Since their formation in the late ‘70s, the Texan hardcore punk rock band MDC have been unapologetically progressive in their messaging, tackling subjects like discrimination, corporatism and capitalism, war, animal rights, imperialism, nationalism, fascism, media, and incarceration. Their songs stemmed from the mind of their socially-conscious frontman, Dave Dictor.

“To be ahead of the curve in talking to Americans about racism and homophobia in the ‘80s, and the multinational corporations that are destroying the planet, or hunting all the whales, or chopping down the rainforest, I’m glad I was there to be aware of it,” Dave says when he spoke with Post-Burnout last month. “There was something in me that wanted to research that. I got brought up in the New York City area. I had parents that were progressive, politically. Not radical, but they encouraged me to talk and think.

“I was also in the tail end of the Vietnam War, and I got to see people’s older brothers not make it back from the war, and I just realised that this was a make-believe problem that they sent American boys to go die in, and 55,000 of them died and they realised, ‘Well, maybe it’s not the greatest idea to try and take over Vietnam,’ you know? A country all the way across the world that had nothing to do with you, who fought the Japanese in World War II. I just realised that it was all about oil, and resources, and control.

“That pained me early, which kind of led me to become a minstrel with my music, playing for people, and saying how I feel. And I had that. Whether it was ‘John Wayne Was a Nazi’ or ‘Corporate Death Burger,’ ‘Radioactive Chocolate,’ it was little things that people needed to hear, to push progress through music and energy. Being a part of American political punk rock, which I was right in the front of at the beginning, was just this beautiful come-together of energy, and created American hardcore punk rock.”

As punk rock was burgeoning in American cities like New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, MDC came out of Austin, Texas; the same state that gave us explorative and left field punk acts for the time, like Big Boys, Dicks, Scratch Acid, Butthole Surfers, and Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (D.R.I.).  “The scene was different,” Dave says of early D.I.Y. punk. “At first, it was just a smattering of people. There were two or three hundred people in about twenty American cities that I knew about, in 1980 and ’79.

“The biggest shows – like Iggy Pop, and The Runaways, and the Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, David Bowie – that was gigantic, and they’re punk to all sorts of degrees, but in the hardcore, political punk rock scene that was starting in 1978/‘79 – that had bands like Discharge, and GBH, and The Exploited, and the Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag, Minor Threat, MDC – there was much less amount of people. So, it was so exciting to build it up and watch it grow.

“Then, in ‘86/‘87, it blew up and went into all these different things. There were crusties, there was grindcore, there was melodicore. People started going backwards, and instead of playing hard and fast, it got more melodic with background melodies and vocals, and Green Day, and NOFX, Rancid, and what it’s grown into here. A big, gigantic punk rock family. It’s very interesting, and it’s so big now, it’s in the main culture. Dropkick Murphys are playing at the Super Bowl in front of millions of people. It’s happened. So, it’s beautiful how it blossomed in some ways, but it was very special back in the old days, as well, creating that whole network.”

Still, Dave doesn’t take a romantic view of the blemishes of the hardcore scene of the day. He notes how reactionary some of those acts could have been, but, if anything, this spurred MDC on to be more outspoken. “We’ve been doing it 46/47 years. It’s certainly changed,” Dave says of how things have become more accepting as the decades passed, especially within punk culture.

“When we took a stance and said, ‘We’re for human rights. We’re for gay rights,’ we kind of stood up to some bully bands. You know, the Bad Brains were on this Coptic Christian/Rastafari thing, and on a personal level, they were like, ‘Boycott faggots,’ and talked about gay people, and we were doing shows and I had to say, ‘I disagree with this band completely. I think it’s the wrong way to be. Have love in your heart, accept people for who they are, everyone’s going through a lot. There’s no one religion to tell you, “You’re a blood clot faggot and you’re going to die because you’re not living up to Rastafarian values or Christian morality,” however you want to put it in.’

“That’s really changed [Laughs] in the forty-seven years. There is gay marriage, there’s more trans awareness, and it’s hitting a speed bump right now, and there is a reactionary level to everything with Trump in America. I can’t speak to what’s going on in Ireland, say, but I think it’s pretty progressive there.”

MDC have continued to use music to promote their messaging, with a discography spanning through every decade and whatever administrative power is in charge since their 1982 debut album, Millions of Dead Cops (which is typically what their acronym stands for, however, it morphs over time, with Dave admitting that he’s still thinking about what that stands for today. During the pandemic, for example, it stood for “Mismanaged Disease Catastrophe”).

“MDC registered people to vote in the last five years,” Dave says of their recent activism. “We went to these elections and we encouraged people to vote, and I guess we didn’t get out there enough. They’re very clever. It’s kind of confusing with this last election. The Democrats didn’t win.

“And it’s kind of hard to get too excited about the Democrats, because they still bomb Gaza, and they still waste money on war and death, they’re still capitalising and making money off terrible situations that involve hunger. They’re still into the capitalist system, but at least there’s still a little more respect for everything with the Democrats.

