Racketeer Brandon goes to get his xmoshxcorex on and ends up informing Madball that their merch guy is doomed to perish. Shit happens. Read this.
Brandon Kelley: By any chance do you guys still watch the original Madballs cartoon?
Freddy Madball: No. I have never watched it. The name actually was inspired by that but, from the commercial for the toy.
BK: I’m not going to lie to you… that commercial was annoying as fuck.
FM: Exactly. The whole Madball! Madball? Madball!? And um… my dear friend, Vinny Stigma of Agnostic Front who is a legendary figure in hardcore, well… he watches a lot of TV and my brother and the rest of the band would fuck with me cuz I was a kid and get me all riled up to the point where I would spazz out and do stupid shit. Hit them with rocks, sticks, whatever. In one of those moments of rage Vinny decided to start taunting me by saying “Madball! Madball!” because he had just seen the commercial.
BK: And it just stuck?
FM: Yeah. He does stuff like that. He’ll repeat shit over and over. He’s a funny guy and I guess it just fit the moment because I was mad, and Madballs actually annoyed me even more because of all the repetition. So… that’s how the name Madball came about.
BK: In the last 10 years have you noticed and minor/major changes in the hardcore scene?
FM: Oh Yeah!
BK: Positive or Negative?
FM: I’d say positive… I mean it’s growing. Hardcore is a tough thing to gauge. You know, every few year’s generations flip, and hardcore is still an underground movement.
It’s grown, now it’s international. You have scenes in Europe, Japan, and New Zealand.
So in that way, it’s definitely been a positive change. This thing that started in a few bullshit clubs in America as an underground thing. It’s defiantly starting to get out to the masses, but not Top 40 hits. The only negatives would be as the generations change… the new kids are sometimes not so in touch with their roots. There’s new bands that are the “new wave” of hardcore, but they have no idea where hardcore came from. It’s a little disheartening.
BK: There has been rumors circulating that Drugs Money Sex and members of Good Charlotte got into it because GC was reppin’ DMS… Is that true?
FM: That wouldn’t have been a run in… that would have been a run over.
BK: I just know you guys were working on Hazen St., which deals with the twins from GC.
FM: We made some business moves with Hazen St. that involved those dudes because they had an imprint on Sony… friends through friends and things just didn’t work out with them. As for having beef with them, naa, we were never really tight in the first place. But we were always respectful to them and they were always really respectful to us, they knew our background.
BK: Damn, I was hoping that was true.
FM: If we had a problem with them you would have definitely heard about it in more ways than one.
BK: On the topic of fighting, if you could see anyone scrap with Chuck Norris… who would it be?
FM: If I could see anyone fight Chuck Norris who would it be? Ugghhhhh, shit.
My merch guy Paulie. (rofling)
BK: Why’s that? (loling)
FM: Because Paulie my merch guy is in Tae-Kwan-Do and he’s won several tournaments and he’s a young kid… only 19. But he’s comin’ up.
BK: I dunno man. Chuck is Chuck. Chuckity Chuck will fuck you up.
FM: Chucks getting old now.
BK: But, he has the beard of JUSTICE!
FM: What is he… like 60?
BK: If you’re asking how many people he killed just yesterday that’s a good estimate.
FM: But I want to put the kid up against Chuck and see how the kid does. I mean… the chances are he might not…might not…. might not….
BK: Chuck Norris can kill a man with one swipe. Do you want to lose a friend?
FM: I think its good testing grounds.
BK: He’s as good as dead.
BK: Do you have any goals that Madball as a whole still strives to accomplish? I mean after Hold It Down was released you guys didn’t do much with it. And now that you have dropped Legacy what do you hope to accomplish from it?
FM: We are actually more goal oriented than we have ever been. Madball has always been a “lets just roll with it” band. I mean the band started as a side project, then it got more serious and we started creating our own style and sound. But we had almost a year and a half after we released HID when we were done with it. But we had a change of heart and so we decided to come back to it. I think ending on such bad circumstances made us resent one another to some extent which in turn made us rethink everything and eventually come back to it and make us strive to be more focused. The main reason Madball came back was because we felt that Madball hadn’t reached its full potential. And… that was our goal right there.
BK: What’s your goal now?
FM: I have no idea. It’s hard to say, especially in the world of hardcore. It’s a hard thing to judge, it’s a very up and down thing. One thing that we have though is longevity. Luckily enough we are fortunate that we get respect from the kids and our peers. That means a lot to us. We have been on many waves, and this year is still unfolding and there is going to be a lot of major tours this year. So we are going to see where this takes us. I mean… if I had left off the way we did after HID I don’t think that would have sat well with me, knowing there was so much more we could have done. However, if Madball was to break up next week; not saying it is; but if it did, I would definitely feel better about it.
BK: Do you have any plans for a new album?
FM: It’s been talked about. We’ve been so busy touring we really haven’t had time to sit down and write anything. We have ideas that spark up, but we have two tours to finish before we discuss anything.
Then some d00dz rolled up and Freddy got called for sound check. We said our goodbyes. And all that nonsense.
-Brandon Kelley