Bad Religion 

"Bands who are known for their live shows, who are known for traveling, who are known for interacting with the audience, like us, don't care about marketing. We care about playing our music."

 

I recently found myself sitting at a table with Greg Graffin, frontman for Bad Religion, one of my favorite bands of all time, along with bassist Jay Bentley, and accomplished lensman Chris Carnel. We hung out at BR's hotel before they went to sound check for their show at the Bottom of the Hill. They were doing a mini-tour to promote their new album No Substance, before hopping on the Warped Tour bus for the rest of the year. I was a little worried about speaking with Graffin. After all, everyone knows that he is a smart guy. And then the rumors about him being a college professor, who eats weak-minded interviewers for breakfast kept milling around in my mind. This man has been called a "Human Thesaurus" and I was supposed to conduct an intelligent interview. Gulp! Well, Greg and Jay turned out to be some of the nicest guys I've ever spoken with. Just to set the record straight, Graffin has a Masters Degree in Evolutionary Biology and is 3/4 of the way to his doctorate. Not too shabby. Anyone who's ever listened to BR knows what they are all about. They know that Graffin and Co. sing about the decay of American society and the plight of the "little guy." Similarly, every BR album has a certain theme that flows through it. Just take a look at several album titles: Suffer, No Control, Against the Grain, and more recently the Gray Race. All refer to social strife. According to Graffin, No Substance is, "... a concept of where we've come so far as a society. Bad Religion has been around for almost 20 years now, and this (album) was kind of an analysis of the last 20 years. Our social status has gone from right out of the hippie era, in the early 1970's, to a society that is completely superficial. The hippies had their flaws, but at least they were concerned about the welfare of their fellow man. Today people are withdrawing from one another. In fact you are encouraged to withdraw from one another, and technology is all we have to show for it." "We have an increase in technological aptitude, but a decrease in social welfare. We have an increase in the amount of hours you have to work to make a living wage, and a decrease in social health. People are less healthy today than they've ever been before. And more people are covered by insurance. So here we've created a small technological wonder, the Internet, and we have a crumbling society beneath it. No Substance is sort of a summary for the end of the millennium," notes Graffin. A true Bad Religion fan will notice something a little different about No Substance. Collectively, the album feels a little more natural. This was no accident. After recording the last two albums in major studios, BR opted for a more laid back approach. A large portion of the album was recorded at Graffin's home studio in Ithaca, New York. Graffin said, "For the last two albums we went to really expensive studios. So every day we felt this pressure. If you didn't finish a song you are gonna spend the money anyway on the rental of the studio. At my house we didn't have that high overhead. 

We felt like, `We'll get done what we can get done,' and then we played some basketball and watched movies." By the way, Graffin claims to be 80 percent from the free-throw line. 

Bad Religion has accomplished something that most bands will never attain: longevity. BR has been playing punk rock, non-stop for the past 18 years. If you take a look into the crowd at a BR show, you'll see kids who weren't even born when the original How Could Hell Be Any Worse came out in 1982. BR has endured countless musical fads, and marketing schemes only to hold true to their music time and again. What is the secret? Why have so few established punk bands failed to reach the youth of the world? Because the message and the music have remained constant. BR hasn't made any drastic changes in their style to appeal to the youth. They just do what they do best every night: play conscious-minded punk rock.

"We are Bad Religion, and we play Bad Religion... that is what we do. Now it is one of those things where if you decide to ride a skateboard, at some point in your life, you'll probably hear of us. It doesn't have anything to do with us. It's not as if we are actively pursuing skateboarders as a market. That is just the status of our fans. That is where we fit in, because that is where we came from," said Bentley. Graffin adds, "Bands who are known for their live shows, who are known for traveling, who are known for interacting with the audience, like us, don't care about marketing. We care about playing our music. That is probably the secret to our longevity. We just focus on playing the show, meeting the people, and hopefully provoking them and making them think a little bit. It's more about personal interaction than marketing. Marketing is about as impersonal as you can get." 

If you've ever been to a BR show, you've felt the connection. Graffin is very jocular between songs; he makes you feel like you are part of the show. The band's stage presence is amusing in that the only time you take your eyes off them is to avoid a swinging elbow in the pit. You have Graffin in front, waving his hands in a controlled manner to articulate the point of the song. To his left Greg Hetson is jumping around like a monkey, strumming his guitar at a furious pace. To Graffin's right, both Bentley and Brian Baker concentrate on playing and singing the back-ups. Behind everyone is Bobby Schayer, sitting back and absolutely killing it on drums. Everyone, including the crowd, is caught up in the energy flowing from the stage. The connection between the band and the fans is something that the members of Bad Religion hold dear. "The one thing that marketers can't get their hands on is the pure relationship between a band and the audience members. It's a feeling that you only get from being a part of it." 

Bad Religion's goal is to expand the minds of the audience, and make them think about the world around them. They have even gone so far as to offer a $3,000 scholarship for studies in the sciences. "We are a band that has always been about promoting knowledge, and questioning the dogmatic beliefs in the world. We promote that through our lyrics, but we wanted to go a bit farther, and promote some actual field work. The 

scholarship is for research into the natural sciences or the cultural sciences. We want people to get off their asses, and put to work their skeptical skills," said Graffin. How many other bands out there care so much about their fans that they set up scholarships? I can't think of any. Bad Religion is more than a band, they are a movement against dogmatic thinking on all levels. When BR was first conceived, they were just a bunch of kids lashing out against the close-minded people in power. Today they are older, wiser and more traveled, but in their hearts the same five punk-kids from Southern California rock on. 

 

--Brad Gobdel