Words: Miljan Milekić
Looking back at pioneers of skate punk culture, it doesn’t get much further than JFA. The pioneers, legends, and everything in between, the band is synonymous with the early days of punk rock and skateboarding alike. Starting in 1981, and still going strong in 2023, they recently released their brand new album ‘Last Ride,’ once again sharing their unique blend of punk, skate, and surf music. We were lucky enough the catch up with singer Brian Brannon and talk about the new record, early days, and evolution of skateboarding and punk alike.
Thanks for finding the time to catch up with us! So, how does it feel to finally have a new record out after like a decade?
Brian: It feels good. We’ve had a lot of these songs that we’ve been working on for a while, and everything came together. We also played a lot, mostly locally, so we haven’t had a real chance to just sit down and record. But, like you said, a decade is a long time for a record. You know, some of my favorite bands, most bands, I only like their first, maybe their second record. And I feel like it’s because when you’re a new band, you have your whole lifetime to write your songs and get your thoughts together. Then you put out an album, and it’s great because of all that time that went into it.
And then, next thing you know, six months or a year later, the record company says you gotta start working on another one. So you don’t have as much time to put into it, and you just throw stuff together. So, this one took some time. Like a good whiskey, sitting in the barrel for a while, getting all the flavors. It definitely touches on a lot of different aspects of our lives. We’ve always been big skateboarders, so there’s a bunch of songs about skateboarding. We surf too, so there are a couple of references to that. And then just the everyday punk rock existence.
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And how happy are you with the feedback for the record so far?
Brian: People like it, and I love it. (laughs) It covers a lot of ground. It sounds like our old stuff but with our new stuff, and it has a variety. Ever since our first full-length album, we have been playing surf music as well as straight-ahead punk. And we like to keep it interesting, to mix it up. We go all over the place. Our influences range from surf music to punk, to funk, and rock and roll. I mean, I listen to some country songs sometimes. (laughs)
For us, that’s what punk is all about. You don’t have to sound a certain way. If somebody’s telling us we have to sound or look a certain way, that’s when we’re gonna break out the weird songs, just to mess with ’em, you know? (laughs) We did it since our early years, from like ’84. No, I’m gonna wear my Paisley shirt – not everything’s your skinhead and your leather jacket. It’s not what it’s about. In Phoenix, where we came up, the early punk scene was all over the place. We had a great art industrial band. We had the early Meat Puppets. We had a band called Killer Pussy, with this tall Amazon woman singing about ‘Teenage Enema Nurses In Bondage.’ We had Frank Discussion and The Feederz. It was all over the place, and there was no uniform. There was no requirement on how you had to sound.
And because, at that time, punkers were the minority, we were actively discriminated against. We were arrested, had bottles thrown at our heads, the whole thing. So, if someone was outside that norm, we were glad to embrace them. It’s not like today, where everybody’s a punker – which is cool. But back then, you couldn’t just go and buy something – you had to make it. And because you had to do that, you had to, kind of, invent yourself. Nothing against what’s going on today – it’s good to see that it’s big and that bands are getting the recognition they deserve. But there are also the Internet commandos that’ll tell you that punk must be this or that, and because you do this, you’re not punk. No. Punk is whatever we said it was gonna be.
And how hard was it for you to bring something new, and mix it up, but keep the JFA flavor? You have been a band for so long, and, on one hand, if you change too much, you can alienate some of your fans, but if you don’t mix it up, you may come across as lazy, and some fans may see it as repeating or recycling. Do you even think about that balance, or do you just go with what you want to listen to, and what you want to play?
Brian: We just naturally do what we wanna do. If we think the song’s too slow, we’re gonna speed it up. If it sounds too much like something that we or somebody else did, we’re gonna mix it up. But if it’s something weird and out there, but it fits and we’re digging it, we’re gonna go for it, man. That’s kind of how we’ve always been. Other bands – they might have a certain genre.
I mean, we’re definitely skate punk – ’cause we’re all skaters, and when we started the band, there wasn’t enough music to skateboard to. In the early ‘80s, it was still arena rock, like Journey or Fleetwood Mac. You’d hear that kind of music at the skate park, and you can’t really skate to that stuff. It’s not inspirational. So that’s why we played fast and hard music, to get in the mood and go hard out there, skate pools and stuff. But after the session, you mellow out, so you need some surf music. I like to listen to blues after I’m done skating. Get ramped up, and then ease on out of it.
