"NOFX: Backstage Passport 2" screening at the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival!

"NOFX: Backstage Passport 2" has been Officially Selected to screen at the 2015 San Francisco Frozen Film Festival!

It will be showing on July 18th (just a month before its official release date) at the Roxie Theater. Tickets available here!

"NOFX: Backstage Passport 2" to be released on August 21st!

In 2009, Ryan Harlin and I set out on the road with NOFX to create a sequel to our docu-series, "NOFX: Backstage Passport". After three years of adventures and two years of editing and almost a year of prepping the release, "NOFX: Backstage Passport 2" will finally be released on August 21st!

Instead of episodes, this time the project takes the form of a documentary feature, and the DVD will include two "lost episodes" featuring footage from trips to Australia and Eastern Europe during the original "Backstage Passport" tour.

There will also be a special screening of "Backstage Passport 2" and a Q&A with NOFX at Thee Parkside in San Francisco on the day of the release as part of the Fat Wrecked for 25 Years festival, details here!

"Do You Remember: 15 Years of The Bouncing Souls" Special Screening at the Asbury Park Music In Film Festival

It's been over a decade since Ryan Harlin and I made our feature directorial debut with "Do You Remember?: 15 Years of The Bouncing Souls" and we're humbled to see that it is still being enjoyed by so many people.

The Asbury Park Music In Film Festival has just announced a special screening of the film on April 10th, 2015 in Asbury Park, NJ, which will be followed by a Q&A with Bouncing Souls bassist Bryan Kienlen and guitarist Pete Steinkopf.

Have fun, True Believers!

One of my favorite interviews

My friend and fellow USC alum Kam Miller did an in-depth interview with me for her blog, "Glass Half-Full in Hollywood".

Check it out here

Very informative...and flattering!

Reagan Youth Announces New Lineup...and I'm part of it!

Years ago my friend Landon was instrumental in getting me the job of singing for Dead Kennedys. Now he can be credited with recruiting me to sing for another legendary punk band: Reagan Youth!

Here's the official announcement in Decibel Magazine.

Looking forward to whatever this new adventure has in store...

THE SODA POPULIST

By Jeff Penalty

(Originally published in Swindle #6, re-published in The Utne Reader)

Have you ever bitched about the fact that your cable TV company decided to jack up its rates simply because they could?  Has your blood ever boiled thinking about the way major labels are keeping good musicians down?  Have you ever thrown your hands up in despair at the piss-poor choices on the ballot for any given American political office?

Take heart, comrades…John Nese is here to lead the revolution!

John runs the Soda Pop Stop in Eagle Rock, CA, a store that specializes in hard-to-find (if not impossible-to-find) soda pop, carrying over 500 varieties.  I walked into his store assuming I’d be writing a fluff piece about fizzy sugar water, but I walked out with a startlingly vivid illustration of corporate oppression and the disturbing effect it has on every aspect of our lives.

I started by asking John, “Why soda?”  He answered with a smile: “I got mad.”

John’s story is an American fable.  He inherited the family grocery business from his father, but, like all independent grocery stores, he found himself struggling to compete with the price clubs and major supermarket chains.  He started carrying a few rare varieties of soda as a means of keeping the business afloat.

And then one day a representative from Pepsi came into his store to convince him to stock the brand.  At the price the rep was offering (remember: no bulk wholesale discount for a small shop like John’s), John would’ve had to charge more for Pepsi than the chain store down the street, and he would’ve felt like he was ripping off his customers.  So he told the Pepsi rep he’d rather refer his customers to the chain.

The Pepsi rep said, “You can’t do that.”  John said, “Watch me.”

I listen intently as John explains the politics of soda pop.  The thing about Pepsi and Coke is that they have the money and clout to purchase shelf space in all of the major grocery chains and price clubs, so there ends up being no space—and little incentive—for stores to stock drinks produced by independent bottlers, even though dozens, if not hundreds, of such bottlers exist.  So as consumers, we’re left with merely the illusion of true choice, choosing between two colas that taste basically the same, and which aren’t really all that great to begin with.  As John points this out, I am suddenly stirred with both anger and sadness, staring at aisle after aisle of proof that corporate rule has officially infected every single aspect of our lives, robbing us of our freedom of choice and holding us hostage to the whims of the C.E.O.s.

