AB: Assholes.
KC: And then it's like, "Oh, I wish I never met this guy!" I'll tell you right now if one of the guys who came to play on one of our records was a prick, fuck 'em, they'd be out of there. I wouldn't want to hear them on our record. I don't care who it is. We've had a lot of&ldots;especially the old British punk kind of guys that were kind of dicks. It's like they think they're The Who or something.
AB: They're jaded, unfortunately.
KC: There are plenty of guys from old British bands who we love and we're friends with, but I've met a lot of people I wish we never met.
AB: It's the Bo Diddley syndrome, even though he wasn't jaded. You hear about that, the forefathers of like blues, '50s rock, whatever. They never made any money, then everybody else came and did what they did and made the millions of dollars and the forefathers went to their graves penniless. There's a little bit of that with the British punk scene, I think. Not that there's a huge bunch of money to be made in the punk world, but punk rock has changed. It's apples and oranges. To me, punk rock was always something to remain small. I remember getting bummed out when Suicidal Tendencies was on Miami Vice. All of a sudden, everybody was familiar with the Pepsi song ("Institutionalized"). I had been into Suicidal Tendencies for years, and all of a sudden the jocks that called me a fag for having an earring were going, "Oh, dude, the Pepsi song is so cool." Of course, I took it out on Suicidal Tendencies. I went "Fucking Suicidal Tendencies! You betrayed us! You betrayed that trust!' I think there's a difference between now and then. That's not to say I'm jaded about that, I'm just noting the difference. The other day, I saw a Subaru commercial with a Pogues song in it, and I was psyched for the Pogues. 15 or 20 years ago, the response from me would've been completely different. I would've been like, "Oh, fuckin' sell-outs!'
KC: That still exists. There are people who feel that way about us.
AB: But with the Departed thing, when our song got in a major motion picture, there wasn't that backlash against us. Our fans were happy for us, generally. Obviously, there were cases of people saying "Fuck that!" But most people were like, "Dude, I was so pumped when I saw that."
KC: It's like the rock 'n roll of this generation. It's a different animal, and we never subscribed to all that anyway. Not that we were out trying to make it, but we never subscribed to this&ldots;what you're supposed to have to be to be punk rock. One of our first singles was a pro-police song. I've had more than my fair share of bad run-ins with the police, but I also have had a lot of friends that were cops, and every show someone played a "fuck the police" song. We were like, "Let's do something to stir the pot."
AB: And that song's about the neighborhood cop, and knowing the family, not the cops that would beat the crap out of kids because they had mohawks.
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