Forming in Texas in 1980, hardcore punk giants MDC have been a mainstay in the scene for quite some time now, putting out highly political-charged records that are not for the faint-hearted. In fact, it's safe to say these guys are THE most visceral, outspoken band EVER. MDC have released material under a slew of names including Millions of Damn Christians and Multi-Death Corporation, but are most well known as Millions of Dead Cops. Yeah, they're not afraid to question the status quo or provoke anyone in any way they can.

And I was lucky enough to speak with vocalist and only member who's been with the band since the beginning, Dave Dictor, a fellow Long Islander and just one of the nicest guys you could meet, in an impromptu interview the second night of the great Viva Le Punk three-day festival at CBGBs in NYC. So, if you're interested in hearing about Dave's sordid past, the "ugly underbelly" of Texas, run-ins with skinheads and Nazis, the origins of some of MDC's greatest songs like "John Wayne Was a Nazi" - the phrase that started it all - and "Chicken Squawk", one of the first vegetarian-oriented punk songs, and his…teaching job?! - then by all means, read on.

Dave: Hello!
Janelle: Hey!
Dave: Hi.
Janelle: So, you played last night…
Dave: We did play last night [October 3]. We played CBGBs at Punknite and I'm not quite, you know, Adi [NY Rel-X bassist, Viva Le Punk organizer] was an old friend, but we also saw Adi at the Holidays In The Sun in June at Morecambe, which is in northern England, which was really great - Holidays In The Sun - there must have been eight or nine thousand people there. Uh, the guy from The Pogues, uh Shane MacGowan was there and we played with The Angry Samoans, Leftover Crack. We were there the last day of the festival so I missed a lot of the bands that played, but it was a really fun time; it's empowering to hang out with eight thousand punks all at once. It was really cool.
Janelle: Are you playing again next year at Wasted [HITS new moniker]?
Dave: I'm playing again. I'm playing Wasted there, it's in July, I think it's the second weekend in July. We're booked on it and I'm happy for that. Some people say, you know, it's such a commercial venue, a commercial thing to do, but personally I really enjoy going and catching a lot of energy and a lot of things at once. I'm glad not all punk shows are like that. I still like playing small shows. And in Long Island we have uh, in Long Island, we played that bar in Port Jefferson Pub. We once played the Port Jefferson Pub [Village Pub] and we played Deer Park - that warehouse way back when, and we played the King's Club - do you know where the King's Club is in [strange accent] Happauge?
Janelle: No…
Dave: Uh, we played there with The Vibrators. We played there a couple of other times, uh Center, Center…
Janelle: Centereach.
Dave: Happauge area. And so it's fun to play those shows, but it's fun to play big shows. Last night was a fun, good, big show at CBGBs.

Janelle: And then Morecambe, how'd you get to play that one?
Dave: Well, we played the year before, so, but there's this guy that books England and he books D.O.A. and he books Leftover Crack and he books a lot of bands. His name's Ian Armstrong, and he actually wrote me an e-mail and said, "Hey, would you like to play this and I could book you in Europe, and I think we could do really good." And I worked with him two years in a row. And he kind of introduced me to the Holidays In The Sun folks. I was kind of out of it with MDC for about four or five years. I ended my drug addiction and just kind of chilled out, was raising my son as a single parent, and basically kind of out of it. We were playing locally and Long Island and every now and then we would play ABC No Rio - playing like maybe three times a month practicing and doing one gig every other month. We did that for like a year, and then we toured Brazil and then we built up to it. We toured Europe again two years in a row, so we plan to go over for a third year and do a US tour this year in the spring, as well as go back to Brazil, which is a fabulous place to go. Everyone has got to go to the Southern Hemisphere. Why? Because it's so lush - you fly over the place and it's got the shades of green like you've never seen. It's not like this evergreen green, it's kind of like dinosaur "land before time". And you're driving around and there's fruit on the trees and papayas and plantains. [Reacting to my pointing outside to the lovely concrete jungle that is NYC] And yes, they put a lot of cement around here. But not everything's so beautiful, but it's exotic and it's cool. And I was saying before to you it's a punk rock kind of place. Ratos de Porao are our friends down there and they're kind of a well-known group, and they're treated…you know, punk rock is so central in the culture - major culture magazines talk about punk rock and what's going on and major models have you know punk rock hairdos. It's not so…and I understand it 'cause it's a poor country and it relates to punk rock a lot more than the United States, which is in my opinion very elitist and staid and boring. And even the people who aren't elitist, they're volunteer firemen and living a dream out of the '40s or '50s, which is like my hometown where I grew up Glen Cove, which is a really end of the road kind of place. The same librarian - my son got in trouble in Glen Cove High School and I had to go to see the dean of women, I went to the secretary of the school, I go, "Gosh, you look so much like the secretary of the school when I came here." And she goes, "Well, that's because I'm her daughter." And that says it all about Glen Cove. The policemen are the children of the policemen. The secretaries at the library are the daughters of the secretaries at the library. And anyway, so I came back to Glen Cove and discovered just how small a place, [Laughter] what a hometown kind of place it is. And I always knew that and that's why I left at 17, 18.
Janelle: And then when did you come back?
Dave: I came back four years ago when I got out of trouble and ended my drug addiction. My parents asked me if I wanted to live with them, and they're in their late 70s, my dad's actually 82, and just hang out with them 'cause I kind of split early and got on the punk rock wagon 23 years ago and just been touring and doing all this different stuff mostly on the West Coast. And they said, "Why don't you come live with us and let's get to know each other." And I did, and it was actually a rewarding experience. I love my momma!

