Bandsplain - The Offspring with Daniel Kohn

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

The Offspring were one in a wave of southern California bands that ushered in a renewed interest in punk rock to the ears of the masses, becoming one of the best-selling punk rock bands of all time and here to help us come out and play is SPIN Editorial Director, Daniel Kohn. Follow Daniel Kohn on Twitter at @danielkohn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Bansplain? Hello and welcome to Bansplane. I am your host, Yossi Salak. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to explain a cult band or iconic artist to me and tea. Today's episode is about The Offspring. If you've never heard The Offspring, it is in fact time to come out and play.

This is what The Offspring. sounds like. You gotta keep them separated. My guest today is Daniel Cohn, editorial director of Spin Magazine. But perhaps more importantly, a person who is from Long Island. Daniel, do you care to explain why you are the person to come explain the offspring to us in light of the fact that you are from Long Island? Well, I mean, it goes, if we want to trace this back many, many, many, many years,

we can go back to, I guess, 1994, right? Isn't that when the come out and play video captured the hearts and minds of suburbanites like myself across the country? So how did it become me? Because I saw that video when I came home from summer camp. Shout out to my close friends from that time, Raul Jane and Anthony Condillas, who were raving about this wild new band called The Offspring because they had some crazy video and being stuck in the Berkshires for two months, not knowing what was going on between the months of June and August. apparently something must have happened.

The video came out and I saw it and it was amazing. And then an older cousin of mine's like, you should check out this band, the offspring. I have their cassette tape. And I went through it and I was just like, what is this? Oh, yeah, they're just new band from California, Southern California.

Not L.A., but they're from Southern California. And I was like, huh, weird, but who cares? Sure. And I listened to the whole album. It was like, my, you know, it was the head exploding emoji, if you will. You were radicalized by Smash is what you're saying. Yeah, and then I saw what they looked like.

I was like, oh, these guys, this is what it sounds like. I mean, once I saw a clear photo with him. Yeah, that's perhaps how you were able to be lured in so easily without a visual representation. Because they just, you know, growing up where I grew up, it was big, you know, you sneak around and you can go to punk shows, but it was nothing like this. And especially then, it was kind of punk was like, you had to be in like Manhattan to really. really, here did like cromags and people like that around that. Sure. The offspring were just were accessible to suburban kids.

And yeah, that's got hooked on smash, was so stoked for Ixnay. And then Americana was, you know, was the end of high school. And then those three albums were pretty much touchtones of the late 90s if you were into the genre now known as pop punk. We're going to unpack a lot of this, what you've been. what you've said to me just now. And it actually opened up doors to other bands I actually really like too, which was probably the most important part of those albums.

They were a gateway band for you. No one has probably used the words offspring and gateway ever, I'd imagine. I would say my culture is not your costume. However, in this particular instance, I do not claim the offspring. They are not particularly part of my culture. I'm from Torrance. It is not Orange County. I will go ahead and claim Blink 12,

who hopskip in a jump from San Diego. Where are you? But I will just skip over the Orange County. That's just my personal thing and no shade to Orange County. But I just, I don't claim the offspring as one of my own. I mean, you should. So you can use this culture as your costume. Fair enough.

I just, as anyone knows me, I never had a long hair like that. This is, I guess no one can see me right now, but my hair is as generally as long as you can get. Thank God. Yes, very much, thank God. Okay, let's take it from the top. Speaking of Orange County, Garden Grove, California, made famous by the sublime song in which we took this trip to Garden Grove,

and it smelled like Blue Dog inside the van. In 1984, this band formed by Brian Dexter Holland, given this nickname because he was a nerd, who was a very high-achieving student at school. born December 29th, 1965, a Capricorn. And Greg Creasel, born January 20th, 1965, an Aquarius. Apparently also a bit of a nerd. They were on the cross-country team together at Pacific High School.

I will point out, Dexter Holland was also the president of the math club and the valedictorian of the high school. Just not typical traits of perhaps the leader of a punk. band, but I don't want to be limiting. You know, like, you can be smart in a punk band. It's just, you know, president of the math club and running on the cross-country team. It's not what I would think of. No, generally, those do scream nerd. But his senior year, Dexter's brother gave him a Rodney on the Rock compilation album.

Shout out Roddy Bingenheimer, an architect of my youth as well. He DJed the late night slot on. on All Rock Station K Rock and would play a lot of punk bands back then in the 80s. So that kind of hooked Dexter on punk. He started like reading Flipside and Maxim Rock and Roll and he got super into TSOL. Important. The adolescents. I hate them all them creatures.

I hate all them creatures. And Agent Orange. Also all from Orange County in the lineage of Orange County punk bands. A couple of things happen here. There's a band called Manic Subsidal. Dexter and Craig Kay were in Manic Subsiddle and Noot was in Clowns of Death. Okay, so Noodles was in Clowns of Death. Also James Leha.

Yes. The drummer, the first drummer of the offspring. Dexter Holland played piano. He had learned piano because his mom made him when he was a wayward teenager. But he didn't know how to play guitar. I think none of them knew how to play instruments. Is this correct? In the punk tradition, they were just like, who cares? We'll figure it out. They just taught themselves kind of learning alongside each other. And yes, then they recruited Kevin Noodles Wasserman guitar, born February 4th, 1963. Aquarius. Three Aquarius is in this band. Those my astrology heads know that that's quite insane. And they changed the band name from Manning Subsidals to the Offspring in 1985 after a B movie called The Offspring. They were born to kill. Have you seen this film? I have not. But they've also said that regarding the name change that when they were merging and needed a new name, it was the compromised choice on names. between clowns of death and manic subsidal.

They had a whole sheet of names they ran through. And everyone was kind of like, eh, that one's not bad. And it was like, okay then. And that was kind of that. Sure. How many great things are named, a sheet of things in the most mid one wins. You mentioned this, that it was accessible to you as a kid in the suburbs. And that's probably because this is possible.

punk music made by kids in the suburbs, you know? Like, that's like a really specific trait of the music of the offspring. And a lot of, a lot of Southern California pop punk that sort of comes in and around the time. For sure, and bad habit or things like that. That was more of an angsty song that would appeal to a suburban kid's because it had the bad words in it, you know? Sure. A whole string on them.

I got in my head will tell you the same. having the bad words. Oh, instantly you go into the cafeteria and start shouting them. People look at you and it's the intention grabber. It was the beginning of a time when punk was reemerging and there was a void, especially in that world where the nirvana was done. There was no other big, I mean, there were other alt rock bands, but kind of the heart of it was torn out.

And Pearl Jam was retreating from every which way, shape or form of any type of accessibility, you know, with the Ticketmaster thing and then doing shows far away. So there was like, it was a big open void between the years, grade seven and grade eight, that this just popped up. And the whole thing I always think about with bands is if you have to sing it like you mean. Right. And it just felt like Dexter and Billy Joe sang it like they meant it. And like, there was coming from a real place. You felt what they were saying and you knew that there was It's a beef to that message. It's interesting that you say this.

It's very interesting to say this because this actually segues beautifully into the first few offspring albums where I would argue they maybe don't yet totally mean what they say. I think that argument could be made and we'll talk about why. I think something really interesting about the offspring is that this is like the late 80s now, right? Like James Leha leaves the band to pursue a medical career in oncology. he is now a gynecologist in the, I believe, in Los Gatos. Still plays, though. He's still plays, though. He's still a shredder.

I did joke with producer John that if I was really dedicated to my research, I would have made an appointment with him and, you know, gone in and then picked his brain about the offspring. And she didn't like that. And she wanted, I think she quite quit in her mind a little bit when I said it. And that's fine. That's her right. So he's off there, gynecologically thriving and shredding.

But in the meantime, wrong. Ron Welty joins the band. This is the third Aquarius I mentioned, February 1st, 1971. He was only 16 years old at the time. He was from Cyprus, a nearby Orange County town. Before Ron Welty joins, they had put out a seven-inch on their own called All Be Waiting. Which is a pretty standard, right? Like, I like TSO punk.

They make this sort of like first song of a band that loves TSO and probably wants to sound like TSOL. so they do kind of sound like TSO. And they record a demo in 1986. Ready, Greg? I don't care. Kevin? Yeah. James.

Satan. All right. Apparently got our positive review in Maximum Rock and Roll, which is funny because later Maximum Rock and Roll will in fact turn on them. We'll get there. So a thing that's interesting to me about the offspring, which in terms of them being a punk band,

is that, like, I think a hallmark of punk music is being part of a scene, right? Like, that's just something you associate, or I associate anyways with punk music. Of course. Like, there's these, like, sort of groups of scenes, right? The authoring was not part of any scene at all. Like, they sort of, like, existed completely outside of any possible scene. They weren't friends with any other bands.

They didn't play shows, really much at all. There's a lot of factors to that, too, for what OC was at that time. Because after the initial first wave with Agent R and adolescence and social D, it was just kind of disney. it was just kind of this void where kind of drugs or breakups, and then you're dealing with the Nazi element to it. And it was just very splintered. Then Mike Ness had his issues and had to go to rehab. And Social D wasn't as active as they were at the beginning of that decade.

So it was just the big void. There were no venues, which is something that was a big part of it, too. They couldn't play anywhere. They would play at house parties. They'd play at like VFW halls. They would play at these unorthodox. places and of course you know at a vfW hall you kind of trick them into playing once and then you smash up the place and then you're not allowed back you're not allowed to play yeah so they and there was

not really much in terms of punk going on in the mid to late 80s and that's kind of where they found themselves but with that single they did it themselves it was literally a DIY operation they were gluing the cover together and they actually got it to rodney yeah when dexter was in school which was pretty impressive with these young upstarts with no scene and like we're just doing it to have fun because they were all in college except for noodles who was a janitor at the time yeah and dexter was at USC where he got i think he got like a full ride scholarship or most ride scholarship and he was studying molecular biology maybe he was pre-med i can't remember um regardless he is seriously doing school and he wanted to stay in l-a so he went to USC they didn't play in the la

venues and I have to imagine it was like a difficult time to break in to the scene. There was stuff going on but I think, you know, not knowing anyone, not being friends with anyone, like kind of made it difficult to get booked and like to your point there's also like less punk shows being booked. It existed. It's just interesting because what ends up happening is they somehow they get involved with Gilman Street. Gilman Street opens and then they're able to play there. And so they would like trek up to Gilman's. like two or three times a year and play shows with like a conno cries. Like,

and like, is like, just so interesting, like that you're like from like, you know, you're driving 10 hours, not eight hours to play these shows. But that's where they sort of started to build a bit of a following, right?

Yeah. They found out about it just by perusing magazines at Zed Records in Long Beach. That's how they found out about Gilman that even existed. Yeah. And they found Gilman and it's, you know, they thrived there. Like Kamala Parks, who very famously was like a main figure at Gilman and, you know, had her band Kamala and the Carnivores.

She helped them out a bunch. She apparently booked their first tour. There was this 1995 Rolling Stone piece where she's quoted in. And she says, Green Day hung out in the punk scene, but their music wasn't punk. The offspring's music was punk, but they didn't hang out in the punk scene. What do you think about that? It's true. I mean, I thought it was pretty astute.

Yeah, I was like, it was. I mean, that's a nice, neat way to sum it up because they had their own thing going on. Like, Noodles was doing his job, getting his pension. He was collecting, you know, mopping the floors, getting his pension. Though he did start as, they did say to us, they did say that he had to start as the substitute assistant janitor at the school. So you got to start somewhere. I suppose this was like a union job probably. That's probably why.

Yes. So, and then Dexter was going. to get a degree, a master's degree in the molecular, said molecular biology. And wealthy and Greg K. each had their own jobs as well. Greg was working at a print shop after getting his finance degree. One of them was living with their mom. Might have been Greg K. I'll have it in my notes later. One of them like completely has still lived with their mom for like many years, like literally up until smash. Classic. Love that. Okay. So, so So they get a little toehold through Gilman.

They signed with a now defunct label in 1988 called Nemesis Records, home of such well-known acts as Fishwife. One down, one to show. I take a quiet and a dog and a show. And they put out their first album in 1989, self-titled The Offspring. Just to the point of before, like the tail end of the 80s was a very interesting. interesting time for music because you can absolutely just see the shift happening, right? Like, on one hand, you have like Motley Cruz, Dr. Feel Good, and Skid Row's self-titled. And that Warrant album, Dirty, Rotten, Filthy, Stinking Ridge.

Which are massive, massive albums. Like, that's what MTV's playing, right? But then on the other hand, like Operation Ivy's put out their first album. Nirvana has put out their first album The Butthole surfers are active Marky got with Sharon And Sharon got Cherokee Red Hot Chili Peppers put out Mother's Milk

Sound Garden puts out louder than love in 89 Pretty hate machine comes out in 89 9-inch nails Pixies doolittle, a huge important one The Cure Disintegration And no effects And other bands like that. that, you know, are still, they're still active.

Adolescents are still active. You know, like, they're putting out albums. Social D puts out prison bound in 88. Things are starting to, like, really sort of shift and move. But not yet popularly. I'm so sorry. I'm going to go on a little rant here, if you'll allow me. It's not a rant.

By all means, go for it. Okay. So the offspring first album is produced by Tom Wilson. Let's talk about Tom Wilson. I'm obsessed. Okay. They go find Tom Wilson, who was this iconic punk producer who had produced the first two TSO albums. He had produced the adolescence. Um, me, but great fucking album, classic album, which although that album was technically supposed to be produced by Mike Patton, and I think it was, Tom Wilson was brought in to work on it. Um, here's what happens. Okay, let me talk about Tom Wilson. Just obsessed. So before the adolescence album, he had literally never worked on any thing. harder rock-wise than Seals and Croft. Or like Boz Skaggs.

He was just kind of like had come to L.A. to like work in the music biz and was like doing some like light mixing engineering at Seals and Croft's own studio, just like, you know, soft rock. Now the adolescents are assigned to Frontier Records, which is started by Lisa FAMS. who worked for Bomp, another amazing fanzine. And she was like, things are not going well in the recording. I need, like, someone who knows what the fuck they're doing in the studio. So she just goes and hires Tom Wilson because he's, like, a man who knows how to engineer an album. Not because he has any punk, like, nothing.

And he's older. And he comes in, and he is just like, all right, let's do this. Never heard a band like this. Like, doesn't care. It's so funny. He just, like, went with it. And there's, like, I think. I think it was Frank Agnew reminiscences about it.

And he was like, he was older than us. That's all we knew. Oh, man, here's this older guy. We thought he'd be a bummer. But he wound up being really cool to hang out with. And he does this fucking great job. So then she hires him to also do T.O.L.'s dance with me. So then he works with T.S.O.L.

And then he just kind of becomes like the go-to guy for Orange County Punk albums out of nowhere. But then this is like more early to mid-80s. So then by the time, offspring goes and finds him, because the, you know, you know, They want to be like they're heroes. They want Tom Wilson to produce it. He's like basically done producing albums. Like he's working on like TV scores. Like he's not even barely in the biz. And they're like, come do this. And he's like, okay. And he comes and does it. Now, it's not that important about this album or even the next album. But this man who was like basically retired, may he rest in peace. He passed away actually several years ago. But became extremely wealthy because the offspring loved TSO. And all that happened by full fucking accident because he just knew how to set up mics and no one else did. I just, that story to me, gorgeous. I mean, it's good to be a guy who knows things and is in the right place. And has a good vibe.

I feel like the moral about it was like, he didn't come in and he wasn't like, this music sucks. You guys are crazy. Like you're weird young punks. I don't want to work. He was like, okay, I'll make it good. I read somewhere that he was a Buddhist too. So the Zen nature of dealing with everyone. That completely makes sense.

Yeah. I think we try to bring that attitude to Bansplaine as well, where we're like, yeah, like sometimes we come into a band and it's not my favorite or producer Dillon's favorite. We just try to make the best possible episode we can't. It's a good attitude to have it. It got Wilson. It got him pretty far. Yeah, in the hopes that it'll one day make us wealthy. Sorry, that's my sidebar about Tom Wilson.

Well, he's the name to be remembered. I mean, I feel like his impact on everything that's seen and beyond because of that has kind of been relegated to the dustbin of history to some degree. No, I mean, it's huge. Those albums wouldn't be as iconic. Because they all lack a similar, there's like an element, like a similar thread to them and a DNA that's his imprint. No, and he made them good. Like, let's be real, right? Like, a lot of punk albums were poorly recorded.

They sounded bad. And that's why they were not, people did not, you know, you don't hold them up. But these ones, like, he made them sound really good. And as producer said, unified this, like, sort of scene sound of Orange County Punk that, like, we think of still to this day. Yeah, because there's plenty of bands toiling around the area that time that they just couldn't get it right. And they didn't have Tom Wilson to come save the day. Totally. Okay, let's play a song off of the first self-tit album. What song do you want to hear first? Beheaded. Yeah. That's a good summary of their sound of that time. Yeah, totally. Okay, this is beheaded.

That was beheaded. Song slaps. It's uneniable. It very much sounds like it was, of a certain time too. Yeah, it's just like straight up. It's just a punk song. It's like a Ford of the Floor punk song. It's good. It's like a good, hardy, gives you what you need punk song.

I like it. It's good. It was co-written by Dr. James Leha, the drummer turned guy now, who producer Dylan points out, did continue to be into offspring, if you will. It's just a different,

in a different way, shaped, and form. Very much so. That's right. So there, Okay, there's a couple of songs on this album. One that's no longer available on streaming. It had to be removed.

And we wanted to talk about it because I know you also brought up this very funny TV appearance that happens from the offspring kind of as a direct result of this song, which is called Kill the President. It's really interesting because I listened to Dexter Holland on Bob Leps at the Thur. This is podcast. Have you, have you heard that interview? It's kind of recent. I think it was last. I think it was last year. They were doing the rounds. Yeah. So it was when they were doing the rounds. So he's and he said it in another interview a long time ago too. So I'm like, okay, double time. This is like what he was thinking. He was like, when you're a punk band and you start out,

there's four songs that you have to write. And I'm going to slightly butcher this, but I'll get the just right. It's basically like, I hate war. I hate the cops. I hate the president. And I hate my girlfriend. Well, I think over their career, they checked all those boxes. I just found it really interesting the way he said it, right? Because it was like, as if it's like a leather jacket or something. It's like, oh, you're going to be a punk fan? You wear a leather jacket. It's like cosplay. Like, this is what I mean or is like, I'm not totally sure they meant it. Like, I'm not really sure like they meant to kill the president. Maybe and maybe a little bit, you know, but it feels a little more like maybe slightly checking some boxes, like some punk boxes.

