Transcript (auto-generated, may contain errors; songs left out)
Hey, this is Rush from Only Crime. You're listening to Sound Scene Revolution.
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What's up? I am Rich, and this week we have a special interview. I don't know. I think they're all special. But this one's particularly special because it took place in inter... It took place in interview? It took place in Santa Cruz with a resident of Santa Cruz. That's Mr. Russ Rankin. And we talked a little bit about his band, Only Crime, who you may have heard of. It features members of Hag, Fish, Guar, Bane, Converge, The Descendants, Avail... Wait, no one's in Avail. That was last week. But you get the idea. It's a pretty fucking awesome group. And I'm pretty stoked on that. Before we get into the interview, though, I want to hit you guys up with who won some of our contests that we have been holding.
The winner of the Me First and the Gimme Gimme's contest for a copy of their new album, Love Their Country, is Tyler B. from Ames, Indiana. Is that what I... Iowa is I-A? What the fuck do they grow? Do they grow corn in Iowa? Corn. So now you probably have most of the original country albums being from Iowa. So congratulations on that. Now you hear some renditions. Winner of the Nothington Contest, which was a copy of their debut 7-inch and, I believe, a large shirt. Goes to Rachel B., who I think is our first female winner. So, you know, thumbs up for the boobies. Anyways, it's Rachel B. from Gilbertsville, Kentucky, who, other than a fucking big horse race once a year, I don't know what the fuck comes... and racists.
I don't know what comes out of Kentucky. So, but congrats on that. We'll send those out as soon as we can. All right. But, like I said, we got an interview with Russ Rankin from Only Crime, and it's pretty good, I think. First half is a little more music-oriented. Second half is a little more political-oriented. And at the end of the show, we have a chance for you to win Only Crime's new CD, Virulence, or Vistulence. I don't know. But it's a good CD, and it features members of Goodridden. Everything I've ever read, like, lists the band, like, 12 times. But it's a good CD. But before we do that, we're going to jump into some tracks and the interview. Be sure to listen to, like, the last eight minutes to learn how to enter to win.
The first track we're going to play is called Shotgun, and it's off their new album. So check it out, and stay tuned for the interview.
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Thanks for tuning in to Sound Scene Revolution. We're hanging outside of the 408 project about a block down, actually, with Russ from Only Crime. If you could say hello. How's it going? First of all, I want to thank you so much for taking the time, for coming by. I mean, I know this is kind of your hometown, so probably got people you're visiting. No, it's fine. All right, so first off, I want to ask, what's probably the most common question you get regarding Only Crime?
Mostly, the one I get most of all is, what's it like to be in a band with Bill Stevenson? And then, right after that is, how did you guys ever come together as a band? Because it's a bunch of people who've been in the scene a long time, playing on all pretty successful bands, but very different musically. And all living in different states. So it is sort of strange. I was going to say, a bunch of the interviews I've read, everybody asks. So if they want, they can read those ones. But the one that I've kind of wondered about, which maybe I just haven't read about, is where did the name Only Crime come from? Well, we were in Massachusetts doing our first demo. And we already had labels interested in us.
We already had people talking about us online and stuff. And we hadn't played a show. We hadn't done anything. And we were at the studio in Salem, Massachusetts, recording our demo. And it suddenly dawned on us that we didn't have a name. Because we've been so busy writing and just going for it. And we spent about a day. Everyone wrote down names. We were just sitting there. Whoever wasn't busy in the studio was writing stuff down. And we were like, no, that's too bad. No, that's been done. Because we wanted a name that was short enough to where it wasn't like six or seven words like a lot of bands. We wanted it to be easily recognizable. So if you went into a really loud club and we were playing and you could go to your buddy and go, hey, who's this?
And he could tell you and you'd have to go, what? Like something that was simple. We wanted no more than two words. And then I think it was actually Pete, who's the bass player of Aaron's other band, Bane. We had said something crime, any crime or something like that. And Pete goes, what about only crime? And everybody kind of stopped him. And it was the first name someone came up with that didn't get instantly trashed. So we sat on it for a while. And then we kind of liked it. It had cool imagery that could go with it. It was two words. It was cool. So it stuck. Very cool. So it seems to have worked out pretty well for you guys. So I'm not going to knock it. You mentioned the imagery that goes along with the name.