“That last election, Trump got more votes than Biden, but Biden got five million less votes, and you wonder where it went. Did they all go to Trump? Some of them got cut off the voter rolls. They’re very tough, but anyway, we’ve got to fight. I’m working within this system to fight, and to speak out, and to encourage people to vote and to organise and to boycott, economically, the tech businesses: Telsa, Google, all kinds of businesses. McDonald’s is one of them, and Amazon’s another big one.

“A lot of tech bros and a lot of billionaires, and right now, Elon Musk is spending money on elections, spending millions and millions of dollars. He gave over $250 million, which is an insane amount of money for one person to give, and, sadly, the United States doesn’t have laws [against it]. They’ve made it so you’re free to give as much as you want, and these guys are pretty clever. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump is funded by Putin. He definitely did things to influence the election.”

After the Presidential election in November, Dave took some time away from politics and punk rock and went exploring. “I just needed to refresh myself,” he says. “If it wasn’t punk rock, if it wasn’t music that I was in, I might be an archaeologist. I might just be out there on a dig, being with people, learning about stuff, and talking about it in schools. I think it’s quite interesting.”

Dave’s post-election wanderlust resulted in a very peripatetic holiday. “I went to Thailand in my own time,” he says. “I kind of hung out with elephants and blissed out in Thailand. I went to Morocco and rode a camel and hung out with baby camels in a camel petting zoo. I spent time in southern Portugal and in southern Spain. I went to Seville for the first time. I went to Lisbon. I went to the Algarve section, which is Lagos and Faro. Really nice, cool places to be in the winter. Kind of like Ireland, you know? Windswept, facing west on the west coast of Ireland. A lot of water there. Beautiful, the Atlantic Ocean. Especially in Morocco, and I just did some fun things. Don’t forget to see the world, everybody! [Laughs]”

Once rejuvenated from his fatigue, Dave returned home and began crafting new material. “I got together with our guitar player, Barry Ward, and we’ve written, together, about thirty new songs in the last two years. We released one album about a year-and-a-half ago, and we have another one coming out in a couple of months, and it’s just fun to be creative. I wish this for everybody, to find what makes you feel good and what makes you feel creative and happy, and you can have success with it, because being a musician and making music for people is pretty good, and I’m enjoying myself. We’ve done close to 2,700 gigs.”

At the time of publication, MDC began a European tour at the start of the week. Since their first international tour, when they supported Dead Kennedys on their 1982 European tour, MDC have played in almost every corner of the world, which, when they began, seemed like an impossibility due to global politics and a certain iron curtain. Dave feels that the groundwork MDC put in in the ‘80s is now paying off, as he can play anywhere in the world and anticipate an appreciative audience waiting for him when he arrives.

In a few weeks (the exact release date and title have yet to be announced, to my understanding), the band will release a new album, with additional material releasing throughout the year after. “We did a covers album,” Dave says of the record. “We did ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’,’ which is a Stevie Wonder song. We did ‘Heartbreaker’ by the Stones. We punked them out and changed the arrangements, and we’re really happy with it.

“We did a Motörhead song, ‘Take the Blame.’ [Singing] You can take the money, but can you take the blame? We did ‘Americon’ by Slayer, and we did this song by the Dicks, and just some smaller bands that we felt like needed to get out there. ‘No Fuckin’ War’ by the Dicks. We did ‘The Last War’ by Heart Attack. What else did we do? We did a Woody Guthrie song. We did a bunch of different songs.

“I’m really proud of it. It’s going to be out on Cleopatra [Records]. Go to [cleorecs.com]. Look out for us. We’re on that label. We’re also on Beer City Records for the older stuff. Look for us on Spotify. You can listen to us for free if you don’t have a record player. Yeah, creating new stuff is just as fun as can be. This album was finished a couple of months ago, and we’re going to get back into the studio and start doing more music.

“We’re working on a tour that we did in Asia with The Restarts. We’re going to put out a movie with that. In Indonesia, together, we played [Le] Pirate Island. Pirate Punks put on this free show on this island in the middle of the Java Sea, about 300 kilometres south of Jakarta. It was incredible. They had vegan food. It was just this idyllic, cool thing in the Java Sea, and we filmed it, and we just want to mix it and get it out there for people.

“We still do lots of benefits and things like that, to be able to support people, to register them to vote, to get them to be active and be part of boycotts that are boycotting companies that are supporting bad shit. Fox News Network is one of ‘em, and we want to be a part of something that’s beautiful, that’s going to change the planet for the good, and have a better place to live for everybody. That’s what it’s all about.”

MDC are currently touring Europe and will return for some shows in the UK in August. You can keep up to date with the band, their music, and their activism via their website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full, where we expand on everything discussed in this article, as well as Dave’s opinion on Trump’s re-election and the time MDC played their first Irish gig at a bar owned by the Hell’s Angels in 1992. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.