PREVIEW
SOCIAL DISTORTION
Saturday, August 11
Olympic Plaza
Snow Jam
Safety pins in cheeks or diapers?
Mike Ness straddles a dichotomy and comes through with his balls intact
Oh, the local PTA – those psychic vampires who suck the life out of small town America and spit it back blacker than used blood. What would they have said if they’d seen it? A room full of impressionable little kiddies, minds more pliable than plasticine skies, with a tattooed punk junkie hero leading them firmly astray with the chorus of "Bad Luck." And them loving it, damn it, loving it! What could that teacher have been thinking?
Mike Ness, founder and frontman of rebel icons Social Distortion, father of nine-year-old Julian, in for Career Day at his school, and making 13 the lucky number for a gaggle of Grade 3 students. Picture it on his resumé – The Hollywood Palladium, CBGB, Highwood ’93, and Career Day at the local primary school.
"There's nothing punk rock about raising kids. That and my marriage, I take very seriously," says an affable Ness from his California home. After the death of longtime rhythm guitarist Dennis Danell last year, Social D is readying demos for their first studio album since 1996's White Light White Heat White Trash, and preparing for a fingerful of gigs this month. (Ness is particularly eager to play Calgary again, reminiscing that on their 1982 tour, Calgary was one of the only places to welcome the neophyte band, and that he couldn't get enough of the Extra Old Stock.) So seriously does Ness take the art of parenting that he was the assistant coach of Julian's little league baseball team, and even took up surfing to spend more time with his board-bound child, and with his younger son Johnny.
Rumours of an upcoming Social D album, planned for release sometime in the spring, may have fans of the band heaving a sigh of relief, no matter how much they enjoyed Ness's two solo albums, Cheating at Solitaire and Under the Influences (both released in 1999) – recorded, he claims, simply because he needed to.
"I love all these other styles of music, and sometimes I felt like Social Distortion wasn't the... (he pauses, searching for words) I just couldn't go all the way. I couldn't go out and have a mandolin player or a fiddle or something. I brought those same influences to SD but I always felt that at some point, it had to stop...."
But if any band under the black velvet sky has the legs, heart and guts to go all the way, even to somewhere between heaven and hell, it's Social Distortion. Formed in 1978 in California, in the wake of the Sex Pistols' sweeping disintegration in America, the band released albums such as Mommy's Little Monster (1983), Prison Bound (1988), and their self-titled major label debut (1990), albums kissed and caressed by the bravest elements of punk, hardcore, country and power-pop, but no inbred-bastard songs. They created these tunes in spite of the fact that Ness seemed to be perpetually going down for the last time under the wave of narcotics that too often drowns musicians who live in escapism's high tide zone.
So why couldn't Ness have requested mandolin or, gasp, fiddle, on a SD album?
"Well, I could have – I'm certainly not a person who has gotten to where he's at by worrying about what people think. I can't be worried about what the industry is doing. I never worried about it before.... Taking a break from Social Distortion and coming back to it is fun again. Playing other styles of music, you improve as a musician. It's so much harder to play a song slow than it is fast. Most people don't realize that."
Ness seldom goes to shows ("It's like having to go into the office on my day off"), but has nevertheless enjoyed performances by both Lucinda Williams and Green Day in the past month. He may be comfortable with the idea of switching between his band and his solo work, but one can't help draw a parallel between his 23-year tenure with Social D and The Stones' 40-year history with Mick Jagger, who announced this week that his third solo album is stirring in the womb.
"Unfortunately, I think the last good record they did was Black and Blue or It's Only Rock ‘N’ Roll. I don't know at what point you're not cool anymore. I used to think Mick Jagger was so cool. I'm sure he's nice, but I don't think he's that cool anymore. I think it’s very easy for artists to become complacent and rest on their laurels and say, ‘It's time to get another product out' instead of putting out the product."
The musical daddy doesn't hesitate when asked about how close any of his band's own albums come to being the product.
"Well, I'm my own worst critic, but I'd say Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell has some great moments, but there's things I would have done different. There's things I would have done different on every record."
While Ness has friends in punk bands that have enjoyed huge commercial success, and in spite of the fact that he labels them as "bubblegum punk," he realizes that’s just a fluke of marketing. What honestly frightens him is a dichotomy he can neither avoid nor digest.
"These people buying these (punk) records are the same people who voted for George Bush – how cool is that? It can't be cool, it's a drag. We obviously have nothing in common. Or you look at it like, well, 20 years later, mainstream has accepted punk rock, and that means society has opened its mind a little, and more people will hear what we have to say. So it's a double-edged sword....
"I can't relate to people who wait until something is safe to do it – I have no concept of that. Maybe the masses have accepted it because they were told it was cool on radio and TV, and maybe they realize they were assholes for throwing apples at us in high school. Maybe they've opened their minds a little." |
