow marijuana which is keeping the prices really low and it’s putting a lot of the original people out of business. I think we’ve got a tight little ship so I don’t think we’ll go out of business, because we grow a certain quality and we have a lot of people that depend on us. Overall, I’m happy that it’s been legalized because, even though we’re not making the same money that we used to make, it’s so much better that people aren’t risking going to jail just because they want to smoke a couple of joints. It’s not over the whole of the United States, yet, it’s only in California, Oregon and Washington so far… which would be something like it being legal in Manchester but not in Sussex !’
‘Well, we started the tour but after a few of the dates, he wasn’t feeling well and we ended-up taking him to a hospital. They checked him out and said that if he rested for a few days, he should be able to continue. So we had to cancel a show, but after he’d rested he said that he felt alright and we decided to continue, but we’d also try to go at it kind of slowly. We were playing half-sets and then doing acoustic stuff and whatever, to give him a chance to get his strength back. I mean, thank goodness it didn’t happen in Bulgaria or Romania or somewhere like that ! But however we tried to takes things easy, it was still a hard tour. We had five or six hour drives between venues in Serbia and Hungary, so it could be really fucking horrendous. But he made it all the way through that and it wasn’t until last Wednesday, I think, when he came up to me and said, Dave, I really don’t feel so good, I don’t think I can do it anymore. So I arranged for our roadie to take him to the hospital and sure enough, where he had been getting better it was now coming back. It’s the sort of thing that comes from smoking, unfortunately… we were just so glad that it wasn’t cancer or emphysema ! So he had to have an operation and they cut out some of the bad tissue, but they said there was no way he’d be getting back on the tour. The first time he’d been sick, they thought he was going to be able to carry on with us after a few days rest and that it was just a speed-bump, but this time they said that he’d need to rest for at least a month. That’s the world we live in. So, he’s started chewing on nicotine gum and we all hope he’s going to get himself back to full strength. Unfortunately, nicotine is a very tough addiction. It’s actually a lot worse that some of the things that are illegal, but the companies that produce it are still allowed to make profits from it. And it seems that the people who own those companies have a disproportionate say in what they can get away with. I mean, when marijuana was originally made illegal, it was the tobacco companies that were lobbying for that to happen, but now that it’s being legalized in some States, you just know that they’re going to move straight in on it. It’s been made legal now in Oregon, so me and a few of my friends grow legal, medical marijuana and we had a nice little thing going on. People had to go through a Doctor to be able to get it from us, and we had to go through a certain process to get registered to grow it. They inspected our rooms and made sure we were doing things properly. But now, anyone can grow marijuana which is keeping the prices really low and it’s putting a lot of the original people out of business. I think we’ve got a tight little ship so I don’t think we’ll go out of business, because we grow a certain quality and we have a lot of people that depend on us. Overall, I’m happy that it’s been legalized because, even though we’re not making the same money that we used to make, it’s so much better that people aren’t risking going to jail just because they want to smoke a couple of joints. It’s not over the whole of the United States, yet, it’s only in California, Oregon and Washington so far… which would be something like it being legal in Manchester but not in Sussex !’
There’s been a lot of different MDC line-ups over the years, but you’ve also had a lot of former members rejoin the band for periods along the way. Do you see the band as a kind of extended family, where you might fall-out with certain people at times but can also rely on them when they’re needed?