Janelle: Ok, so how'd you get into teaching?
Dave: I got into teaching because…well, I actually graduated the University of Texas when punk rock was starting. I graduated in 1979 and that's the punk rock scene I grew up around. When I finished Glen Cove High School, it was 1973. There wasn't any punk rock. I did go to Watkins Glen to see The Grateful Dead, The Band, and The Allman Brothers and then I got into this Willie Nelson-groove thing and I was gonna go to Texas and just, uh, make bluegrass and folk-rock music and that kind of stuff. And I kind of got bored with that a little bit, and as I got down there, you know the '77, '78 explosion of Devo, Patti Smith, Ramones, Runaways, many, many others, Blondie, uh B-52s came through. Talking Heads, Lou Reed, and I was like, "Wow, this stuff is great." And then there was this little punk rock place called Rauls and it was the cool place and The Dicks and The Big Boys and us and a bunch of other bands kind of got their start there. It was a Chicano bar that used to have Monday free, you know free mic nights and all the punk bands would come there with their funny hair cuts and sing "Wild Thing" really sloppy and awful. But it was just great. Everyone could get up and hold the microphone and everyone could shout whatever they wanted, and I shouted "John Wayne was a Nazi" when he died and the next thing you know, I'm building a band around it and people liked it and I was very lucky. I sent a record to Jello Biafra and Tim Yohannon of MaximumRocknRoll, and Biafra invited us out to go play with the Dead Kennedys and we played with Flipper and that was back in '81. 1981, the way back machine 22 years ago. And Black Flag and many other bands - D.O.A. and the Subhumans from Canada came here, drove through. 'Cause the whole idea of making music back in those days was you live in your hometown, you play the bar once every two months and you work on a demo and you pray that a record company is gonna select you to be the next big thing and we saw these bands doing it, not waiting around but being proactive, you know promoting themselves and saying, "If we're gonna sit in our hometown waiting for Arista or whoever to decide - Warner Bros. - that we are good enough to be put out, we'll never get put out."
Janelle: With your lyrical content, you would NOT!
Dave: Yeah, but even the music they would not. They didn't accept a lot of punk rock for a long time, and there were a few bands that did get accepted, but mostly British. You know finally The Ramones got a little accepted, but very few Americans in 1980, '81, '82 had any kind of major label support. Maybe The Ramones, maybe The Dead Boys, maybe you can count 'em on one hand, and then there was always people kind of looked a little punk, but it was not very punk like New Wave was going over but it was more Wendy O. Williams, you know shock punk, which was more - not to put her down - but it was more like uh glam punk that wasn't really about kids in the streets and 200 kids in every little club through hundreds of cities in America putting on their own shows, hanging out with funny haircuts, and realizing we didn't want to fit into a culture that robs you of your individuality and uh, you know values money and status. And we just wanted to make music and have fun together.

