watching these 4 20-somethings ping around like badminton birdies, there's no question where they're coming from. Or how hard they've struggled to get here. guitarists tim "lint" armstrong and lars frederiksen trade clash-school melodies and GBH-mean riffs (with a farfisa organ player backing them up on certain ska-edged songs), as well as piranha-snapping vocals delivered with a healthy spew of vitriol and phlegm. While bassist matt freeman and skin-pounder brett reed anchor the proceedings, these two born showmen leap from the riser, spin like a dreidel in place, race past each other as if they were on fire, and quite often smack into each other laughing good naturedly all the while. oh yeah. and they keep on spitting, frederiksen seems to have it down to a science-- once his verse is finished, he holds a cupped hand to nose and mouth and a spurt of mucous jets down at a 45-degree angle. The message though veiled in safety-pin sloganeering, rises up from the goo: "do you know where the power lies?/and who pulls the strings?/do you know where the power lies?" rancid barks, while the crowd responds by punching its collectives fist into the stale, smoky air. "it starts and ends with YOU!"
This, then, is punk rock circa 1995/96 right? A bunch of regular joes rocking out, having a great time and dragging their fans along for the ride with vague promises of freedom. They music they spot-weld this evening -- much of it is culled from rancid's third ... and out come the wolves explosion-- is crackling with youthful spark but lurid with lived-to-tell-the-tale seediness. "listed M.I.A." for instance, talks about the members' oftern homeless, salvation army past: "stuck in the sewer beneath all the maggots/I ain't foolin' I've been persueing/god damn it man I almost had a way to get out of these dirty old ruins." more of the same in the farfisa-fest "time bomb", the more-punk-than-you "roots radicals," "journey to the end of the east bay" (a reflection of armstrong and freeman's pre ska outfit, operation ivy), and a simple but effective firl-in-every-port anthem thatas also the current single-- "ruby soho." it's punk, it HAS to be.
Two teenage girls sitting by the fillmore mixing boards aren't so sure. or rather they're uncertain exactly what goes into being a true punk in the MTV age. one of them, dressed all in black, her lids weighted down from chrissie Hynde masscara thinks it would be punk to race up to the thrash pit and take her dchances. the other lass, a jeans-and-t-shirt, next-door type wants to enjoy rancid from the safety of the wings. the tough girl sneers and throws her lit cigatette onto the club carbet as a gesture of punk defiance, her friend points to it and whacks her a good one on the arm. "put it out" she demands. for several minutes, there's a mexican standoff with neither party budging while Armstrong rasps on about how "jackyl had a beer in his hand last time I seen him/when he rolled the dice you know he never thought twice" eventually, the butt smolders out and the kids relax, start undulating to rancid rock again.
who was punk and who was PC? guess we'll never know, byt Frederiksen himself has a few ideas. the day agter the playing the fillmore-- a move which gilman street regulars might deem a sellout-- he shuffles into a berkerley diner with all the requisite punk trappings. black leather jacket emblazoned with rancid and us thugs logos. 5 pierciongs in each ear, snow in his snot-crusted nose (he's coming down with the flu he thinks), and a bluebird t attoo on each side of his beefy neck, the first bearing a banner with the words "nobody's hero." the second holding a corollary--"nobody's fool" under his left eye, a tiny star tat surrounded by dots (in prison, a sign that you've killed a lucky charms leprechaun, perhaps), and both sets of knuckles are inscribed: 'P-U-N-X' and the four playing-card suits. His mighty shellacked mane now lies dormant beneath a tight-fitting tam.
and who knows more about punk than rancid, who recently declined to sign with madonna's maverick label or epic, who offered them over a millioni dollars? no, they stayed with their old chum Brett Gurewitz and his label, epitaph records. Because they felt loved and appreciated there, they maintained.
so without further afo, here are the rules of punk according to ex- UK subs-axeman Frederiksn. A list of reasons why rancid-- no matter how many lit cigarettes you toss in a packed nightclub-- will always be more punk than you, pal.
