What year is this again?
There's a less-than-brilliant Republican in the White House who may or may not believe that his God prefers the company of wealthy folks. The economy's going into recession. Our nation is grappling with a heathen threat to the American way of life that, coincidentally enough, oozes forth from the Middle East like, say, oil. The radio is suffused with disposable pop and contrived heavy metal.
And Venice, Fla.-bred hardcore pioneers No Fraud are taking their aggressive amalgam of punk, politics and humor on the road.
Had these facts been posed as a cultural trivia question as recently as three years ago, the answer almost certainly would have lain somewhere in the early to mid '80s. But then, three years ago, the new millennium hadn't yet sent us into another cycle of uncertainty and conservatism. What goes around, comes around. And for Dan Destructo, a punk-rock lifer whose outlook and avocation were shaped by an all-too-similar environment nearly two decades ago, the time for a little action has come around again.
"I kinda had a little semi-personal spiritual revelation. I've traveled all over the place and seen a bunch of stuff," says No Fraud's primary motivator. "It helped me recharge my batteries, get ready to do some shows. And now, we're getting ready to put out some new stuff and see what happens from there."
The quartet, which roared out of the land south of the Skyway 20 years back to almost single-handedly bring the thrashing faster-louder to West Central Florida's fledgling punk scene, has either never really broken up, or broken up 50 or 60 times, depending on who you ask. Dan, who migrated to California 1999 before embarking on an extended walkabout that took him everywhere from Greece and Spain (where he was arrested at Pamplona's running of the bulls, dismissing it as a "mistaken-identity thing") to Thailand, makes no distinctions. Speaking with him, one gets the feeling he sees No Fraud's existence as continuous — interrupted by life's ongoing succession of side trips, hiatuses and soul-searching.
"I guess it's something I'm somewhat good at. I checked out a bunch of other stuff, and maybe now I need to re-focus my energy on my I guess I'll call it art, for lack of a better word," he says with a laugh. "Get it out there."
He talks briefly and amiably of a newfound, mature sense of personal peace, one born of immersing himself in other cultures. He discovered that, at the core, everyone's similarities outweigh their disparities.
"Obviously, you learn a lot about yourself, but you also learn a lot about how people aren't really that different. It helps break down a lot of barriers for everyone," he affirms.
As legendary as he's become in the punk scene for his full-bore persona and outrageous antics — this was the guy running around the State Theatre just last year with a massive purple dildo shoved into the crack of his ass — Dan, and No Fraud, have always balanced hardcore's extremism with an earnest desire to communicate, to share ideas. Before punk became mainstream entertainment's Sound of the Second, that's basically all it was — unsettled kids spewing their questions and differences purely, out into the ether, just hoping for a like-minded response. For fun and catharsis.
No Fraud shares a history with tens of thousands of individuals old (and antisocial) enough to have experienced the nascence of Do It Yourself culture: the clique-less outcasts in some backwoods American town who opt for skateboarding, truancy and Naked Lunch instead of football, the prom and Little Women. These delinquent activities eventually expose the outcasts to insurgent politics (usually through suspicious glances and repeated beatings) and, naturally enough, punk rock (usually through an older bad influence, Thrasher Magazine and a road trip). Inspiration of the "shit, we can do that" variety ensues.
"We basically were the punk culture; there were only about four or five of us," confirms Dan, "looking through a skateboarding magazine and reading about some bands. We just kind of sought it out, and there wasn't much to find at that point — that's why we started playing. We had a lot of energy, and nothing else to do, obviously, where we lived.
"We liked music, so we just started playing the only kind of music that let out that much energy. We had a lot of anger about our situation, I suppose," he laughs.
No Fraud's style, which pushed beyond Ramones hooks and Sex Pistols attitude into something heavier, speedier and altogether new to the scene, influenced a legion of Florida bands isolated from other, similarly embryonic hardcore strongholds popping up across the nation. Soon, the underground flourished — an extensive DIY community where bands weren't untouchables to read about in Rolling Stone, but friends who kept in touch through tape trading and show swapping. Of course, before too long somebody realized there was a buck to be made. Even in indie rock, sometimes people get screwed, and while certain fringe bands enjoyed some mainstream notoriety (see also Suburbia) No Fraud remained completely in-house, turning down offers from various small labels, including now-godhead independent distributor Caroline.
"From the first inception, the concept was just to play for fun. And we were misfits, they didn't want us. Then they wanted us when it was profitable for them. It's like a fair-weather friend," Dan says. "When we built our own scene that became something separate from theirs — we didn't use their distribution or anything, we completely built it ourselves. Once it was damaging to their profits, they wanted a part of it, you know?
"To me, that wasn't what the hardcore or DIY scene was about. To be honest, our first couple of tours, before hardcore was big in the early to mid '80s, we made money touring. We made MONEY money, which is hard for me to believe now."
When the first wave broke and receded, most bands went bust, went to school, went to work in the industry. No Fraud continued to tour and make their records available through mail order. At a time when nobody wanted music with a message, the band refused to bend — though their shows were so raucous and celebratory that many probably didn't know, at first, that they were getting one.
"Our stance was always pretty political, as far as the philosophy that there are better alternatives to what's going on everywhere, even though the shows are pretty much laced with humor," Dan allows. "If you're trying to change people and living by example, what kind of example are you gonna make if you're walking around with a scowl on your face?"
The lean times between Black Flag and Green Day haven't left No Fraud unaffected; the band tours only sporadically and briefly, and most of their catalog (barring the full-length CD version of their classic Babewatch) is currently out of print. But with the first new material in years on the way, an appearance in the new Recess skate-culture video, and a climate sorely in need of something both entertaining and thought-provoking, Dan and his cohorts seem refreshed. They're more than ready to drag their sorry old asses out there in the name of offering punk rock something a little more substantial, and every bit as entertaining.
"Hopefully at the shows, we'll be able to meld a few minds to what it used to look like. It'll be like watching dinosaurs," he claims. "It's punk-rock Jurassic Park, man! And it's just as scary. I might run into you and knock you over, you know?"
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2001.