The day the ShredyrFace tour begins, we thought we’d post a rather revealing and entirely engrossing interview with No Age as conducted by Samuel Strang.
A flavour of enjoyable things to come, no doubt.
NO AGE INTERVIEW (08/08) [SS]
Just over a year after interviewing Randy Randall and Dean Spunt after visiting the UK to perform for the first time since the curtains closed on their days as previous brutish trio Wives at the tail-end of 2005 and things have changed somewhat for the Los Angeles pair. That night providing a rather modest showcase supporting Death Sentence: Panda!, this time round we meet the night after No Age perform their headline show at the Scala in London. Not bad progress for two idle oiks. After the release of Weirdo Rippers, compiling the outfit’s prior EP releases, Nouns has marked itself as one of the vital releases of the year as FM stadium riffs are shackled on to visceral drone. Sat on a bench outside Rough Trade East, we spoke about sex with Bob Mould, talking hardcore with Pete Wentz and Shred Yr Face.
So, you’re touring back here soon with Los Campesinos! and Times New Viking. How’s that coming about?
DS: We’re bro’s man. The real bro’s. We’ve still got to get them to agree to our name for the tour because Los Campesinos!’s name was pretty wacky.
RR: Dodgy.
I can imagine some of the pitches.
RR: Very nice guys, mind.
It’s been a while so thought we’d take a look back over the last year. Presumably it’s been a bit of a whirlwind one?
DS: It’s been almost a year exactly since the whirlwind started up.
Have there been any particular stand out moments that you’ve just sat back and really had to take stock of what’s going on?
DS: Being in The New Yorker.
RR: The other day at Oya in Oslo, Norway, I was somehow able to talk to Thurston [Moore], Kim [Gordon] and Lee [Ranaldo] from Sonic Youth and stood there…
DS: …and he’s on first name terms…
RR: …and didn’t look too stupid. There was basic contact when I’d met Thurston before but it was in a very fanboy way. But, when I went over then… I have to say that night I could have died and my life would have been complete.
Have you taken it in your strides meeting people like Thurston?
DS: I met Bob Mould in Barcelona and I almost shit my pants.
RR: We’re not cool at all.
DS: Only because I saw him play… I hurt my leg really bad at Primavera in Barcelona and was using a cane and was walking round the festival crippled. We were in the van and I thought “that sounds like a Hüsker Dü song. Oh shit, Bob Mould’s on…”
RR: I’d done a runner to fetch him…
DS: …and I managed to hobble along and Jennifer from Mika Miko helped drag me along and he ended up playing six Hüsker Dü songs. He used to never play them but said how the kids are at the festival and they want to hear that shit. Anyway, we were at the band eating area and I saw him and thought I had to meet him so went up and said “hey man, I’m Dean. My name’s Dean” and he was just like “cool man”. Then I didn’t know what else to say other than “I’m a huge fan”. I was just walking away and I just blurted out “I’m in the band No Age” like some stupid idiot and he was like “oh my god, you’re from No Age, I fucking love you guys” and I was just like “Jesus Christ” and that’s when I shit myself.
RR: And Jennfier said you could have sex with him if you wanted. It’s a deal.
DS: My BB. Bobo.
RR: Everyone gets one famous person they can have sex with.
DS: Not necessarily my first choice. I keep having to clear that up.
From when you first came over and presumably were still working…
RR: …I had to take sick leave.
…how strange was it making that transition from being a couple of schmucks making music casually…
RR: We’re still a couple of schmucks. To be honest we’ve been so busy we haven’t had the chance to really think about it. I’m sure at some point we’ll actually get the chance to sit down and look back and think how hectic it all was. I paid my car insurance for the whole year. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done because always on tour I was always having to electronically see off my bill, so to see them off in one go I can travel easier now.
How has it been juggling duties? Particularly with the running of PPM?
DS: It’s gotten a lot easier. I’m working with Touch & Go now, the distributor, and hired my friend Josh Tailor to sort of run things and help me run things. It’s actually far more professional than it was when I was sitting in garage freaking out trying to mail stuff. But now I have people helping me and have given up some of that control it’s a lot easier.
In an interview I did recently with both Bradford Cox and Liars together recently…
RR: Was it Angus and Bradford together?
DS: Yeah!
…both of them have ‘blown up’ to a certain extent this year as a result of playing mammoth support slots [with Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails]. Anyway, they were talking about how they had young kids coming up to them comparing Liars to Primus or Deerhunter with Rage Against The Machine.
DS: Ouch. But yeah, because their spectrum of music is smaller.
What’s the weirdest comparison kids approaching you have given?
DS: We haven’t actually done any big tours like they’ve done with fans like that.
Perhaps the kids you engage are more clued up?