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Almost every song on the record seems to be an homage to something or tells a story. Where did that come from, and how did you approach the process of putting it all together, as it is not something we often see on punk records?
Brian: That’s a good point. I think storytelling is so good and important, and I think we just naturally gravitate to it. These are things that happen to us, that affect us, so we’re gonna write songs about them. Like, ‘Blood On My Board’ is about surfing out here at Huntington Beach, and people just getting in my way. About people being rude and not showing proper respect out there. So, the thesis of the song is – “Hey, I don’t want your blood on my board. It doesn’t look good. So, just get outta my way, quit being a kook, and lemme come through. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to clean up your blood off my board, and I don’t want.” (laughs) You know, that was, kind of, going through my head.
There’s a song called ‘Motörhomeless,’ which is another surfing reference. It’s funny because a lot of people, when they hear us play surf music or talk about surfing, they’ll refer to the song ‘Beach Blanket Bongout,’ where one of the lines is “Surf punks, we’re not / Skateboard, we do.” That is true, but the reference is more towards the band Surf Punks who were, kind of, new wavy at the time, and kind of kooks. (laughs) We’re all about surf-style skateboarding, and to get real surf style in your skateboarding, it helps to go out there and surf. But ‘Motörhomeless’ is about this guy who passed away, named Ray Ray. He was homeless, but he had a Winnebago motor home. So he would park at Walmart – they will let you park overnight with your RV, and then, every day, he would drive to the beach. He would get the prime parking spot, first thing in the morning, and he would just have the beach all to himself. That was his, his front yard, you know? So, that’s what that song’s about.
‘Badlands’ is about… You know, skateboarding is constantly evolving. There’s always new tricks and new ways of looking at things. So that song is about meeting a guy at the skate park, who just wants to go back to the old-school style. Which is great, but what I like in skateboarding right now, is that there’s a combination of the old school and the new school, and there’s respect across the board. And that’s really good. For a while, when street skating first came out, it was like – (mocking) “Oh, no, you guys are old. We don’t want anything to do with you!” And now, it’s just respect.
And speaking of that storytelling aspect, you decided to translate it to your videos as well. There are a few that I would like to hear more about, but let’s talk about ‘Stage Dive’ first, as I really like the concept. How did that one come about?
Brian: Oh, thank you. So yeah, that’s another story. I can’t think of any songs that aren’t a story on this album, to be truthful with you. But that song is based on my own experiences doing stage dives for over 30, well, over 40 years of being a punk rocker. So I’ve done a couple of stage dives here and there, and one of ’em, about eight years ago, was in Phoenix. I kinda threw my legs up and came down backwards on people. But the only problem was there were no people to catch me, so I went straight to my head, cracked my head a little bit, got knocked out, and there was a pool of blood.
So that song – if you look back at the glory days in the eighties, like the cover of the Wasted Youth album ‘Reagan’s In,’ there’s this guy doing just humongous backflip. He’s got a Wasted Youth sticker on his jeans, and he’s probably 20 feet above the crowd. And that picture was taken by Ed Colver, a good friend of ours who also took the cover photos for this album. We also had a compilation out on Jello Biafra’s label Alternative Tentacles called ‘We Know You Suck,’ and there was a drummer of Uniform Choices doing a stage dive. And he had a big JFA on his jeans. He looked like he was about 13.
But anyway, that song’s about all the different things you can stage dive. Being up there and the bouncer’s coming to get you. He’s gonna kick your ass for being on stage, so you jump the hell off before he can get you, you know? So for the video, I wanted to do something cool that really showed what stage diving and slam dancing were about. Not moshing, but slam dancing. And who better to reach out to than Ed Colver, ’cause he took all the photos? He was pretty much known for stage dive photos. So I hit him up like – “Hey Ed, we’re doing a video. Could we use your photos? – Yeah, absolutely.” That’s what we try to do when we’re putting something out – go for the best. Like, what’s the most bitchiest thing we could do? Let’s start with that! Let’s hit up Ed Colver to see if we could use his 1980s stage dive photos for our ‘Stage Dive’ video. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. Don’t die wondering! (laughs)
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I am also very interested in what you did with ‘Desert Pipes,’ and ‘Fort Point.’ Both songs are instrumental and different from each other, but along with the videos, they both tell special stories. And as someone who was born in 1989, and grew up in Eastern Europe, I love hearing stories of skateboarding and punk origins from the other side of the world. Can you tell me more about it?
