YOUNG GUNS
Interview with Capital Wasteland
Orange County
It’s almost dark as the shapes of the members of Capital Wasteland start to form in the distance.
We’re at John Baca Park in Huntington Beach; they were in hiding. They say they’re being salty, looking to avoid having to loan out their equipment to other bands also on the bill for that night’s show.
“Everyone just likes using our instruments. That’s why we hide,” said guitarist Juggz, who declines to provide his first name. “They just beat up our equipment.”
Juggz is short for juggernaut and a descriptor bestowed upon him by friends describing what he’s like in the pit. But it’s also a good descriptor for the band overall. Capital Wasteland—the other three-fourths of which consist of Chris on drums, Christopher or “DD” on vocals and bassist Jacob “Spartacus”—is a raucous, rowdy crew capable of attracting an even rowdier crowd at their shows running in a local local Huntington Beach scene that includes bands such as The Cavities and Tanzler.
The meeting gets off to a bit of a rocky start when there’s slight discord about the band name.
“We changed our name to Capital Motherfucking Wasteland,” Juggz said.
“That’s not our real name, is it?” Jacob asked.
“It’s Capital Motherfucking Wasteland,” Juggz repeated. “Imagine, you go ‘Capital Wasteland’ or you say ‘OK, let’s go see Capital Motherfucking Wasteland.’”
When prodded to pick a name, it creates even more confusion.
“Our real name is Genital Slurpees,” Jacob clarified.
“Capital Wasteland,” Chris said.
“Come on, you pieces of shit,” DD said trying to bring consensus to the group.
Chris: “Capital Wasteland.”
Juggz: “All right, Capital Wasteland.”
DD: “Lock it in, dude.”
Done.
Juggz and younger brother Chris shaped the concept of the band, they said, in elementary school, having always played music together. They didn’t actually formalize it until last year with the addition of DD, whom they had met a few years back at a Long Beach show.
“We had some progressions down, but we never put lyrics to them and [DD] just kind of whipped us back into shape,” Juggz said, “and we said let’s write some lyrics ‘cause we were actually kind of good.”
Jacob more recently came on after moving back to Orange County from San Diego.
They’ve got a five-song EP that was recently released on their friend’s label, Those Uh, and there’s a cassette tape on the way.
“A lot of people have shitty cars nowadays that don’t have CD players,” Jacob said by way of explanation for the cassette.
“I thought we were putting them on cassettes just to piss everyone off,” Juggz said. “Cassettes are very popular for some reason and same with records.”
They’re currently writing more songs in hopes of potentially putting out a full-length album and they said they’ve had some courting by a larger record label but are hesitant about signing onto anything at the moment.
“We’re not selling out; we’re buying in,” Juggz said, somewhat jokingly on the subject of a larger label. “One of the most punk rock things to do is to be not punk rock today. People go way too hard for punk rock. But that’s [along the lines of] another song [Chris] wrote, Cost Play Corruption about The Casualties copy bands.”
“Everybody just looks the same,” Chris said.
“It’s a uniform, dude,” Juggz added.
“Everyone talks about being different, being individual,” Chris continued. “But everybody looks the same.”
“They all think they’re Darby Crash,” Juggz said.
Both Chris and Juggz took music lessons and it was their dad, a metal fan, who turned out to be a gateway for them into punk with bands such as Agent Orange and Suicidal Tendencies.
“We were always blasting that stuff [and we were] little elementary school kids,” Juggz said. “We just got weird looks and then we’d hear stuff on the radio like Blink 182 and it didn’t make us feel the same [as the other music]. We were just, like, dude, this music [on the radio] sucks.
DD said he fell into the music at a young age, too, although his story is somewhat comedic. He came across an Adicts T-shirt at the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet when he was six and thought it was just another brand logo. Wanting to find out more about this “brand,” he told his mom and the two ended up looking up The Adicts. They obviously got a surprise when they found out what it really was.
Capital Wasteland’s attracted the attention of fans for their onstage energy. One show that comes to mind that perhaps best exemplifies that is one in October. They had been added to the bill as an opening act at Huntington Beach restaurant and bar Fuzion. Chaos ensued, complete with a Donald Trump pinata filled with IOUs (because they didn’t have candy) and a couch and recliner that got dragged into the middle of the floor by members of another band.
It’s an aggression and anger in one-minute song bursts, ripping at the seams and energized by youth. But that’s all on the surface. If you take a closer look at their lyrics, they’re far more thoughtful than just a bunch of onstage antics.
“Reagan’s Not Relevant” is just over a minute, with lyrics looking to rouse what they see as a declining scene that has a tendency to look mainly to the past for inspiration rather than moving forward, leaving a community of bands that all sound the same.
“I just wrote it to get a reaction, negative or positive,” Chris said. “I don’t want zombies at my show. They better be jumping on me or off the stage.”
That will likely be the case for that night’s show. It’s still hours away, but the sun’s gone down and the prospect of hiding out in a park begins to fade as the temperature drops.
They’ll have to get there a little early anyways to make arrangements for Juggz to borrow someone’s guitar. He forgot his. Hopefully, the other bands aren’t hiding like them to avoid having to loan out their gear to other bands.
“That’s why I’m laughing,” Chris said of the predicament. “That’s why it’s so funny.”
“We were in a rush to get over here,” Juggz started by way of explanation. “This is the first time I’ve forgotten something. It didn’t come up until now, right when we parked here. I was like ‘OK, where’s my guitar?’”
Chris caps it succinctly: “The irony.”