Janelle: I mean you are very outspoken like on all subjects…
Dave: I'll give you my opinion on everything.
Janelle: So, was there anything ever - I doubt it, but - that you were afraid of commenting on, singing about?
Dave: No. [Laughter] Uh, I, really no. On Dead Cops I sang, "No war no KKK no fascist USA" [in "Born to Die"]. We got in a rock fight with the Klan, we got in fistfights with Nazis, we talked the talk, and we walked it. Uh, you know, the most humbling thing was my grandmother was a devout Catholic…
Janelle: Millions of Damn Christians, she loved that!
Dave: Right. I did Millions of Dead Cops and she's like, "Dave, be careful," and then we did Multi-Death Corporation and she said, "Oh, I like the drawing." Then we did Millions of Damn Christians and she goes, "Dave, I'm gonna pray for your soul." [Laughter]
Janelle: Oh, no!
Dave: That was more on a personal level to like relatives in my own family, who, I love them, I just didn't want them to think I was going down the toilet. But I said, "Grandma, you know," and she looked at the picture, it's us you know, it was done at the San Francisco Wax Museum, and we're - it's the Last Supper shot. The album is on the cover and I'll show you a picture of it. We all assume one of the apostles and the guitar player is Jesus and we're all - and I'm actually James The Great and the drummer is Doubting Thomas, and my grandmother looked at it and she goes, "This is blasphemy! You're my grandson!" That was more along the lines of me being, "Oh, how am I gonna show this to Grandma?" and hiding this from relatives. But as far as being onstage you know, actually I like challenges. I was talking to you about playing the Port Jefferson Pub. We played Drewsapalooza, which is a really charismatic guy out on Long Island named Drew and he puts on a cancer benefit; his mom had cancer, and he just does this cancer benefit once a year and he asked us to do it, and it really was that volunteer firemen. Most of the people there were like at a Pat Benatar concert from the early '80s - just, you know all kinds of…and they're all dolled up trying to look all rock 'n' roll. And there were about 20 or 30 punks and there was like about 150 of these people. It looked like right out of suburban life - 35- to 50-years old and I get up there, and someone goes, "Here they are, they're Millions of Dead Cops." And like the whole place is violent and there's like the few kids into punk going, "Yeah, 'Dead Cops' 'Dead Cops'!" And all these people are just sitting at their tables, and I go, "Hey I'm Dave and I grew up in Glen Cove." You know relating to 'em personally as a local, one of your home-born here, and I go, "Has anybody ever called 911, you know raise your hand." And nobody raised their hand. See nobody calls 911. Look at these lazy-ass cops. I go, "You know I got here today, there were cops hiding around the corner. Be careful going home tonight because these cops got nothing better to do. Instead of breaking up the mafia poker games and doing anything productive, they're here just trying to snag us on a DWI. They're worthless." And then I go on to say, "Did you hear about those two New York City cops busted out at the road stop on exit 51?" You know that road stop out on the Long Island Expressway? There's a road stop there, it's a big thing and…
Janelle: By Commack?
Dave: …The movie Long Island Expressway. Do you know the movie Long Island Expressway? Yes, yes, it's right by Commack.
Janelle: Ok, then I know it.
Dave: Uh, the young boy turns tricks there.
Janelle: Right, right, right.
Dave: That truck stop! These NYC cops went there to sell stolen cocaine that they had stolen off people and they got busted. I said, "Those cops ought to start a group. We could go on tour together. We'll be Millions of Dead Cops and they'll be Bunch of Fucking Stupid Cops.
Janelle: Definitely.
Dave: And the crowd just went, "Whooooaaaa!" and the next thing you know, I got all these 50-year-old volunteer firemen with potbellies you know waving their longnecks in front of me going, "Yay!" and cheering us on.
Janelle: Really? Wow.
Dave: And that's powerful when you can turn people who aren't normally your crowd into relating to you instead of being snotty and saying, "You people are losers and I could have been a jerk like you, and hey, I'm cool." Instead of looking at life narrowly, I can picture it. I got brothers who look just like those people in Port Jefferson. I got a brother who lives in Hicksville, I got a brother who lives in Floral Park, I got a brother who lives in the Hamptons. And they all, you know, are Long Island people in their late-30s and early-40s and late-40s, so I can relate to the fact that some people just went into the straight world and bought little houses and are paying off mortgages and trying to keep their little families together and you know, they party once a month and you know, it seems a little retarded to us, [laughter] 'cause we see them celebrating Pat Benatar and their tight pants and you know, just looking way dated. But that's who they are and you can't think you're too cool for who you are 'cause as fabulous as I sometimes think I am, I know I'm just a human being. I'm capable of all sorts of mistakes. And I've always liked to think that MDC was never trying to be too cool, just outspoken and a very inclusive type of band, not trying to be fashionable or you know punk rock cool, but just nice people.

