While Rancid were playing to stadiums, nary a word was heard from Jesse Michaels. Despite the harsher name, and somewhat harsher music, the East Village as well as the mall crowds embraced Rancid, and they became one of most well known punk bands. On Rancid’s second album, Armstrong announced his love for the Clash to the world, by attempting to pick up where the English sound rebels left off. Similarly, he left behind Michael’s utopian lyrics for a harsher look at the world, often the view of someone without a home, money or a job. With Rancid, Armstrong stripped Op Ivy of their ska leaning and replaced it with oi-tinged, street punk. Guitarist Tim Armstrong and bassist Matt Freemen went on to form Rancid, drummer Dave Mello joined Schlong, and vocalist Jesse Michaels became a myth (rumor has it that he became a Buddhist monk or a missionary). Their legacy would be any band that added Jamaican skank to Berkeley punk skronk. After receiving an offer to leave indie label Lookout Records for EMI, they broke up, refusing to compromise their morals for a larger stage. Of course, by the time we came to know Operation Ivy, they were long gone. More importantly, we had music for hours of couch moshing and basement skanking. Instead of being bored with nowhere to go, we could sing of revolution in the streets. Operation Ivy’s frenetic marriage of hardcore punk and ska provided an instantaneous escape from our immediate surroundings. While there were bands like Jawbreaker and Green Day who captured our attention, none held us as completely as Operation Ivy did. Freed from the bonds of the classroom, we could spend up to forty-five minutes sitting in someone’s car smoking cigarettes and listening to punk rock. This policy became our teenage Emancipation Proclamation.
However, your senior year you were allowed to take off, which meant you leaving campus to go smoke cigarettes. For the first three years ,this mostly meant you got to eat pizza instead of cafeteria food unless you were cool enough to know someone in a higher grade who could drive, something I never had to worry about.
#TIM ARMSTRONG JESSE MICHAELS FREE#
What this meant was that you were allowed to leave campus during your lunch period, and, after you freshman year, anytime you had a free period. There is a special chemistry between us and I don’t take it for granted.One of the perks of going to high school in an affluent (aka: safe, white and wealthy) Long Island suburb was the “Open School” policy. As soon as we started writing together, we found that we had the same collaborative energy that we had in the past, so it was natural and fun just to keep going. Our creative connection seems to be stronger than ever and all the music we loved back then, we still love. This was only the second song we did but it felt hot immediately and just flowed so we thought it would be a good way to introduce the new band to the world. Like many of the tracks we have worked on, I heard the music and wrote the lyrics very quickly, almost on the spot. Raid is about every person's spiritual autonomy from the powers that be, regardless of who they are or what their particular struggle is. The band have released their debut single, "Raid," as the kickoff for Hellcat Records' Hellcat Singles Club. Jesse Michaels and Tim Armstrong of Operation Ivy fame have reunited and enlisted the help of Joey Castillo (Circle Jerks) and Spencer Pollard (Trash Talk) to form BAD OPTIX.
0 kommentar(er)
