Hustle and Drive

Interview with Alter Boys

San Pedro

September 27, 2018

SAN PEDRO, CALIF. – “Johnny!”

Alter Boys drummer Tony perked up from his perch where moments earlier he was slouched over an amp as bassist Johnny walked in.

“Oh, my god. Holy shit,” Tony continued. “This guy. Our bassist came. You don’t even know how excited – did you see how excited I was?”

No doubt all of San Pedro probably heard his excitement as the Alter Boys filed into their practice space. It was up in the air earlier as to whether Johnny would be there (hence the outsized welcome). Guitarist Nick is already reclining on a couch in the studio and Johnny’s followed not longer after by singer Jack, bearing pizza as he deadpanned to Tony “You think you deserve this after what you did yesterday?”

The four comprise Harbor area band Alter Boys. Call it hardcore, punk, speed punk; they dub their style “hockeycore” in reference to some of the members’ sport of choice. With two splits set to come out on vinyl next year and a continually filled calendar of shows, the Alter Boys are, to state the obvious, busy.

“That’s my coke, fool,” Jack said turning to Nick. “Side note. I bought a thing of water, opened a fresh water, last Thursday. This one drinks all my water.”

“But I had mine sitting over there,” Nick said not even refuting the account. “That was funny; I forgot about that.”

“I didn’t,” Jack said.

For the next hour, their conversation straddles inside jokes, divergent side stories and serious reflections about the state of the scene, largely avoiding anything self-congratulatory or cliché stories of how they fell into punk.

Their live sets are as rapid fire as their songs – many shy of hitting the one-minute mark. Jack and Tony are blurs, usually too fast to register with any clarity in a frame for the camera. Nick and Johnny appear to be jamming in their own bubbles. They could never be accused of lacking drive. When Jack and Johnny were unable to make a gig at Bridgetown DIY in La Puente, Nick and Tony refused to cancel. They played as a two-piece with Tony drumming and singing, out of breath by the end of the set, winning them nods of approval and disbelief from onlookers.  

“Have you ever played music? Have you ever made it?” Tony said of why they keep doing what they’re doing. “I mean, it’s just this fucking ecstasy that nothing else can provide no matter what drug you do. Making music, we’re mind fucking each other. Every band does it. Literally, we’re fucking each other’s minds making this shit. We’re feeling each other’s emotions. Besides fucking sex, we’re getting pretty close to each other, you know what I’m saying? We worked so hard at this; I don’t want it to die. Just making music and jamming, letting out this aggression. It’s noise compared to what music is defined as. We ain’t playing no Tchaikovsky shit here. It’s pretty primitive compared to what our ancestors used to do, you know? But being able to make that music and express ourselves and people just even nodding to it, that’s cool.”

“That’s why I always loved being in bands, to be with a literal band – just a bunch of brothers and sisters being tribal. Just getting out your inner self,” Nick added.  

The Alter Boys has gone through its phases of evolution to get to where it is today. It was born out of the remnants of the now-defunct band Think Twice, which had a two-year run that began in 2007. Over the years the lineup has gone through its changes – with Jack and Tony there from the very beginning – cycling through former members that went on to other bands or diverged down different paths in life. Nick and Johnny were both fans, the latter oftentimes getting on the mic during Think Twice shows, and joined the group at different points in the band’s life.

Alter Boys, the name, is derived from the answer to a dirty joke (hint: It’s one that starts off, “How do you get a nun pregnant?”) They’re not to be confused with the 80s band Altar Boys (they’ve gotten four messages about that so, yes, they’re aware), nor should they be confused for a religious act. One person went so far as to comment on their social media “closer to the altar, closer to God,” which Tony had to clarify.

“I had to tell him ‘Hey, man. We’re not that kind of band. We spell it differently.’ He messaged back saying ‘I made a mistake,’” Tony said. “I mean, you’ve just got to, I guess, know how to spell.”

For those that didn’t notice, it’s the subtle difference between an “altar” and “alter” that makes all the difference.

They’re right now riding on their six-song “Hockey Violence” demo released in July and during sets still play some of the old Think Twice music. To those on the outside, all of it may sound the same but the music’s evolved as much as the lineup over time.

