Finding a band like No Age is like discovering a lost pygmy tribe living in a strip mall. The LA duo’s brand of snotty, lo-fi punk rock is just the tip of an iceberg shaped like the ’90s: they’re into all-ages shows in unconventional places like their spiritual home The Smell, an LA venue whose name sounds like a pretty good indication of its charms; they evangelize about veganism and endorse Noam Chomsky; at one point in our interview, guitarist Randy Randall (one half of the band with drummer/singer Dean Spunt) describes The Smell saying “you don’t see too many poseurs.” Hands up if you’ve even heard the word “poseur” in the last 10 years. What time capsule did these guys emerge from? Would you believe it was the “pre X-Games” skater subculture?
“In the early ’90s, us growing up skateboarding, we watched so many videos and pored over them for hours and hours,” Randall explains from his home in Los Angeles. “And there was many a time I’d go to the record store and I was like, ‘Oh, there was this one song that Ed Templeton used on his Toy Machine video and I’d wait till the end and it’s like, oh, it’s Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.’
“The kind of creativity that came out of skateboarding,” he says almost wistfully, “there were no rules. You find an abandoned swimming pool or ditch or something and everyone else says it’s trash; to a young skateboarder’s mind, it’s a whole playground.”
Randall’s timing was impeccable. Just as skating started to turn commercial, he turned to music, on account of a few not-so-minor injuries. “You can only have so many casts before you start going, hmm, this guitar over there, maybe that doesn’t look so bad.”
After gaining notoriety as two thirds of Wives, the pair struck out on their own as No Age not long before putting out five vinyl-only EPs of new material on different labels. “We were hoping to make these underground, grassroots kind of records that people would find 10 years from now,” Randall explains. “And then maybe at that point we might put them on a retrospective or something.”
Instead, Fat Cat approached them shortly after the releases about compiling them on CD, which became last year’s Weirdo Rippers. The band are finishing the art for their Sub Pop debut, which they recorded at three studios (including the UK studio where the Jesus and Mary Chain made Psychocandy).
There’s something about No Age that makes you wonder exactly how indie moved out of the basement into iPod commercials, even though you already know the answer if you’ve been paying attention to the culture over the last 15, or even five, years. Still, as misguided and self-righteous as that line of thinking can be, after hearing Randall talk about the openness of the scene around The Smell, you can’t help but root for it.
“Too much attention can put a burden on a place, but The Smell is a welcoming community. Really it’s like, ‘Here, this is what we do.’ There’s no place to park, the sound isn’t always that great, it’s kinda cold or it’s kinda hot, and if you’re into it, if the music still interests you outside of all of these environmental factors, then you’re more than welcome to be involved.
“But what will happen is, people who are really just curious come down and want to see what all the vibe is about. And they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of scary, there’s homeless people asking me for change, and the food’s all vegan and the bathroom stinks and there’s all this graffiti.’ It’s like, hmm…. maybe you’d better go to the posh-y bar in Hollywood. It sort of has its own weeding-out factor. I think there’s an inherent filter process, which isn’t a bad thing.”