No Age
The Singing Lamb: You guys are here for North By Northeast. Is this your first time in Toronto?
Randy Randall: No it is not. This is our third time.
When was the most recent?
Dean Spunt: Last summer, we played here with Abe Vigoda and Mika Miko.
Randy: And then the winter before that.
The Smell has gotten a lot of press over the past few years and you guys are probably sick to the death of answering questions about it…
Randy: No way.
Not only for the fact that its produced a great number of bands that have gone onto national success, but for being one of the few all-ages art/performance spaces in LA. Would you agree that you’ve sort of stepped into the de facto role as spokespeople for that scene and how does that make you feel?
Randy: I think we never wanted to be spokespeople. I think it just got to be where we were really inspired by a venue like The Smell, and its really where we learned to be a band. Kind of in the most minimal sense that you don’t need a lot of extra stuff – not even a stage – just a PA , an area where you can make music. That’s all you really need for a venue. We became a band just applying that rule. We don’t really have the kind of stuff that comes with being a band or some kind of fake rock star. It was always about keeping things simple and we learned that from The Smell. Just how to get by on the minimum, because you don’t need that stuff.
Dean: Keep it real.
Randy: We just got to talking about that and people kind of picked up on it and I’m happy to talk about The Smell because I think its a cool idea and I wish there were more venues in the world like that.
I read somewhere that you guys partnered with the All-Ages Movement Project.
Randy: We’ve been talking with them for awhile. They’re a really cool group of people who are really trying to spread the word and get the information about all-age spaces out there, they have a directory. If you want to play a show in Montana you can go on there and find the all-ages space in Montana and contact them through the site, get their email. I think the idea of information, what’s great about the All-Ages Movement Project, with all the information out there, its nice to have someone organize it and put it in one one simple, easy-to-use website.
Do you guys like playing to an all-ages crowd better? Do you think the kids make it a better show or is it about making accessible for everybody?
Randy: I think that the fact that you could play a show and have an age restriction is an annoying aspect of it, its always kind of a bummer. I mean, what’s the point, why don’t you just have people that don’t wear red or something? So stupid.
You don’t think it should be restricted to one age group?
Randy: Well no, the reason is that kids can’t legally buy alcohol, so clubs can’t make money and that’s why they don’t want them in there, and that’s stupid.
Dean: Its not our job to sell alcohol.
Randy: We just want to play music to the people that want to come see us. Whether they want to get drunk or do whatever they want to do, those are their choices, but I don’t want to keep people out of there because the law says they can’t be around alcohol. That seems arbitrary, abstract, like ‘who cares?’.
Dean: And especially the fact that if you’re in a bar anywhere, the kids can’t even buy alcohol. Its not like anyone is going to sell them alcohol.
Since The Smell has gotten a bit of press, have you noticed any positive trends as far as all-ages venues in the rest of the country?
Dean: Not enough.
Randy: I think its one of those things, I don’t think you can run The Smell or a venue like that, for the glory of it. It’s a pretty dirty, thankless job, but I think it has to be for personal reasons. You can’t do it for the attention or because you think its going to be cool. Nine times out of ten, its not cool. It’s going to be someone doing a show in their basement or a warehouse that they pay very low rent on it, that they try to keep the lights on through donations at the door for the bands. So its not a very glamourous job and I think despite however many people know about The Smell, you can tell a million people and there’ll still be the same couple hundred people that want to show up there because its not for everybody. So I don’t feel bad talking about it all the time because if it became more accepted in the mainstream, if you are over 21, you shouldn’t feel weird going to shows where 16 year olds are. Its not something you see all the time but I’ve heard people say, “Oh that’s only where kids go, that’s a kids show.” That’s like fuck you man, that’s bullshit. If you want to go see that band, why are you letting the fact that there is someone younger than you there turn you off going? That’s kind of a reverse ageism. The kids don’t want to go where the old people are, and the old people don’t want to go where the kids are.
Dean: That’s lame.
Randy: Yeah, that’s bullshit. I think you really have to get out of your comfort zone and if more people can consider the idea, “Oh right, there’s a different way of seeing a show and why am I only going to bars. Why am I getting drunk every night at bars and seeing rock shows, what do I like better, the drinking or the rock show?” If you can break out of that mold in your head and just enjoy the experience of going to see a show. And bars kind of suck sometimes because they charge way too much for beers. I mean, does paying six bucks for a beer really make it that much better?
Dean: And then you have to pay to get into the venue.
Randy: So I really think the bar, 21 plus situation, or any other age-restriction thing, is about money-making. You are being treated like a commodity and not even as an audience member. All-ages spaces respect the audience and the bands that play there, they aren’t trying to gouge them and take every penny out of their pocket.
Dean: Also though, on the flip side, there’s some really lame all-ages venues too. We’re playing a bar tonight, but The Smell is in the middle of that world and its just great.
You guys list a lot of late-Eighties/early-Nineties punk bands like Superchunk, Husker Du, and of course, Nirvana, as influences. Are their any particular aspects of those bands that you incorporate in your own sound?