‘Yeah… the band has been together for 38 years, during different points in my life. I guess I’m the only constant member but I always like to have at least another senior member in the band alongside me. We started out on this tour with Al playing with us, but right now, it’s me and three much younger guys. Ron Posner had been playing with me for around 10 or 12 years until he hurt his shoulder and begged-off, but then Al came back. Bill Collins came back and played on last years tour… I like it that way, it’s almost like a family or a fraternity type of thing. I may have been the one constant but, you know, I’d be happy for someone’s son to take over if I can’t do it anymore, hahaha ! When Al got sick, I got in touch with our friend Jason and asked if he would come out and help us finish the tour. It was pretty tough for him because he had to quit his job so he could come out, but he did it for us. It’s still been pretty hectic because he only really knew a few of the songs before now, so we’ve been trying to teach him in the van and at the soundchecks, which has been working-out so far. But everyone’s been wearing a lot of different hats on this tour and I’ve been very proud of them. Once we’ve finished these last few shows, we’ll be able to go home and figure things out properly. We’ll have a better idea of whether Al will be able to rejoin us and, if that’s what he wants, how much rest he’s going to need. So, yeah, it is that way with this band. There’s a guy called Chris Wilder and a girl called Erica Liss who both played with us between 1992-1994 and whenever we see each other, we’re always talking about them playing in the band again. Whenever we play where they live, they‘ll both jump up onstage and play some songs with us. I really like that feeling, like it’s a continuum. It’s not a case of ‘you’re in or you’re out’. There’s been very, very little bad-blood with any of the former members. I mean, there have been times when people have fallen out and we’ve tried to put things back together, but it hasn’t worked. In that kind of case, you just have to move on and hope that things will heal after those people have had enough time. I think these sort of things get easier as you get older. You tend to hold your grudges more firmly when you’re young but, you know, these days I just feel glad that I’ve still got this band. I love life and I love making music so I’m glad that there are still a lot of fabulous musicians with so much energy out there. I’m lucky that people are still interested in MDC, 38 years later on !’
‘Yeah… the band has been together for 38 years, during different points in my life. I guess I’m the only constant member but I always like to have at least another senior member in the band alongside me. We started out on this tour with Al playing with us, but right now, it’s me and three much younger guys. Ron Posner had been playing with me for around 10 or 12 years until he hurt his shoulder and begged-off, but then Al came back. Bill Collins came back and played on last years tour… I like it that way, it’s almost like a family or a fraternity type of thing. I may have been the one constant but, you know, I’d be happy for someone’s son to take over if I can’t do it anymore, hahaha ! When Al got sick, I got in touch with our friend Jason and asked if he would come out and help us finish the tour. It was pretty tough for him because he had to quit his job so he could come out, but he did it for us. It’s still been pretty hectic because he only really knew a few of the songs before now, so we’ve been trying to teach him in the van and at the soundchecks, which has been working-out so far. But everyone’s been wearing a lot of different hats on this tour and I’ve been very proud of them. Once we’ve finished these last few shows, we’ll be able to go home and figure things out properly. We’ll have a better idea of whether Al will be able to rejoin us and, if that’s what he wants, how much rest he’s going to need. So, yeah, it is that way with this band. There’s a guy called Chris Wilder and a girl called Erica Liss who both played with us between 1992-1994 and whenever we see each other, we’re always talking about them playing in the band again. Whenever we play where they live, they‘ll both jump up onstage and play some songs with us. I really like that feeling, like it’s a continuum. It’s not a case of ‘you’re in or you’re out’. There’s been very, very little bad-blood with any of the former members. I mean, there have been times when people have fallen out and we’ve tried to put things back together, but it hasn’t worked. In that kind of case, you just have to move on and hope that things will heal after those people have had enough time. I think these sort of things get easier as you get older. You tend to hold your grudges more firmly when you’re young but, you know, these days I just feel glad that I’ve still got this band. I love life and I love making music so I’m glad that there are still a lot of fabulous musicians with so much energy out there. I’m lucky that people are still interested in MDC, 38 years later on !’
It is a funny aspect about Punk that, even though when it started a lot of the rhetoric was about it being about kids and young people, but as the years have moved on a lot of the bands have continued and still produce vital music dealing with contemporary issues. It’s become more about the attitude of the bands rather than their age…
‘Well, to me it was never about the age thing. It was never against older people and all that ‘don’t trust anyone over 30’ stuff. To me, it was more about being against the corporate consumerism and the whole business of rock stars. Even the cooler bands from the Sixties and Seventies, like the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane, had all this corporate thing going on behind them where being a multi-millionaire was the ultimate goal. And even more recently, when you look at someone like Bruce Springsteen… I like a lot of his music and I think he has some really genuine working-class ethics, but at the same time he’s a multi-millionaire ! I remember him saying that it was a shame that CBGB’s was closing down but he could have bought CBGB’s fifty-times over and let it remain open as a punk rock club. It’s just seems to be this weird thing that, when people end up with that kind of money it takes everything over. There are even punks that have over a million dollars and I know a bunch of them… I like Greenday, both as people and their music, but I think they’ve been caught up in that machine and they’re now in that pop-place where, if their new album doesn’t sell a certain amount of records, they’ll be regarded as a failure. It’s as if their growth and popularity has to be in a certain way within the capitalist system and they’ve been caught up in that and if for some reason they weren’t so popular anymore, the business would want them to retire and not put anymore records out. But Greenday have had a long run… I was living in San Francisco when they first started playing and you could always see that they were going to get popular. We were part of a scene that was very serious, hardcore political, but then the generation that came after us approached things in a much lighter way with more melodic and poppier songs, singing about their dookie and stuff.
