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From the Editor's Floor: Street Dogs
Alternative Press - Rob Ortenzi on 12/23/08 @ 3:47 PM - altpress.com
STREET DOGS vocalist MIKE McCOLGAN has a lot to say--so much, in fact, that we couldn't fit a ton of what he told us into the Street Dogs feature in AP 247. --Brendan Manley
On putting on a quality live show:
"I prefer when bands go for broke and give you everything they have, because people take time and money out of their lives to come see you. Things aren't the greatest they've ever been fiscally; people are worried about their jobs and money. When people come to see you and they make that choice to take money out of their pocket to see you, it's incumbent upon you to just go up there and go for broke, and kick a whole through the venue and play with everything you have. And if you're not doing that, you have no right to be in this business. I know it sounds dramatic or over the fucking top, but that's how I feel."
On the state of punk rock:
"Last September, we played with NOFX, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and the Bouncing Souls at the first annual Punk Springs Festival at Red Rocks amphitheater in Denver, Colorado. It was pretty amazing for a handful of punk bands to look out and see 10,000 people moshing in an amphitheater; punk rock's come a long way. It's still viable, and it's still alive, and I would definitely tell the guy at the graveyard to hold off on throwing the dirt over it. It always finds a way to pop out of the grave and regain another life."
On the track "Rebel Song" from State Of Grace: "'Rebel Song,' was trying to deal with that sense of defeat that was in the air during those eight years when Bush was President. I think a lot of people at the end were just resigned that things suck, they're going to suck for a couple more years, and hopefully, come the next election, we'll get a change, and fortunately we did. I think with 'Rebel Song' I was just trying to say, 'hey, at some level, everybody can make a difference in their own life or somebody else's life, by getting off the bench of life, getting involved, finding something that compels you to do something, and getting in there.'"
On the election of Barack Obama:
"I felt relief. I was going to consider staying in Europe if John McCain won. [Laughs.] I wasn't going to go home. I feel good. I feel like the whole world smiled for that moment. There was a collective majority sigh of relief from the world, and wow, there's an intelligent, progressive leader who has a vision and wants to work domestically and internationally. I feel great about it. I feel like a new day has dawned, and I'm really excited. I know times are tough and it will take a while for things to come around, but I believe. I'm a believer in Barack Obama; I voted for him, and I'm excited. I'm sure that seems to be the overwhelming sentiment here in Europe and back home in the U.S. as well, with all my family and friends who I've talked to."
On the economic recession:
"[Obama's] got a grip on what is wrong, and what it will take to turn the corner. I believe in two years' time, during his initial administration, that things will get better. It will take two years for things to turn around fiscally, and things to get more solvent, and the real estate market to rebound, and the market to get more faith, and see higher yields and things of that nature."
On his former band, Dropkick Murphys:
"I'm proud of the group. I believe the group have moved on and grown each step of the way with successive efforts--Gang's All Here, Sing Loud! Sing Proud!, Blackout, Warrior's Code, Meanest Of Times. I think their body of work is beyond impressive and their live show is insane. They've done well. I congratulated [Dropkick Murphys frontman] Al Barr just before we went on tour--the Dropkicks had received a gold record from the mayor of Boston, for 'I'm Shipping Up To Boston,' for more than 500,000 copies sold. He told me to remember to bring my shower shoes to Europe, and he's fluent in German, so I wanted to take some German lessons with him as well, because I always massacre the languages over there and that's one that I particularly massacre. I was a soldier [in Germany]--I have conversational skills, but I'm not fluent. We joked a little about that as well. Those guys are amazing, and continue to grow and evolve and get better. I'm just happy that there's great relations between the two bands, and when we did our first record, Savin Hill, they'd come in free and sang on 'Stand Up.' We were just hanging out over Dunkin Donuts coffee, and reminiscing about Bruiser days, and early DKM days, and stuff like that. There's just a lot of mutual respect and things like that that exist between both bands."
