Joe Escalante is the final word against the underachieving punk stereotype.
Alongside his 32-year gig as bass player for joke punk stalwarts the Vandals, Escalante is a radio host, amateur bullfighter, part-owner of a record label, lawyer, and volunteer judge.
Perhaps most importantly, in his former job as a TV executive. he proudly claims responsibility for Chuck Norris singing the theme song for Walker, Texas Ranger.
He took some time out of his Renaissance man schedule in Orange County, U.S.A. to discuss the Vandals’ upcoming tour of Australia with the sold out Soundwave Festival.
“We’ve always had good luck in Australia,” says Escalante. “It’s a country of 16 San Diegos… they’re all awesome [cities] and they all click with the Vandals’ music and sense of humour.”
He shares some news about a tasty morsel on the horizon for Australian fans. “We’re gonna release an EP while we’re over there… which is sort of a love letter to Australia. I think it’s got four Australian-themed songs on it. We’re actually in the studio right now, just finishing it up.”“We’re gonna release an EP while we’re over there… which is sort of a love letter to Australia.”
He says the release will be released in digital only format, and might be followed up with a vinyl edition at some point.
Beyond that, Escalante anticipates that punters catching the Vandals’ set at the upcoming Soundwave shows can expect to see “four birthday clowns trying to salvage some dignity playing outdoors during the day” – they have secured the 1:30pm afternoon slot.
Escalante joined the Vandals over 30 years ago at the age of 15 and has remained their only constant member. It may horrify some fans to hear his recollection that the Vandals very nearly became a serious U2 style band.
Soon after he joined, he says, the rest of the group was considering this change of direction. He recalls begging them not to, and after writing the lyrics to “A Pirates Life”, from the band’s first EP Peace Thru Vandalism, and speeding it up by a multiple of ten, the band agreed to remain a “joke band.”
He describes “A Pirate’s Life” as “a cautionary tale about taking acid and going to Disneyland.”
“People are always talking about ‘Oh you gotta take acid and go to Disneyland’ and I never did that because I grew up right next to [it] and I thought that was disrespectful… you’d get kicked out, you’d never be allowed in again,” he recalls. “And you don’t need drugs in Disneyland, that’s the one place in the world you don’t need drugs!”
Harkening back to his early days in the band as a teenager, he recalls the violence faced by the Orange County punks at the hands of urban cowboys – the inspiration for the song “Urban Struggle”, also from the first EP.
“Our scene was just brand new, it wasn’t not traditional. It was frightening, and they hated it and we looked like an easy target for a fight, so there were a lot.”
These ‘Urban Cowboys’, inspired by the 1980 movie of the same name starring John Travolta, were not “real cowboys” he says, “that herd cattle to marketplace,” but rather were more concerned with drinking and riding mechanical bulls.
Escalante says he didn’t stand a chance and stayed away, “but the bigger punks, the older punks pulled right up in the parking lot and get out of their car and if anyone gave ‘em any hassle they’d just start swingin’.”
Having survived the urban cowboys, Escalante has built up a reasonable amount of experience as an amateur bullfighter, racking up regular practice in Los Angeles and trips to Mexico for matches.“…You don’t need drugs in Disneyland, that’s the one place in the world you don’t need drugs!”
He is also of Mexican heritage and sees bullfighting as an important part of Spanish culture and art.
He speaks with great admiration of the greats of the pro circuit, including his favourite fighter ‘El Juli’. “He risks his life to the point where you know his mother cannot watch,” he glows.
“He gets gored. Every couple of years he’ll get a goring… it’s not what most people think about bullfighting that it’s an unfair thing where you’re just torturing this bull.”
Amateur fighters don’t put their bodies on the line to quite the same extent, he says; “You’re trying to do the same thing they do, but you just don’t take the same risks with the same sized animals because it would just be stupid.”
He likens the risk to that of landing wrong while skating a half pipe: “You’re always in danger of breaking your back or breaking an arm or getting paralysed or something… but you train and you try to do everything you can to avoid that.”
It’s a rush nonetheless, he says. “It’s a lot like surfing. The wave is big, it’s dangerous, it’s nature. But when you dominate it in an artistic way, it’s wonderful.”
Escalante’s long career in the law has provided him with rushes of a different kind.
From publishing papers on intellectual property law and defending the Vandals against a lawsuit from Vanity Fair Magazine for copyright infringement in the lettering of their 2004 album Hollywood Potato Chip (the title is a reference to a certain dried bodily fluid apparently often found on Hollywood casting couches), to volunteering as a judge.
This volunteering has seen him on the bench in some of the Los Angeles area courts that many other judges avoid, such as the gang-dense Compton, famous as the hometown of rap heavyweights NWA.
“…it’s dangerous, it’s nature. But when you dominate it in an artistic way, it’s wonderful.”Escalante recalls a high point in this work when “someone was totally being kicked out of their apartment for being Mexican. Someone had just decided to clean the Mexicans out of their apartment and fill it up with another race. I could smell it a mile away.”
“I was able to keep the people in their apartment,” he says proudly. He likes to use his brain to work with the system, to “clean it up a little bit so that people can get some justice.”
Last year Escalante ran in the election to be nominated as an official judge, with a campaign poster drawn by Shepard Fairey, the creator of the famous Barack Obama ‘Hope’ Poster and the Andre The Giant ‘OBEY’ street art.
“107,000 voters thought it was a good idea” he says, “but we needed 250,000 to win.”
He’s not upset about it, and Vandals fans should rejoice in his loss: he says he wouldn’t have come to Australia if he had won.
Given his track record of overachievement though, it seems likely that he still would have found the time.
The Vandals are on tour with Soundwave 2013 around the country from today, playing times and dates here. They also play Sidewaves shows in support of Blink 182 in Melbourne, dates below.
Blink 182 Melbourne Sidewaves 2013
The Vandals support with Sharks.
TUESDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2013
SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL Melbourne – Lic A/A
SOLD OUT!
WEDNESDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2013
SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL Melbourne – Lic A/A
Tix here.