My head already reeling, John begins my tour of his shop by telling me about Red Ribbon Root Beer.  Until the ‘60s, root beer was made from sassafras root oil, which was taken off the market because it causes cancer.  Red Ribbon uses sassafras bark (which, thankfully, doesn’t cause cancer), and it is the only root beer on the market to do so, giving it the most authentic taste possible.  It even changes flavor as it ages!

Next, John let me sample a mint julep, because unlike most of you southern plantation owners from the 1800s out there, I’ve never had one.  And it was so refreshing that I have since found myself walking around and actually saying, “I could really go for a mint julep right about now.”

I was also curious about Moxie, a company out of Maine that I thought had ceased to exist around the same time Hollywood started making “talkies.”  Yet there on the shelves were several varieties of Moxie: Original Elixir, Cream Soda, Orange Cream Soda, and Cherry Soda.  John swears by Moxie Cream Soda, declaring it the best cream soda on the market.  He sent me home with a bottle that I later shared with a friend, and neither of us found any reason to argue with John’s assessment.  He also sent me home with a bottle of the Original Elixir, which he cautioned I might not take to right away.  “It’s a sipping soda,” he said, claiming that it would actually change flavors while I drank it.  And it did: each sip started as a cola, morphed into a root beer, and left the aftertaste of some sort of evil black licorice potion from Satan’s private reserve.  I can’t say I wasn’t warned.

“Have you ever had a pomelo?” John asks, uncapping a bottle of Quench and handing me this soda flavored with the first cousin of the grapefruit.  Down another aisle, he holds up a bottle of Manhattan Special Orange Soda to show me the pulp at the bottom, proving that it’s flavored with actual oranges.  Later, he tells me about an angry phone call he placed to the makers of Tommyknockers Root Beer to complain about their switch from Madagascar vanilla to vanillin in their recipe.  He tells me about the elderflower soda he’s anticipating from a Romanian bottler and the rose flavored soda he has coming in for Valentine’s Day.  The possibilities and permutations seem endless.  And, in fact, they are.

Upon a return trip to the Soda Pop Stop one afternoon to share the joys of a mint julep with a friend, I tried to get John’s attention, but customers were coming at him from all sides, asking for his recommendations the way they would a seasoned sommelier at a Napa Valley winery.  One customer told John, “You’ve got me hooked on the Boylan’s Cola!”  And I realized that we were all there because we’d had a door opened for us: a door to a whole world of fun, adventure, and taste.  It’s a door that should have been open to us from the start but which was barred by capitalism gone sour.

I ask John, “Do you still get mad at Pepsi and Coke?”  He says, “No.  I thank ‘em every morning!”

People from all over the world are thanking him as well, both in person at the store or by ordering their favorite sodas by the case via his website.  So dedicated is John to the cause of good soda, that he’s even trying to locate molds to make the metal parts for those now-out-of-production seltzer bottles popularized by the Three Stooges.  With a bottle of seltzer and some raspberry or chocolate syrup that John sells at the end of one aisle, you can even make your own sodas!

“If it was about nostalgia,” John says, “it’d have been over in five years.  It’s freedom of choice.”

Upon a third trip to the store to enlist yet another friend in the soda revolution, I find John outside, hammering something out of the sidewalk.  When he’s done, he lets us sample a bottle of that much-anticipated rose soda (delicious, by the way!) and explains that earlier in the day some workers came by to install a newspaper box in front of his store.  He asked them for the proper paperwork from the city, but they didn’t have it, so he told them to come back when they did.  They started to install the thing anyway until he told them to bug off again.  And then, rather than roll over and take it, he went outside to remove—by hand—the hunk of metal they’d just put in his sidewalk.

It’s a subtle gesture that somehow seems to sum up John’s attitude perfectly.  His pride in his business and his individualist spirit practically amount to a Rockwell portrait of what it is—or rather, what it should be—to be an American.  It makes me think back to the way he concluded our very first conversation with an assertion that practically made me want to salute him:

“Am I Don Quixote?  No.  The important thing is that people have choices.  Not just with drinks, but with everything you do.”

As I shook his hand to say goodbye, he added with a smile:

”Don’t get me started on the education system…”

A PUNK ROCK FAIRY TALE

By Jeff Penalty

(Originally appeared in Swindle issue #2)

“Get a calendar.”

“Why?”

“Just get a calendar.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have a calendar?”

“Yes!  What is it?”

“What’s today’s date?”

“April 16^th.”

“Today’s the day you became the lead singer for Dead Kennedys.”

The American Dream boils down to two scenarios.  1.) Winning the Lottery.  2.) Joining your favorite rock band.  I had just received a phone call to say that I, like Sid Vicious, Henry Rollins, and Tim “Ripper” Owens before me, had just achieved the less likely of the two.

