MDC's nominative cop-hating may have chilled in recent years, but what about the band's salad days, back when calling out McDonald's or the Man still had some semblance of actual political meaning and being outraged over a guy getting shot just for breaking into somebody's house made perrrrfect sense. Considering most kids these days have a hard time remembering what we were saying at the beginning of this sentence, we figured it'd be nice to provide a little personal refresher on some of Austin's most vitriolic sons. So here you go.(PS, photo at right is Blake of Anal Chinook playing the leg.MDC were like America's Crass (they even put out singles on Crass Records). They were the most political hardcore band in North America and if they came to your town, any band that ever said anything more than "I like chicks, beer, and fights" got to open for them. In late-80s Ottawa, Canada that was us, Anal Chinook. We opened for them at the Sandy Hill Community Center right after Millions of Damn Christians: This Blood's for You came out. They almost didn't make it. Back then, the police on both sides of the US-Canadian border gave bands a hard time getting across. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police saw MDC's merchandise had the words "Millions of Dead Cops" all over it they got really, really pissed off. This meant hours of interrogation and spending the night in jail. Eventually they were allowed to leave, but as they walked out of the customs gate one of the RCMP guys took Dave aside and said "If you ever come back to this country again, I will bury you in a field." Luckily, they had driven to Canada early and the 24 hours MDC spent with the cops didn't affect their tour dates.For some reason back then, in the late 80s/early 90s, there were skinheads everywhere. They came to every show, beat the shit out of everyone in the club, and left. They were fucking scary, too. Francois (remember this is Canada, all the poor are French) had a full back piece of a Klansman riding a horse in front of a burning cross. He'd go into the pit with a balaclava on and just pound everyone until the whole pit was lying on the floor moaning. His buddy Wolf walked with a giant cane that had a sword concealed in the handle. He'd go up and down the line outside and make sure nobody dared wear Doc Martens. Their "boss" Geoff had become a survivalist, complete with an arsenal of automatic weapons and a detailed escape plan for the day Armageddon hit. Eventually Francois and Wolf ended up in jail and Geoff blew his head off with his own submachine gun, but back in 1989 things were still in full swing. All the Nazis knew that MDC were playing Sandy Hill and they also knew the lyrics to the band's hit single "S.K.I.N.H.E.A.D." It began, "S is because you're so stupid / K like the KKK / I because you're an idiot…" etc.Anal Chinook played a typically inaudible set. We wore dresses to distract people from the cacophony, but it became obvious pretty fast that the only reason we got the gig was because we once said acid rain was bad and people should recycle. When MDC got onstage about a dozen skinheads poured into the room. Vocalist Dave Dictor was used to this problem, and had changed the lyrics of "S.K.I.N.H.E.A.D." to "S is because you're so super / oK I say hey hey hey / I because you're intelligent…" etc. It didn't matter. They didn't seem to be here for MDC—they were here for a fat Israeli nerd named Uri. This guy was right out of Freaks and Geeks and could not possibly be considered a threat to anyone, let alone a dozen angry skinheads. Geoff, the biggest skinhead in Ottawa, stood in front of Uri and stared at him. The others just lined up behind him facing the same way. We didn't know what to do, so we all lined up in a parallel line facing the same way. It was an absurd version of a gang fight that you'd expect to see in a Michael Jackson video. When Geoff laid into Uri (which he did by swinging him around by his hair) we all laid into whomever we had paired up with like an angry line dance. After the first punch the whole place just erupted into a massive pile of swinging arms where nobody could see what was going on. It was like in a romance drama where the two lovers get separated by the chaos, and the guy is screaming (in a British accent) "VERONICA!" and she's being pulled in the other direction going, "WILLIAM! WILLIAM!" Before one of the few successful punches of my life could be returned by my Veronica, the police ran into the room with bullhorns and told everyone the concert was over and it was time to leave. If those officers had their dicks out we would have blown them because we were about to get slaughtered.That night MDC were crashing at our house. We had a lot of bands stay there because that was kind of the deal back then. I guess it still is. You learn a lot about bands when they stay at your house. For example, after a few mod bands like The Toasters stayed with us we realized all mods are nerds who get way too excited about porno mags and the fact that Quebec allows you into strip clubs no matter what age you are. Thomas from Beefeater slept on a strange quilted mat and had a rock on one side of him and a long stick on the other (ooooh kaaaye). That's all I can think of right now.Anyway, back to MDC: our drummer Aidan, who's in Godspeed You! Black Emperor now, was working on a nativity scene made completely out of snot. It's a lot harder than it sounds because as soon as you have a semblance of Jesus and Mary or whatever, they both dry out into almost nothing. You probably need 30 pounds of snot to make a nativity scene that's less than half an inch tall. Aidan wanted to bond with MDC drummer Al Schvitz, so he pulled out his pathetic nativity scene and showed it to him. Al, who is always bobbing back and forth and rubbing his hair like an autistic child, had a complete meltdown. First he screamed like a girl, then he ran back and forth all over the apartment. When Dave finally got him over to the couch and managed to calm him down, Al just kept shaking his head and repeating, "You'd never do that to me, would you Dave? You'd never make me look at anything like that ever again, would you?"The next day they were gone and, as was punk's wont in those days, everyone started talking shit about them. Word got out that Dave drank a Coca-Cola and bassist Franco Mares had smoked Lebanese hash (which is a problem because they supposedly use children to cure the hash). This was in an era where people would walk out of a workshop at an anarchist gathering because the speaker was smoking (corporate) and drinking coffee (exploits the third world) out of a Styrofoam cup (bad for the environment).Soon after that, MDC played Toronto and two of them (Franco and another guy) were thrown in Toronto's notorious Don jail. Going to jail was pretty common for MDC, but when I asked Dave Dictor about specific charges it sounded like the cops were actually pretty reasonable. At 13 he had his locker busted open by narcs looking for pot he had been seen smoking earlier. A few years later at an Allman Brothers concert, he was roughed up by cops and searched for suspicion of marijuana—they found rolling papers. They were pretty hard on him when they caught him with meth, but shit, he was doing meth. Besides that he's only got about a dozen other arrests at various protests (demonstrating for Indians, crashing the Democratic Convention, drowning out the Pope, etc.) where the charges were always dropped. Not bad for a guy who sings "Kill the Cops" at 85 gigs in 100 days. Can you imagine doing that in any other country? Wu Xianghu was the deputy editor of The Taizhou Evening News in China until he criticized local police for excessive force. The police arrested him and beat him until his liver and kidney collapsed.When listening to those early MDC records you have to remember you're listening to angry Texan twentysomethings from1980s Austin. It was a different world for cops back then. It was "more like Cool Hand Luke," as Dave puts it. That doesn't mean that there aren't evil cops today or that the old MDC hatred is pointless. It just means despite all your rage, it's OK to heart cops in a cage.ORCA SABERTON
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