The Offspring

For a SoCal punk band that's been around for over five years, the Offspring just haven't gotten the attention they deserve. Mixing driving, hard punk with Orange County melodic sensibilities, this band is one of the best around. With one 7" and a fantastic album, the Offspring are really worth looking out for both live and vinyl. The band consists of Bryan - vocals, guitars; Ron - drums; Greg - bass; Kevin - guitar. This interview was done outside of Gilman St. by Lance, Kamala, and Karin...

MRR: First of all, for a band as catchy, upbeat, and fun as you are, why do you live in Southern California (laughter), and how can you stand it?

Kevin: Well, we're used to it. We all grew up there...for better or for worse.

Bryan: It's like being born a Hari Krishna. You just don't know any other way. I don't know. Southern California is so spread out that you don't have a lot of contact. It's not like a real community like it is up here. We just try to avoid everybody. (laughter)

MRR: I heard that the nickname for Garden Grove is Garbage Grove.

All: (groaning) Yeah.

Kevin: That's a cute one.

MRR: Everyone talks about how shows are hard to get. When you do have them, they're these big violent things. How do you put up with that?

Kevin: Actually, we're starting to get more shows now. We have a show lined up every weekend for the next four weeks. There hasn't been too much violence lately. Except for Rico beating up some guy with a spray can at the Anti Club. Why do we live in Southern California? (laughter)

MRR: What do people think of you when you play there? Are people receptive to the stuff you do? You've been around for a few years now. Do you feel like you're making progress?

Kevin: More people have seen us up here because we've gotten on some really good shows. Down there, we just haven't been that fortunate. The way shows are promoted there are mostly through flyers and record stores. And like Bryan said, everything is so spread out that you don't get to a real lot of people.

Greg: It's not like word of mouth or anything.

MRR: Are you able to avoid this "pay to play" thing?

Kevin: Yeah, we have been. We had to do it once.

Bryan: Yeah, we did it once because we thought it would be worth it. It was with Dr. Know on New Year's Eve. There were 20 people there and they were all people on the guestlist. (laughter) We learned out lesson.

Greg: A few people paid. But they were charging like $14 or something.

MRR: Was that at the Balboa?

All: Yeah.

Kevin: It was supposed to be some New Year's Eve bash. It was kinda fun actually because we got to run around the back in the dressing rooms. It's kind of like a dungeon in the back of this old theater. As for playing, we played great. It was probably the best show we ever did. But there were just 14 people there.

MRR: Have you played any big shows? Have you played at Fender's or anything?

Ron: Fender's doesn't really have shows anymore.

Bryan: They still have shows in the back in the smaller room.

Greg: We played the TSOL reunion show.

MRR: How did you go over at that?

Bryan: It was alright but we had to open up. There weren't even as many people as there were here. We had to play so early.

Kevin: Maybe close to it. It was a bigger place. It's funny we get compared to old TSOL so much. Then we do this big reunion show and we get to open up for them. (laughter -- suddenly, a car with no muffler goes roaring by.)

Kevin: Sorry, it must have been the burritos. (laughter)

MRR: We'll come back to the TSOL influence later.

Kevin: Uh oh.

MRR: Have you ever thought about moving? We've adopted you anyway. It seems like people are more receptive to the stuff you're doing up here.

Kevin: Shit, we're so used to driving up here whenever we need to or want to.

Bryan: I like Southern California actually.

Ron: You get used to it.

Bryan: We have things going on down there. With school. He's (Kevin) got a family.

Kevin: I've got a child so I don't want to leave.

Bryan: We're all going to school.

MRR: Since you brought it up, a lot of people do compare you to old TSOL. Do you think that's a strong influence?

Bryan: Well, it was an influence a long time ago. I don't really see it anymore. A lot of people don't. The guy who produced our record, Thom Wilson, produced TSOL. He said he noticed certain things. He said there we things like certain guitar parts and certain vocal parts. I don't know. I think Kamala had a good anology. She said that people kind of get it in their head. Then they start to listen for it.

MRR: Then what bands would you compare yourselves to? As far as what you do...

Bryan: I like Big Drill Car a lot. I think that what they're doing is really neat.

