If you can’t beat ’em, lick ’em

Gird your grid for a big one, kids. The volatile combination of high-octane rockers I Can Lick Any Sonaofabitch in the House and swamp-blues drum-and-guitar duet Hillstomp might just take Off Limits into orbit. The SOB’s new Live at Dante’s disc has been hogging my player for days. The band’s heavy guitar and harmonica-driven rock mixes outspoken political commentary with party-till-you-drop enthusiasm—and frontman Mike D (not that Mike D) has exactly the right rough-edged voice to carry his songs of social malaise and personal exuberance.

SOB bassist Mole Harris responded to the following set of questions, and the only commentary I’ll add is that anybody who cites Motörhead, Björk and Waylon Jennings in the same sentence is a guy I trust to rock a barroom.

Can you remember any musical experience in your pre-band days that made you think, “That’s fucking cool! I’m gonna be in a band someday!"?

I was in high school in Boise, Idaho, at the tail end of the whole Northwest explosion, and bands like Built to Spill, Caustic Resin, Treepeople and all the Seattle-area bands were around all the time. Just seeing all these musicians who were basically regular guys like me just pick up a guitar and say “fuck it, I’ll give it a go,” was sort of inspiring. It seems cliché now, but in the late ‘80s kids like me basically thought that in order to be a musician you had to be able to shred like Eddie Van Halen and have some leather pants or something, so it was a fantastic thing to suddenly discover as a kid that none of that mattered.

What’s the wackiest, most appalling or hilarious thing you’ve ever seen from the stage during a gig?

One time we played a show in L.A. with a band called Nudist Priest. It was a gay, nude, Judas Priest tribute band. It was at maybe the scummiest venue in L.A., and these guys were naked and rolling around on a floor that was probably covered in years of puke and piss and who knows what else. They rocked, but it was traumatic to see.

What do you listen to in the van while traveling between shows?

Trying to find something that the five of us want to listen to at the same time is damn near impossible, so we all tend to headphone it in the van. We’ve got a few iPods, so there are thousands of things to listen to: I tend to put the thing on shuffle, especially when I’m driving, so I can get the Motörhead/ Björk/Waylon Jennings/Ween mix going. I wouldn’t need the damn iPod if there were any radio stations that could mix it up like that. For a while we felt like complete geeks with the iPods, then we toured with The Supersuckers and they were rocking like six or seven of them at a time, so we didn’t feel so lame after that.

If you wanted to describe the band’s reason for existing to someone who had no idea who you are or what you do, what would you tell them?

Despite the sad state of the world and this country right now, there aren’t a lot of bands out there standing up and saying “this isn’t right.” Every other era of social strife had musicians on the frontlines, but right now we don’t seem to have any bands like The Clash, Bob Marley, The Dead Kennedys, everyone during Vietnam, etc. Where is Rage Against the Machine when you need them? All we’ve got is the Dixie Chicks, and bless them for trying. We’re trying to fill that void a little bit, playing good music while holding our middle finger up at those who are sending us toward the end of the world. Hopefully we can inspire some others to do the same.

Has the band ever been confronted by somebody who took your name as a personal challenge?

We’ve never really had a problem. I think that people who have a mean streak like that actually end up liking the name more, so that sort of endears us to them right away.

If you weren’t in a band what would be your ideal day job?

Can I throw feces at the president full time? Is there benefits? Other than the personal satisfaction?