‘Well, to me it was never about the age thing. It was never against older people and all that ‘don’t trust anyone over 30’ stuff. To me, it was more about being against the corporate consumerism and the whole business of rock stars. Even the cooler bands from the Sixties and Seventies, like the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane, had all this corporate thing going on behind them where being a multi-millionaire was the ultimate goal. And even more recently, when you look at someone like Bruce Springsteen… I like a lot of his music and I think he has some really genuine working-class ethics, but at the same time he’s a multi-millionaire ! I remember him saying that it was a shame that CBGB’s was closing down but he could have bought CBGB’s fifty-times over and let it remain open as a punk rock club. It’s just seems to be this weird thing that, when people end up with that kind of money it takes everything over. There are even punks that have over a million dollars and I know a bunch of them… I like Greenday, both as people and their music, but I think they’ve been caught up in that machine and they’re now in that pop-place where, if their new album doesn’t sell a certain amount of records, they’ll be regarded as a failure. It’s as if their growth and popularity has to be in a certain way within the capitalist system and they’ve been caught up in that and if for some reason they weren’t so popular anymore, the business would want them to retire and not put anymore records out. But Greenday have had a long run… I was living in San Francisco when they first started playing and you could always see that they were going to get popular. We were part of a scene that was very serious, hardcore political, but then the generation that came after us approached things in a much lighter way with more melodic and poppier songs, singing about their dookie and stuff.
At that point it become a lot less about the kind of things that we’d been singing about. The irony is that now that they’ve reached this pinnacle, they have started talking about some of those things and being a bit more political, at least since they made ‘American Idiot’. And recently, when they played at the American Music Awards, they were chanting ‘No Trump No KKK No Fascist USA’ which pissed-off a lot of people. But they also gave us credit for the original song when they went on talk shows in America… They were on the Jimmy Kimmel show in America and things like that, so Rolling Stone eventually ended up getting in touch with me and talking about the whole thing. That was nice, because there are some bands that wouldn’t have even bothered to mention our name and would’ve tried to take all the credit for themselves. Some friends of Greenday even got in touch with me and they ended-up sending me a copy of their latest CD, so who knows, maybe we’ll even get a few gigs out of it ? We’ll see… I’d be happy to play to their pop-punk audience. I’d just be worried that we could sound good in a big arena… I mean, I’m sure that most of their audience aren’t going to get it, but it might help some of them to look at things differently. At the end of the day, I’m just glad that Greenday do have that conscience because they are being heard by a lot of people… Someone was telling me that their performance at the American Music Awards had over 1.4 million Youtube hits and even our thing also went up from 4000 to 40,000 after that. In real terms, it’s not that big a deal, but I’m not so proud that I can’t appreciate it. It was like when Chumbawumba had that big hit… I wasn’t one of those people who said, they shouldn’t have done it. We stayed at their house on our early tours and they looked after us so I was happy for them. I liked that song, so what’s the problem ? People don’t need to be put in boxes. I’ve never been that way. In the beginning, I used to be pretty militant about vegetarianism and I’d point things out to people, but I never used to say that people had sold-out or any of that stuff. I’ve always tried to understand that if people recognize they have a certain talent or power, they might want to make the most of it.