Because they're not a political band. They do some political songs early on, but that is not a through line. Like, they're not a political band throughout their career. They're more cultural commentators, I would say, than a political band. That's generous. But, okay, yes, I hear what you're saying. Because of what they write about, they're not writing about, I don't know, save the rainforest or whatever, but they're addressing things that are going on culturally that are of a certain,

time and I mean cultural critiques I mean you're not seeing them right for New York times but in their music they do address issues of importance of that time we'll get into it I have thoughts um so bachshah killed the president so what happened to kill the president there's only 5,000 copies of this album made in the first place um they are guests on a show called hot seat with wally george Our next guest on the hot seat, they are a local Orange County rock band, the offspring. What do you know about this television program? More like, what do you know about the host? Do you know that he's Rebecca D. Mornay's father?

I didn't absolutely not know that, but that like kind of totally makes sense. I can't explain it, but it really makes sense to me. For anyone who has not heard of Wally George, just think of the late 80s were very much a time of right-wing public access shows is probably the best way to describe it. And Wally George was the big guy in Orange County who had his own public access show. His hair. His hair was out of control. Incredible hair. Absolutely incredible. Looks like it came out of a spray can. Yes, very much so. And he had the show where he railed against things of the time.

Let's just put it that way. And the offspring ended up on that show as a local band. And to say hijinks ensued, wouldn't do it justice about how he kicked up a storm. I think you are totally disgraceful. And they kind of took it in and found it funny, but it did relate to kill the president. Kill the president! And he proceeded to destroy that album. I want to be fair about this album. So there's it.

One of only 5,000 copies. If he only knew what discogs was back. then, right? I know. He could have made some money. Here's the hilarious thing about this, and I did some investigative journalism, by which I mean I read the YouTube comments.

And this was filmed not when they say it was. It was apparently filmed in 1992. So does that explain the kid with the bad religion shirt then? Yes. So if you watch it, there's like all these clearly like planted punk kids in the audience, and there's like a like front and center. a kid in a bad religion classic logo shirt.

And I'm like, oh, this was like after you got signed to Epitaph. And it was probably like a brilliant PR move on Epitaph's part. If it wasn't, don't ever tell me. But I love to think. Because like what's going to get kids more like into buying an album than like the conservative pundit of your like public access like shitting on it and ripping it up? They're like, hell yeah, that's cool. Yeah.

Anyway, that's my conspiracy theory about this moment. I mean, it's plausible. And they seem to be taken and in quite well. when he was ranting at them, they were having the time of their life. Yeah, they're like laughing, exactly. Egging on the crowd too, the booze got louder. They were, as they were getting escorted off, they were doing the arm raise. I think Noodles was.

And he while Wally George was just freaking out and trying to rip up a vinyl. And it was just, if it was a PR move, shout out to that publicist, who's idea at once. I mean, that's genius. I want to read some of the lyrics of Kill the President. in a world without leaders who'd start all the wars, the world that you're saving will always be yours. Kill the president, voice of reason, unify with that single line, stop the man with the power of the government, a leader's not the center of democracy. I just want people to hold this in their minds

before we get to give it to me, baby, uh-huh, uh-huh, and all the girls say I'm pretty fly for a white guy, because it's just a bit of a compare and contrast. It feels like, I mean, let's not forget, Speaking of epitaph, one success story in punk, I think you could really fairly say at this point is bad religion. They're on epitaph, I think. They do go to Atlantic at, is it 1990? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Oh, 93.

So they eventually, but still, like, they're, like pretty popular, like, 21st century digital boy is, like, constantly being played on K-Roc. I don't think it was, like, nationally being played. but they were like a successful, you know, paying for themselves to live punk band. To me, a song like Kill the President sounds very much like in the vein of a bad religion song, like sort of like heavier, more political, more big words, you know, like theoretical. Just thought that was interesting. There is a song called Tehran, which is a particular interest to me, an Iranian person. I was like, what is this all about?

This is like Iran-Contra time. Is that kind of right? Does that feel right to you? I would say end of Iran-Iraq War when that would have. Because I think the album was 89. And Iran-Contra ended in 87. Yes. So yeah, it's like on the tail end of that.

Sure. All this to say is there's like, this is like the 80s is peak beef with Iran era. Like we've never really left it. But like it's like a big deal in the 80s. Reagan, Carter, the whole thing. And Rushdie. That's when that happened. And Rushdie. God bless.

And the Reaganism also was a big background for where they grew up, too. So there was all that factored into that. Totally. I bring up Tehran because I don't get what they're getting at. Like, I think it's anti-war, but I'm not sure it's pro-Iran. Does that make sense? Yes. Very much so. When we get into like what the,

perceived politics of the offspring are, I think this is important and it'll make sense. I think they're like, we shouldn't be going to war and wasting our resources and like putting our young people at risk. But they're not like, we should protect Islam or the people of Iran, right? I mean, is that about, is that about right? That sounds right. The bridge is really funny because it's great Satan, great Satan, great Satan. Our flags are burning because that's what Iran called America is great Satan. Shatun. Shatun is how you say Satan and Farsi. I brought this up this song up because they put out a seven inch or an EP maybe after this. Yes, the Baghdad. Where they simply use this exact same song and re-record it and instead of Tehran they say Baghdad. I'm so sorry to me. That's so

funny that it's just like absolutely interchangeable to them. Middle Eastern capital is like, oh, no, okay, now we're at Worthy Rock. We'll just quickly switch out to Baghdad. Two completely different countries. Speak different languages. Just, I really tickled. They really tickled me. That's funny. I know. I sense it. Okay. There's a couple other good songs on this album. Like, Jennifer lost the war. I really like. It ends up showing up on the first punk-a-roma compilation, 1994. Shout-up punk-orama. Great series of CDs.

And Black Ball is another good one. Black Ball is featured on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. Just so you know, of ways that this band infiltrated the culture. This album doesn't exactly make waves, right? There is, surprisingly, an LA Times review of it. They give it two and a half stars. The reviewer says, on the sociopolitical side, the defiantly pacifist offspring are far more acute than TSOL ever was.

Can you imagine a time where the LA Times is like, we're going to review this tiny album punk band? It's so interesting. Hurtful, they call them Cypress-based. Just, that's rude, incorrect there from Garden Grove. I just wonder how they got their hands on it. I don't know how they found it. Maybe it was mailed in. I don't know.

It got reviewed the year after it came out. But basically what they say is overall, the offsprings debut album plows through already-tilled territory and tends toward musical sameness. But it also shows a promising spark of intelligence. Fair enough. Okay. Not bad. The fact that they even got a review in L.A. Times,

apropo of like basically nothing. And not even an L.A. band. I mean, what are they tethered to Dexter's USC dorm residence? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. In 1991, they put out that Baghdad IP they were talked about where they changed the name from Tehran to Baghdad. that song was included on a rock against Bush,

volume one compilation from Fat Records. Then they signed to epitaph, right? Yes. Let's talk about epitaph briefly. I was going to say it was a long journey to get to that point. So, yeah. Before we talk about how they got on Epitaph, because I think that's important,

I want to talk about what epitaph was before 1994, right? Like, what space did it occupy in kind of music, in punk music in Southern California. Like, it wasn't what we think of today, right? Where it's like become this iconic thing. But it wasn't, it was a pretty big deal to be on Epitaph if you were like a little punk band in Southern California. Oh, yeah.

It was absolutely getting that stamp of approval from Brett, which carried tremendous weight, especially back then, the tremendous weight of just being. Right. Brett Gervidt of bad religion. Brett approved, who was still the owner of the label.

And they had, you know, know, in 93, Epitaph sold a million albums. So that's not nothing. Bad religion, No Effects, Pennywise. They had a lot of bands that were big in punk. I mean, No Effects was one of the bigger punk bands at that time. Pennywise, again, in this particular scene was pretty big. I remember going to see Pennywise like every year play at the harbor down in Romoza. I was going to say the South base finest, right? Yeah, they're from like a town over for me. I think they're from Hermosa. if they're not correct me if I'm wrong. But so what happens?

Do you want to tell me how they, the long road to getting signed to Apataph? Well, a lot of it started to rewind the bit back at Gilman. That's where they were kind of plying their craft, so to speak. And they were going up there. The three of them would drive and the noodles would fly up there. You didn't want to miss some days pay. So since he had some money,

he'd fly from Long Beach Airport to, at either Oakland, I think Oakland, they played the shows there, and they started just chipping away at things, and they were pounding the pavement at Gilman, and then how they got to Brett and epitaph was through Flipside,

and they found out that there was a compilation called The Big One, and that would feature bands from Northern Cal on one side and Southern Cal on the other side, and Flipside asked them to contribute and gave them $500 bucks, which, you know, 500 bucks to put your song on that compilation. They were all in.

Sessions took place at Brett's studio in Hollywood. He engineered Take It Like a Man, which was on that compilation. They seemed to get along and things started going well. There was a point where Dexter and Brett played chess against each other. And Dexter was worried at the time whether or not when he was playing Brett, whether or not he should let him win or not. Because in his studio, he just engineered the song. They wanted to get signed to epitaphs.

What do you do? What would you do in that situation? If you're trying to get signed to this guy's label and you're locked in a battle of wits and chess. I would beat him, of course, to show him that I'm a worthy adversary and worthy of being signed to your label. Also keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

And guess what happens? He won and he did not get signed. That is correct. That's exactly what correct. I don't know. I think you're making, you're making a leap to the causal relationship between the chess game and them not getting sides. I know. It was kind of, it was kind of a funny joke that was told to, that, that I'd heard from them. But it would take a few years for them to get signed to Apetaph and how they got signed to Aptaph. They were playing a show at the Antig Club on Melrose. And Brett went up. They were sitting at a table with Brett. And of all things, He said that his son had liked the demo of theirs of Session, and that's why he signed that. Right.

Yeah. I mean, the kids know. Yeah. Session is like such a classic song that a kid or a teenager would like. It's like the song that's in like all the skate videos and stuff. Like I get why that like sort of resonated with him. Here's what Dexter said about like wanting to be on Apetaph. It was an exciting time for Apetap.

We were noticing things like Nirvana, but Apetap had been doing really. well for the last few years. They had bad religion who'd been selling 200,000 copies, which was a lot. Then the bands that came out like No Effects and Pennywise were doing really well. We were just starting to play shows with those guys and we'd become friends with them. We could almost see it like, wow,

I see No Effects actually sort of making a living at it. That it was a possibility for something else to happen. So that's like kind of how they were viewing it. And they were still working there all their jobs too at the time. So music, they

weren't like live and die music. They were playing music, but they still had their other things going on too. Yeah, at this point, I think Dexter is in graduate school or about to go to graduate school. And like, you know, yeah, everyone's just doing their life. So now it's 1992. Musical landscape of 1992. Far different than 1999. I think we all know what's already happened.

That's right. 1991 has happened the year. Punk has broken. Nirvana has happened. Everything has changed. But also, like, maybe. maybe more micro and specific. Like,

1992 is the year No Effects puts out white trash two heaps and a bean, which is one of the bigger No effects albums. God damn gorgeous, beautiful album, if you ask me. Great album.

Lagwagans put out, duh. Ransans to put out their self-titled. You will know Social D, put out somewhere between heaven and hell. Bruce Springsteen's favorite album

from 1992. I did not know that. You caught Producer Dillon's ear. She has been playing solitaire on her computer this entire time. And now she is right back here paying attention because you've said Bruce Springsteen. Oh, the boss, yeah, the boss and Mike does. Buds. Whenever he's here, whatever the boss is here usually brings Mike up.

They do bad luck, a great social debanger. You know now I got a friend of mine. I've been a big fan of his for a long, long time. Great Southern California punk band called Social Distortion. That makes sense. Mike D is such a classic songwriter, like in the vein of a Bruce Springsteen, like in the vein of like an American troubadour.

Like it totally makes sense to me that they would vibe. So Ignition is the offspring album that comes out, October 16th, 1992. Once again, produced by Tom Wilson. Quick question for you. Is it just me or is the artwork on this album? album giving 480. Like what's happening?

I mean, you're right. No way around it. Like, right? Like, it's just like, I know this is an audio podcast, but for those of you who are not looking at it, it is a weird square with a flame in it, with this like new agey sort of font that says offspring. With that G. Yeah, that sort of like goth G.

It's just real 480 hours, which is actually very interesting because one of my favorite offspring songs of all time is on here, which does not sound like any other offspring song, I don't think. And that is dirty magic. Because to me, dirty magic, to quote Robert Harvilla, shit sounds like the cure. Like, why is that song so fucking good? It's crazy. I mean, it's definitely an outlier in their catalogs. For sure, it's, they took a swing on that one. And they knocked it out of the goddamn park? Yeah. Let's listen to it. This is Dirty Magic. That was nerdy magic, a goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song. Surprising. Just imagine if they decided to go in that direction, how different the world would be. Producer Dylan would be much happier right now.

She wouldn't be staring off into the distance. I mean, Bruce Springsteen could have wrote that also. Well. He could have gone that route instead of human touch. Yeah, I guess we could have all just tried to be more like the cure. British Dillon is now angry at you. You've changed. She's had a lot of roller coaster of emotions now.

I love that song. This album eventually does go gold in 1996, but that's like off the back of smash. When it comes out, I think it's largely fine. I think people are like, this is cool. They started a tour behind it so that it did okay, you know, with the people that mattered. Most importantly, this album, probably because, not because of Apetaph, but just like through the exposure of Apetaph, because the songs are good, starts getting their songs in Escape Videos.

And anyone who knows any fucking thing about music, especially in California, knows that this is where you start. This is where the fucking pipeline starts. You have to get into skate videos first and then you start fucking spreading like Wildfire. And the offspring is no different. Session is in Plan B's virtual reality and also thrashers, The Truth Harts. And the song We Are One is on the Powell skate video Suburban Diners. That's a big deal. Like for kids who grew up in Southern California or California in general who were into

skate culture, like this is discovery. Like I discovered a ton of music through skate videos. So like they're sort of getting credibility and exposure through this sort of like important channel. So I don't want to gloss over that. It's interesting. It serves as like a pre-creature. to the whole licensing and soundtracks like Tony Talk you referred to earlier as well.

Yeah, no, totally. Session is an interesting song. Because aforementioned, it's apparently the song that convinced, you know, Brett Gorowitz's son to get them to sign an Abataph. But also, it's sort of a rough draft of self-esteem in the subject matter.

Very much so. Yeah, it's basically like the same-ish, topic, a little more vague, but it's like, you know, simp hours or whatever. And it's also like self-esteem, co-written, and I have to assume, I don't know, writing credits don't usually specify what part of the song you wrote, so I don't know, but Dexter Holland's ex-wife, Christine Luna, co-wrote this song and self-esteem. And I think it must have been the lyrics. Yeah, had to. And I find that very interesting. The sim anthem has a woman's touch. Let's listen to Kick Em

When He's Down because that song is, that song fucking goes, babe. It's a good fucking song. This is Kick him When He's Down. Fun fact about that song, on a personal note, after I had discovered Smash

probably a year later when I, I'd been given a dub tape of ignition and I was listening to it on a, my snuck guy, cut school and snuck. So you stole it, is what you're saying.

You stole it. You didn't put any money into the offspring's pockets. Well, no, no, no. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. So I think it was like an exam day, and like a buddy of mine snuck into the city and I cut it or something.

And we went to a record store and that song was playing. And it had been just been playing on my little Walkman probably no more than eight minutes before, which led me to buy the CD. And who would have thought that this tiny little punk record store in Manhattan would be playing that song, what, three or four years later?

And it was just like, I thought it was, you know, a sign from above. This was before Rixenay, too. It was God. That was God. God works in mysterious ways in everyone's life expresses differently. And in your life, this is how God was expressing. Hearing that, it was just like, but then I just hear that.

And I asked the guy who it was. And they said, this is the offspring and gave me a dirty look. It's like, how dare you not know? It's like, no, I'm just, you know, it's back to the journey. Just, you know, just confirming. And they gave, pulled out the CD. And I was like, I want one of those. I almost didn't get back home because I wasted all or spent all my money on that CD instead of trade fair.

Okay, that's pretty adorable, before we gloss past this album, I do have to point out that they checked another box on their four punk songs at every punk band must write. Here it's LAPD, which is the anti-police song. This is obviously in light of the L.A. riots that happened in April. in Cheney 2, post the Rodney King trial verdict. This song does have the N-word in it, which joins them in a long lineage of punk songs that misguidedly use the N-word. Most notably, I think, Patty Smith's rock and roll N-word, white noise by stiff little fingers, white punks on Hope by Crass, Los Angeles by X. There's a lot. The adolescence, the Dead Kenned is Seven Seconds, Avengers, even Moss icon.

A lot of bands use the N-word. in songs. I just would be remiss if I did not mention that. But it is an anti-LAPD song. It's written from the eyes of that. Yes. But that aspect is still very key. Hard R.

Hard R. This album, well, I find this album to be quite good. That's the thing. Like, early on, you can see that Dexter Holland

is like a particularly adept songwriter. Like, he writes really, catchy, earwormy, just like he's good. He's good at melody. He's a good fucking songwriter. And you see that blueprinted here.

And melody is a big part of what was coming out of Orange County, too. Right. As opposed to other punk that didn't care much about melody. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I mean, you can go back to adolescence. Like social deed. Or even the mechanics, if you really want to go back far. that always had that melody

and it kind of was passed down, especially based on their influences as being TSOL and Social D. They always had strong melodies. So it's just interesting seeing how it evolved from the first single. But again, the first single, Dexter drove up to his house,

dropped it off at a back door to some guy, got back to his dorm room, and there it was. And from that progression to this, to ignition, it was definitely, you could hear that there was definitely something there. And if it's just a matter whether or not they were going to figure it out or not, as you were saying, the songwriting. I love Rodney on the Rock. I love him.

There's a little table at Cantors. I owe him my life. Okay. So Ignition comes out. Not a lot of reviews because, you know, I don't know, the L.A. Times reviewed the first, but not the second one. Not a big market for a music press, I think, around epitaph releases. Or maybe there was. I don't know.

This does not get reviewed. They tour. Like you said, this is enough to back a tour. They tour for a year and a half to promote ignition. They tour with bands like Youth Brigade, The Vandals, Bad Religion, Guttermouth, Voodoo Glow Sculls, which is a brief foray into ska music, glue gun, momentum, face-to-face, Pennywise, Rancet, Unwritten Law. And a little band called Corn. That is my favorite.

Because people forget, if I do one thing with my legacy, it's to remind people on almost every episode that corn has been around for a really long time. That corn, while new metal blew up in like 1999 or 2000, corn was out here in these streets since like 1993 and making good music. And they were Orange County based for a little too. They moved from Bakersville to Orange County. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. There was a period in time where they were. So it does, it does, it may seem like a odd pairing, but in that sense, it does make some sense. Makes a little sense to me. I mean, blind. And then no effects, right? And no effects. Yeah. They basically tore with everybody. like in that scene.