DS: It seems like it. We have been pretty much playing places that people who know us turn up. We played with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs once and that was weird one.
RR: Karen O karate kicked a chip out of my hand, stealing food from my dressing room.
DS: But I don’t think we’ve really been in that real odd position meeting an alien audience yet.
I part ask because you’ve always tried to interact with a younger audience and it was refreshing last night [performing at The Scala with HEALTH and Lovvers] because that however fantastic the line-up in London, the environment’s usually a bit sterile, but last night the kids were going berserk.
DS: It was great.
RR: It’s fun to see things fall apart at our shows. We’ve got no weird comparisons yet though.
DS: To be fair we usually get compared to Sonic Youth, but that’s what I’m saying, I feel like we’ve made a decision not to play giant events. Los Campesinos! fans might be like people who have never heard of us, Not think we’re like Primus hopefully. That’s got to be rough; Angus wouldn’t have liked that.
He seemed to take it on the chin.
DS: I remember when Hella toured with System of a Down and they were like “you sound like Led Zeppelin” but they don’t know because their spectrum of music is so small.
RR: Pick a band: the Beatles.
DS: That’s all they know, and part of me wants to hear that from someone to know they think we sound like but equally I don’t want to play a giant venue for a bunch of people who paid a shit load of money to see another band and we have to play half as loud as we can. Those things are just not worth it – it wouldn’t make sense for us and wouldn’t translate well. And I’d feel stupid. I think if anything that’s the coolest parts and meeting people who come up and say that they started a band because of us or that they’re vegan now because of us, that makes everything so cool. More than press or any of that shit. It’s priceless.
Do you forget you’re on more a pedestal than you realise sometimes?
DS: I do.
RR: The thing that freaks me out is the blog. I post pictures all the time – I haven’t done in a while because my camera ran out of batteries – but people come up and say that they saw the blog and I think it’s just something that Harrington, a friend in LA looks at. A lot of it is in-jokes to him. So I forget that and people seem to dig all that.
DS: I definitely forget that people look at things. We say a lot of things in interviews and we just talk but that’s how we grew up watching MTV and reading interviews. We’re both vegan because we read interviews with Ed Templeton and Ian MacKaye.
Have you spent a lot of time with Templeton? I know he did some artwork for you around the release of Nouns.
DS: Yeah, we’ve talked to him and spent quite a bit of time hanging out with him and it’s like: “Hey Ed!”. Bit weird.
Bit of a beefy man now isn’t he?
RR: Yeah. He’s got the vegan gut. It’s like the hardest belly you’ve ever seen.
DS: But we read those things and people still do those things and it’s weird just thinking we’re in a position Ed Templeton is in. I’d never think that but I don’t think he’d ever think like that. I’ve talked to him and he’s just a dude – it’s a weird thing.
With touring are there any habits that you’d picked up on the road?
RR: You used to eat a lot of prunes.
DS: Yeah, I’ve had a pretty regular intake on the last few tours though. I used to eat prunes every day, like clockwork at the start of touring. Now maybe I’m less stressed.
The perils of touring hedonism.
DS: I think we used to not eat as good. But we didn’t make any money, so eating was hard enough but we’re both vegan so it was just bread, fries and water. But now it’s easier financially I think eating healthy food is one of our priorities.
RR: So boring.
DS: What?
RR: I love our rock star-ness. We eat posh food and vegetables.
DS: Well, we’re not fucking rockstars.
On at least two occasions, maybe three I’ve seen you wondering trying to find vegan restaurants – once in Brighton you seemed stoked with where you’d found. Where’s been the hardest to keep up your diet?
DS: Touring Germany was hard. Berlin’s okay, France is rough though there’s some really good falafel there.
Well there’s that run of falafel shops in Paris…
RR: Amazing!
DS: It’s the best falafel in the world there.
On a similar note, are there any places that you’ve had any particular culture shocks?
RR: Japan.
DS: Japan is insane.
RR: That was a different world.
DS: Especially in Europe you have an idea of the language and you can sort of make out what’s going on. In Japan it could be anything.
DS: I want to play Russian. That would be one culture shock. In my dreams. Come on hit us with some juicy ones.
RR: We’re ready to spill some dirt.
How was it signing to Sub Pop? Presumably you were psyched to sign.
DS: Yeah.
RR: Well, kind of. Bleach.
DS: Vaselines.
RR: Sunny Day Real Estate. But that’s it. No, that’s not it.
How was making that step from a DIY-focused act to signing on with a label where you were perhaps less part of those processes?
DS: We both cried. It was a hard decision man.
RR: We were talking to other labels and it was a hard decision for us coming from this whole world of DIY and allowing people do things for us. It was tough for us. We’re control freaks.