I didn’t believe Landon at first.  Not a lot of people would have.  It took a good half hour or so of convincing, and even then I still suspected that the whole thing was a really cruel practical joke.  If it was, I very much prepared to cut Landon out of my life as a friend, just as swiftly as I would cut open his throat and remove his trachea.

Landon, incidentally, was the voice on the other end of the phone.  He fronts a band called Sidekick.  I met him at Al’s Bar when I first moved to L.A. and our mutual love for the Chicago punk band Screeching Weasel immediately cemented our friendship.  Sidekick often ripped through Screeching Weasel covers and when they did Landon would graciously allow me to get on stage and sing with them.  Always a good time.  The years went by and, despite numerous people encouraging me to pursue singing more seriously, rocking occasionally with Sidekick at dive bars around L.A. was pretty much the most musical glory I ever expected to achieve.

Then Dead Kennedys reunited and Landon became their tour manager.  I was happy for my friend, but I, like most fans, was skeptical about the reunion with Brandon Cruz filling in on vocals for Jello Biafra (who had grown estranged from the band due to a far-too-much-discussed legal battle).  Landon agreed to get me into their first L.A. show for free so I could satisfy my curiosity.  All week I knew I was going to see Dead Kennedys.  The ticket said “Dead Kennedys.”  The marquee said “Dead Kennedys.”  But it wasn’t until I was standing at the edge of the dance floor when the band launched into their first song that I realized, “Holy shit!  That’s Dead Kennedys!”  A smile parted my lips and I quickly squeezed my way into the crowd to sing along with all of my favorites.

Brandon had done a superb job and after the show I told Landon it was a job I wanted.  I was half-joking, but it was a half-joke I’d make repeatedly over the course of the next year.  I thought I was wasting my breath, but, sure enough, one day Brandon stepped down and Landon endorsed me for the job based on my love of Dead Kennedys and the fun he’d had sharing a stage with me.  And for some reason three of my biggest musical heroes trusted his judgment.

A little perspective here: Dead Kennedys formed in 1978 and became one of the most influential bands in the punk genre.  Even my parents know who these guys are.  “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables” was one of the first punk albums I ever owned.  I remember jumping on my bed as a teenager, singing along to it and thinking to myself how cool it would be to one day sing with the band.  At the time, I immediately dismissed the notion, thinking to myself, “first of all, they broke up years ago and they’ll never get back together.  Second of all, even if they do get back together, it’ll be with Jello.  And third of all, even if they do get back together without Jello, how would they EVER find me and why would they EVER let me up on stage with them?”  I vividly remember all of those thoughts going through my head, and thinking to myself that I should keep a lid on my idiotic fantasies.

Simply getting to practice with Dead Kennedys in Landon’s small, dingy practice space in Hollywood was enough to squash the cynical voice in my head that told me to stop fantasizing all those years ago and to give me a story to bore my grandkids with.  But then I got to play a secret show with the band at the Viper Room with all my friends in the audience cheering me on.  Then we got to play shows in Norway.  And Istanbul.  And Mexico City.  And all over the U.K.  Every trip was an incredible adventure, each worthy of its own separate article.  There’s story after story to tell, based on surreal moment after surreal moment.  For instance: in Scotland, we played a club where I had seen a punk show back in ’98.  I never imagined I’d be back at that club.  Let alone on its stage.  Singing to a sold out crowd.  With Dead Kennedys.

Further, I could write articles about the way the music of Dead Kennedys shaped my drastically left-leaning political ideals and how grateful I am for the opportunity to speak to crowd after crowd about the importance of open-mindedness and political participation.  I could write about the bonds I’ve formed with three very quirky musicians who formerly existed in my life only as sounds coming through a stereo speaker and names on an album cover.  I could write pages and pages about the importance and timeliness of the Dead Kennedys reunion in relation to both the current punk rock scene and the world at large.  Believe me, a person in my position has a lot of things to think hard about and gets a lot of frequently asked questions.  But today I’m only allowed to share 1500 words with you, so the rest will have to wait for some other time.