They open for no effects on, this is like a major tour for them, on the white trash two heaps and a bean tour, and they also go on a tour with the lunatic ex. Then they go into the studio to record Smash. They finish it. They get an opening slot for Pennywise. They go on tour,

and they tour all the way until like a week before Smash comes out. Their whole lives are about to change. And there was, and also, the whole C change was changing too then. It was just, you know, with everything that was going on with popular music at that time. Yeah. It's 1994, babe. Green Day Duky has come out.

Things have changed. Do you have the time to listen to me wine? Punk and Drupulik, my personal favorite No Effects album, does come out this year. Bad religion, stranger than fiction. Jawbreakers, 24-hour revenge therapy. What's to Punk? What's the song? Rancids, Let's Go.

Blink 182 has entered the fucking chat with their Buddha demo. They're not quite popular yet. I know about them. I'm going to see them. I'm trekking to Huntington Beach at 12 years old to check out my new favorite family 22. That's neither here nor there. Smash comes out April 8th, 1994.

April 7th, 1994 is the day that Kurt Cobain dies. April 8th is the day that his body is found and the world knows that Kurt Cobain died. So an insane day for an album to be released into the world. It's almost too, like, literal of, like, this era is over and this era is starting. The coincidence or the timing of it is just, it's beyond uncanny. And I don't know if you can go beyond uncanny. It's mud and canny. Just literally one book shuts, literally the next one opens.

Things have started to shift, right? Like already Bush has put out 16 stone. Weir put out the Blue Album. We are already moving into like alternative rock, right? Like Brunch is very short-lived. We talk about this all the time in the podcast. I'll just say it again. Grunge is much shorter than people remember.

It's like a couple of years max. And it just kind of immediately shifts into alt rock within which a subcategory of Alt Rock is pop punk, the Green Days and Offsprings of the World. Smash is produced by Tom Wilson. This is the first album where Dexter actually plays guitar on it. I thought that was interesting. I guess he got good enough a guitar to play on the album. Weirdly the only album where they're referred to as just offspring,

No The, in the history of all of their albums, since and before. It was a time of experimentation. Tell me a little bit about like the album artwork of this. this album, because to me it's pretty iconic. It's very iconic. I mean, the thing that strikes me more than the skeleton is the font. Right.

The font is what beeps out. Totally. I don't even know how I would describe it, but it just feels like it's bringing the heat, if that makes sense. Yes. With the way the white, yeah, the white is fading and then you see the, you see the skull and it's just, it's just, it's just, it just, it just, it just, it just, it just, It goes back to their history as, you know, maybe Dr. Leah's history,

but it does go back to that refined look at the human body, perhaps. But it is definitely something that grabs you, especially when you're walking around to Sam Goody or a place like that in 1994. It also, I think, really importantly, visually fits in with like the Nirvana Soundgarden vibe that's shifted, right? Like, we're talking the last album as like randomly giving 480 the first album. I don't even know what's happening

on the first album. It just looks like a, you know, this is an album, it has an album cover. But now we're like telegraphing, like darkness, sort of like intensity. There's a vibe. Like, this looks like a dangerous album. Yeah, exactly.

There's a vibe. The thing is about that, all of the singles had that similar vibe in artwork. And it was kind of like, you know, kind of spooky and kind of, you know. Yeah. was very unified the artwork. The motif of it.

Totally. Do you know who designed it, right? The artwork? I do. Fred Hidalgo and Kevin Hudd. Yeah. It's in my notes. Oh, there you go.

So I was going to say they did a pretty big album right around that too. That just was, what, released 10 months earlier, bad religion, recipe for hate. This album was recorded for $20,000. That's a pretty fucking small budget. They would talk about how it restricted what they could do, right? Like they couldn't use the studio as much as they wanted. What kind of effect do you feel like this had on this album, if any? It was very punk.

They had a scrap buy. They had to get what they wanted in the limited time and just do it. They didn't have time to futz around and really makes this finite, you know, never-ending work of art. They had X dollars and X time, go make it. This is what you got. Go do it. Here's your guy again.

Done. Yeah. And I think that actually helped in this case because if the songs were done or tweaked any different way, wouldn't have had the impact that they had. I mean, let's just rip off the fucking band did. Let's hear Come Out and Play. Parentheses, keep him separated. The first single.

Let's do it. That was Come Out and Play. Parentheses came and separated. A lot to talk about in this on Launch. about first of all, first and foremost, it is absolutely a fucking time machine that somehow, it's like when you smell something, you know, and like it takes you right back to, I'm always 12 years old when I hear this song. It was so massive. Where were you when you first heard it? In the car, Jed the Fish played it. Jed the Fish came on around five, which is usually when I was

being picked up from school if I didn't walk home from doing sports. And so my dad would make my dad or my mom put on K-Rock and I would listen to Judd the Fish and he played the catch of the day, which was a huge deal for them. and kind of blows everything up. But I don't want to get ahead. What I wanted to say was producer Dylan and I uncovered this tweet where there's a vice article

about how Dexter Holland basically wrote this song. It was like inspired, the lyrics anyways, to keep him separated, not from what the song is actually about, which is gang violence, I think.

And we'll unpack that in the second too. But about molecules in the lab that he needed to keep separated. I mean, the man is a microbiologist. That's what I'm saying. Really blows my mind. Wouldn't surprise me. He's a man of wisdom.

He said, I was preparing gelatin. They call it agarose for petri dishes. And it's very thick and viscous. And to sterilize it, you had to put it in a pressurized oven called an autoclave. I was making a lot like gallons in Erlenmeyer flask. So after an hour, it was hot as shit. And you have to wear oven meds. And you take it out and you can't pour it because it's practically boiled.

I was waiting for it to cool down and it's taking forever and you go back and touch it an hour later. If it's still hot, you put it under the hood where it sucks air. And three hours later, I have these flocks next to each other. It's not cool enough. This sounds so ridiculous telling the story, but in that moment, I spoke to myself and I said, these flas are never going to cool off. I got to keep them separated. I swear to God, this is a true story and it was like a light bulb went on.

Whoa, I need to remember that line. I mean, it balances with the come out and play with the Warriors reference right there. Yes, the keep them separated part is sung by their childhood friend or high school friend or whatever. Jason Blackball McLean, who is not Mexican. He is Scottish, but he, according to Noodles, grew up in a Mexican neighborhood. All his friends are Mexican. He had the slang down the accent. He was a Scottish cholo from Whittier.

So we asked him to come in and do the line. Apparently, he came down because Snoop Dog was also recording at this studio. Again, makes sense, Long Beach Native. And Jason Blackball-McLean just wanted to meet Snoop Dog and take a photo with him. And apparently, Offspring had asked Snoop Dog to do this line on the song, and he had said, no, thank you. How different would the world be if that did happen? It would be very different. We kind of said it, but this song basically, like, Epitaph sends it in to K-Rock, which, you know, K-Roc is a massively influential.

alternative rock station. I would say the most influential alternative rock station in the country. Definitely. Especially at that time. And, you know, every week they go through submissions of songs to add to the rotation and they sent him come out and play. And, you know, I guess Epitaph called them was like, they rejected every other song, but they took yours and they're going to put it into rotation. And like the rest was basically fucking history. And the video. I mean, that video was super low budget too. They only had like 7K or something. 7K to work with.

For a music video in 1994 is you know, is peanuts essentially. Right. And it does have a similar just like the artwork of this has a similar vibe to like smells like teen spirit music video. This music video also has that sort of like sepia dark.

Totally. Vibe. Okay. About the subject matter here. This is where I started to have like I'm just like interesting. And because it's not the first, it's not the first song and it's definitely not the last offspring song that's sort of like anti-crime, anti-drugs. It's like, it's an interesting stance for a punk band to take, right? Which is like, oh, these gangs are too violent. Like, our streets

are unsafe. It does feel like more of like an Orange County dad thing to say than like a cool punk band thing to say. I just found it interesting. I know Dexter's talked about like he's going to USC and he was writing about what he was seeing. But I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that? Because this is like a smaller example, but I want to point it out because there's other examples as we go along. No, it definitely opens that door to where things will go in the future of, you know, not so much shaking, finger wagging at the kids, but like more of the, you know, the effed up nature of it, I would say. because he said himself that he is not this, you know, right-wing guy. Sure. No, I'm not saying.

I don't think any of the offspring are right-wing. But it's one of those byproducts of growing up in the suburbs and not being, seeing things like that, that it is certainly not necessarily like finger-wagoned, but like, whoa, you know, slow down here type of thing, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, outsider. It's an outsider perspective.

It's definitely an outsider because, I mean, as many USC students don't, live in South LA. I mean, no, of course not. So it's seeing that and he's driving what he called at the time, I guess his shitty car, I think it was like a 79 like Toyota something. And just seeing that from that lens, yeah, more

it does come across as the Orange County dad. That's a great way to put it. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, right? Like, not necessarily a right wing thing or anything. It's a suburban. It's a suburban thing. It's like a pearl clutching a little bit. You know? Yeah, a suburban. a suburban thing.

There was a bit of controversy around this song also. Yes, quite a bit. With Agent Orange. Do you want to tell me about it? Yeah, so they were accused by Posh Boy Records of grabbing that guitar phrase that they alleged copied bloodstains, which was an Agent Orange song,

from I think like 79, if I'm not mistaken. So the song had been out there 15 years and ended up escalating a little. By a little, I mean a little. Didn't go to court. But Posh Boy wanted to get royalties on that song. I think like around the penny, if my notes are correct, for each copy of Smash sold. And Smash was flying. So that would have been very good money at the time for them that would have helped.

And I forgot the Posh Boy's owner, I think it was something. something, Fields. And he felt like he had to protect Mike Palm. Robby Fields. Robby Fields, yes. And like he was sticking up for Agent Orange. And it went back and forth. Offsprings manager said that they weren't even closed and, you know,

blah, blah, blah. And then it ultimately went away. And that was kind of that. And I know there was some people in the Orange County community, like I think Frank Agnew. and people like that were just saying it was baseless. And it ended up being a thing. It ended up being a thing for a little before it went away.

But, you know, Agent Orange were the OGs of that scene with the adolescents. So it was kind of a whoa. It must have felt bad. It must have felt bad. Oh, it was definitely. They loved Agent Orange too. Yeah. It's just given the massive success of this album and this song in particular.

I mean, this song hit number one on the Billboard Modern Rock tracks chart. This particular song, making it on the K Rock and blowing it up just like it's off to the races, right? It was beyond. It was a superstar. I would say.

Apparently they went on tour and they like come out and play got programmed onto MTV while they were on tour and they started noticing like every show selling out crazy and it was all like the MTV effect, right? Definitely was. And it was something that they've said also.

So it was just like they noticed like as they were going. Like, oh, why is that? Why is that? Why is that? And then they found out it was MTV. Oh, got it. And like, really for that video? And that was kind of their collective reaction was,

okay. And then kept doing their thing and played bigger and bigger shows. And it went from mailing in and hoping that the LA Times would review something to everyone was covering that. They were on the cover of every major magazine, music magazine at the time, shortly thereafter, at least within a year. I mean, this album had four big singles, which is kind of unheard of

for an album off epitaph, for example, in 1994. And they're all good. I miss all the steam girl myself. That's the song when I was pointing to earlier, singing it like you mean it. That's a singing it like you mean it song. Sure. Although Dexter Holland has said it's not about him.

No, I know. That's what makes it good. That's how you know it was a good song, is that if he's able to write that. And from that emotional standpoint, even though it wasn't about him and bring it like it does, good singer, good songwriting.

Who would admit to that being about them? That's a cuck anthem. True. Yeah. True. They did say it was about a friend. She helped write this song. I feel this song, really the baseline

is the star on this song. Absolutely. Greg Craig crushed it. So good. Just thinking about how, like, to me, at 12, or 13, there was like a bunch of songs like this in my mind, even though there's only two, but two was enough for me to be like, is this a thing?

Do you remember the James song, Laid? Of course. Honestly, kind of the same, I mean, not musically similar, but the same, like, thematic topic, right? Like, that's kind of what that song is about, too. Yeah. No, it's, I never really thought about that before, but it makes perfect sense. It's not exactly the same because Laid is more about a one. woman who's like kind of like insane and stalking him basically.

Right. But then also saying that, you know, that he's so obsessed, he's becoming a bore and says the woman's like a disease without any cure. That particular line because there's also a line in self-esteem where it's when she's saying, oh, that I'm like a disease, then I wonder how much more I can spread. A PhD in infectious diseases of you. I was going to say microbiologists. I was really blown away by noodle saying. in an interview in 2018 that that intro, which I think is like a major part of what makes the song

so interesting and sort of grabbing you that wah, wow, wow, he says that intro for self-esteem, we just threw it down on a whim. Like, hey, want to try something? What if we just did this? So we went in and we did it and we kept it.

And it's most of us just doing it together, maybe even some of the crew guys. Instead of coming in with heavy power chords, what if we tried something different? And it does really, work. I mean, it's hard to imagine that song without that at this point. Yeah. Because going into it without it, it's just, you know, regular old 1994 rock song. Totally. This is another thing about self-esteem that I think is important. This is not a punk song. Definitely not. Yeah. Like, this is a song

that fit squarely and perfectly in with the music of the time. It's a hard alt-rock song. Do you you think that was intentional in the songwriting going into it, given the success of nirvana, or maybe not like so craven, but maybe just like given the saturation of nirvana. Maybe subconsciously, sure. I mean, because it definitely feels like an outlier on the album in that regard. Yeah. Because it's definitely not a punk song. I mean, the hard alt rock is the way I would describe it.

It just. But neither has got to get away. Gotta get away is not a punk song. Not in my estimation. That's also a hard alt rock song. It has the edge, though, that it could be in that realm, at least, where this just feels like pure hard alt rock radio ready song. Where there was no, like even come out and play,

doesn't feel like it was a ready-made hit where this, when this was, I think this was the second single, and this felt like, okay, wow. You know, kind of, whereas come out and play, open the door, it's like self-esteem, ripped it open, and threw it out, threw it away, and started drinking all the beer at the party. Yeah, it was truly like undeniable as gross after that.

Should we play one more song with the album? Sure. Damn, got to get away is really good, but so is bad habit. I'll leave it to you and decide. Let's do bad habit. I mean, anything about when you're about road rage, kind of especially having been a Southern California resident for 15 years, to me. Okay, this is bad habit. That was bad habit. Really, it's a banger. You could see the

through line from ignition to that too. Yeah, except the change that I feel like demarcates this album is, and you tell me if I'm hearing it correctly, but like it feels like at some point they made the decision to really put Dexter's vocals front and center in the mix. And that's part of the of what makes the offspring such a memorable and iconic band, right? Like, may it be polarizing, Dexter Holland has such a singular voice. There's no doubt about it. I mean, you could easily hear on the mix, the difference between the two albums, and even the first one, how it gets to the point where Dexter is not, like, super low

and it's this super punky vibe. This is like, the frontman is here. even to a certain extent the guitars are up high too. I can hear noodles a lot clearer now too, but Dexter has just become the dominant element to their songs where it just wasn't there before. And it gives the songs a lot more personality than some of the earlier ones too because of that.

You know, at first I was like kind of confused because I was like, I just can't, I couldn't picture Brick or a weird to hear and come out and play and being like, yes, absolutely. This is a banger we put this to radio. But then I was like, okay, well, you had voodoo glows calls on your... You know what I mean? Sure. The man had a broad range.

He understood. There was a lot going on with punk music in 1994, and it wasn't all extremely serious. So I think that answered that for me. Before we leave this album, two things. One that I just thought was like really a heartwarming story. Of course, not knowing what's going to happen with the album, they do a cover song. They cover a song called Killboy Powerhead by a band called The Digits. A contemporary.

They were not an older band, just a, I think they're a Boston band. The former singer in guitarist The Digits, Rick Sims, guess what? He bought two houses. Just absolutely best possible lottery ticket. You know, just like this band randomly choosing to cover your song on their like 10 times platinum or whatever album, which we didn't mention. But smash for a time unseated, smashing pumpkins as gish as the, you know, the highest selling independently released album of all time. Is it still there?

I feel like. No, Evanescence was put out on Roadrunner and they are now. That was still a good 10-year run that they had at the top. Because, yeah, Gish was 1991. So that was like three years later ones. But then Evanescence blew them right the fuck out of the water. Before I move on, I just want to talk about one song on here. What happened to you?

This is where I started to be like, okay. Why are we being so mean to stoners? This is like one of the first of many oddly judgmental songs about people that smoke weed and or are like losers or whatever. What do you make of that? It's again, to me, it's giving Orange County dad. I was going to say that. That's exactly what it is. You know what I mean?

It's giving like, it's a little giving Blue Lives Matter. I'm not going to lie to you. but I know that's not their politics. I'm just saying it's an interesting. Like you're a punk band, but then you're like, this stoner needs to get off his goddamn lazy ass and get a job. Like what? Who are you talking?

Is that my dad? And my dad is talking through this punk song? Like, come on. What's up with this? They didn't really dabble in anything. They were always big drinkers. Because they were dorks. They were like cross-country team nerds.

But that's why they got noodles in. That's what I asked noodles to join the band to begin with is because he was... No, noodles and his like 12-inch-thick glasses was the cool guy in the band. No, he was 21, and they needed someone to buy him beer. So that's how it all started is like, the janitor guy in the descendant's shirt plays the guitar. So it goes back to the drinking thing. I think that's what it... Because in 2022, when you think about that, it's like, you can't help but like shake your head and roll your eyes.

I mean, I guess if you're straight edge, it makes sense, but you're not. No, they drank a lot. They like their beer. Like, before you start a token, you used to have a brain, but now you can't even get the simplest of things. I can draw a little picture or even use my hands. I try to explain, but you just don't understand. So he's basically saying this person smokes too much weed and he's dumb now and how dare you?

It's a very amusing thing to look back at the Clintonian times right now in 2022, where what is weed legal and what? how many states now at this point. Even if it was illegal, you're punk. I know. It's very. You're not supposed to police people. No, I know.

Smoking weed. It's mental. It is. It's just, I can't defend it now. Or then because, again, it goes back to your Orange County dad thing in pearl clutching. You can take a band out of Orange County, but you can't take the Orange County out of it. No. And that's why they're still there.

They're still based there. We haven't left. That's true. Huntington, bitch. to the Beverly Hills of Orange County. Albeit a very different Orange County than 1994, of course. Yeah, in some ways. It's moving.

It's definitely not even the Orange County of 2005. Yeah, that's true. Okay, so this album gets great reviews. Neil Strauss, Neil Strauss wrote about their show with Rancid for the New York Times, which I thought was, you know, it's like all of a sudden we're garnering a New York Times write-up. I'm not going to read it because it's basically like, oh, they're punk. Like they play really fast.