Kevin: I don't think that we sound like them.

Bryan: No, no.

Kevin: I like them, too.

Bryan: They're more light-hearted punk rock type of thing. It's a little more poppy.

Kevin: I guess we are too. But I think we're pretty different from them.

Bryan: But, that kind of show is really fun to play at. A really good crowd goes to those kinds of shows.

MRR: Are those the bands that you play around a lot with? What bands do you feel you've connected with?

Kevin: (laughs) We haven't developed any really strong bonds with any bands.

Bryan: We talk to Big Drill Car a lot. We used to hang of hang around 647F. I don't know if you remember them. But they broke up. That's about it.

MRR: That's amazing. It seems like anytime I was in a band, we made friends with other bands.

Bryan: People aren't playing the stuff we play, because either they're straight-edge...

MRR: But around here, Green Day and Filth can have a band. It has nothing to with the sound. Just the community. On your, Neurosis is meeting up with all these bands like Green Day and Filth. It just seems weird that you folks wouldn't develop any ties with any other bands.

Kevin: We did with Distant Silence when we were on tour. (laughter) Also Dead Silence.

MRR: They were great.

Kevin: Yeah, they were.

Ron: We don't play enough with the same bands to do that.

Bryan: There are so many segregated sounds that those are the bands that justhang around together. Either the speed metal types...

MRR: Do you think in Southern California it's a lot more rigid as far as people following around just one type of band? Because over here, it seems that everyone that lives in the East Bay hangs out together.

Kevin: Yeah, I think that there are a lot of factors that come into play, like Bryan said. You have the straight-edge. You have the kind of experimental punk rock. Then you have the kind of Hollywood punk rock thing like Tender Fury. Bands that I think have a flashy image.

MRR: Well, a Hollywood type image...

Bryan: Ron got to play with them. Ron got to be their drummer. He sat in for Tony Sales.

Ron: No, it was Hunt Sales.

Kevin: That's right. He was Hunt Sales for five minutes.

MRR: How did it feel? (laughter)

Ron: Oh, it was pretty intimidating.

Bryan: It was Ron's fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol talked about.

Kevin: Well, it was five and a half of them. (laughter)

Ron: I didn't even know what they said until the record came out.

MRR: (to Bryan) Do you write most of the lyrics?

Bryan: Pretty much most of them.

MRR: What inspires you to write your lyrics? It seems like you have two types. There are the socio-political lyrics. Then there are the, well, horror lyrics that are good too.

Bryan: Over a matter of time you have these weird ideas and you make a song. When it comes to making a record, you're lumping all these things together and it just kind of ended up that way.

Kevin: "Beheaded" was meant to be comical. Almost kind of silly. But I don't think that the music helps it. The music is kind of dark and kind of serious.

Bryan: We knew, unfortunately, that people were gonna take the things seriously, the things we said on the album. Like "Kill the President."

Kevin: When we said, "Kill the President," we don't want anyone to go out with a gun and kill the guy. I don't like him. I don't want to say anything too incriminating. The song is more about democracy.

Bryan: Oh, that's good. Tell the thousands of readers you don't like the president when you've already got a song called "Kill the President." (laughter)

Kevin: It's just a shock line.

Bryan: The Dead Kennedys did a lot of that. They didn't neccessarily mean that line, "I kill children." The idea is to get you to look a little into what the songs are saying.

MRR: Still, some of your lyrics certainly have .. not just horror, but a fantasy side to them. Telling a story and not just telling you something. What influences that? "Beheaded" was written by your old drummer, wasn't it?

Kevin: Yeah, he wrote it with Bryan. He was a lunatic. He was really crazy. In a good way. I loved his insanity. He was really funny. He would get these ideas and just be like, "Yeah, yeah! Wrap that head in a burlap sack!" He would get into that. It was funny.

MRR: Are you fols comfortable with Bryan doing a lot of this? Would you say that he's the spokesperson for the band?

Bryan: Well, they still have veto power. And they use it.

MRR: It seems like Bryan is the president. Ron is the senate. Greg is the house.

