But we started playing shows again in 2010, and it was a chance for us to get together and hang out and be buds again after so many years.Photo: Glen E Friedman A Triton’s life in punk rock and molecular biology. I felt like I may never get back up on stage again. I listened to music all the time, but at that point I was like, I am a music fan first and foremost, and then science is my gig and I don’t need to perform ever again. I was in the forefront of discovering a particular type of molecule that was kind of a new thing, so it was an extremely heady period for me. I was working at DuPont in Delaware at that point, and I would blast All This and the Puppet Stew in my laboratory while doing my DNA extractions. It definitely set the kernel in my mind that you could be in your late 40s and still put out a record that full-on brought the punk rock from start to finish. The Dickies are older than me, and I was just extremely impressed with how they put out a great record. It gives me such a youthful feeling-age goes out the window. It’ll probably make me feel like that until the day I die. But then, as soon as we play a show, I’d be like, Not only can I still do this, I have to do this. Every time I would get back in the van, I would think, Maybe I’m too old to be doing this. It was a good outlet for some of the spastic, frustrated energy that I had coursing through my veins as a 17-year-old kid. I said, “Well, that mic is set up for some reason, and I know how to sing the song from your record, so I’m going to sing it,” and they’re like, “Go for it, dude.” So I sang “Ride the Wild.” It was not this mind blowing thing to either them or me, but they thought I had a lot of energy, and shortly after that they let me in the band. After listening to it for a while I got up the courage to ask him, “Hey, can I watch you guys practice?” They would play the song but they wouldn’t necessarily sing it. He’s like, “You want to buy a copy?” That was the Descendents’ first single, “Ride the Wild/It’s a Hectic World.” I was instantly smitten. So I’m listening to those bands and then I see Bill, the drummer of the Descendents, who was in my geometry class, selling this little single he’s done. Those three bands are the holy trinity of L.A. I started out with X, and then I graduated to the Germs, and then Black Flag. punk rock and immersing myself in that scene. X really does symbolize a shift for me into L.A. Then I went to go see Devo play, and X opened, and I was like: That’s what I want to hear. I had a brief foray into bad prog rock and then I came out at the other side of that listening to new wave. Before grabbing some pizza in New York City, the frontman took some time to lay out his life’s listening, five years at a time.Ī lot happened between ’73 and ’78. The Descendents’ brand of warp-speed punk has a knack for bringing out the 15-year-old in their listeners, and after so many years working in a lab, it brings out the teenager in Aukerman, too. It’s silly, fast, and catchy, just as they’ve always been. He’s periodically found time to record and tour with the Descendents, and the group’s first album in 12 years, Hypercaffium Spazzinate, is out this week. But Aukerman didn’t totally drop out of punk and sink into a tidy lawn. As a scientist at DuPont, living in Delaware with his professor wife, he lives a lifestyle that’s fairly close to the suburban dream he once sneered at in his youth. Now 53, Aukerman has much smaller frames. Aukerman lent not only his name to the album, but his face as well, in the form of a crude line drawing with his signature chunky glasses on the cover. Thirty-four years ago, Milo Aukerman’s California punk group the Descendents released Milo Goes to College, a recording that perfectly crystallizes how simultaneously magical and deeply painful it is to be on the cusp of adulthood.
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