1) THEY KNOW HOW TO SPIT CORRECTLY this is important when you're onstage and something's in your sinus and it's not coming out. says Frederiksen, proudly "I farmer spit! I hold one side of my nostril and cut loose, because only one nostril works-- I've had my nose broken 16 times in fights. so my sinuses have always been fucked up, and I smoke, so whenever I exert energy, it works out your cardiovascular system, so I've gotta get all that crap out. How I do it is just a trick of the trade. and we slip on it all the time, me and lint, we spit and sweat so much, we drain gallons of liquids out of our body." afterwards? "first gatorade, then a snapple. I think that's probaly what broke down my immune system, probaly why I'm sick now. I'm probaly immune to vitamin C, i've been taking so much of it." 2) THEY CAN SPIN IN PLACE, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, WITHOUT GETTING DIZZY OF FALLING DOWN.
Can you say the same? we bet not. "we've been playing so long together, and we can't fake it. like, you can tell if we're pissed off up there-- we don't fake shit. we go in and we play hard, and our reaction is to go ballistic. that's why we got wireless mics, because we'd pull over our cabinets a lot of times. and it's funny because sometime we'll play a place across america and the radio frequencies are so weird, we won't be able to get a frequency on the wireless. so you have to go through a cord and it just inhibits you." Does rancid ever miscalculate a spin or salmon-leap? "all the timne," frederiksen sighs. "One show in portlandm I jumped off the stage and I spun, and tim was coming up behind me and I hit him with my guitar, hard, right on his finger. and we thought his finger was broken-- I'd bashed it wide open. but the man went straight on through with the show, a total trooper. the show must go on, bu that's the way we are-- it's all about playing. it's the only enjoyment we get, making records adn playing. that's the shit. when you're sittin' at home doin' nothing, thats when you go stale. you need an oiutlet. Like, when most of us were kids, dancing was the way-- when you went to a punk show, you got all your aggressions out. now for us its playing live, thats why so much energy and heart goes into it."
3) THEY STILL REMEMBER OLD '80S PUNK DANCES, LIKE THE DREADED "SWIVEL."
But things have changed over the years, Frederiksen admits. "Now basically, it's a mix, kids try to skank, try to pogo, try to circle-pit. it all depends on where you go. the new york kids do the new york hardcore dancing-- the east coast has its own seperate style, but there are so many styles of dancing these days, it's really cool."
3) THEY DON'T CONDONE FIGHTING AT RANCID SHOWS
unless of course, the guys beating you up are rancid members themselves. they've been known to wade into a crowd to break up a melee or two. "but fighting is bullshit. like when jello biafra got attacked (at gilman street). It was just some kids from Phoenix who came to the east bay, and jello is one of trhose guys you'll see around, the old guy that comes to see the shows. and these kids from pheonix see him as ' the dead kennedys guy who did tis and this,' and they don't realize that people are human beings. they're starstruck, so they hurt him. but no matter where you're playing, there will always be an asshole who slips in to make trouble, somebody there for all the wrong reasons."
5) THEY KEEP THEIR TICKET AND T-SHIRT PRICES ROCK-BOTTOM LOW.
cost of a fillmore ducat: ten bucks, the same as rancid's high quality brockum designed merchandise. Frederiksen is adamant about this, "when you play these bigger palces, the overhead is higher, so we make less, because we want to keep the ticket prices cheaper. the fillmore holds 1,000 people, but we'd been having problems on tour, where we were playing a lot of smaller places and there'd be 500 kids, still waiting to get in. so we were like ' what the fuck do we do? do we take that step and try a bigger place?' so we decided to take that step, now all the kids fet to get in and see the show, and that's what's important to us. and if they wanna buy a t-shirt, they shouldn't have to pay $25 for one. that's fucking insane. I would never...I mean, we would NEVER... if ... if ... never ... $25? no way! we'd rather justnot sell 'em!"
6) THEY DON'T GO FOR BIG-BUDGET VIDEO FIREWORKS JUST TO GET ON MTV
of course, rancid could afford the latest spike jonze, flavor-of-the-moment director. Frederiksen will have none of it. "tim directs all our videos," he grins. "the kids has never been to a film school-- he's just got natural talent! there are a lot of those corny art-fucking-film students out there getting thousands of dollars from their parents to go to film school, and if they ever make an actual film, thaat'll be the day. But here's my boy Tim, gettin' out there. Epitaph trusted him with a couple thousand dollars, and he makes a video that blows most videos outta the fuckin' water. he's a madmen. he's a genius."