On joining Hellcat:
"It feels good to be on a label that gets the pedigree of the band, gets the composition of the band, knows that it's a new band and gives you full artistic freedom. And the people who own the label--Brett Gurewitz, Tim Armstrong, Chris LaSalle--own it, operate it, work at it. They've slept on floors, lived on $5 a day, cut their teeth, went from the bottom to the top, and haven't forgotten about the bottom, and haven't forgotten about the grassroots approach to music, bring bands along, and being more concerned about music, more so than fashion. That's been Epitaph and Hellcat in a nutshell, and Anti- as well, which is another imprint on the label that's phenomenal--you have Nick Cave and Tom Waits. It feels good to be a part of that. It feels good to be on a label that Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros were on. I wouldn't be involved in music were it not for Joe Strummer and the Clash, and hearing 'Clash City Rockers' erupt out of my stereo. That changed everything for me--that moment when I heard 'Clash City Rockers.' It changed everything. At that point in time, when I heard that, I wanted to be a singer."
On the track "The General's Boombox":
"There was some catharsis in that. In December of 2002 when [Joe Strummer] had passed away, I think I was the most busted up I'd ever been about a musician passing away. I felt like, clearly the guy was iconic and legendary and humble and grounded and a great singer and a great songwriter. It felt good to try and respectfully and humbly allude to that in song. I hope we did him proud. That's all I can say."
On the track "Kevin J. O'Toole" from State Of Grace:
"That's my uncle. The strangest thing about that song is it's overwhelmingly personal, if you put it under the microscope and look at it lyrically, but when we play the song live, in the U.S. and Europe, people seem to be taking the song on as their own. The part of the chorus, 'Tonight, tonight, tonight we toast to you,' I think that's the part of the chorus that's universal. People can apply that to whomever they may have lost, be it family, friend, loved one, and it makes sense to them, and it resonates and translates and there's a point of identification. That's the strangest thing of the song. I've always thought, 'Wow. This is super specific,' but that's the song people seem to really gravitate toward live. It's a heavy one. We were in the middle of pre-production when I found he had passed, and it hit me really hard, because he was an influential figure in my life and someone I respected, and probably one of the biggest reasons I wanted to get on the fire service. He had been a member for 30 years, and retired as a captain in the fire investigations unit. I just wanted to do him right and eulogize him, and that was my way to do something respectful for him. It's funny the way people have latched onto it."
On the track "Elizabeth":
"We had an acoustic song that was going nowhere. When I was growing up, my grandmother was a big part of my and my brother Donald's life. She really took after us, and watched out for us when we went to grammar school, because both of my parents were working. We would go to grammar school, eat lunch there, my father would pick us up and drive us home, and my mother would come back from work. She was an amazing woman--so selfless, so giving, so kind, so appreciative. I remember when the song was going nowhere I said to myself, 'Why not go there? Why not go to that place? Why not sing about that?' I feel like as a singer, when you're singing songs, if it doesn't mean something to you personally, if it's not in your body, mind, soul and spirit, the vocal performance is going to suffer. When you do a song, it has to be personal on some level; somewhere inside of you it has to strike a chord. That strikes a chord with me for a lot of reasons."
On Boston punk:
"It's got that gritty, salty, shooting from the hip, no pretension, in your face, here we are--deal with it, whether you like it or not, punch to it. The bands I grew up respecting--the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the Bruisers, Slapshot, Jerry's Kids, Gang Green, the Threes-they had that. Those were the influences that were pervasive to the other bands--Dropkicks, Unseen, Far From Finished, the Welch Boys, Tommy And The Terrors, Street Dogs--that stuff gets into you. I think the Boston bands are always fraternal toward one another, always help each other above and below the radar screen, and the influences are there either directly or indirectly. The work ethic is strong. That's the M.O.: You work hard, you do the best you can, and you let the chips fall where they may."
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I LOVE Mike McColgan and the Street Dogs put on an AWESOME show. Our love for Joe Strummer makes us all the more compatible. I really hope to meet Mike again and give him a BIG OL' HUG!...again!