Janelle: Right. Ok, you mentioned "John Wayne Was a Nazi", how'd you come up with that?
Dave: Well, way back in the way machine, if you grew up in like the '60s, you know, there was only three or four TV stations and they used to play John Wayne movies all the time. There was no cable; you couldn't just click it off and turn on "Mr. Ed" or MTV or you know or "Law And Order" on 14 channels 24-hours a day. You were stuck if you wanted to watch TV, to watch John Wayne so he was a big figment of my growing up. He was this strong guy, he was beating down Mexicans at the Alamo, he's charging up all these pork chop hills for the boys behind him. You know I was brought up, I wasn't radical at 7, 10, 12, you know I thought, "Yeah, he's a hero, he's a hero!" And then the Vietnam War came around and I started realizing everything this country does isn't great. Sometimes we get involved in wars based on greed and based on idiocies of trying to control people from far away - kind of like the Iraq war, right? But anyway…[Laughter] uh Vietnam was really a case of that and I was 13, 14 and really starting to understand that the war in Vietnam was this evil thing. It was 1968, '69, and John Wayne drove around in a tank and was very famous in those days and he was quoted as saying, "We ought to turn these tanks on the protesters protesting the Vietnam War," and I knew right then and there all this knocking Mexicans off the Alamo wall kind of like lost it for me. And then as things went on I learned more about him. He was a John Birch-er, very conservative, kind of like felt black people were the white man's burden - of course they weren't equal, of course the South should be segregated. A lot of those type things - Indians were not equal to white people and they should be put in Reservations and we should teach them our ways, and when they're ready, then they can join our society. And he would say these kinds of things and belong to groups that said these kinds of things, so when he died in 1979, I was going to the University of Texas and I was living in Texas in that Austin cool scene coming about, and he died. And I'm walking around on campus that day, people were crying, "Boo hoo hoo, boo hoo hoo, boo hoo hoo." You write that "BOO - HOO - HOO".
Janelle: [Laughter] I got that.
Dave: Anyway, uh, and I'm going, "What are you crying for John Wayne for?" [Sobbing sounds] "He was the greatest Texan there ever was." First of all, he wasn't a Texan, he was a Californian, and second of all, I think he was a Nazi. People go, "How could you say that?" I go, "He was a Nazi! John Wayne was a Nazi." And just watching these plastic fraternity and sorority people in Texas you know just crying and getting in arguments with me, I just thought, nah, this is pissing them off. If just saying that can piss them off, then I want to piss off the whole country and the whole universe eventually. And I want people to wake up and think about who they're celebrating as their heroes 'cause if they look good on film, it doesn't mean that it's true blue and that goes for many people celebrating out there, you know celebrating war, celebrating things blowing up, celebrating a materialistic society that is really based on greed. And if you think about it, in my opinion September 11th two years ago, you know, "Oh why us?" This country consumes so much energy, so much food, so much everything. We should be educating people. We should be doing stuff with our resources. We shouldn't be making it possible for you to have these big humvees and these big stupid vehicles, and people are so wasteful. And then CEOs making hundreds of millions of dollars a year, it's gross. Why do people need hundreds of millions of dollars? You could feed half of India with the salaries of the top ten CEOs. You know and why do we need people starving in Pakistan? They're obviously - radical Islam is coming from because people are hungry, because they have no direction. The only people directing them are the people in Saudi Arabia who have all these radical Islamics infuriating the people against us, and I understand. There's a reason why [they're] infuriated with us. It's not because Britney Spears is showing her belly button, it's because we have a very privileged lifestyle and we're not looking and caring about how the other 5 and 3/4 billion people are living on the planet. We are just some people on a whole big planet. I've spoken to so many people in life who have never even been out of the country. I just heard a statistic - half of the Congressmen, over 240 Congressmen have never left the United States of America. How can you represent the country when you've never been anywhere else? People need perspective, they need growth, they need to keep their minds open to change and not be so narrow in my humble opinion, [smiling] and I am an outspoken person.
