Punk rock: Vandals style

The Vandals from Los Angeles rock out with socially responsible, satirical punk. GRAHAM REID talks to the band's bassist-lawyer Joe Escalante.

Joe Escalante is bassist in So-Cal's long-running punk outfit the Vandals, owns the Kung Fu label which has Blink 182 and the Ataris on its books, and is a practising lawyer. He's also into bullfighting.

"I got into it about two years ago. We live 90 minutes from the Mexican border and my father is Mexican, so we grew up around it. I love it. You go into the ring with an animal and the goal is to get as close as possible and tame the bull and lead it through where the danger and the art are mixed together."

So, he's a punk rockin', bull fightin', businessman lawyer — "Yeah, a dying breed. Not too many of us around any more."

And in that rejoinder you have the essence of the Vandals, who formed in LA over a decade ago and raised the banner of psychotic, humorous punk. Their latest album — with matador artwork — is Look What I Almost Stepped In and their previous was Hitler Bad, Vandals Good.

Yet by being older and educated, the Vandals aren't anarchic, they are socially responsible. In Mom and Dad they tell wayward kids to thank their parents for putting up with them.

"Ninety per cent of the people we talk to are 16-years-old and have the same story — 'I hate my home town, this place sucks, my parents won't let me pierce my nose.' We look at them and say things like, 'You don't know how good you have it.' And they don't," he laughs.

The band have learned that their young following has a healthy disregard for rock history. "They want to hear something new, they want it done really well and they want it often."

The Vandals are something of an LA punk supergroup: guitarist Warren Fitzgerald is a noted producer, and drummer Josh Freese is in A Perfect Circle and is a session drummer whose credits include Paul Westerberg, Guns'n'Roses, Devo and Chris Cornell.

The band has been an enjoyable hobby and Escalante spends about 60 per cent of his time on Kung Fu records and 10 per cent on legal stuff with his two business partners.

He has no trouble reconciling his legal business with punk rock. He says his generation rejected the mainstream music industry and now helps bands do the same because he empathises with their ideals.

"Without me they are stuck in the mainstream legal world, which is not a good deal for punk bands." he says.

"People think a high-powered lawyer is going to make a difference but it's the songs. The worst lawyer can get you a great deal if you have the songs. People are obsessed with copyrighting songs and who is going to steal what.

"I always tell them if at least two people aren't fighting over your songs, they aren't good enough. All the bands we've signed work on their songs. In the Kung Fu and Vandals' world it's all about the songs.

"Oh, and the lead singer has got to be cute."

But it helps to have a bass-playing lawyer?

"You got it."

* The Vandals play on the Waxed Tour at Matakana on Tuesday January 2, North Harbour Stadium on Saturday January 6 and at New Plymouth's Mill on Wednesday January 3.