No Redeeming Social Value Interviews
No Redeeming Social Value European Tour Diary - September 2000

Banned in Italy:
On March 19, 1997, NRSV was on our 15th day of our "Hold My Beer, While I Kiss Your Girlfriend Tour". Everything was going really well so far. Mike D (ex-vocals) was getting a little stir-crazy at this point and our bodies were probably so toxified with beer, hash and wine that we'd never return home with our full mental capacities. However, the van rolled on. The previous night we played a show in Zurich, Switzerland. We were approaching the border of Italy after driving about 8 hours. We were supposed to play a show in Rome that night. We made a pit stop about 1/2 hour from the border to rid the van of any "questionable" items that might inhibit our crossing the border swiftly. When we got to the border of Italy all hell broke loose. The Italian border police and their shady looking flunkies stopped our van and started checking passports and asking questions about how much money we had on us. Our limited knowledge of Italian didn't get us far. Then they told us to get out of the van. The next thing we know, we find ourselves in a scene right out of a T.V. crime drama. Each of us was in a separate little room with a table and a hot lamp. A policeman with a semi-automatic rifle was grilling us with questions - "What is your real name?", "Why do you really want to come into Italy?", "How much money do you have on your person?", "Will you be visiting anyone in Italy?", etc......They ran background checks on all of our passports and everyone there was really, really shady. They kept asking us about our money. We weren't sure if we should give it to them, or if doing that would be a bribe and we'd be in deeper shit. After several hours of questioning they let us go and denied our entrance into Itlay. The show that night had to be cancelled and we spent the night on the Swiss side of the border. That is the fateful night that Crazy Mike D finally flew the coup. The interrogation was obviously too much for him. The rest of us were too stoned to care about any of it. But later on it made a good song - see BAND IN ITALY (3 Way Dance and THC).

Originally appeared in "The New York Press", April 8-14, 1998Akkerpop:
The Akkerpop Festival - the annual music festival in Meer, Belgium. This was the final show of our 2nd European tour in 1997. The tour had gone great - 2 weeks of shows - it was easy compared to playing for a month straight. After the show we planned on spending a week in Amsterdaam - just to chill. But first, the Akkerpop Festival...We were the headlining band on a 12 band bill. It was totally kick ass, but ultra wierd from the get go. Our van pulled up to the gate of the festival. Several bands had played already. We opened the window and as a blast of smoke escaped into the warm afternoon air, we let the guards know - NRSV's here! Then 5 or 6 security guys cleared a path in front of the van and jogged in front of it to lead us to the backstage area. When we got there, we were given the largest bag of weed that we'd ever seen, and several cases of Primus - the local bier. Needless to say, before we even played a note of music all the weed and beer was gone. Now we had to play. There were like 5,000 people there and we were barely able to see. Well, we pulled it off. We played for a hour and a half , we had pyrotechnics exploding around us during the songs, we had costume changes, 100 beach balls, Scott smashed his bass to pieces at the end of the set and they still wanted more. So we played "Skinheads Rule" a second time - acoustically. That shit was Rock-n Roll. It took us like the rest of our time in Amsterdaam to piece that whole festival together to tell whether or not it really happened.

Raybeez:
Ever get to meet one of your idols? What would you say to him/her if you did? One night Mike, Vinny and Dean were prowling the L.E.S. streets for some HC action. Then we remembered that Warzone was playing at a club on Varick St. called the TILT. It was at a time after Warzone made the heavy metal album and they were starting to play again. I remember there was lots of OI! bands on the bill. Warzone played an awesome set that night -even though there wasn't that many people there to absorb the sound, just lots of skinhead girls wanting to meet Ray. I remember that Warzone, at the time, was made up of Raybeez and a bunch of Heavy Metal long haired guys - that was wierd. Well, after the show, we hung around the club and had a few beers. We saw Raybeez mingling around the crowd and we desperately wanted to talk to him. But none of us had the balls - he was our hero for so many years, what would we say to the guy? Finally, Vinny got up the nerve to strike up a coversation with him. Vinny gave Ray one of our first demos that we just recorded and said that we were huge Warzone fans and would love to play with them anywhere, anytime...we went home thinking - "How cool was that- Raybeez has our demo". Of course, we thought he'd throw it out. We obviously didn't know Ray that well at the time. Not only did he listen to it, but he liked it enough to give us a call a few weeks later to see if we'd play a show with Warzone, New School and Shining Time Station at the Wetlands. After 4 years of playing at local high schools and shit bars in Queens, we got our first Hardcore Matinee. The message Raybeez left on Kent's answering machine is somewhere on the "Hardcore Your Lousy Ass Off!" CD. We kept it all these years, because we just couldn't believe that Raybeez, our childhood hero, would ever call NRSV for a show. Good looking out Ray! (R.I.P.)

Vinny Value:
Our drummer just quit! Now what the fuck were we gonna do? We had some hard to come by gigs lined up and we still wanted to play 'em. Besides, we were just getting kinda good - or so we thought. So, Kent had a demo of a local Hardcore band called Mark My Words that we met at a recent Battle of the Bands at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Queens Village. So we called up the drummer - Vinny. "Hey, man. We're that band that throws rubber fish at people and throws up while we play, do you wanna play some gigs with us? Our drummer just quit." Vinny: "Yeah, sure I'll do it!" On a FUCKING HOT day in the summer of 1991 Vinny practically walked all the way from Valley Stream L.I. to Jamaica Queens with his snare drum and sticks under his arm. When I saw the guy he was wearing a long sleeve shirt, long pants and high tops and he was drenched in sweat. We proceeded to the studio to practice as we had a show the next day at Carols Place in L.I. Like most of NRSV practices, Olde-E was in full effect. Here we are - our first practice with a new drummer and we drank at least a case of tall-boys already. So naturally Mike made another beer run. He returned to find Kent and Dean lying on the floor laughing their asses off while Vinny was threatening to jump out of a six story window onto the hard ground below. Then, when we did start to jam again, Dean was so drunk he was throwing full cans of beer at Vinny's head while he dodged them between drunken drum rolls. If that wasn't enough, before the first practice with Vinny ended - we had run naked in the halls of the studio (Jamaica music building), pissed under the doors of several bands we didn't like, taped chicken bones to the wall in some sort of ritual and drank about another case of Olde-E. Dean had to be carried out of the studio - crying and naked from the waist down and puking everywhere. The next day was the show (& hangovers, of course). The rest is history.