Kevin: And I'm the janitor. (laughter)

MRR: It doesn't seem like you want to write things. Or you just feel very self-conscious about it.

Kevin: Well, you know how it is. It's frustrating. You have an idea and you just can't get it out. You know you can do it. But then when you go and try and do it ... I guess I'm wimping out when I don't keep trying to do it. I'd like to write and I get frustrated and I just throw it away. Scrap everything. I could stick with it and if I'm ever going to do it that's what I'm going to have to do.

MRR: How important are the lyrics to the band? There are a lot of bands that feel music can only affect so many people, so the attitude or whatever is more important. The music is more important.

Bryan: I think the music is more important. That's (lyrics) not the first thing that comes across. They just want to hear the music. If they like it, maybe they'll get into it.

MRR: How does the music come together? Does one person bring in the songs?

Kevin: That would be Bryan. (laughter)

Bryan: Everyone kinda chips in and forms it together once we get into practice.

MRR: Do you think everyone has a lot of input as far as how the songs turn out?

Kevin: I think so. I think that's true for any band. Bryan will show us what he has in mind for a song and we pretty much stick with that most of the time. But we add our own things. We'll speed it up or slow it down. We all come together on it. It's majority rule. If we don't like it, we don't play it. We vote on what songs we're going to play. How we're going to do them.

Bryan: Yeah, like "A Thousand Days." They made me change "A Thousand Days." They thought it was stupid.

Greg: It was! (laughter)

Bryan: Yeah, it was...

MRR: What happened with your first 7"? Did you do it yourself? I see it floating around every so often...

Bryan: We did it completely ourselves. We had been around for a while and didn't know what to do.

MRR: How long have you been around for now?

Bryan: It's over five years now. So we just did it ourselves. We had no idea on how to do it. We didn't do a very good job on getting it out. (laughs)

Kevin: We ended up giving them all away. Sending them to radio stations.

Bryan: We had a tough time getting it to distributors. Nobody wanted 7"s back then. We still had some 45's up until about six months ago. We just couldn't get rid of them.

MRR: How many did you do?

Bryan: A thousand. (laughter)

MRR: How did you hook up with Nemesis?

Bryan: The guy who was doing our record kinda helps Nemesis out. We met him through Big Drill Car. Frank from Nemesis heard about us through the guy that was doing our record. He just became interested when he heard about it and put us on. The guy who does Nemesis also does a lot of other stuff. He put out the first Uniform Choice record. He put out Bad Yodellers and some other stuff. We were just going to go independent but we got on Nemesis.

MRR: That's good. They seem like they have their shit together. Are you going to stick with them? Do you know what you're doing next?

Bryan: Yeah, we need to write some new songs.

Kevin: The thing I like about this deal with Nemesis is that we got to go into the studio. We put up the money and got Thom to come in and do all this. We liked him being there. He pointed out all this stuff that we didn't see in ourselves. We had total control.

Bryan: Actually, Nemesis didn't come 'til afterwards. They were pretty much, "Do whatever you want." Which was great.

Kevin: Yeah, so we gave it to him and he liked it. He did, didn't he? (laughter) We felt good about that. Being able to do our own thing and then give it to them and have them appreciate it.

Bryan: Frank has been really helpful to us. He got us a couple of really good shows. He's been pushing things. He keeps the records up on the wall. He's pushing to get the cassettes out and everything.

MRR: Are you happy with the record and the way it turned out? I thought it was great.

Bryan: Yeah, no one's ever completely happy.

Kevin: Yeah, there are things we would do a little different now. Over all it came out pretty good.

Bryan: Thanks to Thom.

MRR: Yeah, I thought it was a really great record.

Greg: Thanks.

MRR: What are you going to do next? Are you going to put out another album?

Bryan: Eventually. We don't have any real immediate plans except to go on tour.

MRR: Is there anything else you want to say that got missed?

Kevin: We'd like to thank MRR for all the support, the good reviews.

MRR: Maximum just facilitates. It facilitates people that are doing stuff and good bands that are doing things.

From Maximum Rock'N'Roll - October 1990

Note: Bryan is Dexter, Kevin is Noodles, Greg is Greg K and Ron is Ron Welty