Janelle: And how can they make so much money - the Congressmen? 'Cause they'd never vote to…
Dave: Well they have lobbyists who support them and they go in and out, and they get big funding and then they get big junkets. And Dick Cheney is in government then he gets hired for Haliburton and he becomes, he has 20 million in the bank. And so it's a big schmooze ride. And really having all these people who are in government who are going in and out of private industry with all that access and all these - can I say motherfuckers? - motherfuckers, motherfuckers you know, getting filthy rich from their position in politics and that's the name of the game and elections are bought and lost and obviously the Republicans have twice as much money as the Democrats. You know, George Bush having 200 million dollars in his war chest is, as unpopular as he is right now, I really still feel like he can buy an election. He can create the news. He can create some disaster. He can whatever, and it's a very scary position that we're in.
Janelle: It really is.
Dave: And we need to speak our minds and it's important for us to be individuals. And that's why I'm happy for us that we're not goose-stepping with all the other people who just wanna look good in fashions and wanna go smile at themselves in new clothes at The Gap and live these, you know, in my opinion, empty kind of lives.
Janelle: I totally understand what you're saying. I mean my parents are all patriotic and everything, and it's like do you know what you're supporting?
Dave: Yeah, my parents are too.
Janelle: And they're all ashamed of me, you know what I mean?
Dave: Yeah, I do know what you mean. I try to communicate with them, with my parents, as carefully as I can. They know where I'm coming from, they know I sing "Millions of Dead Cops", they know I'm a pretty radical person, but I just try to point little things out to them that when I think things are wrong, things about money. I mean right now. This whole George Bush's White House exposing that CIA agent, not only are they corrupt, but they're evil. And it's just this whole idea that war is gonna bring peace, is just a bad, bad, bad thing, and I don't know what we can do to be positive - change a lot of people's heads, but I think just communication as best you can. It is hard when there are a lot of people pressuring you not to have your beliefs, but good for you, good for all of us…
Janelle: No, but…
Dave: …not afraid to not go along with the crowd that wants to wave the flags and when 9/11 happened, everyone wonders, "Why us?" And they were introspective for about three hours, then it became "We're gonna bomb those bastards to hell!" And I remember I left my school at lunch to watch the news report when it happened that morning. I went to lunch and was watching it on TV and I'm sitting there with all these guys, all these people and they're just like, "We're gonna bomb these guys to hell, we're gonna bomb these guys to hell," and like it was just very infuriating, very sad to see no one being introspective, like why could this be happening, not why Japan was created and Germany was created by you know the poverty of the Depression and what was going on. Less so with Japan, but Germany was certainly created by the dire conditions that the Allies left them in WWI, so everything has a reason. These Islamic fundamentalists didn't come out of a bottle, they've been there, but the fact they've gotten so powerful is because the Western world has neglected large parts of the world and let these people be hungry and starved, and out of the loop on the globalization and the first world freedoms and first world privileges, so they don't care about us and they're ready to bomb us, fly planes into us. We have to reverse that trend and I don't think sending Americans to go die in Iraq and these other places is really gonna bring peace on earth.
Janelle: Yeah, it just fuels the fire.
Dave: Yeah really. You know an eye for an eye means a lot of blind people as they say. And that brought me to, yes, I taught in Syosset. You asked me about that before, and I worked in a school for retarded children for three years and autistic children - developmentally disabled is the correct term. And it's a school in Syosset. I took a leave of absence this year because I've got a love life and I stayed with a woman in Vienna who I really, really, really care about and I'm starting a relationship and she said, "Stay here and let me take care of you." And I'm spending some time. She's going to a healing school and she'll get out in June, so I'm spending at least until January there, and then I'll come back and tour Brazil and work on our new album. And then hopefully she'll come for a month and visit me and then catch up with me when she finishes school in June, and we'll figure out where we'll live from there.

