LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Descendents are a punk rock band that got their start in the late 1970s in the south bay region of California.
The group’s drummer, Bill Stevenson, says they’ve never fit into any conventional standards of a typical band.
“We haven’t had massive radio hits or back when MTV was a thing we didn’t have really anything there,” Stevenson said. “We didn’t have a big major label behind us, Descendents has been very much a DIY thing.”
When Descendents were first starting out, punk rock was just beginning to take form. Stevenson says a combination of the past generation of rock like The Stooges and the Descendents’ contemporaries in the early Los Angeles punk scene were huge influences.
“It was a crazy time,” Stevenson said. “I’m not sure if every teenager experiences that sort of a thing. When you’re a teenager everything is intense, but to me that stuff was life-changing because I felt like I kind of found sort of a place to be.”
Descendents first major project, Milo Goes to College, released in 1982 and since then, the band has gone on to release seven more studio albums.
Descendents are currently on tour, with a rare stop on the schedule that you won’t want to miss. On March 11th, the band will be making their way to Jake’s Backroom, where you can see them up close and personal.
“If it’s a place where we go there every single year. It’s like ‘oh yeah, I’m going to go see the Descendents, I love them, but I’ve seen them 20 times.’ That’s not the case for Lubbock,” Stevenson said.
And just because the band has been around the block once or twice doesn’t mean they can’t rock, they just need a little boost.
“I’ll probably drink like eight or 10 espressos maybe,” Stevenson said. “It’s an increasingly less surmountable challenge. I think that’s part of what keeps me in the game. It’s like, I can do this. Nobody’s gonna tell me I can’t do it. Some 20-year-old can’t do that better than me, I can do it better.”
And that attitude is why the band is still in the game, after nearly 50 years.
It’s almost time to hear Descendents take over the 806, for all to enjoy.
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