Interviews

No Use For A Name

Interview with Tony & Dave on Nov 30, 1999 by Archive Bot

Thanks to Mel K. at Fat Wreck cause she rules. I saw down with Kid with a Camera and his friend and this other guy and asked Tony and Dave from No Use for A Name some questions. This is just a portion of our very long and actually pretty interesting conversation about punk and the evolution of it. This all happened at the Phoenix, October 22 here in Toronto.

Kid With Camera: Not too far from here in Barrie, you just played the Warped Tour, touring right after that, was that your choice?
Tony: Touring, yes that was by choice.
Dave: Or was it Not By Choice.
Tony: Oh I get it the band. Wait, is that you? Are you in the band?
Kid With Camera: No
Tony: Who is in the band? I saw a poster with them jumping on it. We saw their album cover. Not By Choice.
Dave: Bad joke. But it was our choice to get back on tour because you kind of want to capitolize on the Warped Tour itself and to see if we reached some different fans and things like that.
Tony: That and you have to figure there is a lot of traffic going on right now. You'v got all the bands on the Warped Tour that want to follow up on it and then you have all the bands that weren't on the Warped Tour that get to tour now. So all these bands are out now, it's so hard.
Kid With Camera: You said you wanted to follow up to see if you have any new fans, can you tell if you have new fans? Well, we are NUFAN. Ah!
Dave: In our case not only do you get to play with a lot of your friends, expose yourselves to people who might not listen to you typically, that's why it's good to generally follow up because the Warped Tour hits everywhere.
Tony: It's hard to tell if you have new fans also. We've got Yellowcard out with us now and they bring out the little girl crown so we could say, "Hey we have little girls now" so maybe that's from the Warped Tour or maybe it's because of Yellowcard, there is no telling.

PB: Well don't you bring in new fans on every tour just depending who you're going out with?
Tony: Yeah I would think that. I mean, I hope. It seems that way, some of these tours you can't tell because you're up against so many things. You're up against Tony Hawk and the Tony Hawk tour. It's now and it's god damn. Pretty soon it's going to be all big tours and you won't have bands just touring by themselves anymore. Like every part of the year is taken up by something. In Europe they have Deconstruction, they have everything. It's hard.
Dave: Plus it's good to come back and play again because we only played for half an hour at Warped Tour. Now we get to do things the way we want to do them play longer, play more new songs.
Kid With Camera: What is the reaction to that like? Similar to the video?
Dave: No it's been really good.
Tony: Hopefully it won't be like that. There are four bands playing so maybe people will be burnt out by us. Slick Shoes, they're rad. The Eyeliners are totally rad, Yellowcard are on and Guttermouth who are awesome.
Dave: GOB was on the first part of the tour and they were awesome. Theo is one of the funniest guys I have met in my life. I was kinda bummed that they left. We were having a lot of fun. Hopefully tonight will be fun.
Tony: Our last show with the Warped Tour here was fucking awesome.
Dave: Canada is always great.
Tony: Toronto is great.
Dave: Montreal is good
Kid With Camera: How do you compare Toronto to Montreal? Some people say they are similar scenes.
Tony: Montreal go a little bit off the hook, not to say anything bad about Toronto, but...
Dave: That's generally the consensus though Toronto is always rad but Montreal is insane.
Kid With Camera: They one up us?

PB: Well, they're not similar scenes what so ever, we're completely different from them.
Tony: That's true there is such a difference the only similar thing is it's Canada. Other than that it's different. Last Warped Tour, Montreal was crazy but Toronto was...
Dave: I think it was Toronto first then Montreal...

PB: No it was Montreal then Toronto.
Tony: Right. What bummed me out about Montreal was that it was so dirty and there was weird low end feedback. We couldn't figure out what that noise was.
Dave: Both places are off the hook, they are definitely two of my favorite places to play.
Other guy: In general how do you compare the scene now to five or ten years ago?
Tony: It's so different that it's almost hard to explain. I mean can you even call it punk rock anymore? It's just... Fast food.
Dave: It's just a bunch of guys making music.

PB: You can call it pop because it's popular.
Tony: That's exactly it, guys are dressing up, like, gotta look good for the pictures. Before it was like you had to look as fucked up as possible. It's crazy.
Dave: Well that's what happens when it gets in the mainstream . Some bands are getting shoved down people's throats. There will be one style like pop punk and everyone else will follow right along. The good thing is we never have to worry about that. We do our own thing and we always have and we try to stay...

PB: But does it worry you that the scene is going in that direction?
Dave: No, like I say...
Tony: I worry about the bands that are involved in that. The ones that are coming out with one or two good songs and then they're out. Gone, forgetten because the next one comes in.

PB: But do you think it puts a bad impression in people's heads about bands like yourselves? Because for some kids all they see is the mainstream.
Tony: Well sure and Brian Baker of Bad Religion said a really great thing to a band, that I won't name, that was on the Warped Tour. It got around that he hated this band and one guy in particular, the happy, new punkband guys. It was great the guy went up to him and asked him if he hated them and Brian said, " I don't hate you as a person, I don't know you, but I hate what your band is doing to the punk scene. You're destroying it and you don't even know it." That kid won't be around next year at all.

PB: Well it's true, if kids see these bands as being disposable then they're going to treat all the bands that way and it's going to ruin it for everyone.
Dave: Yeah a lot of these kids who are hopping on the band wagon don't go back and see where it all came from. They don't care and a lot of the stuff they probably won't even like. The stuff where everything came from. So as you said, all these people are listening to it and maybe will look at us in that light because of that but when you get into our band and see what our band has done and what our band is about, you'll understand why we have staying power.
Tony: Yeah, a kid that likes one of those bands will want to get whatever other cd they have released. And maybe that band will have one other that's not on a major. If they say that about us, we have seven other records. And they'll say, "Oh my god this band has a history that's rad". And having a history means having a fanbase.
Kid With Camera: Well does your history ever scare you? Like, your past music is so different from the way you are now?
Dave: No, because then that's someone who doesn't understand our band.
Tony: We evolve and understand what we're doing a lot more. If you keep writing the same stuff then you're going to go numb. Your brain is just going to melt.
Dave: If people can't understand that then fuck them.