Just Say No

One of the most unfortunate tendencies of uncreative music writers is the need to describe (or more accurately, simplify) a band’s sound by slapping the suffix “-core” after some dubious adjective. “Emocore,” “grindcore,” “sadcore,” “mathcore,” “softcore” and “rapcore” are just a few of the many crimes against language this practice has produced.

But to be fair, some bands don’t mind silly adjectives. So please, feel free to call NoMeansNo a jazzcore act. Drummer John Wright won’t get mad. In fact, he can even sympathize with the necessity that spawned these silly inventions.

“I can see it, people saying, ‘NoMeansNo, it’s this band that plays … music. What kind of music? Music,'” he says with a laugh. “When people ask me, I say we play loud music.”

Loud music? Definitely. But it can also be complex, difficult to follow, even jarring music. While the band’s label, Alternative Tentacles (former home to Dead Kennedys and Butthole Surfers), is synonymous with furious punk, NoMeansNo isn’t afraid to risk offending purists with long songs, such as the fifteen-minute version of Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew” on the band’s latest album, No One. This track leads into a slowed-down version of The Ramones’ “Beat on the Brat,” and while Wright describes this closing cover couplet as a “nice juxtaposition,” he admits NoMeansNo didn’t intend to put “Brat” on the album until band members realized that they couldn’t think of a better grand finale.

“I suppose we do explore the polar ends of music,” Wright admits. “When it’s not four-by-four power chords, it must be jazz. If it’s syncopated, it must be funk. We listen to jazz, but it’s just people trying to push the limits of what we can do. We don’t play punk rock. Well, we do, but we also stretch our limits.”

By doing so, NoMeansNo also stretches the range of its audience, pulling in fans other than the usual punk-club suspects.

“There are two camps you can kind of divide the audience into,” Wright explains. “You have your teenage boys who want to slam dance to the rock and punk and the older fans who want the musically challenging songs with more emotional content. We enjoy doing both. I like it when somebody connects to my music, but it’s also fun to pen songs that people can dance to.”

NoMeansNo has been performing for 21 years, so some of those older fans once were the moshing teenagers, and some of the youngsters in attendance are drawn not by familiarity with the group’s nine albums but by recommendations from trusted siblings.

“People come out because their older brothers or sisters like us, and if you stick around long enough you become old-school,” Wright says. “We’re kind of lucky in the sense that we were unlike any other band. We always played in the punk milieu, but although we embraced the do-it-yourself ethic, we were never punk. We remained independent, so we didn’t get chewed up and spit out by the mainstream.”

Another key to NoMeansNo’s longevity is the willingness of its members (the band also includes guitarist Tom Holliston and Wright’s brother Rob, who sings and plays both guitar and bass) to become involved in other projects. In addition to releasing a collaborative album, The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy, with punk icon and Alternative Tentacles owner Jello Biafra, the Wrights also record as The Hanson Brothers, churning out campy Ramones-type rockers that are as simple as NoMeansNo’s tunes are complex.

“One feeds the other, so you don’t get bogged down,” Wright says of balancing the bands. “You need to be able to step back from things like this and get some perspective so the band doesn’t consume [you]. You have to keep working, but you also have to live a life so you have something to write about.”

NoMeansNo doesn’t usually have to search hard for inspiration; its frequent travels have led to many enthralling tales. Take the band’s run-in with European organized crime in 1998.

“We had a van filled with stolen merchandise, and we had to deal with the Polish Mafia,” Wright says. “But we got it back, nothing touched. They didn’t want the van, they wanted our money.” Band-related legends being what they are, this story has taken on a life of its own, even mutating into a version where the band itself was kidnapped by goons. But not all of the group’s experiences with overseas travel have downsides, easily embellished or otherwise. Wright has proud memories of playing in Eastern Europe before the iron curtain of Communism fell, and since then he has returned to observe how the advent of Western capitalism has affected the countries. So when he decides to inject what he’s learned into his music, his social commentary offers a sense of worldly authority and insight that’s a welcome change from the empty anger of most gripers.

“A diatribe comes from one perspective,” Wright says. “You are a product of everything around you. It’s the age of communication, and people have no idea what’s going on in the world. We’re forming viewpoints based on thirty-second sound bites. We’re forming opinions based on nothing. Now Mr. Bush bombs people to prove he’s a man, and people think it’s okay. They’re just people; they don’t deserve to be bombed. Sometimes it’s frustrating. People don’t have any idea how well they’re living. They have to bitch and complain about how bad things are.