NOFX’s final act of punk-rock rebellion: Download Central by Sanjoy Narayan (2024)

BySanjoy Narayan

The American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, 95, best known for his ground-breaking work in linguistics and his influential critiques of US foreign policy and media, is not someone whose name one would expect to find in the lyrics of a punk rock band.

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NOFX are a punk band that even hardcore punk rockers may have missed. Yet their career has lasted more than 40 years, and their influence has been widespread.

When the band recently announced that they were breaking up for good, the news made headlines. The New York Times called them “the Grateful Dead of punk rock”. Since the 1980s, they have played more than 3,000 shows and sold millions of largely self-released albums, without ever making it really big in the mainstream.

The comparison with the Dead is a bit specious. We’ll soon see why.

NOFX was formed in Los Angeles in 1983, with Fat Mike (birth name Michael Burkett) on bass and vocals; Eric Melvin on rhythm guitar; Erik Sandin on drums; and El Hefe (birth name Aaron Abeyta) on guitar, trumpet and trombone. Wind instruments are uncommon in punk bands, but besides the trumpet and trombone, bassoons, accordions and saxophones appear frequently in this group’s songs.

Their roots in Southern California lend an inflection to Fat Mike’s singing. Unlike many hardcore punk vocalists, he is more melodic, with the influence of ska (the Jamaican precursor to reggae) clearly discernible.

What really sets NOFX apart is their steadfast adherence to punk’s ideology. This genre, in its early days, was rooted in a do-it-yourself ethos and an outright rejection of convention. That was the very thing about early punk rock. Bands did everything themselves and didn’t bow to controls by the music industry. They eschewed overwrought instrumentation and conventional norms about what could or couldn’t be done with their music.

Over time, punk went mainstream and many of NOFX’s peers caved on these fronts, including Green Day, Blink-182 and Bad Religion. NOFX held their ground. They rejected deals from major label, releasing their music through Fat Mike’s independent banner, Fat Wreck Chords, instead. This approach let them continue to operate on their own terms.

In their politics, they leaned heavily left. They are known for their criticism of organised religion, of conservative policies in the US, and of the influence of large corporations on politics. Their music reflects this. Songs such as The Idiots Are Taking Over (2003), Murder the Government (1997), and The Separation of Church and Skate (2003) directly address political and social issues. Their 2003 album The War on Errorism, released during the George W Bush administration, was particularly political. Franco Un-American, The Idiots… and Separation… are from this album.

It is in this respect that NOFX are a world apart from the Grateful Dead, a band that is adored by millions of fanatic followers but one that has assiduously avoided joining issue with politics and has remained, instead, a flower child stuck in the time warp of the 1960s.

The 2022 NOFX song Punk Rock Cliche, in fact, sardonically pokes fun at the caricature the genre has become; and they don’t even spare themselves in it.

Despite all the messaging, their use of language is poetic and witty. In Don’t Call Me White from the 1994 album Punk in Drublic, a line goes: “The connotation’s wearing my nerves thin / Could it be semantics generating the mess we’re in?”

Now, as a farewell, NOFX is on a tour called 40 Years, 40 Cities, 40 Songs Per Night. It concludes in Los Angeles in October.

Those of us who have followed their journey will miss the concerts in particular: Fat Mike’s banter his bandmates; his eclectic cross-dressing; his openness about his interest in BDSM, and his view of openness as a fundamental element of the punk ethos of challenging norms and being true to oneself.

They will be remembered as the band that steadfastly gave NOFX.

(To write in with feedback, email sanjoy.narayan@gmail.com)

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