One Thing Leads to Another

Sometimes a band is gateway. B.C. punk provocateurs Nomeansno, for instance.

Nomeansno came into my life in 1989, when I was living in Tacoma, passing through the odd years between high school graduation and legal drinking age. I was 19, stumbling through community college in search of something academically absorbing and, unlike my high school friends, I had zero interest in subsisting on a heavy-metal-only diet.

Those kids were getting jobs at gas stations and furniture stores. They were meeting up in parking lots to drink 40-ouncers, crank AC/DC and fire bottle rockets at each other. Just as I knew my brain was capable of engaging subjects more advanced than shop class, I knew there was something out there beyond the steady stream of fret-burning anthems I’d ingested since the Reagan era.

I began hanging out with a bunch of crusty-punk intellectual types who lived in a group house they dubbed the Anthill. They loved the Butthole Surfers, Steinlager beer, Ken Russell films and circuitous arguments about South American political coups. They rode skateboards in the house, had no use for bed frames or deodorant and were a breath of fresh air (OK, not that fresh) for someone who’d spent her teenage years with a guy who’d rather convince a girl to act out a W.A.S.P. video than engage her in meaningful conversation. (True story.)

The Anthill clan worshipped Nomeansno, especially the album Wrong, which had been released in ’89 via Alternative Tentacles, the label run by Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra. I was stepping gingerly into punk; I fell hard for the Sex Pistols and the Clash but the Dead Kennedys’ indecipherable tirades made me dizzy.

I was enthralled as soon as I heard the opening punch of Wrong’s second track, “The Tower.” The raw grind and angular groove in the bass felt familiar, but John Wright’s jazz-influenced drumming was mathematically inspired, and his brother Rob Wright’s articulate bark was sly, funny and politically impassioned without sounding preachy. It was spiritually galvanizing, cerebrally challenging and genuinely hilarious all at the same time.

The Wright brothers initially conceived the project in 1979 as a two-piece while living in Victoria, B.C., and have since cycled through a few different third players. In their 32 years together, Nomeansno have released more than a dozen albums, and they maintain a devout fanbase.

For me, embracing the NMN motto of “Be Strong, Be Wrong” was the beginning of the end of my ties with my one-dimensional high school years. I dropped the knucklehead heshers for feminist-friendly fellows who read The People’s History of the United States and wanted more from life than a job at Discount Tire. I stopped blindly buying every new Megadeth release and opened my mind to other underground artists like the Melvins, Throwing Muses and Captain Beefheart. I took a job at the community college, began working as a teaching assistant in the writing center and eventually moved to Seattle in 1991 to attend the University of Washington and pursue a Women’s Studies degree.

Maybe I could’ve become the person I am without the Wright brothers’ influence, but I doubt it. Nomeansno changed my life.

I’m not alone, especially in Northwest music circles. When Nomeansno plays Bumbershoot this month, the audience will be dotted with loyal fans, many of whom are artists themselves.

“I was listening to them around the time that I started to learn to play bass,” says Portland-based musician and former Sleater-Kinney producer Donna Dresch. “I had never heard anything like [NMN debut] Mama, and it shaped the way I played. They were kinda political, but in this funny, sneaky way.”

Nomeansno’s combination of humor, aggression and artful percussion hit Cute Lepers drummer Josh Kramer hard when he was in high school. “I discovered NMN through a friend of mine’s older brother,” he says. “I’ll never forget him putting in the new record at the time, [1993’s] Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy? I was hooked instantly, and within two months I had every record. I had been awoken.”

Like me, Red Fang guitarist David Sullivan cites “The Tower” as the song that first bowled him over. “It had muscle, intelligence and felt genuinely from the heart,” he says. “The musicianship was incredible. They did the same sort of thing to me that the Minutemen did. They were punk-metal-jazz and I was trying to be math or anti-rock at the time. What I got from it was fuck it, be yourself, do what you want, and be weird because it’s OK to express that.”

Perhaps the most valuable thing about NMN isn’t the endurance of their art but of the open-minded attitude that originally spawned it. Three years ago, Anchor Tattoo artist Curtis James inked free tattoos for loyal Ballardites frustrated with the sloppy gentrification of their beloved ‘hood. He designed a simple line drawing depicting the house of the late Edith Macefield, a longtime Ballard resident who refused to sell her home to encroaching developers, and encouraged the members of “Edith’s Army” to personalize their tattoos in some fashion.

Golden Blondes frontman Josie Markiewicz added lettering beneath his that read Steadfast. Hazlewood co-proprietor Drew Church left his rendered in black and white, with subtle, grey shading. Rain City Video store manager Chelsea Robinson added Bless This Mess in girlish script to hers. Mine is pink, and the words I added pleased James, a longtime Nomeansno fan.

This tattoo carries three meanings: 1) a classic feminist rally cry, 2) a phrase that summed up Edith’s courage, and 3) the name of my original gateway band.

Hannah Levin is the host of KEXP’s local show, Audioasis, which airs Saturday nights from 6 to 9 p.m.

Photography by Nate Watters