I was good friends with Michelle Shocked and we even played on one of her records. She signed to Polydor but she just rode that out for two years and then got off the label, got all of her music back and was then able to set-up her own label and do everything for herself. She could make a good amount of money even though, in relative terms, she was back on a lower level. They used her for two years but she also used them and it worked out for her. Of course, later on she got involved with this Christian thing and it totally sabotaged her own career… She’s been on CNN and the Piers Morgan TV show trying to defend why her pastor won’t allow marriage between gay couples. She should never have got near that with a ten-foot pole ! I mean, as a libertarian, I believe that everyone has the right to do what they want to do, but defending prejudice like that is fucked up. But we’re still friends even if we don’t talk on the phone so often anymore. If she comes to town when I’m at home, we’ll meet up and have an ice-tea or something. But I’ve told her, she needs to shut-the-fuck-up about this stuff. She’s said that she is not her pastor and I know that she’s donated money to Gay Marriage campaigns in the past but at the same time, she tries to defend this guy. She has got a Christian husband now and I think that’s one of the things that made her go that way, but the thing is, I don’t think that if I stopped talking to her it would do any good. If anything, it would just make her block out my opinions and not listen at all. I know Michelle and I still love her, so at least I still have a chance of telling her that she shouldn’t be getting in bed with these nutty people. I saw her on some TV show and she was talking about the rapture, going off on all those kind of topics and I just thought, do yourself a favour and keep it to yourself, but she wants to be true to herself and I can admire. The thing is, though, I knew her way-back-when and she did have this thing where she needed people to prop her up. Christianity has always been one of the things that can fill that void for people… not that it’s is the only religion that does that, but, you know, this is just her and who she is so I’m not going to condemn her for it. I love Michelle but that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with her about everything.’
Going back to the what you were saying about Greenday, shortly before this tour you released a new version of ‘Born To Die’, featuring the amended lyrics ‘No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA’, which has already become a slogan for anti-Trump protestors. Was this because you’d found it shocking that, even despite all the horrible things that became public-knowledge about him, he still managed to win the Presidency ?
‘Well, it’s amazing. In America, the Republican party, which is the more Conservative-like, has such a bad record… Presidents like Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush… they all started stupid wars or stirred things up in the Middle East. But people keep going back and voting for them. I know that all political parties have their weaknesses and I can understand that people who are working on low wages and struggling to get by will resent the bums on the streets who are getting welfare or food-stamps for free. But at the same time, these are people who probably aren’t much more than one-step away from poverty themselves. If they get ill they rely on Health Care and it’s Trump that’s trying to take that away. I mean, even John McCain, who is also a Republican, came out and voted against that and all you can say is, whether or not you agree with him about everything else, he is a classy guy when it comes to something like this. But with Trump, no-one really knows what he’s going to do in the end. Start another Korean War ? Destroy the Banking system and start another Depression ? When are all these people that vote for the Republicans going to start holding them responsible for what they do when they are in power ? They do all this crazy, fucked-up shit and the voters just seem to let them off with a free-pass.’
‘Well, it’s amazing. In America, the Republican party, which is the more Conservative-like, has such a bad record… Presidents like Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush… they all started stupid wars or stirred things up in the Middle East. But people keep going back and voting for them. I know that all political parties have their weaknesses and I can understand that people who are working on low wages and struggling to get by will resent the bums on the streets who are getting welfare or food-stamps for free. But at the same time, these are people who probably aren’t much more than one-step away from poverty themselves. If they get ill they rely on Health Care and it’s Trump that’s trying to take that away. I mean, even John McCain, who is also a Republican, came out and voted against that and all you can say is, whether or not you agree with him about everything else, he is a classy guy when it comes to something like this. But with Trump, no-one really knows what he’s going to do in the end. Start another Korean War ? Destroy the Banking system and start another Depression ? When are all these people that vote for the Republicans going to start holding them responsible for what they do when they are in power ? They do all this crazy, fucked-up shit and the voters just seem to let them off with a free-pass.’
