So here we are, MDC, on the second half of our Destroy Bush and Kill the Cop in Yourself Tour 2005. The tour started in New York City with a free show with Choking Victim in Tompkins Square Park with 3,000-plus people. We are winding our way around the upper Midwest on the way to you, Denver.
And what’s in our stereo? Turbonegro’s “Party Animals” gets a lot of listening, as does Leftover Crack’s “(Expletive) World Trade” along with the Stockyard Stoics’ “Catastrophe.” Next up: Deathcycle, Behind Enemy Lines, Driller Killer from Sweden, Finland’s Riis- tetyt and From Ashes Rise’s “Nightmares.” Victims’ “In Blood” also gets a lot of play.
I’m the vocalist in MDC, and I actually listen to a lot of National Public Radio and try to catch “The Prairie Home Companion” as much as possible. On my headphones, I listen to “The Soul of Healing Meditation,” by Deepak Chopra. This keeps me right and gets me through the day or night. (I’ve just started to meditate over the last year, and this stuff is righteous.)
Being that we’re in a modern world, and that Ron Posner, our guitarist, loves modern gadgets, we have a fully stacked iPod situation with all sorts of oldies in the mix: Johnny Cash’s American box set gets a lot of listening, and so does cheesy mid- ’80s hair-metal such as Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, etc.
Next up: Sepultura, Roorbach and – thanks to Al, our drummer, and his roadie/son/friend, Brian – Marilyn Manson’s “Antichrist Superstar.” Incidentally, our windshield got cracked in the rain late at night on the highway while Marilyn was telling us to repent and warning us that the time has come for bitter things.
The other roadie, Wes, favors his Cradle of Filth, Slayer, etc. But I want to shout out to Witch Hunt, The Goons, Life Crisis, Retching Red, Instant (Expletive), No Red Flags, Molotov Cocktail and Dr. Know, the latter of whom we’ve played with multiple times on this tour.
So what rings in our ears from years past? Being from Austin, Texas, we were a band that was weaned on that early Texas scene: The Big Boys, The Offenders, The Inserts, Perverted Popes. As we moved to San Francisco, we fell in love with Gary Floyd’s Sister Double Happiness, the (Expletive) Ups, Sick Pleasure, Bad Posture and Flipper. I have a country-folk streak and really love Michelle Shocked, Billy Bragg, Chumbawamba (not exactly country) and Crass.
Mikey Donaldson, the bassist, has a deep metal streak from Deep Purple to Motorhead to Manowar. Al Schvitz, the drummer, and myself love the infamous dykecore band Tribe 8. Al is a big Gil Scott-Heron fan, and he’s also into The Last Poets as well as King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Negativland also gets play late at night.
Millions of Dead Cops plays the Bluebird Theatre with Life Crisis, Call Sign Cobra and The Hacks on Saturday night. Tickets, $8-$10, are available via TicketWeb.
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David Dictor, frontman for the seminal, political 25-year-old punk rock band Millions of Dead Cops, is well aware of how offensive his band’s name is. And his politics, which tilt way to the left, are equally fierce. Here he raps about rocking out to Turbonegro, Deepak Chopra, Johnny Cash and “The Prairie Home Companion.”