Brian: Sure, so let’s talk about ‘Desert Pipes’ first. Back in the mid to late seventies, they put in this big canal from the Californian border with Arizona all the way into Phoenix. And, wherever this canal went under a freeway or a river, they had to put in pipes. They also had to put in pipes to siphon the water down through the mountains. So, you would be driving to Phoenix from California – in fact, our guitar player, Don, was driving on Interstate 10 – and you look over, and there are these 24, 28-foot pipes. They were right there, and you’re like – “Well, who put ’em there? Space alien? How’d they get there?”
It was like a dream come true for a lot of skateboarders to see that. And a lot of our friends from Arizona actually skated them. I didn’t skate those, but I skated a lot of other ones. But these huge pipes in the middle of the desert, it was like the Mecca, you know? And that song is a tribute to that. You would have to jump a fence, run, make friends with the security guard, whatever you gotta do. And what’s funny about that video – on our untitled album, we had a song called ‘Pipe Truck,’ which was a combination of ‘Pipeline’ by The Chantays, the old surf band, and ‘Police Truck’ by the Dead Kennedys. But ‘Pipe Truck’ also refers to something you see in the ‘Desert Pipes’ video, which is – a pipe truck. These pipes, like I said, are 24 feet tall, and pretty hard to pick up with just a forklift, right? So this truck would drive through through the pipe, and then it would have, like a shell, that would open out and pick up the pipe. And then, it would just keep driving and take it wherever they needed it to go. So there’s actually a pipe truck in the ‘Desert Pipes’ video, referring back to that old song.
So, the video was taken by Ping – Steve Pingleton, the documentation expert extraordinaire for early Phoenix skateboarding. So, again, for that song, it was like – “Well, let’s do a video. What would be the best thing to do? Let’s hit up Ping, maybe he’ll let us use his great footage.” And he was like – “Yeah, sure. No problem. I’ll put it together for you.” So, you know, the video shows the early ‘70s skateboarding, and obviously, the higher you get, the better and the gnarlier you get over vertical, right? So, nine o’clock is just straight vertical, 10 o’clock is more, and you’re starting to get weightless coming down. And obviously, no one’s gonna go 12 o’clock. So we were really happy to do that one.
Fort Point is a surf spot in San Francisco, right by the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a very picturesque, but kind of dangerous place to surf. San Francisco’s is part of what’s called the “Red Triangle,” which refers to sharks. The seals, I think, mate at Bolinas Bay, then hang out at the Farallon Islands, on their way to where they have their babies. So it’s an actual triangle and San Francisco’s right in the middle of it. And then, if you look at San Francisco Bay, it’s attached to San Pablo Bay, all of this water comes through this narrow strait, which is the Golden Gate, whenever the tide is changing.
We surf there, Don and I, and one day, the waves were so big. The water goes around the point and makes a 270-degree turn, so, most of the time, people are on the inside of the point. You can go around – under or by the Golden Gate Bridge, like me and Don did, but when you do, the waves are so big. So we were out there, looking at the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. And we saw some seals out there. We saw a woman getting caught in the rip of all that water coming out. She was trying to pat paddle one way and going super-fast the other way. There was a big old freighter coming in. We saw a guy on a boogie board, dressed as the Grim Reaper, he had a scythe on there! (laughs) Like, don’t rip off that dude, man, he’ll cut your head off. (laughs) One of these days I’m gonna write a song called ‘Death Rides a Boogie Board!’