But there was just one line that really struck me because I was like, oh, this is such a funny detail. Apparently at this show in New York, Madonna was there watching Ransit because she was considering signing them to Maverick. That's how big Green Day and offspring made punk by the end of 1994. for. Like, that's how financially lucrative and culturally relevant, these two bands and they're like explosive albums made punk. It's really interesting. Just thinking about Madonna there and her meeting Tim Armstrong is just to be a fly on the wall. These two albums, though, two months apart, smashed open the door for everyone that was to come after because punk wasn't even, nevertheless, Plus, California punk was not even an afterthought.

It was a no thought. And then to have the Northern Cal and Southern Cal and both be Gilman bands. And yeah, that's also not to forget that there were protests outside of offspring shows by the Gilmanites and people of that ilk that said they sold out and that they weren't punk enough, which again, 2022 terms is funny. And then it was a serious, it was a serious crime. as Dan Ozzie pointed out in his great book. Yeah.

It's interesting because the offspring made it big on an independent label. But again, like, I would argue, like, what about the selling out of the mind of telling people smoking pot makes them a loser? I'm just, in terms of, like, punk ideology and ethos, like, I feel like the sellout happened way before. But anyways, it doesn't matter. That's not the point. It's not what we're here to talk about. Um, they do get raked over the coals by Max and Rock and Roll, um, by a lot of, you know, they're not punk or whatever. Um, the spin review or this, I think it's a spin cover story, maybe

actually by Chuck Eddie. He makes one really good point where he basically says, this whole idea that punk suddenly broke big in 1994 is mostly a lazy headline. Albumed by the Beastie Boys and Guns N' Roses eight years ago destroyed more passer. by in the sex pistol sense than smash our Green Day's Duky ever will. And the already forgotten ugly kid Joe scored with a bubble gum improvement on grunge first. I thought that line was really astute. Because essentially like, I mean, without the negative slant to it, that is kind of what Green Day and offspring were doing, right? They were like doing a bubble gum improvement on grunge in both their own different ways. I mean, Green Day for sure, right? I mean, that's pop punk. It's like most poppy.

But also offspring. We talked about this. I mean, they're very much playing in both pools of like alternative rock music and their punk roots or whatever. But they're kind of bringing it together and that's what's making them so big. It's not the fucking punk Jennifer lost the war songs. It's self-esteem and come out and play, you know. Also, I think Eddie pointed out that in Sweet Child of Mind video, I think Stephen Adler was wearing a TSOL shirt. We talked about something like Gunnar's episode.

Guns and Roses were very involved in the punk community. I mean, Duff, McKagan played in multiple punk bands in Seattle. They played with punk bands in L.A. Like, they're very much rooted in punk music. I think people forget that when they like to talk about like, oh, MTV in the 80s is all Guns and Roses. It was like Guns and Roses wasn't that. It's just like a different presentation, right? It's like a different, it's like Taco Bell menu items where they're like, yes, well, we all kind of have the same ingredients.

This one's just a Mexican pizza. And that one is the crunch rap supreme. And that's a really good metaphor, don't you think? Yeah, that's great. That's a great way to describe it. Thank you. It'd make me want to go get it after this, go get food. Rolling Stone gave it three stars,

entertainably gave it a B minus. It's massive, along with Green Day. Not everyone in punk is happy about this. Nope. There's a great article that looks back on this from Kerrang. Kerang did like a retrospective of this time in 1999. Wadi from the band they exploited said, I had to present an award to Green Day at the Kerrhing Awards,

and I couldn't believe it. I just had to laugh. What the offspring are to punk, Silla Black, is to reggae. If you know who Silla Black is, that's a huge diss. Being a punk, I believe in what I do, but what they do is just laughable. There's so many good American bands who deserve to break through, but they never will.

In order to succeed, you've got to be commercial and have a lot of money behind you. they didn't totally have a lot of money behind them to that part's wrong but okay bill stevenson of one of my beloved bands the descendants when green day and the offspring took off i was kind of confused by it i mean it was very confusing to me to turn on the radio and hear something being played 10 times a day which sounded very much like what we'd always been doing but they were totally ignoring us it made me become very insecure and skeptical about the integrity of the very thing i was involved with. It kind of hurt my feelings. I will lay down my life for Bill Stevenson. How dare his feelings

get hurt? And he's, he's not wrong. Like, the descendants were doing Green Day-esque songs 15 years prior, you know, but they didn't get any attention. And those are just as catchy. It just, they didn't, timing. Right place, right time. That's how all this, you know, even the mud honeies of the world in 1988, If, you know, Touch Me I'm Sick came out. Touch me out. Totally. You're just a little early. If self-titles came out instead of somewhere between heaven and hell and these flip-flop places,

it would be very different for them right now. Totally. Yeah, it's just a lot of things have to line up. I want to talk about this, a man named Todd. He is not given a last name in this piece. Todd from Flipside. Todd from Flipside is a goddamn brilliant genius. Let me tell you a couple of things, he said.

Green Day was probably one of the first bands of the newer generation who totally embraced a pop edge with punk rock. You don't have to listen to the words or anything. You would just bob your head to it. They took a lot from the buzzcocks, but asked four kids at a mall today about the buzzcocks, and they'll just stare at you blankly. The offspring did it with the advent of the snowboard videos. I remember bands like Big Drill Car, shut out of big drill car, great band, trying to get into that kind of stuff so hard and it just didn't click. And then all of a sudden, every kid with a snowboard was punk. all of a sudden every kid with a snowboard was punk people with snowboards also have expendable income which is something that punk rockers never really had before and if you're in a mall those people are there to shop

not to overthrow the government brough the wisdom in these lines like he fucking nailed it right like the infiltration the sort of marriage of like punk orange county right in general right like bringing punk from LA to Orange County, bring it into action sports, not skateboarding. Skateboarding is not for rich people. Snowboarding, which is for rich people. Famously, you cannot do winter sports if you do not have means. Orange County, a more abundant and meaningful, that's not the right word, meaningful, you know what I'm saying, of means place. And this sort of coalesces where all of a sudden mall kids who are exposed to punk through snowboard videos, skate videos.

and they can go, they have money to go buy the CDs. Whereas like when Agent Orange comes out or when the adolescents comes out, they're not getting that snowboarder kid money. It doesn't exist. No. And they're not going to go seeking, you know, a seven inch at their local record store

by someone they'd never heard of. Whereas CDs also was a big part of this. Yeah. Right. But CDs were a big part of this too, that they had the money and access to go to the mall while they were getting their gear to slip over to the record store, just grab it and go, too. That is a very much

on the money, a very astute observation. Yeah, if you'll allow me, two more Todd observations. Shout out, Todd. Todd, if you're listening to this program, get in touch. Bang my line, Todd. People always talk about Green Day and the offspring, but there are far more important bands out there. If punk hadn't been exploited by major labels, Superchunk and Fugazi would be the biggest bands on the scene. In the mid-80s, nobody thought punk would go into the mainstream. They thought minor threat was about as big as you could get. Bruv. Super junk. Since MTV started programming the music, more college kids and young girls come to punk rock shows. And the whole definition of a punk rock show has changed. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing for young

girls to come to punk rock shows. That's my personal opinion, but I'll let you continue, Todd. It also thrust a lot of people who are on the second tier of punk rock right into the forefront of American culture. Bands like Blink 182, who wouldn't have survived 10 years ago, have had their current success because the whole scene has been opened up by other bands. Like you said earlier, right? Like the smash opened up this thing. Blink 1A2 have sold more than the circle jerks, but put two punk rockers together and ask them who is the more influential and they'll say the circle jerks every time.

Todd was a little salty, I think, maybe about some things that were happening. Was Todd, you know, someone's pen name that they didn't want to, that, I mean, this is hidden very close. He is. He definitely didn't want his last name, didn't want his last name involved. I think he did nail some stuff. It's interesting because they interview Rancid as well. And Rancid, I mean, at this point, is an epitaph band.

And they're pretty pro the offspring, you know? And they've been, I mean, I think they've seen the offstring play since the 80s and they know where they come from. There's just like a really funny line from Lars Frederickson where he's kind of like hitting back at the like, which I agree with, right? Like it's like Ben Weasel eating his hat because jawbreaker signed to a major label or whatever. Like this like fucking like, you know, dictator. ship of punk. So Lars Freddixon says, the worst thing was the whole punk rock rulebook. You do it this way or you're not punk. That's bullshit. When you start dictating about what punk should be, you're as bad as Adolf Hitler. I feel like that's like perhaps a stretch. Me personally, I'm going to go out on the

limb here. And I think that's a little, just a bit of an exaggeration. But I hear what he's saying. He's not the only one to say it too. Like Mike Ness says the same thing. He's like, I didn't get into punk rock to be told what to do it or bide by rules. He said, I got into punk rock to do as I wanted, because that is the most punk rock thing is to do what you want and be yourself. Yeah, unless you're smoking weed and being a loser. But I love then, yes. I'm just kidding. Um, last thing I'll say from this, or one of the last things I'll say, Brett Gerwitz is also interviewed for this. And he basically says epitaph is a more nurturing place for, he's talking about Rancid, because they apparently were offered to sign to Epic.

for a reported one and a half million dollars, but they chose Epitaph. So he's saying, epitaph is it more nurturing place for them than the majors, a better place to make music. Fact is, I let them know that I could sell more rancid records than any of the major labels. Nobody could have sold more offspring records than we did. It's interesting. This might have been around the time they were beefing. I think their beefing kind of continued through from the mid to late 90s.

I'm not totally sure. I couldn't find too much to quote Brett Gurowicz on, but I know that he did publicly say some nasty stuff about the offspring, which they kind of did. I don't know if they were like nasty per se, but they definitely like revealed details. We'll get into that as well. But it was not a pleasant because, spoiler alert,

Epitaph is not where the offspring states after Smash becomes the biggest, you know, platinum. In fairness, and Brett Gerowitz says this too. He says it was overwhelming and kind of scary. At the time Epitaph was a company of maybe. five or six people, myself included. And we had to meet this incredible demand. We had offspring records filling my entire building on Santa Monica Boulevard from the floor to the ceiling. The inside of the building was like a rubic skewed of pallets of offspring vinyl, cassettes, and CDs. They just weren't, they weren't equipped to deal. I think you could say that's how

offspring felt anyway, that they weren't really equipped to deal with the like onslaught of what happened. Although that's not why the offspring left. It's interesting, right? You would think that would be why they left. That's not according to them, that's not why they leave. They do leave. They go to Sony Columbia. Yep.

So they've said that, oh, Noodle said, oh, you know, Aptap didn't have the resources, blah, blah, blah. But they've also said that Brett Gurowitz was shopping their album to a major. Like, I don't really understand how this works. Like, I don't know, maybe you can enlighten me, but like, basically that he was sort of both maybe taking meetings about selling epitaph, but also taking specific meetings about selling the rights to smash to major labels. I mean, from a distro standpoint, because they're in line to make way more money as an indie that way. It kind of can parlay things into a bar. I mean, there was no album like that sales wise. And handing it off or selling the masters to a major would be the all and all.

but it would make sense in a sense that it would make them rich from epitaph rich and be able to fund and have massive expansion for years to come. Right. Which in a way is what kind of happened with this album anyway. They were able to grow as it was. But I mean, the demand as, you know, selling 10 million albums is a lot for an indie label with like 10 people at the time. Totally.

Gerwitz has denied those claims. He said he never wanted to sell his label to a major. want to sell the offspring to a major, but I don't blame them for thinking it. Maybe someone told them that and they really thought it was the truth. It was a confusing time. This is much later, right? This is like mid to late 2000s where they're like doing retrospective. So heads have cooled. But here's what happened then. It got ugly. Dexter Holland writes an open letter to the fans via the offspring mailing list. Because Brett's saying all this nasty stuff about them in press, allegedly, again, I couldn't find any of it. So I don't know what it was. But this is what it's

In the Wikipedia, it says this letter, they were Dexter Holland felt compelled to write this letter to the fans to clear things up. So he says, we've gotten a lot of flack about leaving epitaph. And a lot of that's because we tried to keep our mouths shut so this wouldn't turn into a press war. Unfortunately, epitaph didn't do the same. So the only side anyone heard was theirs. Well, I'd like you guys to get our side of the story. Brett Gerowitz owns epitaph. He's making our leaving the label very public and very nasty. And that's why we decided to defend ourselves. That's why I'm writing now. We all really like the people at Epitaph and the bands on Epitaph, but we couldn't deal

with Brett anymore. Brett's more concerned about making his label big than he is about helping his bands. That's basically what it's about and why we left. Here's where it gets juicy. We tried to renegotiate with Brett to do more records on Epitaph starting last March, because we wanted to stay on the label. We had been trying to stay on Epitaph all along, actually. When Smash first started getting big in May of 94, Brad approached us and said he wanted to sell

the record to a major label in return for a royal table. he override on it. I don't know what that means. We convinced him not to do it. In July of 94, when the record started taking off in Europe, he approached us again about selling the record to a major label in Europe. Again, we had to beg him not to. We wanted to stay on epitaph because they give us our start and we like to keep the same people. We have the same booking agent, the same crew, etc. You know what you probably didn't have, though, is the same lawyer because their lawyer at this point is Peter Paterno, who was at the time probably the most powerful music lawyer in the entire industry.

Like, he did, like, huge people. Anyways, we didn't meet with any major labels, not one. Meanwhile, Brett met with all of them. Geffen, Capital, Sony, you name it, and he met with them. They wanted to buy Epitaph, and he was listening. He told people that he wanted to be the next Richard Branson. Oh, yeah. He met with Richard Branson, too.

Remember in the 90s when Richard Branson was so famous? Oh, yeah. It's important to a lot of the epitaph bands to be on a label not associated with a major. When we confronted him about selling, he denied. finally though last December he admitted that he wanted to sell part of the company to raise capital. Okay, it gets really as you see here. Basically, I'm going to TLD.R. He says they turned down all these TV appearances, which I think they did, 120 minutes, David was later than Saturday Live.

They were huge, right? And they just said no. They didn't want to be, I think, over-exposed. I don't know. Dexter said every time they turned down an interview request, Brett would step in and do it himself, pumping his company. Now here's the real fucking crazy balls shit. We negotiated for about a year but couldn't get anything ironed out. It's true that he offered us a great advance and a great royalty rate, but the last contract

he sent had some big problems for us. It said we couldn't do cover songs. It said Ron couldn't play in his other band. It said he could use our music on as many compilations as he wanted to. One version of the contract had a clause in it that allowed Brett to take out a life insurance policy on me so that if I died, he would profit. If that's true, that's the most insane fucking shit I've ever heard. That's wild.

I mean, it sounds, there's too many, there's too many details for at least not like, at least like 40% of it has to be true minimum. There's weight. And what would the digits say also to that? I think the digits would have been pretty upset. The digits. The digits are, I don't care. They bought several houses.

They're like the happiest. Yeah, but they could have had several more. Perhaps. True. Good point. Good point. The life insurance policy. That just sent me.

And they also made kind of a good point where they're like, he wrote a lot of the song. Like, Brett said publicly that major labels are bad, but of course he was in bad religion when they signed to Atlantic. Damn. Murder. Je telephone police. There's been a murder.

Rough. There's just way too many facts there, it seems like, right? It got really ugly. I don't, I don't know. It's, you know, I'm not, I'm, I don't know the details. I think whenever an unexpected sum of money gets involved in anything, people get a little mentally ill. And it's truly like my precious Ghalom vibes. Like, I think we're just built this way as human beings. And like, just people, they don't know what to do. It's, you know, it's like that lot of winner syndrome where like, you know, tragedy befalls them. Because it's just like, they're not prepared for this to happen. And And so people act kind of crazy. And like, yeah, you see all these like outcomes and possibilities. And maybe you think like, I want it to be one way, but they wanted to be, you know, like, I don't know what happened.

Whatever happened is that in the end, when they relooked at it years on, like, Gurwitz, you know, apologized. And he was like, I definitely regret the words that were spoken in the press. I wish I had never said in a disparaging word about the offspring. And I wish they had never done the same about me, but emotions got heated. The battle of the smart guys, too. Totally. And he, you know, graciously says, because again, the offspring was roasted for signing to a leap. You know, they're already like they're not punk and then they go and sign to Columbia. And he kind of says, I don't think any musician ever deserves to be judged by people from making any business decision for themselves. The fact is the offspring signed to Sony. They weren't having cop fights in their backyard. They weren't spilling oil off the coast. They signed to a major label. Who gives a fuck? Extreme, but sure. Greg Kay said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 95. We've all always decided that we don't want to do much TV right now because we don't want to be overexposed. Not to not Green Day, because I like Green Day, but it's like every time you turn

on MTV, you see Billy Joe's face. Billy Joe's a good face. Not wrong. Not wrong. He has a good face. I have a good face. So they toured for more than two years to promote Smash. The aforementioned club tour that we mentioned that sort of started the month after the album came out or like right after the album came out and it was the crazy sold out. And then they apparently also turned down these big arena tours. This is reported, but they were poorly offered arena tours with Stone Temple Pilots and Metallica. They were meant to replace Allison chains on that tour. A weird fit though. So a bit of a weird fit, right? You know what? Like Metallica and 94 was like Load Reload era, wasn't it?

It was in between, I think, the live, live shit or whatever, that weird box they put out. And then I think Load was 96. So it's one of those Band-Aid or Bridge Tour, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, yeah, 96, right? So they were like sort of moving towards, I'm sure they wanted to be more aligned with what was happening with Alt Rock. I mean, having Allison Chains, as your original opener says to me that, you know, you're, down to clown with all her rock music. They, and they said no.

But Dexter Holland did say, I do like Stonehubble Pilots. It's not like we're saying we're too punk for that. But it's like maybe you should have been too punk to tour with StoneHubble Pilots. I mean, they are, I love Stonehubilis, but. Fellow Orange County Brethren, though, so you can't talk too much shit. I mean, you could, you don't say you like, you don't say you like them. You could simply just not say anything. Not saying anything

because it's almost saying it all also. Depending on your point of view. Sure. So anyways, they just tore a bunch. My point shortened is that they toured a bunch. And then in 95, they buy out the rights to their first album from Nemesis Records.

And Dexter Holland and Greg Kay create their own record label, Nitro Records. They put out that album. And they also start signing a bunch of other punk bands, including the vandals. Gutter mouth. Jughead's revenge. Real heads remember jugged's revenge. And a little band called A Fire Inside, Shorten Down to AIFI.

Those of you around our age might remember that AIFI started out as like a full-on punk band. Answer that and fucking stay fashionable, babe. Mom will not let me get a Mohawk. That was the album prior to them being on Nitro. Love that fucking album. So this is going to come into play a little bit later because there's like gorgeous stuff I want to talk about involving the relationship between AFI and the offspring.