Janelle: How did you teach, do you have a degree?
Dave: I have a Master's Degree. I got it at C.W. Post when I got out here I went to school. I got a college degree when I finished University of Texas in American studies and then I took Post and I went a year-and-a-half, I took a summer thing, went on the fast track and got my teacher's degree. And though I've had trouble with the law, I appealed to the state and showed to them I was a person of good moral character, which I had to do and they gave me my teaching license, so I'm a certified teacher with a Master's Degree in special education in the state of New York.

Janelle: So when you wrote "Deep in the Heart of Texas", you were living down there?
Dave: Yes. Actually the song is an old, old song from the '40s - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys originally did it. [Laughter] We bastardized the lyrics.
Janelle: Right, right.
Dave: "The policeman is in the Ku Klux Klan…"
Janelle and Dave: "Deep in the heart of Texas."
Dave: "So be careful if your name is Schwartz or Chan, deep in the heart of Texas." It's on the Metal Devil Cokes album that's back at the table. And yes, that's part of living in Texas, and uh, Texas has its own redneck-ism. Long Island has a redneck-ism and narrowness, and Texas has a very redneck-ism. I was involved with doing support when I was in college for farm workers and they were making 35 cents an hour and they were trying to get unionized and make $1.25 an hour, you know, and they were literally getting shot by the Klan. And 1979, three Mexican farm labor organizers were killed, and there were charges that the people who killed them were affiliated with police in Texas. And I was part of the Millions of Dead Cops, and cops will kill you if you disagree with them and the power's concentrated enough. Texas is a weird spot, there's counties called King County. Kings County's almost totally owned by the family that owns Purina Dog Chow and it's a county that's like 50 miles by 50 miles a square block, it's west of Houston but kind of near Houston and south, and the judges, the police, everyone's in the same family. It's like one of these kind of just right out of a Leadbelly song "Midnight Special": "When you're walking in Houston, you better walk right, you better not squabble, you better not fight 'cause the policeman will bust you and take you down and the next thing you know, judge'll be sending you prison-bound." Uh, there's a lot of that there. People snatched on the street, thrown in prison, people lynched, the unglamorous, unfabulous history of Texas. Uh, there is one. You know, there's also a freedom spirit in Texas. I loved Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and The Outlaws, and there is kind of something nice to all that space, but there is an ugly underbelly as there usually is to a lot of places - killing the Indians and stealing their land, slavery, and abusing Mexicans and that was part of Texas' legacy.

Janelle: Were you ever ostracized because of your outspoken ideas?
Dave: In high school I had a big mouth and I tell the story where I wrote the song "My Family Is a Little Weird" when I was 16 years-old and I was going to Glen Cove High School. And they had this thing called the Juniors/Seniors Girls Basketball Game and that's when the juniors and seniors play each other and the boys are supposed to dress like cheerleaders and come to school and cheer them on, and this was when I was 16 years-old 1972, so I dressed up like a cheerleader and came to the festival. My friend's sister helped dress me up, and maybe I liked it too much or whatever, but nobody else showed up as cheerleader; I was the only one. The jocks hassled me and I almost got beat up, later on I got punched, blah blah blah. I wrote the song "My Family Is a Little Weird": "Daddy wears a dress, mommy grows a beard / All my neighbors they complain all the time" and that's on MDC's first album, and that was being outspoken. It wasn't in the case of MDC, but I once got jumped by skinheads and got kicked pretty hard. They actually didn't know who I was, I was just trying to help someone in a fight in California, and I've been socked a few times. Mostly in that skinhead thing, but I've been very fortunate where really through the years for as much outspokenness very, very blessed that the people who love MDC are very protective of me. And so when I get surrounded by those six skinheads in Portland that were gonna threaten to kick my ass 'cause I'm a queer commie, all the sudden there's 30 punks with baseball bats standing behind them going, "You touch Dave, we'll kill you." I'm very lucky, right down to Harley once stuck up for me - Harley and John from The Cro-mags - some Jersey skins were gonna beat me up in front of CBGBs and they got in the middle of it and said, "Man you touch Dave, and we'll fucking fuck you up, you know, it's only me, Dave, and John John, but we'll fuck you up here." [Pausing while tape is being turned over] Like I was saying, White Aryan Resistance and all these skinheads, and they were doing vicious things, but they were always protective of me. And I've had skinheads come up to me and holy shit, what's gonna happen, and say, [scary voice] "I just wanna say I disagree with you about everything but you're old school and you're cool by me." And I'm like oh man. And then there's the time where I'm watching the news with a bunch of friends and there's this skinhead in Northern California talking about [how] he's gonna fuck up the Vietnamese fishermen - he didn't say fuck up, but - because they're stealing fish from American fisherman, blah blah blah. And then they pan away and he's wearing a Millions of Dead Cops shirt. [Laughter] And he's just like a blithering idiot. The dude's spouting on hatred about Vietnamese fishermen stealing fisherman jobs from American fishermen, and then he's wearing my shirt. So, but even as much as I hate Nazis and everything else, I try to personalize everything 'cause everyone's got a history and a story, and I really wanna hold out belief that people will stop being Nazis, so you know, I'm not like [return of scary voice] "Look there's a Nazi I'm gonna go with a baseball bat and kill him." I just try to communicate and be real and honest, and there's some people that will never change, but I'm happy to say people I know who are bad politically misplaced feelings, grew up and changed. And I like to feel like them getting to know me and the politics of the band and me even personally, kind of got them out of that hatred mode of "I'm gonna kick ass" and all that. And you know, I'm not saying just me, but I'm glad some part of life turned them around. And if I had anything to do with it than I'm happy for that. But my temperament's not to try to engage everyone in a fistfight or to be hostile towards people whatever their beliefs are.

