MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS

from Flipside #36
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS singer David was interviewed on the phone by Al in late October 1982.

As you probably know, M.D.C. are a hardcore punk band who are originally from Texas. They moved to San Francisco about the same time they changed their name to MDC. They have been around for quite some time and originally caught my attention with "John Wayne was a Nazi." This song could have been a stupid bunch of songs just judging by the title - but after listening to the lyrics you could tell this band was thinking about things. Although they were happening in Texas, in L.A. they were just another name for what could be a great band - if they go for it. And go for it they have. They are now totally self supported by the band, they live in the "beer vats" (low cost "punk" housing in an old brewery) and are very ambitious with touring. They just completed a cross country tour playing 56 dates in 91 days and are ready to, and are, doing it again. Besides working for themselves they are trying to set up a record label (to operate much like Dischord) and a club (to be at the Tool and Die in San Francisco). Future projects include films such as a version of "My Family Is A Little Weird" that David thinks he can get shown on some cable network, and also videos of songs, especially "John Wayne Was A Nazi," and live videos of bands that play at their club. Sounds ambitious? It is, but they ARE doing it!

FS: What's going on with the re-release of your album?

David: Well we're just getting the 5000 albums printed and we've run into every problem in the world. Also, our pressing plant went out of business, and then this guy form Alco was gonna do it and then the cover art got stolen. We were on tour at the time and we had to call our artist friend who did it, Larry and he had to re-do it again, and that took two weeks. And then we remixed it with the Dead Kennedys and the mix didn't sound right. We got the test pressing in the mail and oh, we were just unhappy with it and we had them redo it. We never suspected there would be this big of a gap between our record, the record should be out or ready tomorrow and it's going to Faulty. The new 5000 should be out soon!!

FS: And it's on R Radical.

It's on R Radical, we were gonna go with Unicorn but they came in with "Oh we can do for you what we did for Black Flag, we'll put so much into advertising, and you guys should really do this" and then they show us a contract and it didn't have any money for advertising in it - "Oh we promise." Promise! We're signing our life to you for 5 years! Promise!?! I mean we're not a group that just formed in the last 3 months, we've been at this for 3 1/2 years pretty much. Naw. I think we fucked up we just kind of left them on hold, we just said "Well we'll think about it, we're not sure" and they've been sitting with it in the can. So we're just gonna go our own way. They really wing-dinged us, they took us to town and to Ringo Starr's birthday party at Madame Wongs! Ha ha. Goofy kind of stuff. We stayed at her house on top of a, um, Hollywood hills. With Jack Nicholson and Frank Zappa neighbors, you know, this could be you, working with Unicorn, eating barbeques at my house all that. And she (Daphna) is really nice, but they promised us stuff they couldn't come thru with. They acted like everything was on the house and then they say "Oh yeah, you have to pay for all your phone calls and by the way every time you use the studio in the back it's five dollars an hour." And then there were other head trips, I'm really glad we're retaining our independence.

FS: Do you guys get into many problems with your name?

David: Well, yeah, it does weird them out. We played Baltimore with Minor Threat and like 8 police came and helicopters came and a paddy wagon came and they busted four punks and one of them had a "Millions of Dead Cops" shirt on. And I couldn't help but think that the cop leaned on him and his group because he had our shirt on. It made me nervous in some respects, not just for myself but for other people who are into us. People who are digging the message. In weird places we came in as MDC, Calgary Canada I wasn't gonna come in as "Millions of Dead Cops" and a lot of places like Chicago and New York the Mafia is so big that they are putting on all the shows and so they already paid all the cops off. So the cops don't care. That's what has been told to me about Chicago and New York.

FS: Then why did you pick that name, you had to change from the Stains.

David: Right, and we were gonna be the Fatal Stains, we were just thinking of things. After we played here with the Stains at the Cuckoo's Nest we were driving home and we were thinking they were such a great band and we weren't much better than them and they had a jump on the name for a year longer then us - we never knew there was an L.A. Stains... I mean we've always thought small, the "John Wayne Was A Nazi" single we made 300 of them, that's how naive we were, ya know. That's just how Texas was. So... we were like hanging out and we were getting fucked around by the cops and we wrote a song called "Dead Cops" and we went to L.A. and saw the Cuckoo's Nest cops and we were hanging out with Buxf Parrot of the Dicks and he said "Millions of Dead Cops, now that would be a great name for a group." And at this point we were still thinking that we had to keep the Stains - Texas Stains or Tex Stains and it kept on being goofy. Then it was like an inside joke - the MDC Stains, so we had the combination of MDC and Stains. We didn't really change it until the day we were leaving with the Dicks and Big Boys.

FS: That name really says a lot, just how anti-cop are you guys?