But suffice to say, they're assigned to Nitro. Now it's 97 and it's time to put out a new album. With Trouble Brewing. Tell me about Ixnai on the Ombray. When it ended up coming out, I believe in February of 97. And they went through all the success. They went with Epitaph.

And now they actually had the budget they crave to make, I would say a less punk album. And the, you know, we got to get like we said, the 20,000 let's go get it done. They had some time to actually work in the studio. And they worked with Dave Jordan on this one, which was a departure from Tom Wilson. So things were different to put it mildly when it came.

to the sound. I'm not saying that it's selling out to get rid of Tom Wilson. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm just saying it is a head-scratching moment to go to Dave Jordan, who was kind of at the moment a bit of an alt-rock, you know.

Producer Dejure, if you would. He did Allison Chains. He did Jane's Addiction. I did a band called Mary's Danish that no one really remembers, but I feel like funk punk, punk, it's pretty good. And he did, most important. importantly for my youth, the reality bite soundtrack.

But yeah, I mean, like, it doesn't not send the message. And I think, didn't he also work, like, heavily with Pantera? I think he worked with SocialD also. So there's that link. Okay. There's a little there. But dropping Tom Wilson in favor of Dave Jordan, interesting move. Please go on to continue to tell me about X-Nay.

They were going to for a bigger sound. And the stuff they've been writing for a while while they were touring and whatnot. And once they had their full. falling out with epitaph. I think they went to the studio in like mid-96 with Jordan. And with the resources they had, what the result was was very different than fans who latched on to smash would have expected. It's a bigger, not bigger in like a Prague rock,

but it definitely leans a lot more into the alt rock than the punk. The demarcation lines of the punk songs and the alt-rock radio songs are pretty pronounced here. I've gone away for The Gone Away is like the most obvious example of that. Let's play Gone Away, because we should hear it. It was the second single off this album. It's a great fucking song, I think. And it was everywhere.

Yeah. Definitely captures what the band was at that time. Okay. Let's hear it. This is Gone Away. That was Gone Away. It feels like a cousin of self-esteem or a natural progression she said that way. Gone Away could have been any, a band.

or like a song by any alt rock band of the 90s, not in a bad way. It was a good generic alt rock radio song. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great fucking song. It falls in the canon of songs that have a lyric to the effective call out your name, which is a personal favorite thing of mine when the lyrics have that. It's interesting, though, because the album, because when I spoke to Dexter in 2017 for 20th anniversary, he told me, this was a difficult time for sure. It was weird as far as changing labels.

At that time, it was a big deal when you went to a major. It was kind of like, are those guys sellouts? There was a real stigma attached to it. We were genuinely concerned about it because we try to stay true to the indie spirit. The fact is, no matter what we did, it was going to be perceived as a sophomore slump. At the time, though, it was like, gosh, I hope it goes over. So it's interesting for them to see that also as a sophomore thing when it was their fourth or fifth album. Yeah, we haven't really talked about this.

really dissociated themselves from the first two albums. At this point already, from what I can tell, they were stopped playing almost any of the songs from the first albums on tour, which to me is kind of weird. Like, there's good songs on those albums, and I think they just fully drew a line in the sand and were like those two albums basically don't exist. Why do you think that is?

It's a really good question, because those albums help get them to the point where they were able to succeed, but turning their back on like, you know, It goes back to what you said about the punk checkmarks, I think, too. Or checklist, rather. We had this type of song, this type of song, but this type of song. Where at this point, it feels like with Smash and Beyond,

it is the band that they felt like they were comfortable with, that they weren't checking boxes, but actually being true to themselves in their own way. Yeah. I mean, that's probably true. Because it is weird, because they haven't played any of the first self-titled songs, I think, since like 92 or 94, since those pre-Smash days, which is crazy.

Usually bands will play at least one or two of the songs from their first few albums, you know, for the heads or whatever. But yeah, they definitely don't do this. A quote from Dexter to Mois from 2017 was, the longer we've toured in the past couple of years, the better response has ever been to X-Nate. It's like, what's going on? The songs are still the songs.

Somehow they're being received better. Maybe the longer, you know, it became ingrained after a certain point. I'm noticing a lot of kids who weren't born in 97 when this record came out. It's interesting how they got to it, but it's really cool and flattering. We can't usually play some of these songs during our regular set because people are just not familiar with it. It's going to be fun to play this music to an audience that's so receptive to it. And this is what he said around the time of the anniversary because they did like, I think maybe a handful of shows at the observatory around that time and that was it.

And that's the only time they really did Ixnay in full since it was released. And I think they played it in full and then a couple of greatest hits and see you later. So they always saw that kind of as also not as the pressure of smash. It's like we're not going to make another smash. This is what we're making. And it doesn't sell like 10 million copies. And so be it, it did pretty well though. Yeah.

It sold like 4 million. It was never going to do as well as smash. But yeah, I think it commercially did pretty well. A fun story about Gone Away, which might ruin it for some people, just the way when I learned that the Sarah McLaughlin's song in the Arms of Angel is actually about the death of the touring keyboardist for the Smashing Pumpkins, who she had never met. In that vein, this song was purported to be about an ex-girlfriend that Dexter had lost in a car accident or his at the time girlfriend. That's not true. He revealed last year that this song was about him and his wife were at,

A strip mall in Huntington Beach. I want to say they were in a Baskin Robbins. Don't quote me on that, but I believe they were getting some ice cream. And there was a shooting. Like someone ran into the Baskin Robbins hiding, fleeing from a person that was trying to get them to shoot them. And no one died. I don't even know if anyone was hurt. But just the idea that someone could die in the Baskin Robbins is what yielded this song.

Not that that's not terrifying and horrible to go through. But maybe it isn't maybe like the soul-punching story of losing your girlfriend in a car accident. So sorry to people if I ruined that for you. Continuing from what he said back in 2017, we also didn't want to repeat what Smash sounded like. We wanted to expand the boundaries of what we were doing musically. I'm really glad we did because we set the stage to do lots of stuff later on. Now, it, Ixnay, has sort of become a fan favorite since there.

and I mean this in a positive way, but we went on to do our own Pinkerton in a way. So it's interesting to see him draw from that. He's saying Ixnay is their Pinkerton. He did. That's what he said five years ago when he told me. That's really interesting given the fact that over time, the convergence of these two bands is pretty startling, right?

Like they started out in completely different countries and by like album seven, they're basically both making the same kind of like alt rock revival gimmick music with love and respect. I just, this album is really funny to me. I'm not like, this is a fan favorite for me personally.

Like, I've only really experienced offspring through the singles until this episode. That's just to tell the truth. Like, so it's been really interesting for me to like go through the actual albums. I just found it very notable that this album starts, all of their albums start. with these little spoken word bits,

like little intro bits, right? This one is called disclaimer, and it's read by Jellobiopra. And it's just very funny to like, you know, you're being accused of selling out, you're not punk anymore, you left Epitaph, and they were like, but hey, we have Jellabiafra. We're still punk.

Deliapra is here. He's reading the disclaimer. We could not possibly not be punk anymore. If Jellabiafra is here, we're a punk. Ladies and gentlemen, No, it's a mayoral candidate, right? Former mayoral candidate. So it also sticks to that politics-ish angle, too,

even though they've gotten further away from it. Yeah, well, yeah, it's just, it just made me laugh. Let's talk about Motta. Because I think that song is really important on this album, given what you just said that Dexter said, which is like things that they tried on this album, I don't remember his exact phrasing, but like created the path or whatever for like future successes for them or future things that they did that they were proud of or whatever.

Mota is, okay, I have to say it because I would be remiss if I don't say it. There's a lot of like Latinx appropriation in these songs in a way that I don't know why makes me uncomfortable. When Sublime does it, I feel fine with it. And that's maybe my bias. I don't know. But like when I hear Sublime sing in Spanish and stuff, it feels like from within a community.

Totally. Whereas when I hear the offspring do it, it feels very much talking about the other or like referencing the other. And I think that's what makes me a little bit uncomfortable about it. And it's played for laughs, you know? Yeah, because Sublime also is very uniquely of Long Beach. So that is their reflection of that where I could see how the offspring based on their previous work and how they are and where they are from, that it could be seen that way.

And it's funny. You say that specifically about Mota because in the same interview, he said that it's one of the songs they're most proud of from that album is Moja. Called it a deep cut that's always requested. Again, this is a song that is standing in judgment of a problem. of a person who smokes who smokes weed also like again

I don't know and I mean you've told me they were really into drinking I don't know the like comings and goings of the offspring members with regards to drugs but like very much like third eye blind singing about meth

it's so clear to me that these people do not smoke weed from the way they discuss it you know like it's a through way throughout even late to the next album especially like who hurt you Dexter Holland, what marijuana hurt you? What strain of marijuana hurt you? What like, what

harmless stoner hurt you? Of all the kind of like drug doers to like write multiple songs about like, what about a heroin or like, you know, like these like stoners in the 90s like they were a beloved, a beloved figure in culture, half baked, babe. Like this was a great time for stoners. Dazed and confused. That's what I'm saying. How dare. Anyways, this song, to me, is so strange. But I also brought it up to be like, it does for me feel like a precursor to Pretty Fly for a White Guy. Definitely is. Yeah.

There's a wonderful quietest piece from 2018 by J.R. Moore's where he sort of like grapples with his offspring fandom and like re-looks at the lyrics and themes and is kind of like, wait, what's this? And again, I wasn't like an off-stringo-fan And I don't share the same sentiments But he just brought up a couple of good points And so he's making kind of a parallel between Mota And what happened to you Which we talked about a little bit Which was the song off smash

That's standing in judgment of the stoner or whatever And I think that is kind of That's kind of what we're saying There's like a bit of a through line there Totally is The other song on here That is kind of like Gives me a little pause

is way down the line. It's kind of like an oversimplification of cycles of trauma and abuse. Right. Both of these are very much of a 90s, you know, suburban thought process, if that makes sense. Right. But the point that that quietest piece makes, which I just couldn't get out of my head as I was like thinking about these songs in context, was that some of this is punching down, right?

And I think we'll get into it more when we can. get to Americana, which I think is what you were talking about in terms of social commentary, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. But it does feel a bit punching down to be like, oh, well, of course, these people who had, or like drunk parents breed bad kids or, you know, I'm paraphrasing. That's not exactly what the lyrics say.

Yeah, it's very much, I think, a very distinctive thought in like suburban America and the mid to late 90s. what we have now and the way people are open about, you know, trauma and, you know, mental health wasn't as prevalent back that. Yeah, it's not incorrect what they're saying, right? Like, it is cyclical. It just, it's like, it's pretty like, from a point of view. Yeah, it's just, it's just pretty like hopeless and like, like, lacks optimism. Prisoner really makes a good point. I mean, this is a, this is a lot of what we grapple with with Southern California, punk music from the 80s and 90s is that, particularly in the 90s, it gets kind of bro-y, right?

Totally. Blink 1282 is a good example, right? Like, Where are you? It's just like, we'll get to it. We haven't gotten to idle hands yet, the feature film that Offspring is in as themselves, in which it's a horror movie where Dexter gets killed. But every teen movie from the 90s is also a good example where it's like, it was just fully people making gay jokes, just casual homophobia.

some casual racism. Like it was just par for the course. And it was kind of like that for these bands as well. It's just interesting. Like it is a little distinct between Blink 182 and the offspring. Where the Blink 1282 did feel to me like high school bros like teen movie, right? But the offspring, like I've said this again, I just want to bring home. The offspring feels like the dads, you know?

They feel like the authority that's like kind of looking down. on the misbehavior of people who abuse drugs or who are in gangs or, you know, we'll get white rappers. Yes, there's very much the finger-wagging vibe. Finger-wagging, totally. It hit number nine on the U.S. Billboard 200, and it was later certified platinum, and it has sold over three million copies worldwide. I don't know as of what date, but it's not nothing.

But I guess, you know, if you're coming off of 10 million, you know, from Smash, it's a big deal. It didn't have any songs to the grab you level of self-esteem or come out and play. You know, like, Gone Away is good. All I want is good, but they're not. They didn't like stop the world, you know? No, and Gone Away, we said, it was just, it was an alt-rock radio song that anyone could have probably written. But it was the point of transition for them. That was probably the biggest thing that was gleaned from that song.

All right. Is there anything else you want to say about this album before I move on to the reviews? I mean, I like this album. I think it was a good, you know, in terms of transitional albums and a band's discography, I mean, there's certainly been way worse than this. Sure. Yeah. And as a major way of label debut, it could have gone in a very, very different way, too.

Yeah, totally. Like you said, it's a fan favorite. People like it. Yeah, it's become somewhat more of a cult. offspring fan album, as Dexter himself pointed out. So, be it as it may. It was the transition to what was to come. The last song on the album, Change the World,

might be directed at Brett Gorowitz. I think that's just funny. Who knows, maybe. Things were still bitter then. Yeah, totally. There's a spin piece by R.J. Smith at this time. I just want to read a little bit of it because, you know, now, of course, like, after,

smash, the press is going to write about everything they do, right? So here's this piece. Of course, the offspring hail from Orange County. They have to be from Orange County. Frontman, Dexter Holland, was a high school punk rocker who was also a class valetorian who was also a jock. If he had composed that resume in the Midwest, the internal contradictions would have made him look like a freak or some kind of wannabe. In Orange County, where the promise of infinite possibility flows out of the gates of Disneyland, dissolving subcultural distinctions into youth culture proper. He was simply an overachiever. I don't know if that's true.

I don't know if you'd call them a jock. I don't think cross-country, I mean, on a technicality, sure, but I don't think the cross-country team is necessarily... They get all the girls. They get all the girls, the five-mile distance runners. Holland's dreadlocks were the mouse ears of an OC rebel. That's funny, but, okay, one main thing. Dexter Holland, when they've gotten famous at Smash, we didn't.

mention. He wears his hair in long, not dreadlocks. That's his signature look. That's actually like burned into my brain about the offspring. Like, oh, the guy had braids. Almost every journalist refers to them as dreadlocks. And in many instances, in like a mocking way, kind of being like, oh, this white guy with dreadlocks when it's like a white journalist. And it's like the fact that you can't tell the difference that you conflate braids and dreadlocks is to me very much like the spider man pointing at each other meme of like no you're white no you're white you know like just really made me up i was like you're you're all you're literally all fucking up here babe it's l-o-l by this album those braids were gone um he had he had uh cut his hair and he had a bleached blonde spiky situation

um it still remains today um like you know if it ain't broke um don't you love sidebar. Don't you love how most aging punk dudes all dress the same? They all kind of start to get like, it's like impossible for them not to get so rockabilly.

Like all of a sudden it's just like bolot ties and like, you know, Dickies. Leather patched blazers. It's like a situation happens. And that's fine. And the vans. You can't forget about

about the vans being the official sure official footwear or creepers if they're if they're really styling um okay here's what i highlighted from the spin piece though that was just kind of funny one time epitaph label mates rancid offer fans a myth of punk rock penance they heard a noise and it lifted them from the gutter which by the way in rancid's case is like a really pretty astute observation that's like pretty much what rancid was right. Rancid was like the kind of band that would, they, music like saved them as people. That was like their way out of like a sort of like, you know, futureless life. Maybe they even had to be in the gutter to hear it in the first place.

But the offspring believe in a punk rock you don't have to suffer for. One that doesn't interfere with after school clubs or life at home. Yeah, Holland wails about changing the world, but his music is more about finding a place in it. He may think he's lobbing bombs, but really he's lighting bottle rockets, and that's just fine. He's already calling his girlfriend, my old lady. These are songs imploring you to rip it up, but they always feel like a prelude to getting on with the rest of your life. What do you think about that? Very interesting.

I think it goes back to place, not to keep harping on it, but the whole suburbanite thing. Yeah, but like, is that enough to like, because there's other Orange County bands that are from suburban bands. and backgrounds that I don't think occupy the place that this writer is speaking. It's like ambitious middle class thing also, I think, with getting ahead. Listen, I'm not a, you know, I'm not going to let fucking die on the hell of punk rock ethos. But does that clash with particularly 80s punk rock ethos, but maybe what is happening in the 90s? like, is that kind of what the dream of the 90s was? It's like, oh, you can be punk, but you don't have to actually be punk.

I mean, that's how mall punk essentially started with that. You know, it's, we'll start to like chart the thing because Green Day and offspring are always like the two that we look to. Blinkly-192 is like came in their footsteps. It's different, you know? They opened the doors. Green Day in many ways did end up being more punk in their ethos, right? Like, I mean, if you think about how they.

their big comeback album was a completely politically minded album. You know, it was a fucking concept album about George Bush and what a terrible president he was. And they aren't raked over to Coles for going to Broadway either. That's the funny thing is that I just saw them at the metro in Chicago, which, for those who don't know, was a very small venue for a band that size during the Lalapalooza. And it was just, you're right. The fury of the crowd also felt very, you know, raucous and punk at what it was. And they managed to somehow navigate that very, very astutely.

They weaved in and out, and then they got American idiot. And then there was, you know, pretty much they set up the second part of their career and ran. And for the offspring, that second part almost came a little too early and it had a very different message and effect. Yeah. It's just interesting because you look back and you're like, Green Day got famous off songs about like jerking off and, you know, snot nose like teen shit. And smoking weed. And smoking and smoking weed.

And offspring got famous off songs about cuckolding and weed is bad. Gang members are bad. You know, it's just kind of mind blowing to me. It's fine. Let's move on. Rolling Stone gave it three and a half stars. They, you know, pointed out that gone away is a grunge type pessimism, but that has real clarity. gravity.

Ixnay's true heart comes from less blatantly serious semi-novelties, where Dexter Holland's hefty high register keeps the group's eccentric beats light on their feet. Whenever his gang harmonizes behind him, the music turns positively anthemic. Oh yeah, we didn't talk about Don't Pick It Up, which is like literally kind of anti-trans. A lot of stuff happening in the 90s. So Chuck Eddie emboldened the offspring. to continue to make these sort of more lighthearted semi-novelties, as they called them. I don't know if they read their reviews, but Chuck Eddy liked them, Rolling Stone liked them.

The British started paying attention to them after Smash because they were pretty big in Europe. There's a really, there's a good article in NME by Stephen Wells. Oh, it's funny. He says, Dexter says, oh yeah, a punk band's first songs are always the I hate the place song, the I Want a Die song, and the war is wrong song. kind of what I was saying. So he's... There you go.