But in the case of Trump, I think he actually goes beyond normal party politics. I get the impression that he latched onto the Republican Party for his own means but in truth, he’s only really interested in himself and his own self-serving opinions…
‘He taps into different things and it’s very similar to the Brexit thing over here. A lot of people, particularly older people, get nervous when they see change. They see Polish people coming over and taking jobs in their country, or they see Nigerians or whoever, and they convince themselves that the country is going to suffer because of this. They don’t see what it really means, they just want things to go back to how they were in the Fifties or whenever. But that’s just not going to happen because the genie is already out of the bottle and you can’t go backwards. And in the first place, what was so great about the Fifties anyway ? There was still segregation back then, there were no gay rights or anything like that… But a lot of people would still like to return to this imaginary ideal time. They want an America that’s 90% white and that’s never going to happen. But when it comes to elections, the system is rigged or gerrymandered so that someone can win even though they only have 45% of the votes. Maybe one day that will change, but… I don’t know. I really thought the Republicans were going to be out of office for a very long time, so I found this all very shocking. I saw a lot of very intelligent people who were saying, ‘Well, I don’t trust Hillary Clinton.’ But at the end of the day, how can you compare Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump ? I mean, yeah, she’s not so great and maybe she’s a liar, but still, it’s like night and day. She wasn’t saying that Mexicans are rapists ! But I think a lot of the result wasn’t so much down to the people who voted for Trump, but to the people who wouldn’t vote for Hillary. There’s been thirty years of Fox News that’s just been attack, attack, attack against her and it was almost the same way that Hitler tried to persuade everyone about the Jews. After hearing that propaganda again and again, people end up thinking, well, maybe Jews are kind of crappy… After you say the same things for long enough, people will start to buy into it and unfortunately a lot of people bought into what Fox News was saying. Even young people on Facebook were writing slogans like ‘Hillary Sucks’. I’m not saying that she would have been great, but all these people who tried to make a protest against her are realising what they’ve ended-up with now and that’s really sad.’
‘He taps into different things and it’s very similar to the Brexit thing over here. A lot of people, particularly older people, get nervous when they see change. They see Polish people coming over and taking jobs in their country, or they see Nigerians or whoever, and they convince themselves that the country is going to suffer because of this. They don’t see what it really means, they just want things to go back to how they were in the Fifties or whenever. But that’s just not going to happen because the genie is already out of the bottle and you can’t go backwards. And in the first place, what was so great about the Fifties anyway ? There was still segregation back then, there were no gay rights or anything like that… But a lot of people would still like to return to this imaginary ideal time. They want an America that’s 90% white and that’s never going to happen. But when it comes to elections, the system is rigged or gerrymandered so that someone can win even though they only have 45% of the votes. Maybe one day that will change, but… I don’t know. I really thought the Republicans were going to be out of office for a very long time, so I found this all very shocking. I saw a lot of very intelligent people who were saying, ‘Well, I don’t trust Hillary Clinton.’ But at the end of the day, how can you compare Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump ? I mean, yeah, she’s not so great and maybe she’s a liar, but still, it’s like night and day. She wasn’t saying that Mexicans are rapists ! But I think a lot of the result wasn’t so much down to the people who voted for Trump, but to the people who wouldn’t vote for Hillary. There’s been thirty years of Fox News that’s just been attack, attack, attack against her and it was almost the same way that Hitler tried to persuade everyone about the Jews. After hearing that propaganda again and again, people end up thinking, well, maybe Jews are kind of crappy… After you say the same things for long enough, people will start to buy into it and unfortunately a lot of people bought into what Fox News was saying. Even young people on Facebook were writing slogans like ‘Hillary Sucks’. I’m not saying that she would have been great, but all these people who tried to make a protest against her are realising what they’ve ended-up with now and that’s really sad.’
It’s one of the problems we have over here. The media is currently so anti-Labour that people just accept that it must be this terrible thing without considering that, for all their faults, they’re still a much better proposition than the Tories… Theresa May was wanting to bring back fox-hunting, for fucks sake !