So, that video was shot by this guy, Pete Koff. He films a lot of surfing in Ocean Beach, San Francisco area, which is an intense place to surf. Some really good waves, but intense. And then, you’ll see Team Pierre in it. Pierre is an old buddy of mine, we used to surf at Ocean Beach all the time. We’d be the only guys out there. We would drift for miles, ’cause the current’s so strong, and waves just so big. So, I hit up Pete, to see if he can get some footage of Pierre to put in this. And Pierre was once in a Thrasher video, eating crabs at Fort Point. He was poking the crabs out underneath the rocks and just popping them into his mouth and needing them raw. And everyone was all “Ew!” (laughs) So, Pierre blessed us with some crab-eating in there, too. It’s kind of a tribute to Pierre, and all the surfers in San Francisco.
All the skaters in San Francisco, too. I lived out there for about seven years. I worked at Thrasher Magazine as a music editor, art director, and staff writer for a while. I used to go out at night, find a bar at the top of the biggest hill, drink until it closed, and then come skateboarding down the hill with my buddies. So, yeah, San Francisco’s got a lot of history.
And Thrasher is still alive.
Brian: Yeah. And, you know, I was on the cover of Thrasher twice, even before I went to work there. In April ’87 and April ’89.
Both before I was even born! (laughs)
Brian: Yeah! (laughs)
JFA is widely considered to be one of the first, if not THE first skate punk band ever. At the time, did you have any idea that what you do would spark something new and influence the whole culture in the next 20, 30, or 40 years?
Brian: No, but also, I wanna give The Big Boys credit. They were a Texas punk rock band – they were playing before us, and they all skated. So, they were definitely the first, but I think we were more in-your-face with skateboarding. We started the band to play skateboard music, just because there wasn’t enough out there. But you could definitely skate to The Big Boys’ music, too, and we did. So, I just wanted to give them the credit that’s due to them. Great guys, whenever we went out to Texas, they would show us the greatest hospitality, and we would return it when they came back to Phoenix.
But for us, when we started in Phoenix, it was not what you would consider a small town, but it was a small scene, especially for the skateboarders who liked punk rock. So we had our own crew of skaters from the High Roller Skatepark, which was our local park, and we skated pools together. And hardcore music was new in Phoenix when we started. You know, people would be slam dancing, and the club owner would shut off the power, kick us all out, and call the cops, starting a riot. We got banned for life from pretty much every club we played back then.
So there was no sense that we were establishing something, or doing something that’s gonna be around forever. We just did what we liked. We were listening to the bands from Southern California – our guitar player, Don, who started the band was from out here originally. T.S.O.L., Circle Jerks, early Black Flag, Adolescents, Flyboys, The Crowd, Weirdos…, all those bands were big influences. And also English bands The Damned, The Jam, The Clash. And we just wanted to play music, that our friends could skate to, ’cause there just wasn’t enough.
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Being in it from the early days, how do you see skateboarding today? On one hand, it feels like it is finally getting accepted, and skaters are not treated like public enemies as much as they used to, it seems like it’s finally getting the respect it deserves, but on the other, some aspects of it are getting very commercialized.
Brian: At the time, skateboarding was not popular at all. It was on the downslope. There were no skate parks, and it was not cool to skate. If you saw someone who was a skater, you knew they were hardcore into it. Just like punk rock – you could get your ass kicked just for being a skateboarder. (laughs) And definitely for climbing over somebody’s fence to skate their pool, going under a fence to skate a ditch, or going into some mammoth pipe project. The High Rollers Skatepark closed, I think in ‘82, and after that, we were just on our own. You either had to build a ramp, find a pool, or skate a ditch. You just had to make something up, and we were doing all of that stuff.
And now, it’s so big. The bands, too. And it’s great to see it. Pro skaters – I can’t really call ’em athletes, I call ’em skaters – but yeah, they’re getting paid like professional athletes. And that’s pretty good because I don’t know the last time, a tennis player did a face plant off a 10-foot pool, if you know what I mean? So it’s good they’re getting the recognition, but at the same time, it, kind of, waters it down a little bit, with just everybody’s doing it. Back then, there were regulators. There were people who were like – “Hey, kid! You wait your turn. You don’t just go!” And if you’re being a kook, they would pick up your board and throw it over the fence or whatever. (laughs) You don’t have that now. What you have now is soccer dads – skateboard dads sitting there, you know, making sure that their kid gets all the runs, coaching ’em, and forcing them to make it.