I just picked up your new album a day or two ago. And I noticed the artwork has very similar, not like, I don't want to say it looks the same, but it's very similar thematically. And was that something you guys kind of planned out from the beginning? Or was that kind of like once you started to work on the album, you thought to kind of go with it? We were not as prepared as we would have liked to have been layout-wise. I mean, we had a really good guy do the layout for us, Sergi Lubkoff. But we weren't able to give him a whole lot of stuff to work with. And there was a deadline. And we just kind of gave him the name of the album, the definition of the name of the album, Virulence. And then just said, you know, we want something that's like, you know, dark, sinister, foreboding, whatnot.
But we don't want anything that's like, we don't want guns or like, you know, anything that's just too cliche. Yeah, two over the top. And he threw that stuff together, like got some live pictures in there. And we were stoked on it. So, you know, we, yeah, like I said, we didn't have a whole lot of time. None of us are really creatively inclined enough. So we sort of just left it up to him, and I think he did a great job. Yeah. I mean, it seems to work pretty well with it. Like you just said, Virulence, your new album came out. Last Tuesday. Last Tuesday? 23rd. So I got it about a week later. It's all right. But there's some similarities between that and To The Nines and some differences. What would you say was the main differences of it, and how would you, if you were to compare the two?
I don't know. I think that this record is a lot closer to what we originally wanted the band to be like when we started. When we recorded To The Nines, we had never played a show, and Donnie, our bass player, had just joined the band like days before we started recording. So we really, it was, To The Nines was half the music was written by myself, half the music was written by Zach. So a lot of it, looking back now, is really a little bit more derivative of like our other bands than maybe we would have liked. And I think the new album shows us like after two years plus of touring together, getting together to write organically like from the ground up, much more often in our own kind of direction.
Rather than like, oh, this song sounds like Good Riddance, that song sounds like Black Flag, that song sounds like Hagfish. I mean, hopefully that's what we've accomplished. We really wanted to make a record that was interesting to listen to, had some elements of jazz and improvisation in it, and some really fucked time signatures and stuff like that. And some oblong phrasing and interesting melodies. But we also wanted to make sure every song had a pretty good vocal hook. So that's what, I think we pulled it off, I think it's a pretty good record. Yeah, I mean, I bought it, so, and I don't buy a lot of records. Wow, that's cool, man, I appreciate that. I was thinking about just trying to get a free copy, but I thought I'd actually buy this.
That's cool, because you could probably get anything you want for free, being someone that does this. No, no, we don't get shit. Wow. We're like the, I'm not going to. What's the world coming to, man? We're kind of beasturing media, but I don't want to tell you that. But, uh, you, so, you, shit. So you mentioned how you got, you didn't want to make it sound like, oh, this sounds like Hackfish, or this sounds like Good Riddance. What, what do you probably, what's kind of like more offsetting? The fact that you guys kind of get referred to as the super group, or the only, or the Good Riddance comparisons that you tend to get? I'm, I'm puzzled by the Good Riddance comparisons. I guess it's because the vocals are so distinct, and you can't really shake it.
Yeah. Um, I don't think we sound anything like Good Riddance. Yeah. But I guess if I'm singing a melody over a chorus, and it's a melody, it's going to sound like Good Riddance. I, I can, I can sort of see that. The super group thing, I don't really buy into. Mm-hmm. Uh, it's never been something we wanted to play up. Um, we, we fought tooth and nail against our record label to keep them from putting a sticker on our record, and they ended up winning, it says Featuring Members Of. And I understand why they did it, and it's, but we, we never wanted that. We wanted to be treated like we're just a band. I mean, especially now, I mean, a lot of us are so old, and our bands are, I've been around so long. Yeah.
Hopefully a lot of the kids that come see our band, maybe they'd have no idea. Yeah. That any of us have been in any bands before, they're just like, wow, these old dudes are throwing down, you know, that's pretty cool. Um, but also, um, I mean, there was a super group, yeah, like, before anybody had ever heard anything we play, there was already expectation of how it would sound. So, yeah. It's sort of, you're sort of screwed from the gate, but we, you know, it's okay. I mean, we realize, I think we're pretty comfortable with our place in it all. Like, we're able to have a good time, and we're playing music that we think is interesting, we think is kind of important, and we're having fun doing it. Cool.
And hopefully, you know, whether it's fans of our other bands that have sort of caught on to this, or people who have no idea what any of us have done before and don't care, maybe they just like it, think it sounds cool. I mean, we're just stoked if people like it. Cool.