For now I’m just enjoying the ride, because the one thing I can’t really speak about with any certainty is where this is all going to go.  Maybe we’ll keep touring, maybe we’ll record new music, or maybe it’ll all end tomorrow.  At first, the unpredictability of the situation really messed with my head, but I’ve made peace with it because I’ve learned to appreciate the fact that I’ve been able to live out an insanely fantastic dream, the scope of which I can still barely comprehend.  It’s all cherries on top of the icing on top of the multi-tiered cake at this point.  Maybe there should be some sort of punk rock twist to this story to make it all edgy or dark or something, but there’s really not.  It’s a fairy tale.  It’s a dream-come-true scenario, and it’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience.  If I wrote a song about it, it would sound more appropriate coming out of Jewel’s mouth than mine.  It’s done nothing less than change my entire outlook on life.  It sounds excruciatingly cheesy, I know, but it’s the truth.  After all, I used to really relate to the Dead Kennedys song “Forward to Death”, which contains the lyrics “I don’t need this fucking world / This world brings me down / Gag with every breath / This world brings me down / I’m looking forward to death.”  But now it’s the one song I feel weird about singing because for once in my life I’m NOT looking forward to death!  I’m having too much fucking fun!  Even when things are at their shittiest and I’m forced to look into the darker side of my soul, I’m able to turn myself around because I’ve learned that life can take radical turns for the better just as easily as it can take drastic turns for the worse.

Roughly ten years after my first exposure to the music of Dead Kennedys, I was on an airplane bound for a tour of Norway, seated between Landon and drummer D.H. Peligro.  As we taxied onto the runway I looked back and forth between the two of them and said to Landon, “if this is a joke, you’re really taking it too far.”  Landon laughed and assured me that it was for real.

I still don’t know if I believe him.

ROBBIE CONAL

By Jeff Penalty
(Originally published in Swindle's "Icons" issue)

“Ronald Reagan made me do it.”

It’s unlikely that such a defense would hold up in a modern American court of law, but it’s how Robbie Conal explains his incitement to hit the streets with his trademark poster art.

Robbie is best known for gluing disturbing and hyper-real images of political and historical figures to fixtures of the urban landscape.  His posters usually include a portrait, a slogan or a one-liner (the man loves his puns), and some form of overt socio-political commentary.  The posters are placed by Conal and his “volunteer guerrilla postering army”: a formidable force that has the ability to cover a significant amount of public space in Robbie’s home city of Los Angeles and beyond.  Both his art and his methods are untraditional and controversial.  And that, children, is exactly how one becomes an icon.

Robbie, though, doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable with that label.  “[The word ‘icon’] makes me think of a giant wooden cross painted by Cimabue in the late 13^th century: Christ writhing stiffly on a 400 pound hunk of black carved wood, looming over my head in the Uffizi Museum in Florence.  Nope.  I don’t identify.”

But when others think of the word “icon” they may think of someone who has blazed a trail and inspired others to do the same, and under that definition Robbie most certainly fits.  Numerous artists have sidestepped the gallery system and taken to the streets with buckets and brushes in Robbie’s wake, inspired undeniably by his consistency and his coverage.  When asked at what point he realized that his illegal art would or could eventually gain legitimization, Robbie claims, “I never did.  But I knew people would see it.  Especially in L.A.  Everyone (around the world) thinks Angelenos are superficial.  But what they don’t know is that we’re DEEPLY superficial.”

Robbie is essentially the art world equivalent of a street corner Bible thumper.  Not content to sit quietly inside a church and wait for people to come in and find salvation, he goes out into the world to broadcast his message loudly, abrasively, and (mostly) unwelcome-ly to anyone in range.  The key difference being that most religious figures would encourage you to obey while Robbie begs people to think for themselves.

He offers the following to those who may want to continue in his tradition: “If you want to communicate your social/political ideas to regular people and have no money, make an interesting little black and white picture, turn a few words of the most subversive language on the planet—colloquial American English—inside out, shake ‘em for loose change…[and go] to Kinko’s.  Mix up the medicine and text message your homies after you call your local National Lawyers Guild office.”

With others clearly willing to pick up wherever Robbie leaves off, does he ever see his own postering missions coming to an end?  “I always see them coming to an end,” he claims.  “Every time I stand up on a red naugahyde banquette at Canter’s [the deli from which his L.A.-based missions stem] and yell at the, uh, ‘troops’ about ‘Guerilla Etiquette’ […] the first thing I say is, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this again.’  I’m old.”

Sure, he’s got his own book, “Artburn”, on the shelves, a regular column in L.A. Weekly, and a teaching gig at U.S.C., but if Robbie’s posters do someday cease to appear on your friendly neighborhood electrical box, what will he do for a creative outlet?

“My art in the future?  I’d like to draw portraits of cats.”