So, it’s different, but it’s good. We have a lot more skate parks now, and people are getting paid, but at the same time, it’s lost some of that purity, and some of that essence of just doing it for the love of it. You have people doing it to be cool or to beat other people. And, there’s room for all that stuff. But my philosophy has always been that you gotta make the most of where you’re at. You can’t sit around and wish things were the way they used to be, ’cause you’re missing out on the way things are now. And 10 years from now, you’ll probably be wishing they were the way they are now. So I just enjoy it. But it’s definitely different, and very few kids out there have had to endure the things we had to, just to skateboard, you know?
That reminds me of an interview I did with Rune Glifberg a couple of years ago, just before the Olympics. He said that – just like Tony Hawk’s video games when they first came out, the Olympics will attract millions of people, many for the wrong reasons, but with time, it will filter itself, and many of them will just drop out when they figure out it’s not an easy money, or whatever. But on the other hand, there will be many people who will get into it, and actually stay.
Brian: Oh! I love Rune! And yeah. I mean, skateboarding’s always evolving, right? That’s one of the essences of it – to be on the edge. And the edge doesn’t stay in the same place – once you get something down, you wanna push it a little further, or take it in a different direction. But in my experience, one way I can tell who the hardcore skaters are. And those are the ones that are still skating. When street skating came out, there were all these young, hot, street skaters, talking shit on the pool skaters, telling us we’re old and outta date.
And, you know, some of ’em are still skating today. They’re still skating street, maybe they’re doing some transitions, some of ’em are skating pools. But then, some of ’em just got out of it, ’cause it was just a phase that they were in. And that’s fine, but I think you can tell a hardcore skater – someone that still skates, and it still means something to them. It’s part of them. And whether that’s somebody who does slalom, downhill, street, pool, whatever – if they’re still doing it, I got respect for ’em. I have respect for all skaters. It does take a certain amount of commitment just to get good, you know?
We have a song called ‘Go 4 Broke’ on the album, and it’s about the Signal Hill downhill races. So, In the seventies, people were going down this hill, like 60 miles an hour, and they didn’t even block off the street at the bottom. (laughs) And the point on that one is – ugly catches wind. If you have a bad style – especially in something like downhill racing, where your goal is to go fast – if you’re all stiff, that’s gonna slow you down. The wind is gonna hit you like a sail and stop you from going fast. But if you have a good style, you’re going fast.
So, I think style is important. Back in skateboard magazine days – before you were born – it was all about the hand position. It wasn’t just about the tricks, because they didn’t really have videos. It was just photos. And if your photo was in a skateboard magazine, people were just gonna study every little bit of it. So people worried about everything, down to the level of hand position. You know, style is a really important aspect of skateboarding, and someone who has good style, in my experience, is usually someone who’s gonna be around for a while. (laughs) It’s funny how that works. Like Rune! Rune always had a good style!
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He did! I’m amazed by what some people are still capable of doing in their 40s, 50s, and 60s! So, one for the end – what can we expect from you guys in the future? You mentioned that you play locally, but are you planning on bringing ‘Last Ride’ on the road, and maybe to Canada anytime soon?
Brian: We want to do as much as we can. We love to travel. Few of us, actually three of the four of us, work, so it’s hard to do a big tour. What we do is go to an area, play two or three places, come back home, and then go somewhere else. We’re always looking for that, especially if you got a good place to skate and you got a good scene, we’ll come out. We just need to make enough to cover our travel, eat, sleep, and come back with a little bit to make our wives happy that they let us go out for the weekend. (laughs) But, we’d love to come, man. We’re talking about me going out to Hawaii, in January. We never played out there, so that’d be good.
Well, I will tell you one thing – I’ve never been to Hawaii, but it seems like a much better place to be in January than Saskatchewan. So, go for it, and then come here in the Summer!
Brian: Yeah. (laughs) We had never been to Saskatchewan. We played Montreal and Vancouver, and I think that’s it. They were both fun though. We’d love to come back and see more Canada, with our brothers and sisters out there in the Great White North.
Follow JFA:
Website: azpx.com/jfa
Facebook: facebook.com/REALJFA
*Interview edited for length and clarity