Descendents
The Descendents are an American punk rock band formed in Manhattan Beach, California, in 1977, by guitarist Frank Navetta, bassist Tony Lombardo and drummer Bill Stevenson as a power pop/surf punk band. In 1979, they enlisted Stevenson's school friend Milo Aukerman as a singer, and reappeared as a melodic hardcore punk band, becoming a major player in the hardcore scene developing in Los Angeles at the time. They have released eight studio albums, three live albums, three compilation albums, and four EPs. Since 1986, the band's lineup has consisted of Aukerman, Stevenson, guitarist Stephen Egerton, and bassist Karl Alvarez.
History
Early years, ''Fat EP'', ''Milo Goes to College'', and first hiatus (1977–1984)
In 1977, friends Frank Navetta and David Nolte began writing songs on acoustic guitars with the intention of forming a band. They initially called themselves "The Itch", until Navetta came up with the name "Descendents". By the end of the year they had failed to attract any more band members, so Nolte left to join the Last with his brothers. In late 1978 Navetta, joined by drummer Bill Stevenson, and with Nolte switching from guitar to bass, revitalized the Descendents project. Nolte sang with the group at several of their early performances alongside Navetta, but by the spring of 1979, The Last were becoming more active and he left the Descendents again, being replaced by bassist Tony Lombardo. The lineup of Navetta, Lombardo, and Stevenson recorded the band's debut single at Media Art studios and released it on their own label, Orca Records, named after Stevenson's fishing boat. Navetta sang "Ride the Wild" while Lombardo sang "It's a Hectic World". Nolte produced and mixed the session, and his brother Joe turned the lead guitar level up, resulting in the guitar being very loud in the mix.The band's music at the time was described by Stevenson as a "coffee'd-out blend of rock-surf-pop-punk music The sound consisted basically of Lombardo's hard-driving, melodic bass lines, Navetta's tight guitar riffing, and my 'caffinated' surf beats." Steven Blush, author of American Hardcore: A Tribal History, describes the single as "a blend of Devo-style new wave and Dick Dale-like surf." Ned Raggett of AllMusic describes it as surf-inspired power pop with a New Wave edge: "Not quite Devo if they grew up on the coast, but there's something to that comparison."
After a six-month trial with a female singer, Cecilia Loera, they recruited Milo Aukerman as their new vocalist after Navetta and Lombardo got tired of singing. The addition of Aukerman led the band to write shorter, faster, and more aggressive songs in a hardcore punk style. They later released the Fat EP in 1982. It was a record which established the band's presence in the southern California hardcore punk movement with its short, fast, aggressive songs.
For the recording of their debut album Milo Goes to College in June 1982, the band worked at Total Access Recording in Redondo Beach, California, with Spot, who had also engineered and produced the Fat EP. While still short and fast, the songs on Milo Goes to College were also melodic. Aukerman later reflected: "It's interesting: we started very melodic, then moved to hardcore, but melded the two at a certain point and became melodic hardcore." The album's title and cover illustration referenced Aukerman's departure from the band to study biology at the University of California, San Diego. The illustration was done by Jeff Atkinson, based on earlier caricatures by a high school classmate of Aukerman's named Roger Deuerlein, who had drawn comic strips and posters depicting Aukerman as the class nerd.
A note on the back of the LP read "In dedication to Milo Aukerman from the Descendents", and was signed by the other three members. Aukerman later recalled that the band took his departure in stride:
When I decided to go to university, the guys in the band were pretty hip on it because they knew how big of a nerd I was. Like, "What else would you expect him to do but to go off and be a geek?" I mean, I've got a Ph.D in biochemistry — how uncool is that?
The band continued performing for a time with Ray Cooper on vocals, who would switch to rhythm guitar, when Aukerman made return visits to Los Angeles. At the same time, Stevenson had also joined Black Flag, intending to be in both bands at once but soon finding it too difficult due to Black Flag's touring and recording schedule.
With Aukerman in college and Stevenson in Black Flag, the Descendents went on hiatus from 1983 to 1985. During this time Navetta burned all of his equipment and moved to Oregon, while Cooper and Lombardo performed as the Ascendents.
Reformation, ''I Don't Want to Grow Up'', ''Enjoy!'', ''All'', and second hiatus (1985–1995)
In 1985 Stevenson left Black Flag and he, Aukerman, Cooper, and Lombardo reconvened as the Descendents for I Don't Want to Grow Up, recorded that April at Music Lab studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, with producer and engineer David Tarling and published by New Alliance Records.After three tours in support of I Don't Want to Grow Up, the band recorded Enjoy! in March and April 1986 at Radio Tokyo studios in Venice, California. Drummer Bill Stevenson acted as producer of the album, working with recording engineers Richard Andrews and Ethan James.