Janelle: Can you talk about "Chicken Squawk"?
Dave: "Chicken Squawk" ok. Well, I actually wrote the song "Chicken Squawk" I had a band before MDC and before The Stains. We were called The Solar Pigs. It was that kind of the guys I was playing with country/bluegrass music. These guys all grew up on Long Island with me. They had a band called Stack of Bones. One of them was named Joe Zito (sp?), one was named Jim Brighton (sp?) and I wrote this song together. This was '77, '78. I was just becoming a vegetarian and they were too, Jim was just becoming a vegetarian too. And it was very simple, kind of hokey, kind of [singing] "bawk bawk bawk" with banjoes and guitars and mandolins and kind of pre-punk. And so it was there, and then I did the first MDC album and I showed it to everyone in the band and everyone was like "Eh, you know, uh." It didn't quite fit, but maybe later. And then we were in Canada once and someone, we were out of songs, and we were in Winnipeg and they said, "Play a song, play a song," and I was there and I forget exactly how it happened, but I started playing guitar and I started just playing "Chicken Squawk". And the next thing you know, the whole room is just "Bawk bawk bawk" you know, and then everyone in the band just goes, "Let's do it. Let's go home and record it and put it out on an EP or something right away," and we did. And I wrote up a whole thing about it, about the economics of meat, about how much feeding meat drains what could be a lot of food for a lot of people if people converted. Reading books like Small Is Beautiful and reading different ideas about it. To raise a cow, you gotta stuff that cow with, the amount of food you have to stuff a cow, is 20 times the amount that the cow will actually produce, so there would be enough soy to feed everyone on the planet twice over if we didn't feed our cows soy. And the whole thing came - chickens - five billion chickens in America a year are kept in little cages have their beaks chopped off. It's a gross thing and I didn't want to be part of it, and I wanted to share my view. And early on, it was one of the earlier vegetarian punk-related things, and I was happy to have that come out and be part of us, and in the booklet it talks about why I'm a vegetarian and the economics of meat and what it does to the planet on all kinds of pollution, on using the water to grow all these crops and how it can be better used. I felt it was something that needed to be shared, so I reworked the words up more and "Swing it to the east, swing it to the west / Swing it with the chicken that you love best / Come on down and do the chicken squawk with me." It's a favorite song; I do it at many of our shows.

Janelle: [The story behind] "Nazis Shouldn't Drive".
Dave: Well we were in England touring and Ian Stuart of Skrewdriver, you know, big fascist band, big famous for Paki bashing and the whole thing, lot of hatred in their energy - died in a car accident. We were on tour and it's not really funny that anyone should die on tour, it's always sad, but it was kind of a snide poke at him. I said, "Well, Nazis shouldn't drive their cars," and we're fooling around with it and Chris Wilder the guitar player wrote the tune up and we put it together. It just talked about - you know fooling around - saying, "Nazis should meditate, they should ride bicycles, they should get jogging shoes, they should do anything but drive cars." And without saying, "Nazis I hate you, you stupid asshole bastards." It just kind of pokes fun in a little more light spirited way, yet has a snide underbelly to it, and you know, 'cause it's poking fun at someone's death who was kind of a leader and a cultural icon to fascist youth everywhere. But so be it. We slagged them.

Janelle: Ok and then you said you were gonna write a new record.
Dave: Yeah, we're working on a new record right now. Ron and I are putting it together - Ron Posner who is the original guitar player - and well it's gonna come. It's there; I got some songs written. It's kind of - the music's very [much] like the first album, it's very early on MDC, very hardcore/thrash. And I got some songs written called "Sick of It", I got one called "Prick Two-faced Bastard", I got one called "Dr. Evil", which is about the - it's called "Prime Evil", not "Dr. Evil", it's called "Prime Evil" - Dr. Evil is Austin Powers. [Laughter] "Prime Evil" was the nick-name they gave to the South African head of secret police who was responsible for doing all these atrocious tortures, electric shocks, and had family members execute other family members to save their lives, and turn them into spies. And it's coming together right now as we speak. I'm trying different poetical angles to it and I wrote a new song called "Sleep a Little Less and Dream a Little More", which I like. It's kind of a chant-along and kind of Crass-y feel to it; very drum bass-y. And I love making music and I feel all happy and privileged to be making it. I'm privileged that people actually keep buying it and I can sustain at least partially a life from touring and making music and people supporting it.