Dean: Um, loud. Those bands are all pretty loud.
Randy: I think just the energy too, I think there’s a lot of excitement and energy in their live shows. Definitely a band like Husker Du, they played fast and not take a lot of breaks in-between songs. I think there is a certain physicality to being at a live concert. Cause you’re in a room with a bunch of people, people are going to bump into you, but your also going to hear music played louder than you could hear at home. For me, that’s the reason I shell out the cash to see a band live. I want to see them on the stage, but I also want to hear them the way they want to be heard, and I want to be there with people around me. I could listen to records at home, quietly and by myself. I want to be in a social place where I want people to move around, I want it to be loud.
You’ve done a few remixes lately for the likes of Bloc Party and two Canadian bands, Holy Fuck and Fucked Up. I was curious about that.
Randy: We love Canada.
Dean: Good people. And they both have the word “fuck” in their names.
Dean: Canadians like to fuck. They can get away with it. [laughs]
Was that the draw for you guys?
Randy: [laughs] We were hoping to remix Canada, just the country.
A whole concept album or something?
Randy: We’d start with the vocals of Edmonton [laughs]…No, Fucked Up are our friends and we played with them a number of times and they asked us to do something. Holy Fuck was the first one – it was just a weird, random MySpace request, like “Hey, do you want to remix a song?” I don’t if it was even them, maybe it was their label. Their British label wanted us to do it. I’ve never done this before, and they were like “Oh, just give it a shot!”. So that was the first one and I realized how much fun it was. We record a lot of the stuff ourselves and we are really part of the whole process, but when we mix our records, that’s one of the funnest parts about making the records. All the tracking and writing was cool, but when we really got in there to mix, that’s where the artistry was in how to mix. It was like, “Oh cool, I get to mix something without having to record it.” It was a fun thing to do.
So could we possibly see a No Age remix album in the future?
Randy: I don’t know necessarily, if there were to be one…just because we’re children of the 90s, and remixes used to be like the “Funky Dance Slide Mix”. People used to make remixes to make them more dance-friendly and I don’t think the ones we have done so far have been in any way more dance-y, if anything they’ve been more noise.
Dean: The songs are already kind of dance-y that they’ve sent us, all of the songs, except for the Fucked Up one. The other ones I think they were trying to make them less dance-y or just trying to make them sound like something we’d do.
Those remixes certainly don’t seem like the type you’d throw on at a club or anything.
Dean: And nothing against that.
Randy: No, I like to play records. But I feel like the idea of a remix, maybe we just have some negative connotations with it, but I think of more of it like a sound collage or a rearrangement.
Dean: You are literally re-mixing the song. Taking what we think is interesting, instead of being like, “Hey what if you threw in a [makes beatboxing sounds].”
Randy: You don’t need the big drum beats. So I think if in the future if we were to ask some friends, it’d be more like less remixing, but as a re-imagining, or a rearranging. Having someone like Infinite Body, people who are more sound-experimental. I don’t think Justice is going to remix a No Age song in the future.
No?
Randy: I hope.
Dean: That’d be cool.
Randy: I feel like that could be fine because I’d like to see what their interpretation of the mix would be.
I’m guessing Justice might be a little strapped for cash these days, what with remixing that new U2 song and all.
Dean: They probably get so much money for that.
Randy: Its probably like the idea of “Hey we’re U2, here’s a truckload of money and we’re going to back it up to your house.”
Dean: I mean Justice knows how to make money.
Let’s get some cred with the hipsters.
Dean: Well I think Justice is a million times better than U2.
I agree.
Randy: So that takes U2 maybe up a notch.
Speaking of collaborations, something that people might not know, is that you were nominated for a Grammy Award this year. Tell me the artwork for Nouns (the album was nominated for Best Packaging).
Randy: We did it with our friend Brian Roettinger, he’s a designer and an old friend of ours. Its something we worked on, we made it while we were on tour. We conceived the booklet and the images for the cover basically while we were on the road touring with Liars.
Dean: We couldn’t have got it done if we weren’t every night in the hotel room. If we were home, it wouldn’t have turned out like it did. And it looks awesome.
You guys seem like a band that has always placed an emphasis on your aesthetic. I know that you guys partnered with the skateboard company Altamont. How did that come about?
Randy: We’ve know the people from there for awhile, it just kind of made sense. They were doing the shoe company Emerica and they started the clothing company, and it all kind of happened at the same time. I think that aesthetic and the visual aesthetic are just as important as the musical aspect, sometimes more important. I feel like if you package something – and I feel like this works in terms of selling anything, in most aspects of things like that – if it looks like this and smells like this, its easy to get into mind games with design.
I’m assuming that you guys are the type of band that places an importance on the tangible product, the CD, the t-shirt, etc.
Randy: Digital downloading is awesome and people should listen to as many bands as they want whether they pay for it or not, just the fact that you’re exploring and finding new bands is really what matters and if you do dig it, chances are you are going to see them live and maybe you will buy a record. So I don’t really care about that stuff, but I feel that a download doesn’t have much value, why would someone want to pay for that?