The lyrics of "Hürtin' Crüe" derived from a high school classmate of singer Milo Aukerman who had earned a score of 1420 on the SAT, gaining him entry into the United States Military Academy. Gloating about his accomplishment, he sang a taunt with the lyrics "I am better than you / You are a piece of poo / 1420". Aukerman incorporated these lyrics into "Hürtin' Crüe". The cover artwork for Enjoy! was drawn by guitarist Ray Cooper under the pseudonym "Scoob Droolins". Rather than printing the song titles on the reverse of the album's sleeve, the band instead replaced them with various euphemisms for feces.
The band supported Enjoy! with a tour through the Summer of 1986. Following the tour both Carrion and Cooper left the band, and were replaced by Karl Alvarez and Stephen Egerton, respectively, from the Utah band Massacre Guys. In 1987 New Alliance was sold to SST Records, who re-released Enjoy! on cassette and compact disc. The cassette and CD versions added two additional tracks: "Orgofart" and "Orgo 51". "Orgofart" consists entirely of the band members cheering each other on as they fart into recording equipment, a technique also used in "Enjoy", while "Orgo 51" is a heavy metal-influenced instrumental track.
One week later, on Stevenson's birthday of September 10, Stephen Egerton and Karl Alvarez moved from Salt Lake City to fill the vacant guitar and bass positions. All was recorded in January 1987 at Radio Tokyo studios in Venice, California, with recording engineer Richard Andrews and was produced by Stevenson. Dez Cadena sang backing vocals, while Stevenson created the album's cover graphics and Alvarez provided illustrations for the sleeve and liner notes.
The album was themed around the concept of "All", which had been invented by Stevenson and friend Pat McCuistion during a fishing trip on Stevenson's boat Orca in 1980. According to singer Milo Aukerman: "While drinking all this coffee in the midst of catching mackerel they came up with the concept of All — doing the utmost, achieving the utmost. The more they got into it the more it turned into their own religion; it's partly humor, but it's also an outlook on how to conduct your life: to not settle for some, to always go for All." Stevenson described the concept of "All" as "the total extent", and he and McCuistion had quickly written several short songs that would later be recorded by the Descendents, including "All" and "No, All!", written "in a fit of Allular frustration. The songs were only seconds long, but that was all the time we needed to make the point." McCuistion also shared writing credit on "All-O-Gistics", a musical set of commandments for achieving All, including lyrics such as "Thou shalt not commit adulthood", "Thou shalt not partake of decaf", and "Thou shalt not suppress flatulence". In a June 1987 interview with Music magazine, Stevenson elaborated on the "All" concept:
I'm really into "ALL"' and I've waited a long time to unleash the whole concept on people. And now I'm going to do it It's just a way of thinking, in which there are extremes and there is this goal called 'ALL.' It's a way that I created in dealing with achievement and satisfaction and how the two relate. Basically just to avoid stagnation... going for "ALL" and never being satisfied and just wallowing in your own sameness.
Aside from the concept of "All", other songs on the album such as "Coolidge", "Pep Talk", and "Clean Sheets" dealt with themes of broken relationships, while "Iceman" was loosely based on the play The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill. The album was released through SST Records, who had purchased the Descendents' previous label New Alliance Records that year and also re-released all of their previous albums. All was released in LP, cassette, and CD formats, the latter two containing the additional tracks "Jealous of the World" and "Uranus". The band supported the album with a 60-day Spring 1987 tour, followed by the 50-day Summer "FinALL" tour, so-called due to Aukerman's decision to leave the band to pursue a career in biochemistry. Recordings from these tours were used for the live albums Liveage! and Hallraker: Live!. Following Aukerman's departure the band added singer Dave Smalley of Dag Nasty and rechristened themselves All, a change Stevenson claimed he had wanted to make for eight years. "Well, basically, I've been wanting to work with David for a long time; but at the same time, Milo has stuck with me for almost nine years now, so I wouldn't exactly feel right about just continuing to call us the Descendents. In a sense that would be kind of like discrediting Milo's nine years worth of effort. It's kind of like, 'Let the Descendents be my and Milo's sacred thing,' or whatever. Who knows, at some point later on we might decide that we want to get together and record something.
On December 16, 1987, during the recording of the first All album Allroy Sez, Pat McCuistion died when his fishing boat sank during a storm. Stevenson remarked that "He had 15,000 pounds of fish onboard, so I guess you could say he died in heated pursuit of All. He was always the '5th member' of the band, besides being my best friend, next to Milo."