It's like, just kind of in all the biographies, regardless of how it lists it. It always lists like, you know, Hagfish, Guar, Black Flag, Descendants, Bane, Converge, Good Riddance, all that. I noticed Creep Division is left off of that list. Yeah. Creep Division is, it's not something you want following you around. You don't want, you know. No. It was such a small little period of time. Yeah. Although it was a lot of fun. Oh, I got the album, and I was like, you know, they should, it kind of should be put on there. But it's up to you guys' discretion. I appreciate that you brought the album. That was a good time. Creep Division was a lot of fun when we were doing it. And we had the goal of like, we wanted to sound like if you went to a VFW show in like 1984, and we were like the fourth band on an eight-band bill.
That's kind of what we wanted to sound like. Yeah. What happened was we went on tour, and we started to get tight. So we just stopped. You're like, wait, this is actually sounding kind of formed. Yeah. At least you guys were like, you knew, you had reached your limit, you're like, we're done. We plateaued. Fair enough. Oh, I totally overlooked this. I was looking online at your new album, and LP on FAT is limited to a thousand copies overall. Is there like a reason for that that you know of? Well, very few people buy vinyl anymore, and the record industry is really going through a tough time right now. So I think labels, I think not just FAT, but labels in general, unless they're just doing great, are probably cutting back on stuff like that because you end up printing all this vinyl and it just sits, and nobody buys it.
So we got enough printed. We have some that are special colors too, and enough for the collector people. You know, we actually have them on tour, which is cool, and I was surprised. We've actually been selling quite a few. Do you have the colored ones that are gray? I think we do, yeah. Okay, because I checked on the website, and they're out, and I was going to ask you. You should ask Steve, our merch guy, when you get back in there. All right, I will definitely do that because I'm that guy. Yeah, no, it's cool. We've actually been selling. I was like, okay, we're ringing vinyl, I guess, whatever. And then, because usually I've never brought it on tour before because it always gets wrecked or broken or melted in the van.
It's hard to transport. Yeah, but we brought it on this trip, and especially the new album, it's been moving pretty well, so I'm stoked. Oh, dude, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think probably the limited release, there's a lot more people who are like, I've got to get a hold of it now if there's only a thousand copies. Yeah, it's good. I mean, if it sells it, more power to it. All right, so we're going to take a break, kind of in transition between the music and the politics to bring you some more music from Only Crime. We're going to play the song Just Us off their new album, Virulence. So you want to hear that, and be sure to listen to the end, like last eight minutes, to learn how to enter the win for a copy of that album.
It's pretty easy, as you know, we just want to make sure you all are listening. So we've got Just Us coming up, and then stay tuned for the second half to learn why Russ wasted his vote on a no-win candidate, and all those other things that make living in Santa Cruz seem really awesome. So check it out, and listen at the end to enter the win.
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So you're pretty politically motivated in both this band, pretty much outspoken in all that. The recent elections, do you think a Democratic Congress is going to change all that much? History has shown that probably not, but I mean, I'm hopeful. I mean, it's hard for me, because I'm a registered Green, and I'm still upset that there's no Greens in Congress. I'm upset that I'm a taxpaying citizen, and I have no one representing me in Washington. That's kind of upsetting to me. It's upsetting to me that the Green Party and other parties that aren't Democrats or Republicans still have to suffer this, like, across-the-board social blackballing and media blackballing. The gubernatorial candidates across the country in November weren't allowed to participate in debates.
We're never mentioned in the media, in the mainstream media. Yeah, and it's unfortunate, because I don't trust career politicians, whether they're Democrat or Republican. And I don't trust a lot of the Democrats who voted for this war in Iraq, who are now against it, who are just trying to just stay with whatever's going to make them popular. I think that it's time for us to have a more integrated Congress that represents more than... I mean, dividing the country up into red states and blue states, like, whoever said that was okay, like, you know, that leaves out so many people. And so, for me, the big picture is, like, I'm sick of living in a country that doesn't have a free press. I'm sick of having no one representing me in Washington.
No one representing me in my platform, which is the Green Party platform, you know? Because even Democrats, I mean, if you're a liberal in America, like, okay, cool, a Democratic Congress, rad, you know? Women are like, whew, I might be able to have a safe legal abortion for the next 10 years. And that's something, that's good. Yeah. But at the same time, Democrats aren't going to do anything about health care. And there's a lot of Democrats that don't want to pull out of Iraq. And there's a lot of Democrats that don't want a living wage. I mean, there's a lot of things that I believe in that I feel strongly about, that my party feels strongly about, that are not going to be addressed. Because we don't, like, even if there was just one or two Greens in Congress back in 2000 or 2001, the Patriot Act would not have passed, you know?