7) THEY'VE STARVED FOR THEIR ART. THEY'VE DONE IT THE HARD WAY
that's why there are constant references to mass transit and bumming change in rancid songs. frederisken wants to make himself clear-- this is no lifestyle to idolize, punks migratre to berkeley, he says, " but hald the kids who come out here are little rich kids who romanticize being poor. there's nothing fuckin' reomantic about being poor. and if you've ever been poor, you know that. all of us in this band know what it's like to be poor-- eating raisin bran for dinner, if you're gonna eat at all. for a long time success for us meant just being able to eat."
8) RANCID SPEAKS FOR--AND DIRECTLY TO-- THE DISENFRANCHISED MASSES
Punk rock-- circa clash/sex pistols/damned/vibrators-- used to wield a sharp politicdal sword, but to little mass-media effect. now, thanks to offspring and green day, news cameras are trained right on rancid and their uppity ilk, waiting for them to say something earth-shatteringm film at 11. Rancid, meanwhile, has made three albums that basically describe what it's like to be rancid, sans any fight-the-system flag-waving.
Frederiksen thinks punk has definitely changed. "now I think it's just kids relateing to people who are more like them, instead of the motley crues adn the skid rows, these idolworship guys who tease their hair and talk about dragons. punk is reallt relevant these days. you've got gang wellfare everywere, and you blink, man, and the days over, the years over and whadda you got? whadda you got?" what's it take to be a punk these days? " I don't think it takes anything. do what you wanna do. if youre following the herd like a sheep, then you're fucked. it's all about doing what you want and making a better life for youself, on your own terms. not taking any shit from anybody and doing what you believe in. punk rock gave us somethign to believe in, and we're trying to give back what we got out of it."
9) THEY KNOW HOW TO STAGEDIVE
And this is a big one, if you've actually got guts enough to dodge security, hoise your self onto the proscenium, and hurl yourself back into the amoeba masses, you'd damn sure better know how to do it properly. take it from lars. "all these people have seen eddie vedder stagedive, and they think all it is, is just jumping off a stage. there's much more to it. there's a way to land so you don't hurt people, a way to land so you don't hurt yourself. I've learned it by trial and error-- I jumped out one time and nearly broke my neck. you know when you hit your head so hard you hear sirens? eventually, yuou just know-- you don't jump on 14-year old girls. you find the biggest guy in the crowd and go for him, because he's more or less gonna catch you."
10)THEY'RE STILL POOR, OR AT LEAST LIVING LIKE THEY ARE
Frederiksen would like to purchase a heater, theres no heat in his $500 dollar a month flat. he feels he's getting sicker because there's no heater. But he only has 20 bux in his pockey-- he swears he can't afford one. "I grew up in low-income housing projects," he adds. "I'll take you do wn there! but as soon as you're in somebody's living room, on their televiosion, they think you're some superstar with billions of dollars. it's not true. Our video of Hyena was played on MTV before green day, before offspring, and we were over in europe at the time. two of us didn't have a place to live when we got back home. people go ' oh rancid's rich now...'come to my house on gilman street-- matt fuckin' lived there too. tim and brett are still living in the same fucking punk house they've had for the past 5 years. just because you're on MTV or the cover of a magaazine doesn't mean that they send you a check." that bad, huh? with a phlegm rattling cough, he adds an amendment. "I'm not sayin' we cna't pay our rent or we can't eat, but people's perception of us is all wrong."
some wicked irony. while Frederikson is bemoing his plight, louis armstrong sashays into the diners jukebox/sound system, purring his uplifting them., "what a wonderful world." the rancid rowdy cocks his ear, listens to the "I see skies of blue" versem then smiles and nods. there's a moral here somewhere, but maybe it's best left along. you either watch the cigarette burn ot you stomp the sucker to a cinder. it's your choice