You can’t hold it.
Randy: So for us, designing these cool packages, this physical object, that’s what I want to buy.
Dean: I even feel that CD versus vinyl…obviously I think vinyl is cooler, but when you compare vinyl to MP3, there’s not really any comparison. I think CDs still sound better than MP3s. More people still have CD players or computers than they have record players.
Randy: So I think if you have a vinyl with a free MP3 download you can listen to it in your car and it’ll sound like shit and you go home and put the needle on and look at what we intended it to be as a package with art.
On your MySpace, I noticed at the top it said “No 8″ and I was wondering if that was a reference to the Prop 8 in California.
Dean: Yeah.
Could you explain what Prop 8 is because I think its something most Canadians, much less university students, don’t know about and your views on the issue.
Dean: Yeah. Prop 8 is a proposition that isn’t allowing people to be married to who they want to be married to.
Randy: Last November, there was a ballot measure in the California state legislature that banned gay marriage because it was legal through a loophole in the court system…
Dean: For like six months.
Randy: Gay marriage was legal in California and then there was a proposition put onto the ballot called Prop 8 that the majority of people came out and voted for and voided all the same sex marriages in California which I think is completely…
Dean: Disgusting.
Randy: Yeah, it was really horrible, especially when to be from California where we think we’re so progressive.
How come there are still so many people for it, is it just decades of prejudice like that?
Dean: California’s a huge state and I think there are some very progressive areas around the major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, maybe even Sacramento.
Randy: Not everyone votes.
Dean: A lot of people don’t vote and also there’s a vast majority of the state that aren’t really…you go forty minutes outside of LA and you’re in very suburban, conservative neighborhoods and cities that more closely reflected to what you see.
Randy: The progressives are kind of in these urban centers and outside of that its like the rest of America. I think its obviously a very debatable issue, and I think just the more awareness, and the more debate is raised…I imagine not this year, but the next, it’ll go up again.
Dean: Its not going to last long.
It seems like something that the tide is beginning to finally turn and its only a matter of time.
Randy: I think so.
Dean: In so many other states passed it like Connecticut, Iowa passed it. We were in Iowa the day after it was passed just playing shows and it was just so embarrassing like “way to go California”. The most mid-Western, the most stereotypical rural American state.
Randy: I don’t think its a progressive issue, its a homophobic issue. I don’t think its progressive to think all men are created equal and we all have inalienable rights, if anything, these are very old-school way of thinking.
Dean: Worrying about that are children or going to be gay or something.
Randy: Even being framed in the way it is, like “Oh it’s so progressive for you to acknowledge human rights” Its like, no its not. Guantanamo Bay, human torture, was never okay or progressing. If anything, we’re trying to come out of the Dark Ages.
Dean: Its like “Hey, we don’t think Korean people should get married anymore and people would be like ‘You’re right man, Korean people shouldn’t get married,” and its like who the fuck are you to say that someone can’t do something?
Randy: You can’t murder someone, there’s a lot of things that you can’t do. But you should choose who you want to be married to.
Dean: We feel strongly about it and I feel its one of the most horrific things going on in the States today.
Do you think that a band has so much more of an opportunity to speak up on an issue like this, as opposed to, say a political issue?
Randy: I don’t think that being in a band you have any more right to speak out politically than anyone else does. I don’t feel like I have a burden to speak out politically. I think that if we weren’t in a band, if we were working in record stores, if we were bike messengers, I think everyone has the right and should feel comfortable speaking their political beliefs, no matter what their jobs are. We happen to be musicians, but before we were musicians or in a band that anyone knew, we still were just as vocal, if not more vocal…
Dean: Almost more.
Randy: I think that everyone has a right to do that whether you’re a mom, a stay-at-home mom, you should talk to everyone that you want to. Everyone has the right to speak their mind, you shouldn’t feel like you should be silenced because “Oh, you’re just a musician, what do you know?” Its like “Well fuck you, you’re a reporter, what do you know?” We all want the same things, we all have access to the same information. I’m not a politician, I’m not running for office, but I do vote and I’m asked to vote. So if I’m asked to vote on something…
Dean: Like if gay people have the right to get married.
Randy: If I have the right to vote just as much as you do, why can’t we both speak at this level? I think the idea of people saying, “Oh, bands don’t know anything, they’re all just drug addicts playing loud music, they’re not part of society and how would they understand what’s going on”, that’s just flat out not true. I think everyone has a right to speak out and I think if we get the opportunity, when we’re asked a question in an interview, we’re going to respond.
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For more No Age,
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/nonoage
Note: Recently the band announced that they’ll be releasing a new four-song EP titled Losing Feeling, which will be out on October 6th via Sub Pop. This will be available as 12″ record only, with a digital download. Track-listing below, courtesy of Exclaim!:
Losing Feeling:
1. “Losing Feeling”
2. “Genie”
3. “Aim at the Airport”
4. “You’re a Target”