Janelle: You're living in Vienna…
Dave: Well, staying in Vienna and have been for three months. I'm going back in about four days.
Janelle: So how do you find their point of view of America?
Dave: Oh, they all can't stand George Bush 'cause they know they're stirring up a bee's nest right next to where they live. You can take a four-hour plane ride to the Middle East. They don't want all the trouble the United States is stirring up. Individually, everyone's kind of fascinated by Americans 'cause so much cultural media comes out and that includes Dead Kennedys and Black Flag, but as well as Brad Pitt and you know, so much culture that comes out of the U.S. and the English speaking world - England and the United States - so people are kind of interested all around. Vienna's an interesting place; it's in the middle of Europe so from where I live, I'm like 50 to 75 miles from Slovania, from Croatia, from Czech Republic, from Slovakia, from Germany. I mean from my car, I can go from Vienna to five or six different countries, to five or six different speaking languages with four or five different currencies. So it's very interesting, it's the crossroads of Europe and it's got a lot of old culture. How do they treat me as American? Like I said, generally on the personal level, they're very interested. There's a great squat there called the AK House Squat and it's a really cool place. If you ever get a chance to go, I'm trying to think of the name of the street it's on. It's in south Vienna, but they advertise and they put on MDC shows. Who from the U.S. did they put on there? Well Molotov Cocktail has played there and Leftover Crack played there. Rancid once played there. We played there with them way back.
Janelle: Like how long ago?
Dave: 1992 they played there.
Janelle: Oh, early on.
Dave: They were actually opening for us. [Laughter] Gone are those days.

Janelle: And then with how this country's become just so much with "security" and everything, have you ever felt that you were being suppressed in some way?
Dave: Oh yeah. Well all the time, back you know, they used to strip-search me when I'd come through the border. They'd put rubber gloves on and search my butthole.
Janelle: Just because…
Dave: Just because we were in a punk band. Just 'cause they didn't like the way I looked. Just 'cause I might have smelt like marijuana 'cause I'd been in Holland for the three days before. Just because they knew we were Millions of Dead Cops 'cause they saw our t-shirts. Or just because. And they were rude to all sorts of people. Actually the last, you know, if there's anything good that could have come out of 9/11, is all the sudden punk is a little off the radar. [Laughter] And you know, if you look Muslim or Middle Eastern, you're gonna get the evil eye or the long arm of the law and also I don't have a gigantic mohawk. I had a green mohawk last summer when I came home, but still they're looking - it kind of fell off the radar. People got used to Mr. T with a mohawk, but there was a time when they weren't used to it at all and we were busted for stupid things. Different band members in different cities busted - Zainesville, Ohio; Toronto, Canada, which is not America, but it's North America but it's not the USA, hassled us lots of different times. Let me say, not just for being Millions of Dead Cops, many times it was just for having a punk rock hairdo and just being in a van with five or six people and you know, "You people shouldn't be just doing this." We didn't look like we came out of an Avis rent-a-car commercial, so that gave them the freedom just to mess with us or it gave them the idea to mess with us. Ok! Can I wind this up? [Laughter] Ok, I want to say goodbye. It was a pleasure meeting you. Everyone do whatever they want to do. Enjoy your life. Be free, enjoy your life; you've got a whole life ahead of yourselves. And I always say be true and blue and really enjoy your life. You've got one life; don't get caught up doing something you don't want to do. It's very easy to get pressured, peer pressure, people get married young, get pushed into jobs they don't want to do. You only get so much time in this life. Try to figure out what you can do if you don't love it, at least like it. And I love doing my music. I like teaching a lot and I'm lucky I found that, but I love making music even more. And so I'm lucky I found things that I can get on, but other times in my life I was pumping gas just four-and-a-half years ago before I got my teacher's degree and I got busted by the police. Not that pumping gas is wrong, anything wrong with pumping gas, but in fact I actually felt very free when I was pumping gas. But just don't find yourself in a situation where you're living around people you don't want to live around 'cause you only get one life. Turn off your TV and enjoy it. Thank you very much.

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