Nobodys
The Smell of Victory (Hopeless)
An interview with JJ Nobody
by Scott Hefflon
Nobodys are from Colorado, but you seem to have a strong tie with Boston: Joe Queer producing your first album, Metal Murph from The Cretins singing back up on this record…
Actually, the record Joe Queer produced was our second album, but our first for Hopeless Records. We’d recorded an album a few months before that we were going to release ourselves, but then Hopeless wanted us to re-record it in a better studio with Joe Queer. So we actually have an album with 10 songs that’ve never been released. By the way, I grew up in Boston. I was born in Maine, but grew up in Boston and Cape Cod.
Did you play in bands while you were here?
No, I was really young. But Boston was where I first got into punk rock. I saw my first show at TTs. I was 13 or 14, so while I saw a bunch of bands, I was never in one until I moved to Colorado.
What’s the environment like? When I think of Colorado, I think breath-taking views from posh ski resorts, not punk rock keepin’ it real.
It’s weird, half the state is mountain, but what a lot of people don’t realize is the other half looks like Kansas. The mountains come out of nowhere. All the major cities run right along the mountains, right up against them.
What about the punk scene? Is there really that much to be punk about when you live in a postcard setting?
It’s just life experience. It doesn’t really matter where you are…
It matters more who you are.
Even before I started playing in bands, I had a lot of girl troubles. Colorado has so many hippies it’s unbelievable. So you’re into punk rock, you learn to hate the fuckin’ hippies. Now there’re just as many hippies in punk rock as there are hangin’ out at the colleges. They have dreadlocks and backpacks, but they listen to punk rock. Or crust. They’re useless – sitting around, begging for money, listening to crusty punk which, to me, has nothing to do with punk. To me it sounds like bad death metal. Why it’s associated with punk rock is beyond me. But everyone in this band grew up listening to GG. He influenced us, not so much in the “hate everything” thing, but when something annoyed him, he’d write a song about it. I don’t censor myself because I think people’ll be upset or offended. We’re Ramones-influenced musically, but lyrically, we’re more a group of friends who loved GG Allin. When you’re in high school, the five or ten people you hang out with are more of an influence than any scene, any style of music, or any cultural movement going on. I’m still hanging out with the same people I did then. We started a band, we rent pornos, we jerk off, and I write songs about it.
I’ve got a 7″ of the Nobodys covering songs by bands you all used to be in.
Yeah, we used to be other bands when we were like 16 and 17. Justin (Disease, drums/vocals) was always the leader of the band he was in, I was just in the bands. I didn’t write anything, I just did what people told me. I wanted to be in a band, but I couldn’t really play anything. When all that ended, I didn’t want to stop, so Justin joined my band. When the Nobodys first started, we played to 2-300 kids. Then people started saying, “What the hell are these guys singing about?” We really got a lot of backlash. Then we were playing shows for, like, 25 kids. We put out a couple 7″s by ourselves, played a few good shows, but mostly for ten kids in a basement somewhere, and then we didn’t play in our town for almost a year. Right when we got signed to Hopeless, we played a show with about 200 kids singing along to the songs on our 7″s.
You can never really pinpoint why popularity suddenly falls in your lap.
I think a lot of people like us just ’cause they’re sick of everything else. It’s not that we’re the most talented band in the world, we just have catchy songs and we write about whatever we feel like. We don’t really care, and people seem to get into that.
I interviewed Mark from Guttermouth last month, and we talked about you guys. There really aren’t many bands playing rude, catchy punk, and that really surprises me.
And a lot of people are surprised when they meet me. They think I’m going to be big, mean-looking, and angry all the time. I’m not – I’m a 160 pound skinny guy with blond hair, blue eyes, and a lisp.
The music is the therapy so you don’t have to be a dick all the time.
The songs are just what I was thinking at the time. Like “I Wanna Fuck Your Girlfriend.” I’ve taken tons of shit for that song. I wrote that song for one girl I knew who used to flirt with me all the time. I wrote that song a year ago, they’ve since broken up, and I don’t care about her at all. But people ask me how I could write a song like that.
But who hasn’t thought about fucking their friend’s girlfriend? That’s why the song makes so much sense, ’cause it’s true. Even Rick Springfield wanted to fuck his friend Jessie’s Girl.
And that’s why I get pissed. People ask how I can write songs about jerking off, wanting to fuck my friend’s girlfriend, or checking out some chick’s ass. We aren’t trying to shock people or degrade them, we’re just guys singing about guy stuff. Some people have called me sexist, but I’m certainly not sexist. I’m vulnerable. For the last three years I’ve lived off my girlfriend. She had a great job and I’m a bum. She supported me. I just like to check out girls, so what’s the big deal? I think people need to lighten up. We’re just here for the fun. It’s certainly not for the money or the chicks, ’cause we sure aren’t gettin’ much of either. It’s not like we’re Mark from Guttermouth. He gets chicks like nothing.
Do you think you’re getting better at this? And do you think getting better is actually a bad thing?
I think I’m a little better than the average punk rock bass player, but bands like the Vandals and Guttermouth have a lot more of the California flash to their playing. They do a lot of the muted guitar stuff, too. I used to be in the Parasites, and they were really bass-oriented. One of my idols was Karl Alvarez from the Descendents and All. He’s a fuckin’ genius. I can play that kind of stuff, but the Nobodys is a simpler band, more straightforward. I think if you put too much fancy stuff into a song, you can ruin it. Funny thing is, some people say we’re getting worse. They say the new album is harder than the first. The first album had songs on it from five years ago that we just wanted to record and get out of the way. The new album is stuff we’ve been playing for the last year. I’d like to think that we progressed. The last record was influenced by what we were listening to at the time. This record is influenced by what we’re listening to now.
So what bands are you listening to?
The last few years, I’ve been listening to the Dwarves, Zeke, DayGlo Abortions, early Angry Samoans, early Queers with Wimpy singing, and the harder rock’n’roll stuff that’s still catchy. I’ve just really burned out to the pop/punk stuff ’cause so much of it has turned to bubblegum. I love the Queers, but the rest are just so sappy. Descendents can pull it off, but the cute boys playing love punkpop just makes me sick. I can’t write a song about a girl now, ’cause they’ve ruined it. They took Milo, the whole “I’m a geek and I just wanna play in my band” thing and drove it into the ground. But then the Descendents came back and showed up everyone by putting out a fuckin’ great record. To me, punk was never supposed to be safe. There were no rules and it was a place where you could tell people to fuck off. The whole PC movement is probably what inspired us to form the Nobodys more than anything else. I’d go to punk rock shows, and there’d be people with displays – be a vegan, be a this, be a that – it was all politics. I go to shows to hear music, not be told what I should believe.
I hear you guys are putting out a greatest hits record.
Yeah, Greatasstits. We have cool T shirts, mini shirts, and tank tops printed up that we’re going to give to girls on tour if they’ll pose for a photo. Then, on the next record, we’ll do some kind of center spread with all the photos.
Sounds like fun. Well, I hope you get laid on this tour.
Thanks. So do I.