‘In America, there are so many contentious issues that it becomes hard to find anyone who you can agree with on everything. People get angry about the subject of Abortion, about Welfare, about Pollution and it’s hard to find anyone who shares your point of view on everything. But if you’re going to hold your breath and only vote for something that passes your total purity test, then good luck ! You’re just painting yourself into a corner and you’re going to watch the rest of the world pass you by. I can understand why people feel that way but when it comes to someone like Trump, you have to take a stand against them. I’d love to live in a liberated, vegan workers paradise too, but are we going to let a nut like Trump do whatever he wants in the meantime ? Whether or not to vote for the lesser of two evils is a real big discussion and I can certainly understand some of the arguments in the opposite direction, but I voted for Barack Obama twice and Hillary Clinton once and I’m not ashamed of it. I know people who will accuse me of buying into the system because of that, but, you know, that’s what I felt I had to do. It really is a crazy world we live in when we have to make these kind of choices but the supposed Free World is now being run by a guy who is clearly out of his mind and believes his own version of reality. He takes advantage of women, takes advantage of teenage girls and uses his power to get away with it, but at the same time he’s supported by supposedly-moral Christians. There’s just so much hypocrisy that it’s hard to believe. It almost makes me think that we should all just leave the planet and let the animals take it over ! Of course, it’s more likely that we’ll cause a mass-extinction before that could ever happen…’
‘In America, there are so many contentious issues that it becomes hard to find anyone who you can agree with on everything. People get angry about the subject of Abortion, about Welfare, about Pollution and it’s hard to find anyone who shares your point of view on everything. But if you’re going to hold your breath and only vote for something that passes your total purity test, then good luck ! You’re just painting yourself into a corner and you’re going to watch the rest of the world pass you by. I can understand why people feel that way but when it comes to someone like Trump, you have to take a stand against them. I’d love to live in a liberated, vegan workers paradise too, but are we going to let a nut like Trump do whatever he wants in the meantime ? Whether or not to vote for the lesser of two evils is a real big discussion and I can certainly understand some of the arguments in the opposite direction, but I voted for Barack Obama twice and Hillary Clinton once and I’m not ashamed of it. I know people who will accuse me of buying into the system because of that, but, you know, that’s what I felt I had to do. It really is a crazy world we live in when we have to make these kind of choices but the supposed Free World is now being run by a guy who is clearly out of his mind and believes his own version of reality. He takes advantage of women, takes advantage of teenage girls and uses his power to get away with it, but at the same time he’s supported by supposedly-moral Christians. There’s just so much hypocrisy that it’s hard to believe. It almost makes me think that we should all just leave the planet and let the animals take it over ! Of course, it’s more likely that we’ll cause a mass-extinction before that could ever happen…’
One of the really irritating thing about Trump is how he harps on about ‘fake news’ and yet so many of the things that he claims are completely false…
‘Yeah, but the people that vote for him are the people who want to think that way. I’ve got a family member who voted for Trump and he’s just like the typical feeling-sorry-for-himself white guy that blames everyone else because he hasn’t got a better job. He won’t even stop to consider that perhaps he didn’t get any further because he didn’t try hard enough. I can understand that people get worried when they think that cheap labour from other countries is taking away their job prospects, which is the same reason why a lot of people voted for Brexit over here. But what they fail to see is that the people who run the companies want the cheap labour to come over because it’s to their advantage and they can profit from it.’
MDC, or The Stains as you were initially known, were originally formed in Austin, Texas, even though you became much better known after you had relocated to San Francisco…
‘The band started in Austin, but I actually grew up in Long Island, just outside New York City. Al grew up there as well. But it wasn’t until I was about 20 that I went down with my acoustic guitar to Austin, just to see what was going on. I had a kind of plan to try and get into school at the University of Texas, but instead I started delivering pizzas and then punk rock started happening… this was around 1976 and ’77.’
Do you think the environment and atmosphere of Austin (which spawned a lot of influential bands from the Thirteenth Floor Elevators through to the Big Boys) played a part in the development of The Stains / MDC ?
‘Well, I can’t really speak for the stuff that happened there in the Sixties so much, but the Austin, Texas punk scene, along with a lot of the early American punk scene, still had their hang-ups. It wasn’t exactly homophobic or misogynistic, but it wasn’t pro-gay rights or pro-womens rights. The weird thing was that the Austin punk scene was led by two bands who were fronted by guys who were very-much Out, so I think that did make it a lot easier for me to make queer-fluid statements... I’ve always felt like I’m everything and I’m happy to tell people that. We never encountered any problems until we went on tour with the Bad Brains and that bad thing happened with them so we found ourselves in the position where we had to tell them that they were wrong. They were being mean to people who had been supporting them and treating them well and that wasn’t our type of punk rock. I think the thing was, in the late Seventies, American punk rock had been more about bands like the Dead Boys and the Heartbreakers, that kinky, crazy arty crowd. But the new crew that came in after them, Black Flag, Minor Threat, 7 Seconds and the Boston bands were a little bit more of the boy-crowd. Ian Mackaye was always a very special guy, but a lot of the crew that followed those bands, with X’s on their hands and the black sweat-shirts, it took a while before they started to appreciate gay people or the things that bands like us were saying. By 1985 or ’86, people like Ian were doing stuff to support all kinds of people but a lot of that scene developed very slowly.