Maybe we don't go to, maybe the president isn't given this carte blanche to invade Iraq if there's a couple of Greens in Congress. So I'm really more for, like, the big picture of trying to get more representation of different kinds of people who live in our country into the bodies of government. Because right now it's just Democrats and Republicans, which to me is like one party with sort of two different angles to it, depending on what you feel. If the light hits it one way, it's, you know, liberal. If the light hits it another way, it's conservative. And I think there's a lot of people who are just, they don't want to lose their jobs and their expense accounts and being able to own two homes. And they don't care about, you know, the people that they're supposed to be representing.
So that's kind of where I'm at. And now I'm non-bummed because the mayor of San Francisco turned out to be a scumbag. And he just barely beat our candidate, Matt Gonzalez, to be the mayor of San Francisco. Yeah, that was, that's kind of the bad part. And I don't know how you feel about it, but I know it's now, like, he may win re-election when it comes up in November, but that's as high as he's ever going to get is probably mayor of San Francisco. And maybe as high as he should probably be as it is. But I was kind of bad. I felt bad because I kind of, I rooted for him. You know, I thought he was an all right guy. He seemed like an all right guy. You know, he may be. Like, everybody wanted to crucify Bill Clinton because he was fucking out of school.
But, like, I don't think that, at the end of the day, I don't think that's, like, that should be the final epitaph on your period of service. But at the same time, like, it just sucks because that election, a Green Party candidate was so close to winning. To be mayor of San Francisco would have been a huge deal. The news would have had to mention it. They couldn't keep the Green Party out of the news if that had happened. And that would have been great for us. Well, it would have been, like, the biggest mayoral win by a Green Party member, wouldn't it? Yeah, we have a mayor of Richmond, California, which is the largest city with a green mayor in America right now. And, yeah, so San Francisco would have been quite a coup on that.
Yeah, definitely. Awesome. But I'm just in it for the Green Party and trying to, like, do my part to, like, let people know. Because there's so many people that don't even know it exists, who don't even know that it probably is their party and they just don't know it. And they've just been trained by the media to vote Democrat if they're remotely liberal. Yeah, one or two ways. Yeah, so it's, and that's just, to me, that's just tragic. And it shows in the results of it how many people actually show up to the polls. Yeah. You know, more Americans voted for that show American Idol than voted in the last presidential election. Maybe if we could get it by phone. Yeah. We should do what Australia does and have compulsory voting, where you have to.
Yeah. I think about that, but then I look at some people and I'm like, I don't know if I want them voting. I don't know, man. I think everybody should have a chance. I think that what sucks is that people are being asked to make one of probably the most important choices they have to make as an American. And then they're being given a sliver of the information about it. Yeah. And, you know, if you're a rich person, if you're the tiny elite group of people that run this country, you're stoked. Because you got all the people who could actually rock the boat are marginalized right out of the whole process. Yeah. Like, well, I don't like him or him, so I'm just not going to vote. And then the people who do vote already have pretty entrenched ideals anyway.
Yeah. And just want the status quo to stay the same. So we really could make some noise if people were empowered and were able to really see, like, wow, there's more than two parties. Yeah. Maybe if I saw a presidential debate and I saw, you know, the libertarian candidate and I really liked what he had to say, I might vote for that guy. Yeah. I mean, but the problem is he's not allowed to come to the debates. Yeah. The TV news never mentions him. It wasn't like, was it 2000 Ralph Nader was, like, locked out of a bunch of debates? He wouldn't even get him with a ticket? He wasn't allowed in the debates. And this past election in St. Louis, when there was the debate between President Bush and John Kerry, the libertarian candidate, Michael Bednarik, and the green candidate were both trying to get into the building.
They had tickets to watch the debate. Yeah. And they were arrested outside. But it wasn't reported in the United States. It was reported in England and in Canada. Yeah. So we got that going for us. That's, yeah. That makes you feel good. Yeah. It's great. All right. Let's try and get on. Super Bowl's tomorrow. Yeah. On a lighter note, all right, I was going to ask you, just talking about this, you write for AMP, right? You do a, is it monthly or just kind of whatever? Monthly. Monthly column at AMP. Have you ever thought of doing something like more, like writing a book all together or doing like a speaking tour or anything like that? Yeah. I thought about all that, but nobody would care. I don't know. Someone would care.