Credit to you. Yeah, I mean, I said it again last year, so it's clearly something that's enduring. This journalist says, The offspring are both cool and popular. I made a little note to myself that I do think only the British think

that the offspring are cool. Because literally the last article that was talking about them being from Orange County and jocks and stuff says that the last thing on Dexter Holland's mind is being cool. What do you think? Like, I don't remember

them being particularly cool. I don't think they were uncool. I mean, Smash era is a little different. I think there was some mystery around them and that the songs were big. And so they were like a big band and they were kind of cool then. But by I don't know. Do you think their place in the culture

was cool? Like, for example, the Green Day was cool. No. Never. They were never. in that same realm. Right. They never, whether it be because of their music, because of how they look,

but they were never considered as it was the braids. It was the cutting edge or cool or, what was that? The braids and also the noodles is glass. Yeah, they never were seen as like this larger than life superstar, you know,

persona like Billy Joe Armstrong like was a force of nature. And you knew what you thought, you know, of Green Day, you thought Billy Joe Armstrong, where in the offspring, you just thought of,

oh, it's the guy with the braids or, oh, it's that group. There was never, once Dexter cut his hair, they were just those guys. And there was nothing super magnetic and they weren't like out, like trashing things or doing stuff in the culture outside of really making music that made them ubiquitous where, you know, Billy Joe Armstrong was burning a copy of spin on stage and things like that. They were, you know, more in line, if you were behaved. I have a theory that nine times out of ten you had to be hot. to make it in the 90s

musically because of MTV, right? Because you were so visually in everyone's face. There's a few exceptions to that, counting crows and the offspring. And then later on, that shit just goes out the window with new metal. No disrespect to my new metal kings, but I don't think they were considered

traditionally handsome and attractive on the television. Producer Dylan, silence. Okay, so yeah, XNae comes, XN goes. XNA is an important. album in the sense that it is leading up to and there's some blue printing of Americana comes out in 1998 also we have to just speak to the incredible timing of these albums 98 is probably the last year this album could have come out and been the commercial success that it was like you push it one more year it would not have done as well as it did even if you push it like

three more months it would have been tough to well it came out the tail end of 98 yeah November of Yeah, November 98. Yeah, okay. So it's produced by Dave Jordan again. It is a major success. It is the band's second best-selling album after Smash. But its singles were more successful. Is that true?

Yeah, their signature songs definitely came from Americana, or what is now known as their signature. Tell me a little bit about Americana. Well, Americana was a very quick turnaround compared to the time between Smash and Ixnay. So even though Ixne, you know, Ixne now is seen as this transitional album, it was kind of seen at the time as kind of like, you know, but when it comes to Americana, it was more what we were starting to say earlier about Dexter seeing things and the finger wagging, if you will, at the culture at large. He started noticing these things and started writing about them and they were trying to do things. things musically that were very different,

they went in a very different direction musically here, where instead of the punk, and the punk sense was almost out the window to a certain degree, it became what it became. I simply can't help but notice that the dawning observations

of the decline of culture do coincide with this band is rich now. They're very rich, extremely rich. I believe at this point Dexter is a pilot already and has his own plane is correct? Yes, and it has a very special

insignia on its tail, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I looked it up. It does have the anarchy symbol on the tail of the plane, his personal plane, his private plane, has the anarchy symbol on it. Double horns. Punk rock. I just, it's just, I'm simply pointing out that you're not rich and society's ills are perhaps more revealing themselves to you.

You made a good point. I wrote this down on my notes. It just says, question, is this still punk musically? Definitely to me it's not thematically punk at all. But even musically, are there songs on here that you feel are punk at all? I would say at most there's some punk adjacent. Right. But, I mean, think about pay the man.

Pay the man is an eight-minute song that doesn't really sound like anything they'd ever done before. It's so out, like, if you would have told the offspring of the smash error that, hey, in four years, you're going to put out a song that's eight-minute song. I can only imagine what they would have said with their $20,000 budget. Which I also, an eight-minute song that from what I can gather is like a sort of libertarian anthem on how they don't want to pay taxes? A lot of the, let's call it, the 90s libertarianism of the time is very poignant here

and throughout most of the key songs. Basically, while you could take care of your own destiny and pointing, you are the master of your control and you could do this and how dare you not take care of what you can't do? And that seems to be a big theme on here. It goes back to that quietest article, which was, pointed stuff like that out too, but it's very prevalent. Like it sounds like, get a job. And even something like Pretty Fly,

where they're just going after those boy bands. That's who they're spoofing is people like that. Let's unpack Pretty Fly in parentheses for a white guy. First and foremost, let's hear it. I think if we talk about it, you must hear it. You've all probably heard it, but let's hear it again. This is Pretty Fly for a white guy. that was Pretty Fly for a White Guy.

Just. There's a lot going on. There's so much, so much to unpack. Okay, first and foremost, they just have to, like, really blow some people's minds right now in that the backing vocals on this song are sung by Jack Grisham of TSOL and one David Havoc of AFI. That's right, babe.

Davey Havoc, singing backing vocals on Pretty Fly for a White Guy. I have to imagine, and I'm fully writing fanfic here right now, so just go with it, that this was like a hostage situation type thing. Or like, Dexter was like, I am your label boss and I will shelve your album if you do not come into the studio and sing the backing vocals on Pretty Fly for a Y guy. And actually also, no, no, why don't you get a job? Because he also sings backing vocals on, no, no, why don't you get a job. That's my fanfic. I don't really know what happened. I don't know the whole story.

I wasn't there. All I know is David Havoc came in, took off his leather trench coat, folded it neatly on a chair, did his vocal warmups, and then was like, no, no, why don't you get a job? A young David Havick. Sure. Very young. Yeah. That's right. That's part of his legacy now.

Okay. You mentioned, you said boy bands. I think this song is about white rappers. Well, there's a quote for that he had in Spain in 99 on the March cover story. that the song was inspired from Omaha, Nebraska, regular white bread guys, but who act like they're from Compton. It's so fake and obvious that they're trying to have an identity.

There's a word for that, and we don't use it anymore. But I think you all know what the word is. And that's what he's saying. A lot of people still did use it in this time, by the way. It's in a lot of the articles about this. But Omaha, Nebraska, is he talking about 3-Eleven? Is he maligning my beloved 3-11? I will fucking stab.

It is, okay, it's like on one hand you're like fair, but on the other hand, you're like, but you are taking all these like Latin culture elements and parenting them. Well, I don't think he saw it that way. Clearly.

There's a quote he told, well, he told Billboard at the time. He said, I kind of wanted to do a song that was like a punk version of GoWrider. I really love that old Latino photo stuff. It's really cool. So we built the song around that kind of baseline. It's like I can do it, but you can't ever last.

Now you really want to know how it feels. Almost fucking banger of a song, I must say. They beefed over this. It was very popular. It was the first single. He really blew up. I was to say their whole thing was just going after, you know, the in sinks and backstreet boys.

That's what he said in the same spin article from 99. That was the target of his derision and that he wasn't. anti-hip-hop or anything like that. He knew they were coming to dethrone him. De-throne him off the charts. The second single is in this vein as well, right? We said it, no, no, why don't you get a job? There is a calypso situation happening on this song.

It has an obla-di-o-blada vibe. He did do a gender swap in the middle of the lyrics to be fair in that both the boyfriend and this girlfriend need to get a job. They're both freeloaders. Let's talk about the third single, though. The kids aren't all right. I'm sorry, if I'm able to divorce myself from the meaning of the song, man, this song fucking bangs.

This song is good. Let's hear it. Just to like palate cleanse a bit. Let's hear it. Let's talk about it. This is The Kids Aren't All Right. That was The Kids Aren't All right. God damn gorgeous, beautiful song.

It's a staple of the USC football marching band today still. that Dexter will conduct from time to time. That's weird. I'm going to go ahead and say it. That's weird. We live in hell. Okay, this is a good time for me to use this song to talk about just like the general theme of this album, right?

Which we've hinted at, but it's basically America sucks, right? Like, here's what Holland says. He said, the songs on Americana aren't condemnations. There's short stories about the state of things and what we see going on around us. We want to expose the darker side of our culture. It may look like an episode of Happy Days out there in America, but it feels more like Twin Peaks. This leads me to believe he's never seen Twin Peaks.

I was thinking about how American culture is distorted, really. It's not Norman Rockwell anymore. It's Jerry Springer. It's not living on the farm. It's going to Burger King. Babe, it's giving MAGA. Like, I know they're absolutely not right wing, and this is like 100%. They're not really open about their politics, except I think for isn't noodles that's like an open liberal Democrat.

is. They're definitely, they've like completely denied being conservative. Like, they're not Republicans. Yeah. And this, in the same in that 99 article, Dexter says that he's pro-environment. He's a registered Democrat and everything like that. Yeah. It's more like they're neither Democrat nor Republican, but something a third weird thing. It's a libertarian view. It's a libertarian point of view. Yeah. It's just, it's funny to hear it then and then hear it echoed now in a very different context. But back to the kids aren't all right, right? The kids aren't all right is a song about going back, driving through Garden Grove. They don't live there anymore. None of them live there anymore. You know, I think they live in Huntington Beach and probably Laguna Beach, whatever,

the nicer parts of Orange County. And like, kind of seeing the neighborhood is dilapidated and then thinking about what happened to some of the people that they grew up with or whatever. We grew up in Garden Grove and saw how. there are all these houses that pretty much, you know, hadn't changed. They just looked much older, of course, because I haven't been there so long. And there's some sympathy in this song, right? It's like, you know, it's hard to see fragile lives, shattered dreams. But then it's just also like the list of people.

Jamie had a chance, well, she really did and said she dropped out and had a couple of kids. Okay, that's sad. You know, she wasn't able to continue school because of motherhood and, you know, this and that. Mark lives at home because he's got no job. He just plays guitar and smokes a lot of pot. Once again, villainizing the pot head. Yeah. Poor Mark.

Leave him alone, babe. Again, didn't one of the members of the offspring live with his mom until Smash broke up? Like, he was that guy. Maybe he wasn't smoking pot. Why am I, like, dying on the hill to protect these stoners? I don't know. Jay committed suicide. Brandon O'Don died.

What the hell is going on? I mean, he's not wrong, right? Of course. Like, there's a lot of dark outcomes. for the youth in America. And that's kind of evergreen. And it's gotten worse and worse because there's no societal support.

There's no government support. You know, people are left to their own devices. And I don't think Dexter Holland would agree with that. But like, that's my take on it. All of it is built up, right? It's not like all of a sudden one day he looked around and was like, I got to write about this. Like, it's been creeping from back on smash.

and now it's just an entire album talking about how things used to be better and now things are bad. It's interesting when you compare it to a song like Story of My Life. Goddamn gorgeous, beautiful song. It's more or less lionizing those days versus finger wagging.

Yeah. And the songs are only written eight or nine years apart from each other. Yeah. No, it's just, I guess I just, I can't stop being surprised by the positioning of the lyrics and themes of this music. Also, I didn't mention, Dexter Holland was obsessed with Jerry Springer.

He watched a ton of Jerry Springer. That also, I mean, if you watch fucking Jerry Springer every day, yes, you're going to have a bit of a distorted view of what America is like. That's like a bit of a biased fucking sample of what is going on in America. Especially as it was still this novelty and starting to really break into mainstream culture as being the shit show that it was. Yeah, totally. Back then it was still like really fucked up like my daughter's a Satanist, who's the father. You're too fat to make porn stripper wars. The tabloidization.

Yeah. And Dexter Holland said about it, I'm kind of fascinated by it and disgusted by it at the same time. It's not just a freak show because it appeals to our basic human instincts. and you can never underestimate what people will do. It's just the buildup to that, this song and how it serves as the outro music to one of the Woodstock documentaries. And the impact of this album on a larger cultural level saw them become as big as they've ever been. Back to your point about the cool, they were still not seen as the world's most coolest people. I mean, Weird Al, made Pretty Fly for a Rabbi.

A pretty fly for a rabbi. Which I guess is assigned to some that you've made it. Well, that's the thing I was going to point out is like, these songs, which happened to me as a teen, I don't know about you, but whatever Dexter Holland was fucking talking about, I didn't know about it. You know, like, I was just like, oh, this is a cool song. And that's it.

Didn't take one thought in my mind that this was about like the fucked up nature of American society. Like, I just heard a good song. I don't think people listen to Pretty Fly for a white guy. thought about anything except like, oh, catchy song funny. The thing is, this is probably noodles at his best, this album. Noodling at his best. The guitar's rip on this album.

Yeah, yes, correct. You're right. We can't dispute that. To your point about them becoming the biggest punk band in the world, they do. They eclipse Green Day here. Like, they're much bigger than Green Day in 1998 until American Idiot comes out. And then it's, Green Day is bigger forever. But that's not until 2004.

So they have six years of being the reigning. Woodstock 99, though, was a big point for them. Huge. I just want to read the reviews before we move on to like the thing they did. Whatstock 99. Okay. NME hated this. It gave it a three out of ten.

This is straightforward brainless thug funk. The lyrics may be updated, but otherwise it's business as usual, brain pummeling drums, yelling and colliding, scrambling guitar riffs. They didn't not like it. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B-plus. Robert Crisgau gave it an A-minus, which really actually blows my mind. He's basically the only credit. Really?

Like it? Yeah. Spin gave it a 5 out of 10, did not like it. L.A. Times gave it a 2 and a half. And then Robert Crisgow coming in hot with the A-minus. Loves to be... What did he say? He said, four or five years late, they make selling out seem both easy,

unlike the major labor exneung the Ombray and fun, unlike the fluke smash, smash. A dozen or two BPM faster than when they caught Green Day's punk wave, they sound like a bad religion whose catchy drone is at long last unencumbered by any message deeper than the truth about the world is that crime does pay, which to their credit makes them indignant, or more generally, that the kids aren't all right. This truth, they explore as fully as, but as is only fitting given their relatively privileged upbringing, less solemnly than any gangsta. Only on the title tractor they get grandiose, and while keeping it light keeps them on the

right side of their frat boy base. It also makes the fuck-ups they mock and mourn seem all the more hurtful. I don't know. It sounds like he's like down with the message. I don't know. It thinks it's fun. Just bizarre. I don't know. You're the go, but I don't, I don't totally agree. I know this album is really popular, but I think smash is like 10 times better, me personally. Okay, let's talk about Woodstock 99 because that's just one smoothier after I mean, I think people have gotten a lot of information about Woodstock 99 amongst the two documentaries. But the offspring play a big role in it, right?

Yeah, and it was a big sea change too from November 98 to July 99. Did you have the chance or even consider going to Woodstock 99? I went to high school in Singapore. It was a bit of a far, a bit of a trek. It's been well documented, yeah, it was. But they were portraying it as exactly as shown.

And during the offspring said, It was one of the first warning signs that's shown in these documentaries is how Dexter gets hit with a bottle or people are throwing debris onto the stage. And he tells it was before self-esteem. And he basically lectures the crowd to not basically sexually assault people, which was the first morning sign the weekend was going to be as horrible as it was. But here's the whole speech of it. He gives it's like basically punched a guy in the dick if you see him doing something to women.

And it's not cool. Yeah, yeah. that was very cool of him. I think just because a girl wants to go crowdsop and whatever, that doesn't give the guys the right to molest him, you know what I'm saying? And then the Bill Simmons doc, I think Dexter Noodles are in it, and they comment how fucked up the whole thing was. Yeah.

But even back then, it's just like their image on, you know, him being very careful about it and being very aware of, like, what was going on was very different to what his, not very different, but interesting compared to the lyrics of, you know, pointing down as that's been said. Totally. That he was like pointing out the fucked upness. Yeah, totally.

I mean, again, I'm not saying I think like he hates people or whatever. He wants people to be assaulted or, you know. But I think there is a moral righteousness that runs through all of this. It fits with me. It's in these lyrics and it makes sense in standing on the stage and being like, don't do this, you know? Which, I mean, thank God. they did, whereas, like, there was other bands who were, you know, wouldn't say a word against it or were, like, you know, sort of like silently condoning it in a way. This year, they also appear

in that film, idle hands where I keep bringing it up because I did, as a thorough researcher, yes, did I go to Dr. James Leha and do an appointment to do my deep dive research mid-exam? No. and I regret that. But I did watch this film. It's essentially like a veiled moral, like Christian moral tale. It's a horror movie. But the whole premise is that this like evil spirit inhabits the laziest fuck up in town

because of his idle hands, who by the way is a major stoner and then takes over his hand and causes him to kill people. And then this like priestess has to come at the end. and like exercise it or whatever. And it's just always like, of course you're in this movie. You know, like, it was just so like perfectly synthesized with like their vibe and their messaging.

And just it really made me laugh. They play the school dance band, the Halloween dance. And they cover the Ramones, right? Cover the Ramones. Which if you guys want to laugh, just please go to that part and watch Jessica Alba dance to I want to be sedated and just be like, what song were they playing when you were dancing because it certainly was not I want to be sedated. Yeah, then the disembodied hand that's been cut off does come and scalp Dexter Holland, I believe, while they're seeing beheaded.

Gorgeous, gorgeous moment. It's also just wanted. The LA Times does a piece about the offspring around this time, and it just does mention that Dexter Holland has a Halloween party in Huntington Beach and Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale attend. She was a black fairy or something. She was a black fairy or something. thing and he wasn't dressed up because he's English. I just liked the detail. American is the peak of offspring's fame and popularity. Their songs are ruling all rock radio, the whole thing. And now we go into Y2K. The Century has turned, marked, of course, by Radiohead's Kid A. 2000 is just like things have changed, right? We've talked about this, I had nauseam on the program, so you know, just main points.

Pop has taken over in the form of like aforementioned boy bands and Britney Spears and new metal has taken over. So sort of traditional alt rock and or pop punk, Blink 128 is still thriving in this era. But other than that, it's not a great time for the offsprings and the green days of the world. Would you agree? Definitely. What's the Y2K thing happened? Not the virus, the fear. but the actual turning of the calendar, that was it.

Like, everyone moved on to the next thing. Yeah. Okay. In November of 2000, conspiracy of one comes out. This album's produced by my man, Brendan O'Brien. He's my man because he engineered and mixed blood sugar sex magic, one of my favorite albums of all time. But at this point, he had produced Korn's issues.

Raging Against the Machine. Gorilla Radio, probably some reasons why he was hired, and also every single Pearl Jam album after 10. Maybe that's what he was most known for at the time. And Stone Temple Pilots also at that point, I think. And core, gorgeous, goddamn gorgeous, beautiful album. Tell me about Conspiracy of One.

Conspiracy of One was obviously the follow-up to Americana, and it was, I wouldn't say a rushed album, But it was an album that came right after the tour of Americana. And they banged out some demos quickly. I think by May of 2000, they were already ready to roll, which considering the lag between Smash and Ixna, it was pretty quick turnaround from Ixnay to Americana, then Americana to this,

where they got into the studio with Brendan O'Brien, as you said. Same place, I think, at Energy in North Hollywood and got to work. And think a few months later, that was it. They were ready to roll. And it did well. And I think it was reviewed pretty well. But it was the dark edge, if you will, that encompassed the past few albums, wasn't engaging with audiences.