‘Well, I can’t really speak for the stuff that happened there in the Sixties so much, but the Austin, Texas punk scene, along with a lot of the early American punk scene, still had their hang-ups. It wasn’t exactly homophobic or misogynistic, but it wasn’t pro-gay rights or pro-womens rights. The weird thing was that the Austin punk scene was led by two bands who were fronted by guys who were very-much Out, so I think that did make it a lot easier for me to make queer-fluid statements... I’ve always felt like I’m everything and I’m happy to tell people that. We never encountered any problems until we went on tour with the Bad Brains and that bad thing happened with them so we found ourselves in the position where we had to tell them that they were wrong. They were being mean to people who had been supporting them and treating them well and that wasn’t our type of punk rock. I think the thing was, in the late Seventies, American punk rock had been more about bands like the Dead Boys and the Heartbreakers, that kinky, crazy arty crowd. But the new crew that came in after them, Black Flag, Minor Threat, 7 Seconds and the Boston bands were a little bit more of the boy-crowd. Ian Mackaye was always a very special guy, but a lot of the crew that followed those bands, with X’s on their hands and the black sweat-shirts, it took a while before they started to appreciate gay people or the things that bands like us were saying. By 1985 or ’86, people like Ian were doing stuff to support all kinds of people but a lot of that scene developed very slowly.
The New York scene, in particular, had more of that tough-guy reputation and there was that whole Hate-core thing for a while, even though that was always a pretty different scene. So I was always very happy that we’d started out from Austin, Texas and we had bands like the Big Boys, The Dicks and the Butthole Surfers playing on the same scene as us. We also played with Really Red from Houston, we actually played with them a bunch of times, but they were a bit different thing in a way, because they were still in that late-Seventies mode. I think we picked up our tempo because that was the way punk was going with the hardcore thing, but Really Red stayed more in the style of the Dead Boys or the Ramones. And unfortunately, as much as I loved them and as good as they were, they split-up instead of taking it further. The same thing happened with bands in San Francisco, the Mutants or The Dils… they all got as big as they could go, but the New Wave thing came along and they either had to become part of that or become part of whatever else was coming along, which was bands like the Dead Kennedys or Social Distortion. All of these new things were coming along and a lot of the older bands never really caught the traction of it. The kids who were into the music were going more for bands like Minor Threat or SS Decontrol. They still also loved bands like the Avengers, but things were changing. ‘
But what was it about Austin that made it the focal point in Texas ?
‘I think Austin was the one relatively cool place in Texas. Texas is a really big State, so anyone living there who felt like they were a bit different and couldn’t stand living in Lubbock, Texas or Fort Worth, Texas or Shithead, Texas or Fuckface, Texas… they came to Austin. So there were a whole bunch of like-minded people in Austin who weren’t originally from there. I mean, all the Dischord-related bands were from DC, all the SSD-crowd were from Boston and all the Agnostic Front crowd were from New York. But the Austin crowd came from all-over and they were eclectic people, as were we. I think that’s why Austin was able to produce so many different ideas and so many different styles.’
‘I think Austin was the one relatively cool place in Texas. Texas is a really big State, so anyone living there who felt like they were a bit different and couldn’t stand living in Lubbock, Texas or Fort Worth, Texas or Shithead, Texas or Fuckface, Texas… they came to Austin. So there were a whole bunch of like-minded people in Austin who weren’t originally from there. I mean, all the Dischord-related bands were from DC, all the SSD-crowd were from Boston and all the Agnostic Front crowd were from New York. But the Austin crowd came from all-over and they were eclectic people, as were we. I think that’s why Austin was able to produce so many different ideas and so many different styles.’
Unfortunately, this was all the time we had for the interview. With MDC packing-up and various friends to talk to before they left, Dave had other commitments and, in my case, I had a bus to catch (light-weight !) But it had been great to talk with Dave and I hope we’ll have more chances to do so again in the future. In the meantime, be sure to hear MDC’s latest album, ‘Mein Trumpf’, and for anyone whose curiosity has been sparked by this interview, track down a copy of the book ‘Memoir From a Damaged Civilazation’.
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