BROWN: Festivals good to Offspring

By Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Olivier Laban-Mattei / Afp/Getty Images

The Offspring's lead guitarist and singer Dexter Holland, left, and guitarist Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman perform in June at the Trabendo private club in Paris.

Despite the angst-ridden songs, life is good for songwriter Dexter Holland and his band The Offspring. More than a decade after blasting out of the Orange County punk scene with hits like Come Out and Play and The Kids Aren't Alright, they're already on the second radio single from their eighth studio album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace.

"It's great to still be in a band, to be inspired to make the best music we can and people are still interested. My job doesn't suck, you know?" Holland said.

He talked while sitting in a Los Angeles rehearsal studio, gearing up for Saturday's Big Gig at Fiddler's Green, while guitarist Kevin "Noodles" Wasserman ran around with an undersea spear gun left over from a photo shoot.

Radio-sponsored festivals like the Big Gig helped your career early on. What do they do for you now?

We've been fortunate. Radio's been very good to us. A lot of times if they're not your hard-core fans they may know a song on the radio. They don't put it together till they see you. That's a comment we get a lot. We'll play a show and they'll say, 'Gee, we didn't know you had so many songs. I knew every song you played.' It kinda gives people a chance to reacquaint themselves with the band. It's fun for us because people know all the songs.

Why did you want to record with Metallica producer Bob Rock? Was it watching the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster?

I didn't watch the movie until after I started working with him . . . so I had a little different perspective. Working with Bob was great. He was not the person I initially thought of just because his pedigree is something I'm not familiar with. I didn't realize till later he was in the Payolas and was part of the old Vancouver punk scene. Once we actually sat down and talked about music and playing songs it worked out great. A really great producer to work with.

What did he bring to the mix?

The most important thing is he really wanted to get involved in the songwriting more thoroughly than before. I usually like to go off myself and get the songs in a demo form and come back and we start to record. With him it's like, 'Let's sit down, just you and me and an acoustic guitar, see if the song's working.' It made the songs step up a notch.

Why the long delay?

You get off tour, spend six months writing a record, six months recording it, then you tour for a year. It's this two-year cycle that goes by before you know it. It's hard to do anything much quicker. We did do the greatest hits in between, recorded a few songs for that, did a little touring, and all of a sudden a year and a half had passed. This was our eighth album and you have to make sure it's special and unique. Sometimes you have to dig around a little bit more to get to that point. It's natural in a band to go back to the same thing you did before.

The same day the new album came out you reissued Ignition and Smash, your first two indie albums. Why?

It started with Epitaph (Records) noticing that a lot of their older records just don't sound as good because the technology for mastering has improved so much. They suggested it on our two albums. I didn't really get around to mastering it and approving it till this record came out . . . My concern with that was to still have the essence the originals had . . . Sometimes when people remaster stuff it's 'Listen to the bass! It's so heavy now!' That wouldn't have been right for us. It needed to sound like it did.

Songs like Hammerhead and Half-Truism hint at school violence, which is still a raw nerve around here. The song characters have violent thoughts. What was the writing process?

I wouldn't want to point out one particular incident, although Columbine might be the one that sticks in most people's minds. It's definitely more widespread than that . . . rather than focus on a specific incident, look at the symptoms of the ills of society. Is he a soldier maybe in Iraq? Is he a good guy trying to help? Is he a bad guy? Is he being told what to do by the powers-that-be or by the voices in his head? How different are these people? They're both committing violence they maybe shouldn't be doing. That's where that song was coming from rather than really make a commentary on a particular school shooting. . . . It's a terrible thing and it keeps on happening. I don't have an answer for it, but maybe that shouldn't stop you from writing about it.

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

Channel 93.3's Big Gig

* Who: The Offspring, the Flobots, Paramore, Dropkick Murphys and more

* When and where: 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Fiddler's Green

* Cost: $15 to $35

* Information: 303-830-8497 or www.ticketmaster.com

Off and running

What's the big deal about the Offspring's five-year break between new material? Look at how prolific the band once was:

* Greatest Hits (2005)

* Splinter (2003)

* Conspiracy of One (2001)

* Americana (1998)

* Ixnay On The Hombre (1997)

* Smash (1994)

* Ignition (1992)

* Offspring (1989)