I think that, I think a book is probably realistic. Um, I've had a lot of people just constantly asking me about it and I do have a friend who has published a book and has a second book coming out and, uh, he's encouraging me and he's offering to help out. I just don't know what I'd write about. I mean, I just saw many things. Yeah. And, uh, he was just, he suggested like getting all my AMP columns and sort of separating them out in different categories and maybe writing an intro thing. I don't, I don't know. I mean, a speaking tour would be great too, but I just don't, I mean, it's hard enough getting 10 people to watch my band. I don't know if I'm going to, I don't know if a speaking tour is going to be that great.
Dude, if Jeff Ott can do it, you can do it. Yeah. We'll see. I'm not, I'm not bashing Jeff Ott, but. No, we'll see. I think your release is good. We'll see. Yeah. Well, hopefully. Um, all right. I think we're, uh, I got some other questions, but I think they're kind of just bonus ones if we had the time. Yeah. It's pretty good. So I'm going to ask you got anything else you want to plug any, uh, I mean, you obviously got the CD that just came out. You guys are doing this too, or you got any future plans? We're going to be touring the East coast in April and May. We're going to try to be, we're going to try to hit it pretty hard this year. Um, just to do right by our label, um, to try to play as many places as we can and go back to Europe, Japan.
We want to get to Australia, um, Canada. So we'll just see how it goes. We're going to, with everybody's schedule, especially with Bill and his producing work, it's tough. It's tough for us to route around that, but, but we've all, we're all pretty committed to, uh, to playing as many places as we can this year with this record being out. We really want to push it and, and let, let me show everybody around the world who may want to see us, we'll get a chance to cool. And, uh, yeah, I guess that's it. All right, man. Well, all the best. And hopefully you get to go wherever anyone wants to see you this year. Cause I mean, I'm sure there's lots of places in the world that want to see you play. So that would be great.
All the best, man. Thank you. All right. So that wraps up our interview for this week. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. I hope, uh, yeah, I don't know. I just hope you listened for the most part. I don't really give a shit what you get out of it. As long as every week you come back and listen, that's what makes us the money that we met. Oh, the fucking just truckloads of the shit. I fucking bathe in pennies, which is probably why I'm sick. It's not a really good idea, but, uh, anyhow. And we are going to play another track to wrap the show up. But before that, I want to get into the contest for this week. You can enter to win a copy of Only Crime's new album, Virulence. To do that, send us an email.
SoundSceneRevolution at gmail.com or MySpace, whatever. Fucking things hooked up to your cell phone, your iPhone nowadays, you kids. Make sure that Only Crime Contest is the subject line. And in the body of the email, make sure to put your name and your pertinent information. Address, phone number, what times you're not home, where you lock up your expensive shit. And, uh, make sure to include, this is actually, literally, we want this to make sure you've been listening. Only Crime is made up of a great number of people from a great number of really important hardcore bands, or at least I think they're fucking important. And you should, too. What I want you to do is, uh, put what your supergroup would be.
If your supergroup happens to be that really shitty, shitty one, that VH1 put together, that's fine. If you're into fucking, uh, Ted Nugent and fucking the guy from Skid Row, that's all you. But whatever your supergroup would be, put that together and send that to us, just so we know you were listening. And, uh, we'll draw some names. And the winner will get a copy of the CD. Also, want to let you know, we're coming up on our 50th show. We got, like, two or three more episodes until that. We're hoping to do some work. Um, we've actually talked to a guy about doing some logo work. I can't give you any names right now, because it's kind of top secret. But, uh, I'll give you a hint. It's fucking awesome. And you've probably seen his stuff somewhere.
So, hopefully we'll get some new looks going. If you guys have anything you guys want to submit, just send it to us at soundscenerevolution at gmail.com. And we'll see what we can do. Alright. Wrapping up the show, we're going to play one last track from Only Crime's new album, Virulence. Which I'm probably pronouncing wrong. Whatever. Uh, we're going to play Xanthology, which I may also be pronouncing wrong. But when words start with a fucking X, I don't know what you expect me to do. But, uh, so we're going to play that. And then we're going to wrap this show up. I hope you enjoy it. Be sure to write in, win some free shit, and, uh, we'll see you next week.
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