DS: I don’t think we were to know until we made the jump. I think once you get rid of the control – like I was talking about PPM earlier – you can sit back and relax.
RR: When we first met Jonathon [Poneman], we were playing a show with Black Dice in Brooklyn in New York.
DS: Worst show we’ve ever played.
RR: By far the worst show.
DS: Black Dice were amazing.
RR: And BARR also played.
DS: But our set was a disaster.
RR: Horrible.
DS: Samplers broke; my drums broke; shit was falling over and that moment from when the feedback starts to kick in and there’s that uncomfortableness. And there were labels we were talking to before and everyone was there and we walked off like wounded fucking sheep.
RR: And The New York Times were reviewing it and stuff and we just thought we’d blown it because – without exaggeration – it was the worst show we’ve ever played.
DS: But Poneman comes up and was just like “that was amazing”.
RR: I just thought either he’s an idiot or generally gets us and though the music didn’t work our personalities came through. You learn the most about someone when the chips are down.
DS: I think we stopped playing. I kicked over the drums and he came over and said it was amazing. I thought he was kidding. Then The New York Times made it sound like a great show – “everything broke, it sounded like shit and then the drummer kicked the drums and it sucked” – and I was just like that sounds so cool.
RR: It was not fun though. Never have we had a horror like that.
DS: Then a couple weeks later we went for some food in LA and he gave us a hug and just said “please sign to Sub Pop”.
RR: His marketing pitch was literally “please”.
I remember a while ago one of you talking about ‘personal politics’. Wondered whether because of your approach to making their not being much of boundary between you as people you’ve had some bad experiences with pestering fans as a result?
RR: Our Japanese friend who jumps on stage every time we play London now. He gets up on stage and just dances and doesn’t leave the stage – he doesn’t crowd surf. He needs to start a band and whatever band it is it’ll be awesome.
DS: He just kind of stands there and dances with us. We’re going to make him a sperm outfit; dress him up as giant sperm, then put a condom on him.
RR: But in general it’s pretty cool. At the end of last night’s set, I’ve put the late 90s hiphop songs and put them in my samples and pedals and stuff to end the set with some Ja Rule and then start a party. It’s better than just walking off the set.
So you were responsible for B.I.G. last night at the end, yeah?
RR: Yep. It’s only thirty seconds but it’s a loop.
And you closed with the Urinals last night. By that point it just seemed all over the place.
RR: The Urinals are awesome
DS: And a Misfits song. We thought that was funny, just some party punk.
RR: Like Gun Club.
DS: It’s all punk rock and we’re definitely a punk band. All those bands were weird when they came out. When Misfits came out everyone thought they were these stupid Italian guys with funny haircuts singing weird doo-wop songs. Even with hardcore and stuff it was all trying to be so abrasive and now a lot of the Top 40 sounds like those bands. All those bands that were cutting edge and pushing boundaries and I feel that we’re trying to reference that if not just in the way that you need to push things and make people feel a bit uncomfortable.
Presumably one of the weirdest moments of the year was your MTV performance?
DS: It was funny. Imagine: they’re doing this thing in LA with the homeboy from Fallout Boy hosting and looks like the MTV Awards and it’s Rihanna and T.I. and all these famous people and all had these vast entourages and Randy and I were just there with some friends from Mika Miko and Abe Vigoda and smelly kids from The Smell and we were all up and they were just laughing at us and we just treated it as this weird event. And people from MTV kept coming up to us and saying “we’re so glad you’re here” and “it’s nice to have a real band” and almost talked about shit about the others and then went out and acted like dumb asses.
Did Wentz seem to dig what you were about?
DS: He said he did, actually. We had a conversation about hardcore and stuff. He’s into hardcore. I think we try to find situations that are funny or ridiculous and that definitely was one. It’s a good barometer of how we do things. And yes, laughing all the way to the bank.
You don’t want to know what Rihanna thought…
RR: She wouldn’t talk to us. She was so tall and beautiful and huge and wouldn’t even look at us. I think I’d turn into a pillar of salt if she looked at me.
Only last thing is what the plan is from here?
DS: Randy’s going to win the presidency. [Randy only last week got in a kafuffle about not being able to wear his Obama tee on the Late Late Show, here]
RR: I’m going to go for vice president. Obama’s tapped me up.
DS: Obama/Randall.
RR: 2008.
DS: We’re just going to finish touring now and then start working on our next thing. We’ve got shit to do. Just mapping out our shoe.
Quick quiz to close: how many labels now you’ve been on over the last year?
RR: Five EPs. Fat Cat.
DS: Six. Sub Pop – seven. Is that it? Seven a year’s pretty cool. The Liars split! So, eight.
Shredyrface Tour 