And there was definitely elements of different sounds incorporated into this music, which, whether it be there was, Red Man was on a song too. Let's talk about one second. Yes. So we just came off of an album where we're, saying these people trying to be rappers, trying to appropriate Compton, et cetera, bad. I'm going to quickly make a song called Original Prankster, Hire Redman. Shout out Redman.

The all-time best Cribs episode that's ever existed. His legendary. The shelf of porn DVDs, the piles of clothing everywhere. He has a normal closet, which he just steps in and out of and says, it's a walk-in closet. I'm walking in, I'm walking out. game and not walk out. What about the dollar? The dollar box, the box of dollars, the top of the fridge, the fish sticks in the freezer

that he shows off. Absolute fucking king. This is the best crib that's everything. Anyways, they get him, or an original prankster. All he seems to do on the song is say, original prankster, original yeah a few times. Not a greatest use of Red Man. Why do you think, can you, do you have any insight? So the thinking behind getting Red Man on the album on this song.

I don't. Especially in an album that has a T-S-O-L cover. It's just I think they were trying to do a lot on this album. For those I don't know, Red Man, a member of the Wu-Tang Clan, of the famous Wu-Tang Clan. No, not a member of it. Adjacent to the Wu-Tang Clan, a good friend. Him and Method Man.

Because they put out blackout this year too, so he was pretty prominent in the culture. Maybe he was on Columbia as well. That could explain it. Let's hear it. Sure. This is original prankster. That was original prankster featuring Red Man.

I just, I'm, like, it's so funny to me, like, you could play someone, Jennifer lost the war, and then be like, just so you know, in 10 years, they will make this song. And I don't know if a person would believe you. Definitely not. it was an interesting time for them too because they were one of the first bands to speak up for streaming. They were one of the first pro-streaming people or pro-Napster or Kazah, whatever.

Look how that worked out for them. Speaking of cucks. They actually got in a lot of trouble because they were going to put the whole album out on that. But they only ended up putting, I think, this song out there for free. I know. That's one of those like, icarus-ass shits where you're like,

surely this wealth and stuff could never go away. why don't we give some of it away for free? Who cares? And then look what happened. And then they ended up giving away a million bucks to a fan, though, in a contest. Yeah, they sure did. 14-year-old won it. Imagine being 14 and getting a billion bucks from the offspring in the year 2000.

Yeah, that's, I mean, I just feel like we've gone whole hog into novelty songs. It starts out with like just a touch, a touch of novelty on come out and play, just a little flourish, if you will. And just increasingly more and more throughout the albums, till we're just, we're just making joke songs. This is just a cousin to a weird owl song, basically. Like that, the fucking drum, what is the, you know what I'm talking about? When that drumby comes in, you're like, oh, it's a joke. Oh, I'm supposed to laugh, you know?

Yeah. And then, like, again, the, like, vaguely, the Latino, you can do it. Why? For what? I think there was more of a water boy thing, probably. Do it. You can do it all night long. Oh, right.

Good point. Still, even in Water Boy, it was questionable. Want you bad the second single? I'm sorry, this song is good. This is a great song. It was everywhere. It sounds like they're trying a little bit to do a Blink 182, to me, to my ears. But it works.

And I think it was on like the American Pie 2 soundtrack. Correct. That is correct. Which was a good synopsis of what. was going on at the punk, punk adjacent world at the time, too. Here's an insane tidbit, and then we'll hear the song. This song was remixed by the singer of the dwarves, Blagdalia. This remix appeared on the Million Miles Away single.

Do with that information what you will. This is Want You Bad. That was Want You Bad, a banger. American Pie 2S sounding song, but in the best way possible. I mean that as a highest compliment. There's one song on here. that I've written in my notes almost time travels for me

to like gutter mouth, fat records type punk, but like drop kick Murphy's-a-fied like anthemic Irish pub punk which is one finding. It's a good way to put it. Thank you. Thank you. If this was family feud, that'd be the number one answer.

They were like, hold on. We still have this too. But it's really kind of the only song that I noticed that happening in. It's definitely an outlier. The rest of it, like you said, they're trying, yeah, they're trying all sorts of new stuff. Like, that song Living in Chaos almost feels like they're like, what if we did new metal,

just kidding, unless. And it's not good. It does not succeed, in my humble opinion. I mean, it was very much them trying to be, you know, I don't even know what's the way to put it. I wouldn't say trend chasing, because that isn't what they were doing here. But it was just like, guys, come on.

Like, what are we doing here type of thing? It's like, how does this fit it to the puzzle of this album or even to your larger catalog? It was just an interesting choice. Let's just put it that way. Sure. This album was semi-commercially successful. I think they were still very famous, like we talked about.

It peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200. Five weeks after its release, it was certified gold and plaid. platinum. I don't know how many it had to sell to do that because that's shifting now, obviously. But still, you know, pretty... I think it was 500 back then. Yeah, pretty successful. The album artwork is egregious.

It's some insane clown posse as shit in not a good way, which we love Insang Clan Possian here, but I don't know. There's no visual through line of this band at all. Like, every album cover looks like it's a completely different band's music, just full on. I am agreeing with you on that because even the fonts are just... You know, later on, the fonts get a little bit more consistent. But yes. Yeah, this one is crazy. I don't know.

It's mental. Well, the whole conspiracy of one thing. I think Dexter said is that one person can make a difference good or bad. I think they were just saying, and this was pre-9-11 too, about how a person could ruin the whole thing. And I think they pointed to Oklahoma City bombing in that regard, too. So it was dark in its own way. oh my god the Oklahoma City bombing was that happened when I was in middle school and I totally remember the kids because they made fun of me all the time from being Middle Eastern they called me a camel jockey

and some other things that I can't say on this podcast but when this happened they were like oh my god yossi where is your uncle hiding out like you know before they caught the Oklahoma City bomber And then when they caught Timothy McVeigh, I was like, oh, babe, I'm so sorry about your cousin. It was a really highlight for me. It was a great moment for me. Kids are the worst. That's true. They aren't all right.

They certainly aren't all right. But I was sorry about their cousin, Timothy McVeigh, who was caught as they'll call him a baby bomber. Okay, I hear you. We're getting vaguely political on this album that has a song called The Original Prankster Future. Red Man. It's not quite a going back to your roots thing. No. Okay, let's read a couple of the reviews. Shockingly, Rolling Stone. They liked it, I think. Yeah, Rolling Stone gave it three. Compared to Americana got way worse reviews, but did way better commercially. This album got better reviews, but didn't really yield as much commercial success. Do you think that was a regression to the median type of thing that it was overcompensating for missing on Americana's commerciality? It's a good question. Because the critics, except for Criscoll, they didn't take it seriously.

And then all of a sudden it blew up and now it said, oh, it was basically a critical reevaluation. I think Americana was correctly reviewed. And I think perhaps they were too generous with this album. That's just my personal opinion. I'm just saying purely from a commercial standpoint, that's what that could have influenced how it was seen. Sure. Which often happens, right? Spin gave us a seven out of ten.

Even as the New Metal Army's bus barrels past their stop, these guys will find a way to skitch on its bumper. They are tough little cucoraches. They did a little offspring there. Just used a Spanish word up about nothing. So what if Blink are cavorting with porn stars while Dorky Dexter is name-checking Janet Reno? The world needs wannabes and has-bens, especially if they shred. Here's the thing. That is not a nice review, but yet a 7-5-10.

It's like when Pitchfork is like, I love this album. It's the best album that's ever come out, and it's like a 4.2. You know, it's giving that, but in the reverse. With 7.10 is a good thing. Rolling Stone gave it 3.5 stars saying there's much honored to be had in making great novelty songs. Okay. So it goes back to your weird owl cousin. They said they say, as any one.

familiar with Lair, the Ramones, and Bismarkey nodes. And as long as the offspring put topical yucks into their hook-crammed tunes, they hold the title as the world's most rocking novelty band. Now, if I was the offspring and I read that, I'm not sure I would be stoked. What do you think? Were they trying to be the world's most rocking novelty band? I mean, they definitely have a sense of humor,

and they're not afraid to show it. But being called that is kind of like, you know, it's a look in the mirror moment. for sure, especially since at that time, too, they were playing these gigantic shows, like in Orange County at the time in 2000, around when the album came out. They were playing the Dennis Dinell Benefit Show that was where all of their peers and heroes were playing. It was, for those of you who don't know, Dennis Dinell was the rhythm guitarist of Social Distortion

and the longest tenured member at the time next to Mike Ness. And he died suddenly. They put on a show in his memory there. And the offspring were one of the bands that were playing there with TSO, adolescent, age, and orange, Social D was the headliner. But the offspring were the clearly, you know, the biggest band at the time that played that. And I think they were, they played second to last before Social D.

So there was all this stuff going on with them, too. Didn't X play as well? I think so. I think so. Yeah. Because they were sort of in the same milieu, for sure, as Social D. I saw, I saw X in Social D play at a thing called Who. Hootenanny in 1998, which was an Orange County festival for Rockabilly and Psychobilly.

And it was sick. The cramps played. Sorry, that's an aside. But I just want you all to know that that existed and it was very cool. I bet it was, it must have been awesome. Don't you wish you were there? This is the first time I ever saw with seams tattooed on the backs of their legs. I had never really experienced this level of immersion into the Rockabilly world as I did that day.

And it was forever changed. So that being said, though, seeing as an novel. ban next to those luminaries. Well, that's what I was going to say. Do you feel like TSOL and X were like these fucking corny clowns? Get them out of here. I'm just wondering. What do you feel like the general

sentiment towards the offspring was amongst these bands? I mean, they're nice guys. So I don't think that anyone was rude to them or like dismissive of them. Okay. I think that if they were on the bill, there was a reason they were on the bill type of thing. Totally.

And it was also an end of an era for Orange County punk. That was kind of a book end to it. Yeah. Totally. I mean, everything changed. Everything changed. They don't put out another album until 2003.

2003 shit's changed. Shit has fucking changed. In rock music in particular. It's the strokes. It's the white stripes. Fall Out Boy has gotten super big. Yellow card. I mean, we're talking.

talking pop punk, right, and Warpedor shit. Like, that's sort of that mantle. And you have the huge new metal, you know, you have Lincoln Park. It starts with love. I don't know why. It doesn't even matter how hard you try. It's an interesting parallel, and I want to ask you. I don't know if you're a Weezer guy.

Malo Droit comes out in 2004, right? Splinter, the offspring album, comes out in 2003. To me, it feels like they came out in a similar way into an environment as these, like, sort of like legacy alt rock bands that had both kind of shifted their persona or the place they occupied in culture from like if not cool then kind at least cool adjacent and like sort of like you know something into sort of like I mean again I hate to say it but like cartoonish novelty acts right like yeah how do you feel about how do you feel about how maybe people, I mean, you were a full journalist at this point.

Like, how do you feel like music people were taking new releases by the offspring and Weezer in 2003 and 2004? It was the old hat. I mean, I wasn't actually. I was just a mere civilian at the time. But it started to get to the point where it was like, oh, okay, you know, it was kind of, unless it was something like American idiot, it was nothing, you know, tide shifting. It was just like, okay, just another thing to come out, which in turn, this is when the band started a lot more than they had. Well, you got to make money now, babe, because your albums aren't going to make you any money.

I'm sure you're going to hit the plane, babe. It was the beginning of their revolving drummer issue because they fired Ron Welty. Oh, yeah. We forgot to say Ron Welty is out of the goddamn band, babe. Right after Conspiracy of One, there is no information about why. He didn't leave of his own volition.

That's plain and clear because he sues them. after. Greg Kay said in a retrospect, I don't know if you read this, basically, like, says that for the most part, Dexter writes the songs as a whole. And there was always a little tension with Ron. And he was the youngest member of the group also by some years. He said, we just sold something like 8 million copies of Smash. And now he's demanding to write his own drum parts. His ego always kind of got in the way. It was also because he wanted some of the writing proceeds. Nobody's really had contact with him since he's been gone. I'm not sure it'd be a fond memory for him. or more of a bitter thing.

So it sounds like he wanted to be more involved in the songwriter process, and they said no, or Dexter said no, and that's kind of how they were like, you should not be in this band. And he is not in the band anymore as of Splinter. Enter Josh Fries, who's played drums for every band in God's Green Earth. Josh Fries had the Vandals. So he plays drums on this album, Splinter.

Tell me about Splinter. I think it was the beginning of where things started, go off the rails a little in the aughts for the offspring. One of my favorite little tidbits about this is how they were, I mean, their humor was incorporated into it because they joked that it would be named Chinese democracy, snooze you lose because for those of you listening, Chinese democracy was, by 2003 already, was becoming mythical that Axel would never release the album. And the funny thing is, Josh Fries, I believe, did contribute a part to Chinese democracy. He did.

that album ended up taking over eight years and cost reportedly $13 million and did not come out of 2008. It's extremely funny that they joked that they were going to call their album. The Chinese democracy parentheses, you snooze, you lose. And Axel put out a cease and desist. Yeah, Axel Rose filed a cease and desist. And the extremely funny thing about that besides Axel getting really mad about it, like thinking they're actually going to do it, is that Dexter said, Axel ripped off my braids. I ripped off his album title because don't forget this time, Axel Rose does have braids.

It's where he's when he's in his braids and hockey jersey era. That was pretty funny. They did release that statement about them calling the album Chinese Democracy on April 1st. So that should have been a clue. And they are the original pranksters. And they did, and it is leaning into that novelty aspect. Yeah, they're big jokesters, big jokesters. Splinter is their shortest album, 32 minutes long.

Also produced by Brendan O'Brien. Also produced by Brendan O'Brien and The Offspring. They have production credits now. There's an MP3-only release during this time. That was a thing at the time of the kids aren't all right. Island style, which of course I had to go look up. It is an instrumental. The first song on this album is called Neocon.

What's up with that? What's up with this song? Neocon says it all. They were not, it was the time of the Iraq war. Everyone was using that word to describe the hawkish nature of the Bush administration. And they were on the Rock Against Bush compilation, too. So they were letting their politics fly a little bit back then. Yeah.

Probably for the first time in a while. They were leaning into that. And it was a very short song. It features crowd vocals that they recorded live at the Redding Festival in 2002. Hit that is the single off of this. Don't worry. It's a novelty song. It does feature the term baby mama in it.

I can't really get into this song too much because it's not good. It's not a good song. I would agree with you. Is there a song on here that you want to play that you feel like is good and also maybe like gets the gist of the album? I mean, the worst hangover ever

is kind of the gist of the album, but do we want to hear that? Wow. By this time, I think they released the greatest hits album in 2005. Right. And they're just torn, torn, torn. Rolling Stone somehow gave that album three stars. God help them.

It just doesn't mean anything. Stars don't mean anything. Nothing means anything. What did they say? They said, one reason a 19-year-old band with hardcore punk roots can feel comfortable writing frat-boy-friendly songs is in the offspring's calipunk world. Progress is less about maturity than about finding faster beats and bigger riffs. But like Jokey Pioneers, the remote.

The offspring could keep writing their dumb humor and smart riffs well into middle age. They could and they do. Sure. They could and they do. Again, listen, is it for me? No, but I will say what I say on every episode when we get to this part of the discography of a band, which is almost inevitable unless someone dies, this is their right. This is your right as artists to continue to put out music.

And yeah, it's just you're never. going to capture the spirit of the first couple of albums where you peaked. That's just, that's never going to happen. There's rare fluke bands that like maybe 10 years in have a huge, you know, hit radio head or someone. But like it is not the, it's the exception, not the fucking rule. Important. They announced their full-time drummer is going to be Adam Willard, the old drummer from Rocket from the Crypt. In 2004, Dexter does launch a hot sauce company called Gringo Bandito. The label depicts Dexter Holland with bandoliers, revolvers, a sombrero, and sunglasses.

Just if you need to see it, you can just simply Google. They do sell this hot sauce on Amazon. He told the LA Times, growing up here, I was always into Mexican food and culture, Day of the Dead, all of it. And one day I looked at a hot sauce bottle. and wondered if I could do better. I looked at a hot sauce bottle and I wondered if I could do better. Have you ever heard a more white man shit

than that in your whole God-given goddamn life? I have not. I mean... Again, it is not illegal to go ahead and make a hot sauce, but just that, to be a white man in this world. Truly, God bless, honestly.

The thing is about that hot sauce is you can't find it online anywhere, but my old editor, Gustavo. It's on Amazon. It's literally on Amazon. No, the hot sauce. I meant the hot sauce is actually quite good, but it got the blessing of my old editor, Gustavo, at OC Weekly, who put him on the cover of OC Weekly, I think, in like, I forget what year,

maybe 2010 for this. And Gustavo's kind of a kingmaker of that. And he's a columnist now at the LA Times. And it's something that Dexter said that was, he knew that he knew it was at, actually good when Gustavo praised it. Yeah, I think both things can be true. I think it could be good and also the

approach to making it can be absolutely bad shit insane. Sure, yes. It was very funny because he does say in the same LA Times article, making a good hot sauce turned out to be far harder than I thought. Going to Google and typing in salsa and finding a recipe is one thing. But trying to figure out

how people make a quality hot sauce is a lot tougher. That made me laugh really hard. I did want to get something in advance of this podcast so I could report on how good it is. Could be an addendum. Yeah, but I unfortunately, yeah, I'll, don't worry, I'll come in hot with one of those really embarrassing front facing camera, Instagram stories where I review the Dexter Holland hot sauce. I'll tell you what, though, it is well reviewed on Amazon by the type of people who order and review hot sauce on Amazon.

Also, it does apparently come with temporary tattoos, so that's a thing. Marketing. Yeah, punk. The Punk Hot Toss. Yes. So you mentioned it. 2005, they released a greatest hits album. The compilation, I just have to drive this point home.

This compilation does not include any songs from the band's first two albums. It's weird. You write a song like Dirty Magic? Do you think epitaph stood in their way of licensing it? They own the rights to their own first album. That wasn't Epitaph. They bought it back. The first one, I don't know about the second one, but like...

So by this point, they consider Smash then the first album, is what you're saying. Yeah, in their estimation, I guess, to me, it's so weird that there was no songs on there. They did have a bonus acoustic version of Dirty Magic on there, which is really good. They play Warp Tour for the very first time in 2005, which to me seems insane, given how what Warpter has been going on and how big offspring was, but that's the first time they do it. But it's a weird fit, though, if you think about what was going on, at 2005 too. Yeah, 2005, babe. It's like we're getting into scene music, right? Like, that's one like this insane shit that I'd never heard of until I worked at a little online website

called buzznet.com. Realheads, no. I didn't know. I didn't know what I was getting into. I was like, who the fuck are the Black Veil Brides? What are you talking about? Is that a raccoon tail in your hair? Do you know what I mean? Like, it was really mind-blowing for me. I felt extremely old then and I was only like 28. But yeah, they play. I mean, they have enough cachet, you know? Like, You have seven hit songs from the 90s. Like, I think you can play the band's Warp Tour and have a audience. And again, the vandals are still playing and they're 100, you know? True.

