Influential California punk band NOFX is coming to town for one last time, Saturday and Sunday. “Forty years, forty cities, forty songs a day,” is the promise of this Final Tourwhich in five weeks will conclude where it all began, in Los Angeles.
“This is perhaps one of the best posters of show “I’ve seen some of the punk scenes I’ve seen in Montreal since I was young,” says Hugo Mudie, author, illustrator and former singer of the band The Sainte Catherines, who will exceptionally return to the stage on Sunday to salute Fat Mike, leader of NOFX and one of the most important figures in the history of American punk.
A historic moment, this NOFX double at the Olympic Park, topping two posters meticulously selected by the group? With the added bonus of legends Circle Jerks (Saturday) and Descendents (Sunday), Vulgaires Machins and The Sainte Catherines? In any case, certainly the most important punk gathering of the year… just after last spring’s Pouzzafest, a festival founded and directed by Hugo Mudie.
He had said he was “retiring” from music, notably in his last work, Crying over bread (published last March by Hurlantes éditeurs), a story whose subtitle is The final chapter of the punk singer. No more music, even solo. “I didn’t want to give concerts anymore, but I’m doing it, here, to please the guys from Sainte Cath, and, quite frankly, a little to be part of history: it will be an important concert. It will be a little like the end of an era that we were lucky to be a part of.”
And NOFX was one of the headliners of that era. Founded in California in 1983 — four years before Green Day, to compare apples with apples — by guitarist Eric Melvin and bassist and singer Mike Burkett, known as Fat Mike, the prolific quartet (it has about fifteen albums) arrived as the breath of fresh air that ignited the Californian punk scene (we would call it ” skate punk »). Punk in Drublic is one of the movement’s flagship albums, released in 1994, the same year as Dookie (Green Day), Stranger than Fiction (Bad Religion), Let’s Go (Rancid) and Smash (The Offspring), all Californian orchestras.
Business opportunities
Fat Mike will also leave his mark as an entrepreneur. S&M Airlines (1989), the band’s second album, would be released on the independent label Epitaph, founded by Rancid guitarist Brett Gurewitz. Some fifteen years after the English punk scene introduced the idea of do-it-yourselfthe Californian punks, themselves, innovate with the idea of do business yourselfto paraphrase: the NOFX leader would go on to found Fat Wreck Chords, which launched over 150 albums as well as the international careers of Lagwagon, Propagandhi, No Use for a Name, Strung Out… and Montrealers The Sainte Catherines.
“Fat Mike was a kind of marketing genius: almost every band that signed to his label became popular around the world,” Hugo says. “It changed my life that one of our albums was released by Fat Wreck, almost 20 years ago.”
Yes, it will be nostalgic, but this music is still not outdated. NOFX is still playing two nights at the Olympic Park, which is a sign that there is still interest!
Released in 2006, the corrosive Dancing for Decadence became the first, and only, album by a Quebec group on Fat Wreck Chords.
“The people from the Fat Wreck camp contacted us to see if we wanted to participate in the concert,” confirms Hugo Mudie, who has maintained ties with Fat Mike, even though The Sainte Catherines officially disbanded in 2012. Mudie is also one of the ten shareholders (along with legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk) of the Punk Rock Museum, founded by Fat Mike and inaugurated in Las Vegas in April 2023. “The old jacket that I wore in concert is on display in the museum,” which brings together a thousand artifacts from the history of punk. “I think I’m the only Quebecer to have one of my objects on display there, and I’m proud of it!”
Memories
Thus, another page in the history of this musical scene will be written at the Olympic Park as two of the most important Quebec groups of the genre will share the stage with the legendary Californians Circle Jerks, founded in 1979 and pioneer of hardcore punk, and especially Descendents, founded in 1977.
“Descendents had an influence on NOFX, which says a lot,” says Hugo Mudie. “They were one of the first bands to have defined this Californian sound: it had a humorous side, another more serious one. A band unique that has always led the way on the punk scene, and that is unanimous among fans and musicians. I have rarely met a musician who did not like Descendents: the sound had such refinement, in the guitar riffs.
Despite the presence on the bill of “young” bands (Béton Armé, Speed Massacre, Taxi Girls, even The Interrupters), is this farewell tour a matter of nostalgia? “I think so,” Mudie admits. “I think that today, in punk, there is a lot of nostalgia, since the scene has had a hard time renewing itself. I think that a new generation is coming – that of my children, for example, who are starting to take an interest in this music.”
“Yes, it will be nostalgic, but this music is not outdated. NOFX is still playing two nights at the Olympic Park, which is a sign that there is still interest!”
NOFX will be at the Olympic Park on August 24 and 25, starting at 1 p.m., with The Sainte Catherines, Vulgaires Machins, Circle Jerks, Descendents and many others.