{"id":3366,"date":"2011-08-10T12:32:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T19:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3366"},"modified":"2011-08-10T13:39:16","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T20:39:16","slug":"social-distortion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/social-distortion-2\/","title":{"rendered":"SOCIAL DISTORTION"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

SOCIAL DISTORTION<\/h1>\n

An all-American band explores its rock \u2019n\u2019 roll roots and its own checkered past<\/strong><\/h2>\n

If well-inked Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness doesn\u2019t already have a \u201cLucky Seven\u201d tattoo somewhere on his body, now\u2019s the time to get one. On Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes<\/em>, the California band\u2019s seventh album, Ness continues his streak of building fresh songs from familiar ingredients. By now, the singer and guitarist should have exhausted every possible blues-country-punk permutation\u2014but against all odds, he\u2019s still finding new ways to blend those influences. When the group does step outside its typical parameters, Ness observes, \u201cI just see them as enhancements to what we\u2019ve already done.\u201d<\/p>\n

What they\u2019ve done is impressive indeed. The band fans refer to as \u201cSocial D\u201d formed in Orange County in 1978 and released its debut, Mommy\u2019s Little Monster<\/em>, five years later. Although Ness had grown up listening to the Rolling Stones and Johnny Cash, he waited until 1988\u2019s Prison Bound<\/em> to begin incorporating those and other classic sounds into his songwriting. \u201cWhen I was starting the band at 17, there was a period where I put that stuff aside and couldn\u2019t sit through a five-minute blues song,\u201d Ness says. \u201cIt had to be fast and loud and hard. But by the mid-\u201980s that stuff got really old and punk started to stereotype itself. I felt the need, as an American band, to grab hold of my roots and start integrating that American music in combination with everything\u00a0I\u2019d learned from punk.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s done just that ever since\u2014and never quite as directly as on Hard Times<\/em>, the first Social D album Ness has produced himself. While Ness\u2014a onetime heroin addict and all-around troublemaker\u2014challenged himself to break from previous albums and write about topics other than his own checkered past, he couldn\u2019t help but incorporate a few autobiographical elements. \u201c\u2018Writing on the Wall\u2019 is actually about my elder son, who unfortunately has chosen to go down a similar path I did at his age,\u201d Ness says. \u201cIt\u2019s been a rough couple years. He\u2019s been crazy, and without being literal, I wanted the song to have a certain mystery to it. It could be about a lover, or it could be\u00a0about a family member.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone has been in the same situations I have, but emotions and feelings are universal,\u201d he adds. \u201cWhat I hope to do when I\u2019m writing is capture\u00a0those same emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Kenneth Partridge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOCIAL DISTORTION An all-American band explores its rock \u2019n\u2019 roll roots and its own checkered past If well-inked Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness doesn\u2019t already have a \u201cLucky Seven\u201d tattoo somewhere on his body, now\u2019s the time to get one. On Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, the California band\u2019s seventh album, Ness continues his streak […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[1340,1059,2380,2381,1339,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3366"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3369,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions\/3369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}