One song that isn’t on the album is the 18-minute long The Decline, by NOFX. Were you tempted to try that, Frank?
Frank: “I thought about it for a day and then realised that it was too much effort. But one of the things that I noticed in doing this is just how much stuff I’ve sort of stolen from NOFX. On the sleeve for The Decline are the words ‘Don’t try this at home’, presumably because the song is so difficult. And that’s the reason I did [the song] Try This At Home, because it’s so easy to play.”
Mike, would it be fair to say that even after all these years, for you, punk rock has never lost its sense of wonder?
Fat Mike: “Yeah. We had a secret, and to this day it’s still the best kind of music. It’s still the most complicated, it still has the best melodies, and the lyrics are the best. And it’s a still a secret that people don’t know about. They know about some of the bigger bands, but it still exists in basements and in the underground and in pubs. What other kind of music has that? Nothing relevant.”
What does punk rock mean to you, Frank?
Frank: “So much. In about 2005 and 2006, when I started doing solo stuff, I was in and around the fringes of the indie scene; you know, The Libertines and that kind of crew. And I kept being blown away that I kept meeting people who didn’t grow up with punk rock, and just how weird they were. I couldn’t believe that here were these energetic guitar bands who were 23-years-old and who were going out on their first ever tour. I was like, ‘What the fuck have you been doing for the past six or seven years?’ I’ve been touring since I was 16, because that’s what bands do. You can tell the people who grew up with punk even if they don’t make that kind of music any more, because it puts something in your DNA. It’s an attitude as well as a style of music. It’s an approach.”
Mike: “Frank has said this to me before, but we both kind of have contempt for our crowd. We like it when they like us, but we don’t care if they don’t. We question them and make them think differently. We’re not pandering.”
Frank: “To me, punk was always a refuge. It was a community that we built and that lived by our rules. And there is a level at which the atmosphere I try to inculcate at my shows is me trying to put that philosophy into practice again. It might not be punk in sounding like The Descendents or whatever, but is punk in that it’s a society that seeks to question and challenge things. I want to be in a punk scene and to be in a punk band.”
Mike: “What punk has is that we look out for each other. We support each other. Like when Green Day first got big I was, like, 'Yes! Finally!' I remember the Deftones were the only band that were on both the Warped Tour and Ozzfest – they were the only band that did both. And when they were on the Warped Tour they told us, ‘Man, Ozzfest sucks. Every band has to outdo each other, everyone’s got their own posses, no-one is friends, it’s just bullshit. But on the Warped Tour it’s like family.’ Any band that behaved like a rock star on the Warped Tour was shunned and made fun of. They got the scarlet letter. And that’s the biggest difference. Punk rock is family; because we all came from weird families, we built our own.”
Frank: “Because it’s not a fucking competition. So many people seem to believe that music should be a competition, and that’s so fucking boring to me. But if I see a band that I knew as kids playing in a basement, and suddenly they’re doing well, it’s like, ‘Yes!’ Punk rock is a conversation between a community of equals.”