They're Proud Of New Offspring

Band's fourth album, Ixnay On The Hombre, full of positive images

Don't write off The Offspring yet.

The Huntington Beach, Ca., neopunkers' current album, Ixnay On The Hombre, has racked up only a fraction of the sales reached by their 1994 indie smash, Smash.

Smash sold an unprecendented 8.5 million copies. But Offspring frontman Dexter Holland isn't shedding any tears over the two million Ixnays that have sailed out of record stores around the globe since the album's February release.

"I suppose we have the best of both worlds," Holland is saying earlier this week from a tour stop in Quebec City. The Offspring play the Warehouse tonight.

"We've been lucky in that people like MTV and radio have supported us and brought us to a wider audience. At the same time, we were able to play (last Sunday's) Warped Tour in Montreal, which was a very underground kind of tour with bands like Pennywise, who are our friends and represent the kind of scene we came from."

Not bad, given that The Offsprings' recent deal with Columbia records -- after 10 years of independence -- should have signalled the end of the band's beloved grass-roots autonomy. That is, if you believe the many indier-than-thou purists who populate the punk rock world.

Holland contends that the jump to the majors actually liberated The Offspring from their souring relationship with Californian indie label Epitaph, where they made up nearly 90% of the profits. He declines to comment any further on the matter.

Holland has also had it with another topic: The much-fabled creative pressure of following up Smash.

"Almost every interview I do they ask about the pressure," he says. "I don't know why it's so interesting to people. The natural answer is yes. There is pressure, especially when you've got something going and you want to continue it as much as you can. But you can't do anything about it, except go in and do the best you can. That's what happened. We basically submerged ourself in the studio, didn't see the light of day for a few months, and that was that."

He adds with a laugh: "We never expected anything to happen in the first place, so it's all gravy.

"We used to think, 'Wow, maybe we could get big someday like The Adolescents or even Social Distortion.' To us, that was huge."

Three years after his band's surprise rise to fame, Holland is still stunned by some of the controversy an outspoken punk band can accidentally generate.

The 31-year-old, who is on leave from his graduate studies in molecular biology at USC, fondly recalls receiving in the mail a copy of Smash -- broken in four pieces -- from a parent who missed the point of a song, Bad Habit, which condemned highway violence.

Likewise, Ixnay On The Hombre is full of positive messages that are bound to be misunderstood because they're coded in Holland's tongue-in-cheek humor.

"Us and Marilyn Manson, huh?" Holland jokes. "It's kind of like the joke's on them if they don't get it. You can't just come out and spoon feed people and say, 'Drugs are bad. Go to school.' That would be ridiculous. It's got to incorporate sarcasm or black humor. What we're doing really isn't that obscure. Our lyrics are fairly straightforward. But misconception is the problem with music or literature or anything that requires interpretation.

"It's been so fashionable lately to write songs about how relationships suck and what a creep you are. I've done that too. But I thought it would be interesting to write songs that were about how rad things are."

By Kieran Grant, from Toronto Sun - July 23, 1997