“Maybe because I was younger and I was singing about breakups and how I didn’t want to go to school, compared to now where I’m singing about life and what’s bothering me, but it just has a different feel,” Jack said of how the new sounds compare to the old. “If you hear us play it live, it sounds the same.”

“But in its own right,” Nick said. “What we’ve got has gone through so many changes and different creations with so many different people that there is a difference in the energy. I love playing those old songs because they sound amazing to me and I hear them still as a fan when I was going to those backyard shows as a kid.”

“Damn,” Jack said in disbelief.

“You made me cry, girl,” Tony added.

Despite the gusto with which they’ve been playing shows, the band had actually been on a three-year hiatus up until last December after Johnny and Nick attempted stints with other bands. When that fizzled, they regrouped, and Alter Boys reemerged, now playing a frenzy of shows. They’ve got a passion for and encyclopedic knowledge when it comes to the local scene and bands.

The four are not “old” by any stretch, but the fact that they started their first band in 2007, gives them a frame of reference not everyone can lay claim to when they look at what the scene consisted of during the rise of Think Twice to what it is as Alter Boys replants the seeds on a new group of punk and hardcore fans.

“For me, coming from Think Twice as a fan, it doesn’t sound as angry,” Johnny said of the landscape today. “It doesn’t at all. It’s gone from Think Twice, Gross Negligence... it was just straight out there aggressive and it made me want to fucking move. Nowadays, this backyard scene, they don’t really get me moving. Some of the bands they sound really talented, but it doesn’t make me want to move. That’s what really disappoints me and I like aggressive punk rock like classic Infest.”

“I was talking to some of these kids that are starting up now. They’re 19, 20,” Tony said.  “We’ve been together for 9, 10 years and so 10 years ago they were 9 years old. They didn’t even know what this was. Like, no fucking idea what we used to do. We had a cool little momentum. We were chilling and then we disappeared. All those people we grew up with, most of our friends, aren’t even in the scene anymore.”  

That reality is not a deterrent. They like what they’re doing and they refuse to stop. That’s largely a bi-product of them not ever being content, according to Jack. They’re constantly picking away at their songs, tweaking and then re-tweaking. It’s also to do with the band still growing up. Despite now approaching a decade since it’s founding, the Alter Boys, according to Tony, is still figuring out who it is as a band and there’s no real expiration date on personal quests involving creative outlets, which is what this band is for them. 

“I’m not going to say we have much larger aspirations because honestly we’re just going with the flow,” Jack said.

“We’re not here to make money that’s for sure,” Tony said. “If we were, we should have been playing reggae.”

“If you notice, any of the merch we make, we give it out for free,” Jack said. “I’m not going to charge $10, $15 a shirt. You’re doing me a favor by wearing our shit, you know what I mean? That’s how I look at it. This is all in good fun. I mean, we did put a lot of money into it, so we hope it lasts a little longer.”

But that will require more work for what Tony noted is a fast-food generation. That fact is writ large from beyond just the backyard scene, with a generation brought up on social media and the idea that content – including music – can be culled from a bottomless vat, never mind the actual work required to create said content.

“What’s a full-length album, especially with how short our songs are. We’ve got to come up with 30 songs,” Nick said of what it would mean to produce a full album. “That’s going to take a year to 18 months. We’ll get so far behind, people are going to be like ‘I thought you guys took a year break again.’ It’s like no, dude. No one gives a shit about what you’re working on. They just want to see and what can you give me to stand there at this backyard show and not really do anything other than just sit there with a blank stare. It’s just like what do people want to stare at and swipe next?”

“You’ve got to work really hard now,” Tony said.

They’re not running from that hard work or hustling either to release more. They’re sitting on roughly five or six new songs and Jack pointed out their music should be available across multiple platforms within the next month. They’re also working on two split albums, one with Kamikaze Co-Pilot and the other with Deviated State, both due out next year on vinyl. Still, this isn’t a career move for any of them. It’s not a job. It’s a hobby and they agree they’re not going to get ahead of themselves, producing more just to win over short-term thinking. They’re not about that kind of existence.

“As soon as you start thinking you want something out of it or you want something back for what you do,” Jack said, “that’s when you’re failing.”

Keep In Touch

Instagram: @alter_boys

Music: Bandcamp