David: I don't tell people to go shoot a policeman, but I don't tell them not to. Do what you want to. I'm not throwing bombs, I'm just throwing words and to me Millions of Dead Cops is like a mental image, political poetry! Ha ha. We're not being too facetious in saying that, yet I think there's something real wrong with the police state that we have. One thing that is neat having a name like Millions of Dead Cops, all sorts of people come up to us, unbelievable, with police stories, "Yeah, they killed my brother!" or "they beat this girl silly" (goes thru an impressive list of stories!). So at least people can communicate cause that is going on. We worked with John Brown Anti-Klan Committee in Texas, we set up tables for them and do benefits for them. They monitor police action with the Klan in Texas specifically... After some punks got beat up by police in Austin the Klan meets about 30 miles from Austin and they have like 600 people show up at their rallies... the KKK office in Galvaston sits right off the highway between Houston and Galvaston like it's a post office or something. It's not like in Joe's basement on Tuesday, you know it, it's right there. ...I mean I don't mind having a radical name like MDC, if it's used in the right way. I don't want it to turn into like an Oi thing where you go "Yeah kill a cop ahhh ahhh ahhh." We want to appeal to people on a rational basis.

FS: Do you see a need for cops at all in America?

David: Well you know I think there needs to be what you call peace officers, ya know, II really believe that. Some kind of health safety thing available to society. I think how it's gone about is real wrong. Just what they feed people to believe - it's just what's gone wrong with society, the whole idea of what "American Achievements" is about, they don't want welfare and they don't want abortion - so these people get impregnated and they get stuck with babies and poor people and lower middle class people who can't afford abortions get stuck with babes and have these kids. Their life's ruined and they treat 'em real shitty, they don't get the proper love, the psychology and the sociology of the society is not giving them anything to grow upon. And all these kids are brought up on high sugar diets, I was brought up in Jamaica, Queens and I could see it all my life - people not getting the right diet and that fucking up their minds.

FS: Are you guys vegetarians?

David: Yeah, everyone in the band is a vegetarian. Our roadie and our drummer eat meat if they need it on occasion. The whole idea isn't anyone ever eating a piece of meat again in their life, it's just that the abuse is real sickening. I was driving up the highway and we saw all these chickens going to market and all their necks were broken and they're all dead in the cages. And the whole thing with Burger King - in New York they're boycotting Burger King because of how they bring up cows for meals - they put them in boxes where just their legs stick out, they never see their parents, and they stick them in a dark room where there's 10 thousand slaughtered at a time and they put like a milk tube in their stomach and they like blow them up and kill them. And that's the animal level of it, there's the human level - who gets to eat that protein? Are they trying to make the world more self-sufficient or are they trying to make it a marketplace for their domination?

FS: How do you feel about drugs and stuff like that?

David: We, ahhh, we're not ummm, we do them ha haaaa... but we don't like them to mess around with our trip or our act which means like on the road, going across borders even up until right after we do the show - that's our policy. After the show relaxing is relaxing you know, not into the needle thing at all - I mean we've seen it, we have been there. In Texas it's tempting because we were real bored and we experimented with drugs - out of boredom almost and then the priority became the group - then we couldn't afford them - straight edge came out of economics...

FS: But you can relate to those straight edge people...

David: Oh yeah, real well because they are putting energy straight and forward into the scene... it's not going into that 3 ludes they had or that gram of speed. I've seen people scam onto my guest list and then take money out of their pockets and buy speed with it - I go goddamn, I'm a lower priority than speed! I've seen what drugs can do to the scene. Self control on drugs is a real hard thing. I don't smoke cigarettes, I've never been addicted to anything, I've never been an alcoholic, that's just me - but a lot of people have a hard time with it, and I'm not trying to put them down at all. I'm not anti-drug but I'm just real skeptical, like the saying: Are you using drugs or are drugs using you?

FS: That's the straight edge view...

David: Yeah, I don't think it takes total deprivation.

FS: Tell me about your upcoming tour.

David: Well we may stay either 3 weeks in England or 5 weeks with a week in Germany and a couple days in Belgium and Holland - we leave like November 14 and we'll be back like December 16. I'm gonna try to get a show somewhere in N.Y. or D.C. to try to make a little car fare then go on down the coast to Florida. Then depending we'll go back to Texas then swing back around to L.A. somewhere in around January. We have a new single coming out "Kleptomaniac" on the A and "No Place To Piss" on the B. Oh we have a new song about the Bad Brains called "Pay To Come Along." It's about our trip down to Texas with them where they did indeed call Randy (Big Boys) a "blood clot faggot"... (The whole story about MDC vs. Bad Brains is a long one and we really can't mention it without going into details - I'm sure you all know the gist of it.)