issue #02 pdf - Razorcake

Would that be the coda for The Crowd?
[laugher]
Decker: That sums it up pretty accurately.
Kaa: It's certainly frustrating when Green
Day and Offspring - both "Dookie" and
"Smash" went off in '94 or '95 - when they
were both selling a lot, their music is so
derivative of our style. Not at all are they
copping our style, but it's right up our pipe.
Straight-up pop punk music. Power guitars.
Short songs. Poppy.
Dennis: Good choruses.
Kaa: Melodies that stick in your head. A
little bit of guitar solos. You begin to think,
where's trickle down for The Crowd? I see
Social Distortion being so successful, that
they made it, and we missed by an inch.
There's two little holes to shoot in and we
missed both and they got in and how that
happens you just never
know.
Todd: Can you think of
any mitigating factors
that have changed over
time? Now you have
children and better jobs.
Kaa: I think we're all
realists in the sense that
we don't have this false
illusion that "This single's
gonna be the one."
[laughter]
Dennis: It used to be,
twenty years ago, every
time I went into the studio,
I'd go, "Fuck, I'm going to be famous,"
since I heard the first take. "We're there,
right?" Now, it's what's going to happen is
going to happen.
Dennis: We're having a good time.
Kaa: I feel that way. It's disappointing to
have known that you had that style of music
when there wasn't an audience for it, and by
the time there's an audience for it, we're
well past the opportunity stage of our
career. But I think our fault was we didn't
tour when we were kids and we should
have.
Decker: That said, I think this record will
be our best one ever. The songs that we
wrote for this record are fucking great, I
think. I love them.
Dennis: I think this is a better band than
we've ever had before. Cory and Boz are so
solid.
Kaa: Literally, Cory's parents' house is a
mile from my parents' house. Boz is a few
miles away. We all went to Edison high
school. They understand exactly where
we're trying to be. It's easy for them to lock
into that mold and the music we're playing.
They grew up in the vacuum of the Crowd.
They've been reared on the SoCal pop punk
stuff. Cory was in the second version of
China White. He was also in The Blades in
the old days. Boz toured with Youth
Brigade in 1984. He had his own bands,
The Relics and Curb. They've been active
guys.
Dennis: He's playing with
38
someone else too, now.
Kaa: He's in a band called The Glory
Holes.
Todd: Is it true that you guys smoked hash
with Jane Wiedlin and Belinda Carslile?
Dennis: I believe so.
Kaa: [Lowly, so his lovely wife and child
don't hear.] It was backstage at a place
called The Woodsound. The bill was
Flyboys, Crowd and GoGo's at this little
place in Monrovia. It was certainly being
passed around and everyone was there.
And, basically, what I saw in "Behind the
Music" with the GoGo's, that ain't nothing.
[laughter]
Todd: Did you guys really teach Ron
Emory (of TSOL) to play guitar?
Kaa: I showed Ron Emory how to tune his
guitar 'cause he had this crappy Mosrite.
Mosrite had a really cool surf guitar but it
wouldn't stay in tune worth a
damn.
Todd: Have you guys ever
done a Bar Mitzvah?
Dennis: No, but we'd like to.
Todd: Do you ever feel like
you're playing to an audience
that are your children's peers?
Kaa: I'm running into that all
the time. There's a whole new
generation of people who are
into music right now who are
in their twenties who are...
Decker: Who weren't born
when we started.
Kaa: That's why we're not
trying to live on nostalgia. All people know
about is now. Duane Peters is contemporary.
He's forty. Mike Ness is contemporary.
Decker: If he isn't forty, he looks sixty.
Kaa: All blues and rock players are contemporary
and they're older, so I guess
there's no age where we say, "You know
what? Because I turned forty this year, I
must turn in my punk rock badge."
Todd: Like "Logan's Run." Just get sucked
up through a big tube when you get too old.
Sean: What you were saying before with
younger bands, it reminded me of your
song, "Run for the Money" and I was thinking,
what bands did you kick the door wide
open for that you wish you could have
kicked it right shut before they got in?
Dennis: That's pretty harsh.
Kaa: The band I think about in that era
when I was writing that song was
Guttermouth. It's not so much them specifically
- I have no beef with them. Mark, the
singer, is a nice guy. But it was seeing
bands really reaping the benefits of long ago
hard work. All of a sudden, there's a builtin,
twenty-year generation raised on punk in
Southern California. The demographic was
right there for bands like Pennywise to pick
it up and score with, and there's been good
bands - Pennywise being one of those in the
sense that they're winning. Then there's
bands that are less than that, that you see the
same thing. For me, it was more not directed
at one band, but more like, we smashed
through the door and just fell to the side.
Dennis: And got trampled.
Kaa: Everyone poured through before we
had a chance to get back up again. You see
that in all styles of music. When Pearl Jam
started to get big, all of a sudden you had
Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, Creed - all of
the followers sell millions of more albums
because they take the identifiable sound.
What's going to be the next one? Who
knows. Every generation needs their own
rebellious music for their parents to hate,
whether it be Elvis Presley, The Crowd, or
Eminem. There will be someone new to
hate next year. I saw Marilyn Manson on
TV and he seems pathetic...
Dennis: "Nobody hates me. I'm acceptable."
Kaa: He doesn't even shock people...
Sean: Let me ask the opposite side of that
question. What band do you think that
you're really glad that you kicked the door
open for them, who took your sound and
really moved it in new ways that you're
happy about?
Kaa: I think bands like TSOL and The
Adolescents...
Dennis: They were the first ones behind us
after the door opened and we fell down.
Kaa: I think they were able to say, "We're
in the same genre in the sense of pop, powerful
punk," 'cause there's definitely pop in
both of their music to a certain degree, and
quickly made it their own styles. The
Adolescents with the double guitar attack,
the really good vocals, and TSOL, more of
the darker hue, heavier, kind of rock. Really
the demonic, in the sense that it came from
their own personal demons. Their own personal
haunts came through in their music.
They both directly and indirectly, got it.
Decker: Put the Offspring in there, too.
Kaa: Yeah, but they're like a much more
distant relative.
Dennis: They came through the same door
about the time we were starting to get back
up. And at that point, they had the Titan
missile.
Kaa: When we started playing again in '87
and '88, hard rock, long-hair music was
popular. It was funny, when punk started to
happen four or five years after that again,
people would come and see us again and
think, "Oh, The Crowd, they must have
heard punk's happening and jumped back
on." It's like, "No, we jumped back on when
Bon Jovi and Guns and Roses were popular."
Again, our timing. It wasn't like there's
a great demographic for us. No one was
thinking that far in the future back then. It
was just like, "If we could just play a house
party, that would be great." Then it was, "If
I could ever play the Whisky A Go Go,
God, that's all I want. I'll never ask for any
more. Just one shot at the Whisky," because
that's where you saw you heroes. That's
where The Jam, X, or The Weirdos would
play. "If I could be like them, I'd be..." Then
two years later, we were playing at The
Whisky with The Weirdos. It was just such
like, a "Wow, it couldn't have been any better."
Dennis: "We made it."