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A dedicated riot of fists, spit and angst follows Pennywise wherever they tour. One of neo-punk's best kept secrets, the Warped Tour participants have sold roughly a tenth as many albums as Long Beach, Calif., neighbors Sublime, yet they continue to draw a loyal, ferocious following that few bands enjoy. |
From the center of a savage Pennywise moshpit, it's difficult to
distinguish this punk outfit from any other with stickered guitars
and chained wallets. In a brief tete-a-tete with Jim
Lindberg, however, the Pennywise vocalist makes a valiant
attempt.
"Instead of dwelling on the negative and trivial things in life, I
think it's important for at least a few bands to try and dig a
little deeper," says Lindberg. "It's important for you to bone up
on your philosophy if you're going to write your own. So, I've been
studying a lot of existentialist thought, and a lot of different
authors that talk about utopia and society."
Such are the heady issues that torment the thirty-one-year-old
surfer from Hermosa Beach, Calif., as Pennywise prepare to enter
the studio on Sept. 29 to record their sixth album of the decade.
Teaming up once again with engineer Darian
Rundall, Pennywise have already written nearly twenty
carpe diem, save-the-planet songs for the as-yet-untitled album,
which will likely hit stores next March. Keeping in tune with their
interests in social issues, Pennywise plan to donate proceeds from
the upcoming album to the Covenant House -- a
national organization to help troubled and homeless teens -- and
the Surfrider Foundation.
Lindberg has already decided on the album's opening track, an
untitled song about drug and alcohol addiction, written about
founding bassist Jason Thirsk, who committed
suicide on July 29, 1996 following a drinking binge. His death came
two months and one day after Sublime frontman Brad
Nowell overdosed on heroin.
"It's so incredibly hard for people who have addictions to be
truthful ... being someone who has gone through this themselves, I
know you come up with so many rationalizations for your abuse that
your life becomes a lie," Lindberg says. "It's important for the
kids to realize that it may seem cool to get into that world, but
99.9 percent of the time it's going to lead to a path of
destruction. You'll lose your friends, your family, your money and
everything that you care about in order to numb your brain for five
seconds."
Pennywise's social and political rhetoric will also likely play out
on "My Own Country" -- a laissez-faire ditty about self-government
in what Lindberg deems Clinton's corrupt era. And then there's
"Anybody's Sky," another new song about the evils of religious
dogma and fanaticism in Northern Ireland, Sudan, Afghanistan and
the U.S.
"These themes are hard to put into a catchy punk song, so we are
definitely not upset if our music does not get embraced by popular
culture outlets," he says. "To a certain extent the last album
[Full Circle] was a little heavy to digest, but we were
going through a heavy time. If you are trying to develop as an
artist as well as a person, those things are going to come out
depending on where you are in your life at the time. Hopefully
there will be a time when we are all completely well adjusted, and
we'll write songs about relaxing ... or something." Yeah, about the
time those Ian McKaye Levi's ads start to
surface.
ANNI LAYNE(September 14, 1998)