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Over the course of an unbelievable twelve years and change, San Jose, California-bred quartet No Use For A Name have honed their slashing, melodic sound. While any number of punk subgenres have blown up only to burn out, NUFAN’s six releases sketch out a picture of a band that knows exactly what it likes, and only gets better at doing it. The latest, More Betterness, is undeniably their best to date, fusing hardcore-influenced intensity with solid, tuneful songcraft.
“Punk rock is what we were brought up on, and we love to intertwine that with melody,” explains vocalist/guitarist Tony Sly. “That’s all we know, and we just try to make a better album each time, and hopefully people will stick around. I think the reason this band has longevity is because we stay true to our sound, but keep evolving. Every record sounds a little different, but we don’t want to jump on any bandwagons, things that are just the flavor of the month, the summer thing.”
Since 1987, NUFAN have continuously refined their sound without abandoning their roots. The manic energy which characterized early offerings like the self-released debut Incognito and The Daily Grind, the band’s first disc for famed indie imprint Fat Wreck Chords, remains intact, augmented by Sly’s ever-improving sense of structure, dynamic, and melody.
“I think that writing is a really slow learning process for me, and that’s why it’s so [evident] on the albums,” he posits. “Knowing what not to do in a song is just as important as knowing what not to do when you’re writing. That’s one thing that I’ve learned in the past couple of years, knowing what not to do. I’m not a big music theory guy, I don’t read music or write on paper, but in the last few years I’ve been identifying with chords and scales. So I think maybe that has a lot to do with why the albums have seemed more melodic. It’s just the process, it’s something that you never master, but it feels like every record, I learn something new about writing.”
This compelling combination of ambition and old-school reverence (along with the requisite ceaseless touring schedule, naturally) has gradually earned No Use a massive, devoted underground following, as well as the respect of their peers. The band has been tapped regularly to play huge festival dates, and is often the first-choice support act of punk’s more household names – they opened on a sizable chunk of The Offspring’s tour behind the mildly popular Smash album. Now Sly, drummer Rory Koff, bassist Matt Riddle, and new guitarist Dave Nassie are heavily buzzed. And they’re booked into thousand-plus capacity venues, headlining Fat Wreck’s biggest spring/summer jaunt. And they’ve recently put out their most ‘accessible’ disc yet, at a time when punk rock’s profile is such that a certain birthday-suited trio can command arena shows. And, oh yeah, former guitarist Chris Shiflett is currently in some little pop band called Foo Fighters, a fortunate turn of events which saw the words “of No Use For A Name” printed in virtually every music magazine in the world at some point during the last six months.
“I’ve wondered about that. As far as people going ‘hey, I’ve never heard of No Use For A Name, I’m a Foo Fighters fan, I think I’ll go buy their album’, that’s definitely possible,” remarks Sly, regarding Shiflett’s Foo residency, and its impact. “I’d like to find out, and I don’t know if there’s any way to, except to talk to kids, especially kids that say our new album’s good, but they haven’t heard any of the older stuff yet. Those are the kids to ask, and that might most likely be the case.
“The thing that I’m stoked on, if that is happening, which is fine, it’s just another outlet for us, another form of advertising, let’s say, that doesn’t cost any money, is that when they do find out about us, and go to the store to buy the new record, it’s not a shitty record. It’s one of my favorite No Use For A Name records.”
The aforementioned factors have spawned the notion that NUFAN may be the next punk act to BREAK OUT, to BREAK THROUGH, to BREAK, well, something. When asked if the idea of Big Rawk Status grates against his mores, Sly is equivocal.
“I thought the whole big punk thing was going to be really short-lived, these few bands being huge, playing arenas, it wasn’t going to last very long. But for some bands it did, Offspring, and now Blink-182, and it lasted for Green Day. So I think if that sort of thing came our way, it wouldn’t be something we’d be able to turn away. It would happen, and I don’t think bands in that situation have too much control over who they’re playing for. If people started calling us sellouts, whatever, right, we’ve been doing this for twelve years,” he laughs.
“We like where we’re at right now. It took us so long to get here, and it’s not something you really notice a whole lot, it just kind of happens. And everybody’s really happy with the new record, and everybody’s really happy with the increase in attendance lately. So we’re just, ‘everything’s going really well right now, let’s not fuck it up’. That’s the only thing we have in mind right now, we don’t really think about shooting for the big time, or whatever. I mean, we made a video, but…”
Ah, yes, the video. For ‘Why Doesn’t Anybody Like Me?’, from More Betterness. Aired approximately three times on MTV. Sly doesn’t feel any lighter in the integrity department for having made one, and why should he?
“It’s not like it’s going to go into heavy rotation on MTV-“
But it COULD, though, right?
“Oh, yeah, right, sure, it COULD, and if it did, I guess that’s just the kind of thing you’d have to play by ear. Our video was very, very inexpensive to make. And that’s the sort of thing; ‘do you want to spend a lot of money on something that’s never gonna get played?’ Or maybe get played once, on 120 Minutes, like ours did. But the thing we were thinking was, we can make a video, and use it for the Fat Wreck Peep Show 2 video compilation, we could use it for promotion in Europe, because Europe will play it, and some Canadian stations might play it. And if the US wants it, then fine. So it was just, sure, why not?”
The realization that they only have to answer to their own ideals is a big part of NUFAN’s success. It has allowed them to filter out peripheral distractions and focus on hammering out airtight, substantial rock and roll. It has also afforded them the freedom to do things another punk band, encumbered by scene dogma or their own punk-ass self-image, wouldn’t. Like appearing in some horrible TV show, strictly for the hell of it, for instance.
“There’s this show, it’s called Sorority. It’ll probably never be on TV, it’s so bad. I have the videocassette of the pilot we were on. It’s like a cheesy show about these two sororities who are rivals; there’s a good one and a bad one, and the bad sorority is having a party, and No Use For A Name is the band that’s playing at the party. We’re in it for about five seconds. It was so completely something we would never do that we had to do it,” divulges Sly.
“I never thought of it in terms of, ‘oh, maybe someone will see this, and we’ll get huge’. It was just something that took literally like an hour. I just thought it was funny. If we ever got the chance to play at the Peach Pit on 90210…it was like the poor man’s version of that.”
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