They take a hiatus after that. And Willard is recruited by Tom Delange, aforementioned Blink One 82, for his new band, Angels and Airwaves. And they go ahead and tap former saves the day drummer Pete Parada to replace Adam Willard. And they play some more shows. for whatever reason on the next album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace,

that comes out in 2008, Josh Fries plays drums again, not P-P-Pirada. Important thing about this album, it is produced by Bob motherfucking rock, Bobbert Rock. This band saw some kind of monster, and they were like, yes,

bring us that man. I don't know if that's true. That's a fan pick again in my mind. I mean, Bob Rock did have a big resurgence because of some kind of monster. Top lexicon. Sure. Weird to watch that documentary and be like, let's get that man.

But I don't know. Again, I'm simply purely speculating. Bob Rock did have some free time at this point because Metallica had basically stopped working with him. Right? That's correct. That's like when Mataka was like, we're good on you, babe. Yeah, they went to Rick Ruben, I think, at that point. At every young man's career, except for offspring, Rick Rubin does enter.

Could you imagine? Yes, of course I could. I mean, of course I could. I don't think it would have made a lick of a fucking difference, but yes, I totally could imagine the next album while all of a sudden Rick Rubin's like, I'm producing this. This album is sort of, in my estimation,

and you tell me if I'm wrong, an attempt at a return to, like, very early form. Like, it's pretty, a lot of the songs are pretty basic for the floor punk. Am I incorrect? No, you're right. It's definitely felt like after, or for lack of a better way to put it,

the novelty act wore thin. The novelty war. And they were trying to get back to that. Yeah. We're off. And they started getting revved up because the album has, I think, their most streamed song on this platform. Excuse me? Is that correct?

I think so. You're going to go Far Kid, I think. It's number one streamed song by the offspring on Spotify. I wonder why. I mean, you can never speculate as to why. But you're going to go Far Kid. Went pretty far. So let's hear it.

Should we hear it? Yeah. Okay. this is you're going to go far kid. That was, you're going to go far kid. Honestly, kind of a good song. I get it. I get why it's highly stream.

It would have been at home on any of their pre-conspiracy albums. Yeah. Or at least their 90s albums. It's like just like a solid, catchy punk offspring song. I get it. Like I, you know, it felt familiar in the good way. The more interesting song was Hammerhead, though, from that album. What makes it more interesting?

Well, the subject matter. They wrote it from the perspective of a school shooter, which is going into that heavy territory, not the novelty act. I want to know. I just want to know. I want to know. I want to understand what makes someone look in the mirror and say, A, I can do hot sauce better.

And B, I should write a song from the perspective of a school shooter. Not the first white man to do this. Stephen Jenkins also did this famously. But it was too close to Columbine and the song was forcibly left off of the album or it was only included as an instrumental and then came out later. Anyways, I can't know the heart and mind of Dexter Holland, but weird thing to do in my opinion. Yeah, the different sides of Dexter Holland right there. Stoner's bad. School shooters, let's get in their minds.

Let's see where they're coming from. It's about hot sauce. Hot sauce? I can do it better. Okay. I wonder if people were, if offspring fans anyways, like really like this album since it's, it is a return to form or if real offspring fans came in on some of the prank era stuff and don't want something like this. I imagine by late stage offspring, it would think that it was, you know, it was really the hardcore people who were, who had stuck around for a while. And that would be probably the pre-American crowd because the people who got in on arikaner were probably out at this point. So they're well on the legacy path.

Or if they're, I mean, they're there already. So the people who are still there are true believers. They've been a ban for over two decades. They've been a ban for three decades at this point. You know, like they're absolutely a legacy act. Like there's no denying it. Robert Criscow, which is just hilarious to me that he even took the time to review it, but it got a bomb.

Just got a bomb, just a bomb. A dud. There's no further words. It's just a bomb. It's bad. Rolling Stone gave it two and a half stars. If you only remember the offspring as pop punk jokesters, SoCal boys who quip about clueless white guys,

and the band's rather serious eighth album may surprise you. Over hardcore punk grooves and a massive guitar wreckage, the multi-platinum quartet delivers their thesis. Stuff is messed up. It is their thesis. That's the title of the ninth track. a smorgas board of carping on which frontman Dexter Holland dises the media, the Iraq war, reality television, and a celebrity fundraisers. The standout melodies often take a backseat to the diat tribes.

And Holland doesn't back up his disaffection with many good reasons to rally behind him. This kind of brooding might fit the national mood, but America should demand more from its punk bands. That they consider them still a punk band at that point. Did they consider anyone still a punk band at this point? Okay, it's 2010. The offspring has, speaking of being punk, trotted off to join 311 on 311's 2010 Unity Tour. We love 311. In 2011, whether or not it sounds true, it's kind of deep on the filter it's gone through.

In 2011, they took the main stage at Redding and Leeds. This is a detail I bring up to just point out they're still a huge band. It doesn't matter that they're not culturally relevant. of it anymore, they have enough pull that they can play the main stage at Reading and Leeds in 2011. To me, that was kind of mind-blowing. There's still international superstars. Like, though, if you look at their tour schedules, it's mostly abroad at this point. Right. Okay. It is interesting. There's bands like that. It's like if you got to a certain level of fame in the 90s, you can tour forever in pretty good-sized venues and make a lot of money. Like 3-11 plays amphitheaters.

still. And they're playing, I think they're playing, they're definitely playing Rock and Rio. I mean, I guess this weekend, but you. In this year of the year of our Lord 2020. Yeah. They're built pretty high up. And then they're doing an arena tour of Canada at the time when the time of this release.

I bet you the come to Brazil contingent for offspring is massive. Oh, huge. South America love. But that's what they become. Because at that point, at this point, yeah, at this point in their career, they have enough to get by on where they, They could play the hits and just tour. By 2011, they're good.

They could have stopped releasing new music at that point and toured and still would have been fine. Yeah, it's true, but they didn't. Spoiler. They didn't. In 2012, they released the album, Days Go By, once again, produced by Bob Rock. Again, music has just, like, we're in a whole fucking different ballgame. We're in Mumford and Sons Town, babe. We are in Barneour

But it was not your fault but mine. And it was your heart on the line. We are in Barn Cor, okay? We are hay and hoeing. Edward Sharp and the magnetic zeros are out there singing their sort of folk hand-clappy song. All sorts of shit is going on, you know? Like Beach House, Grimes. The hipsters, they're running off.

That's right. Mac is Demarko Hanks, says producer Tullin. And our beloved friends, Baskos put out their iconic album, The Only Place in 2012. Rock music, at least, has very much entered its indie phase, would you say? I mean, it's like fully sort of in its like,

the rock music being taken seriously in 2012 is mostly indie music. Yes, because internet, blogosphere, to the offspring, everything is splintered. So there is no monoculture. period, nevertheless, in the rock world and radio world. Yeah, it's like, you're either muse or your sleigh bells, and that's, there's no in between.

Yes. Okay. Bob Rock is back to produce days go by. You know what? I have to look back at it, because I just have a note that says the artwork question mark. It is simply an old man and a young boy sitting on a bench. Very literal.

Days do, the days do be going by. Yeah. And that's what more can we say about that? Pete Perada plays drums on this album. Greg Kay, by the way, we said there was three Aquarius in this band, but by the end there's only one. We'll get to that. The last album that Greg Kay plays on. Tell me about Days Go By musically.

I mean, it's something they'd been working on for some time. It is an album that they did work on and release. Yes. Those are backs. But in the aspect, it took them quite a while from soup to nuts in this regard, not nearly as long as the next one. But this was at the advent of social media. So they leave breadcrumbs of fans saying, we're almost done. We did this. We did that.

And the single that's known on this album is, they try to be, you know, they're critiquing old self. But I don't know. Are you referring to cruising California? I sure am. In parentheses, bump it in my trunk. What the fuck is going on here? They're trying to satire pop music and all the California this, California, that.

I think it's mostly aimed at Katie Perry based on sound, but boy, does it not land. Here's the thing. Teenage dream came out in 2010. It's been two years. Let's move on. Secondly, this is so bad. Like, I get it.

Like, let's make a little satire. but a satire has to know Jonathan Swift had ass right now but like it has to fucking like do a couple of things like you can't just parody a thing and do it in the style of Dr. Lou

and put on a funny voice and call it a satire like I'm not really sure that is what that means. Especially on an album where you're kind of longing for everything that's passed you by and looking back you know semi-

nostalgically, and then you put this on here. It was just like, huh? It just feels so out of place. Oh, my God. Producer Dylan said Katie Parody, and so she's finally fired. It took a long time in this episode to fire Producer Dylan, but there she did it. Bye-bye, producer Dylan, see you. Here's what Dexter said about it. As I was writing this record, I realized I was writing some heavier songs and they were

a bit serious. Having some fun songs has always been a part of our band. I thought I should write a couple of songs that are a little more fun and on the lighter side. Towards the end of the album, I wrote Cruising California. It's about what it would be like if I was driving down the beach in my hometown on a nice sunny day in Southern California. This is a smooth brain song. I live at Huntington Beach, so I thought, that's what I should write about. My hometown is great, and there's a lot of fun reflected in the song.

See, like, in the lyrics, there's actually no parodying. It's pretty straightforward. La, la, la, la, I love California. I love the beach. Bruce O'Don says, have you seen the picture of the koala brains and how they look like chicken breasts? It's kind of like that. Damn. I don't know, man.

I can't talk about this song anymore. What I can't talk about is OC Guns. This song is egregious. Like, I was, like, upset. Like, I feel like it's borderline inappropriate. The tiki, tiki, what up homes? I just, SOS, help. that's all I wrote. I don't know. I don't know what they,

what were they going for in this song? I know it's another like guns are bad, gangs are bad. Should have stuck to the road. Keep touring, get the torn money, right? Yeah. They do put on dirty magic back on this album. They re-record it. Yeah, that was probably the most

interesting part. It was 30 years since Ignition was released by this point. I don't know why they re-recorded it though, because I'm going to go ahead and say the other version is better. By this point, I know they were reissued, or their epitaph reissued smash and

ignition. So things had to be at least better that they would, they feel comfortable to re-record that. This is their Taylor's version, Dirty Magic, Offspring's version. Yes. It's still the best song on this album because it's a song from 20 years ago. There's a song called I Want a Secret Family with

you. It is sung to a stripper. Dexter said, the idea of a secret family is something I've heard about. So much things that Dexter has heard about, but clearly has no experience with drugs, secret families. You always hear the story of a pilot who has families in different countries. The other family is his secret family. So that's a song on here. Maybe he saw up in the air and thought about that. Yeah, maybe, perhaps. The last song on this

record is not that bad. What I wrote here, it's called Slim Pickens does the right thing and rides the bomb to hell. I wrote this song is actually pretty okay in comparison. It's just standard punk and pretty catchy and it's not about strippers and there's no Spanish words in it, so it's a winner. So it's not just a clever name. No, I don't, in your opinion. In my opinion, yeah. Rolling Stone gave this two stars. They say the low point is obviously cruising California, a gag track with no laughs in sight, but then they say songs like dirty magic, which sound like an homage to nevermind's deep cuts, will at least aid X small punks looking to work out midlife crisis via adolescent angst.

It is funny to me that whoever wrote this review did not bother to do just like a quick Google. That's a song that came out 20 years ago. But I'll go. It's fine. Spins review is really funny. They gave it a 4 out of 10. It's by Theon Weber. It says, because the offspring, like all of us, daily draw nearer to death. Their new album is clouded with nervous fear.

The sound of 440-ish callig guys who took a wrong term somewhere and ended up as the offspring. days do be going by. And there's the last graph is like even in their prime, the offspring were not good exactly, but they were genuinely misanthropic, which in certain situations, adolescents and its relapses can be similar. But it took a while to realize just how misanthropic they were and are that underneath their punk snot is not the traditional damaged heart, but a deep and clinical hatred of nearly everything. One effect of this disdain is to make the band's stabs empathy distended and awkward. Oh, that was pretty poignant.

That's kind of what I've been thinking the whole time where it's like when the like good melodies and catchy riffs are gone, all that's kind of left is this like weird vitriol and judgment. And it doesn't, maybe that's why it doesn't totally hold up. I don't know. And of course, the song that sounds like Dr. Look. They kick Greg Kay out question mark. Again, no real information.

except that he sued them. So I'm assuming they kicked him out. Yes. There's no details. I think it's ongoing. Yeah, it's ongoing. I think it's an ongoing case. It's insane to me to kick out a band member 30 years in.

35 years in, I think. Yeah. Why? Like Dexter and Greg Kaye literally started the band together after those riots. You ran cross country with this man in high school. And now 35 years later, you're going to kick him out of the band and go to a lawsuit? Insane.

Shit must have went down or long simmering shit must have gone down. Yeah, it's just weird. In most instances, it's because a band member is like a gnarly addict or whatever, but no one knows what this happened. In 2020, the band released a rock cover of Joe Exotic's country song, Here Kitty Kitty. Do you guys remember Joe Exotic? Do you remember the beginning of the pandemic? It was a time.

Joe Exotic? for the people of America. How was that? Early pandemic days. Pandemicor. We call that pandemic core. Nobody called it that. Ron Welty filed a lawsuit in 2020.

So they have multiple lawsuits happening. Also in 2020, the offspring released their first ever Christmas song, a cover of Darlene Love's Christmas, Baby, Please Come Home. It's not like Christmas at all. Well, you do. That was going to happen at some point, right? I didn't know. I actually didn't know. You didn't think they'd go down the Christmas route.

No. I didn't know that. They put out a 7-inch single of it, too, for those real heads who needed the completists, who also needed the Christmas 7-inch. Now we're in 2021, and the bad times have started rolling. The bad times have been rolling for some time, but the album is called Let the Bad Times Roll. Tell me about Let the Bad Times Roll. It was their 10th album. I mean, that's a good landmark or benchmark for them, rather.

And they'd been through what? Several drummers at this point. Perada could not get vaccinated. He was not able to get vaccinated due to health concerns. And thusly, he was not able to be in the band anymore. Right. But they had finally at this point were done with Columbia. They fulfilled their contract.

They were dropped. I think that's a notable thing. Yeah. How many bands does that happen to that? Yeah. They didn't drop them. They fulfilled. filled their entire thing and then they left.

There were some pretty good songs on here compared to the previous album. And Dexter went after a big pharma even on this album. Opioid Diaries. Letting the Bad Times roll certainly summed up what everyone was going through of that time.

Because I think the album was done by end of 2019 and then like everything got pushed, pushed, pushed and pushed. And then was released in 2021. and they've been on the road since. But yeah, it was another Bob Rock joint. What song should we hear off of it together, just of the most recent offspring album?

Let's go to the title track. Okay. This is Let the Bad Times Roll. That was Let the Bad Times Roll. Also during this time, Dexter became a doctor. Finally. Let us not forget. Finally.

Dr. Holland. Yeah, he finally, 30 years later, picked back up and defended his thesis and got his doctorate. Dr. Holland. So do we need to call them Dr. Now, Dr. Holland? You can. So that was the last

offspring album, 2021. They're 55 years old, or Dr. Dexter Holland is anyways. It doesn't tell like they're, you know, showing any signs of slowing down. I know they're definitely still touring, playing big shows. They'll probably make another album.

They're rocking. They're rolling. And they are, you know, they're playing big venues and they still have a lot of fans. And I gathered some of those fans so that we could hear from them to wrap this podcast. Do you want to hear what they had to say? Let's do it.

They're one of the most recognizable punk bands ever. And that's a really commendable feat to achieve being that the genre that they came up in encouraged anybody and everybody to make music despite their musical comprehension or skill. I have been a fan since Smash. Basically, that was the year I turned 18. And the whole year-under-18, you won't be doing any time, became like the anthem of my 18th birthday. I bought a shirt, and on the back of it, it said stupid, dumb shit, goddamn motherfucker. And when you walk into high school as a freshman wearing something like that, you feel really cool.

Dexter Holland is one of the greatest human beings on the planet. True Renaissance, man, I could talk for hours just about all the awesome stuff that he's involved in. cherries, marathons, hot sauce, record labels. You know, when you put on an offspring song, even if you don't know it's the offspring, you're going to know it's the offspring by the time Dexter Holland's vocals come in. I live in Florida now, but I grew up in Brazil. And I never actually thought I would see them live until 1997

when they actually find leaking down. And I managed to meet the band. That's when my stalking day started. They're all super nice. Talking about the band is something I've been doing for 20 years, very involved in the very small online community that obsesses over them. I remember writing a letter right after I met them to, you know, the fan club address they have in those old CDs. And Dexter wrote me back. I actually got a wedding gift from Dexter.

They never forgot how to go fast. They never forgot their roots as a punk band. And their songs, even later, and I think actually even as they get more into their career, their fast songs get better. watching them for 20 years. I've listened to everything that they've said. I've read everything that they've written, read every interview, watched every TV appearance, you name it. I mean, a lot of deeply loyal offspring fans who love that Dexter runs marathons

and makes hot sauce in addition to his fine musical stylings. And you know what? I appreciate that these are longtime fans. They've stuck with the band. You know, with a band like that, you're not. have the people who are smash arrow usually and they're not going away they've been with them through the thick and thin and then they're down with the cause they got to get away but they're not getting away um Daniel speaking of getting away it's time for us to now get away from this podcast

and finish it up um thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to us about the offspring can you choose one last song that we haven't played yet to leave our listeners with the close out the program i mean we got to go got to get away right that's literally early perfect because we're our got to getting away right now. We're getting away. We got to do it. We got to get away. We all got to get away. Mainly, but also the rest of us have to get all with our lives. Daniel, thank you again. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. Come back next week for a new episode of Bansplaine and this is Gotta Get Away. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Banspline, only on Spotify.

Our guest today was Daniel Cohn. Follow him on Twitter at Daniel Cohn. Huge thanks to the offspring megathans you heard on this episode. John Gussman, Mark Haslinger, and Isabel Olavera. This episode was produced by My Ombre, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and edited by Michael Hardman, with help from Casey Simonson and Kelly Kyle. Executive producer for bands playing is me, Yossi Solid. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Claven, and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagarsa in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Meyerson, Jessica Hopper, and the return of the Mexican pizza to Taco Bell, God bless.

Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bales, Lane, only on Spotify. Okay, I have to wrap it up because I barely can talk anymore and I'm so hot.