INEVITABLE BACKLASH

I WAS A PUNK 10^TH GRADE KID

Fabulously raw, the Inevitable Backlash, hail from LA but without the trappings of an LA band, they are anti formula and over-production, they are into analogue only sounds and keeping it real.

They have a dark damp basement sounds… seriously lo-fi, with a CBGBs feeling, like you were there listening while hanging at the bar…

NY Waste catches up with John Renton while he’s in NYC recently promoting their new CD “My Two Brookes”

You’ve been touring around a lot by the sounds of it, and basically you’ll play anywhere, whether it’s a converted costume shop, (& yes, it does sell costumes by day) and other…

Yeah, we played a place up in Eastern Washington that was just a dirt floor indoors with a transvestite booker with just hundreds of Punk teenagers.

That’s what the all ages thing has done, it’s created weird venues in all sorts of places somewhere empty with no need for a bar. Somwhere you can shove a bunch of under 21s in and a band.

Yes, some place with a p.a. in it, that doesn’t necessarily work, and if we can’t hear each other onstage we just turn everything up to 10 and just kick-back. We play lot of other weird situations, I wouldn’t have it any other way, because I was a Punk 10^th Grade Kid, so it was cool. When I look out at them now, (John’s in his early 20s,) I go, yeah, these are our people… yeah. I still feel like I’m a seventh grader at heart.

Musically I’ve listened to enough music to be a little bit older. I got my first David Bowie record in 6^th Grade I saw him in the seventh grade, he’s my number one person.

Realy? You don’t sound like him at all more Iggy than Ziggy?… No, no! Wait, what are we listening to here… that could be a driving Ziggy guitar riff,

Yeah, I love David Bowie a lot, but not necessarily to be him, but spiritually perhaps.

He’s had his weird moments, but all in all…

Yeah, I haven’t worn a dress yet.

Yeah, but you have played on transvestite’s floors!

Yeah, yeah, looks like it’s starting…

The other two biggest influences besides Bowie are Neil Young and Frank Black (his tenure with the Pixies but even more-so his solo stuff) who still continue to inspire me to this day. A large influence on me was the entire 80's hardcore punk scene chiefly Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat/Fugazi. From the amazing music to the DIY/Indie aspect it was all a huge influence. After that it gets pretty scattered and weird from surf-guitar legend Dick Dale to Slayer to Cheap Trick. Dick Dale and Greg Ginn of Black Flag probably had the biggest influence on me guitar-wise.

What got me started: It was probably a combination of seeing David Bowie for the first time in concert at age 12 and the ages of 11-13 when I was just starting to discover music. It was the purest form of fandom, hearing The Velvet Underground and The Stoooges for the first time and devouring as much music as I could possibly find, buy, or steal. It was a great time in my life. In terms of what made me say I'm going to do this. I'm going to paraphrase Frank Black who said something along the lines of "It wasn't whether I would create music or not. It was the fact that I was such a gigantic fan of music there was no possible way that fandom wouldnt translate into playing in a band"

Gone are the days of yelling at the mic, this guy gives it a close to your ear voice, which gives it a lot of scope for giving it extra juice when called for.

When did you start writing music?

I basically paid my dues. While I wrote a few songs here and there, I spent a good 5 years practicing guitar religiously before I even felt somewhat confident in my instrument. About 2 years after that when I was about 17 the writing floodgates opened and haven't stopped since.

You write all the time and say you love to be in the studio and have 3 albums worth of stuff up your sleeve still to go. That's fantastic

We got a bunch of new records that are ready to record. Once we make the money back from this one, we’ll be going straight back into the studio to record a vinyl of 100% garage rock, balls to the wall. This will be vinyl only & itunes. We haven’t done a vinyl yet, and it’s gonna be amazing color. So I’m excited.

You are behaving more like a traditional record label signed band, in that you are producing a record a year…

Yeah, as much as possible, (2 a year even) If I had the money, I’d be recording 300 days a year, but our tape isn’t cheap tape, we use analogue tape. It has the good sound, the real sounds.