FROM THE MOST RECENT LINEUP ON THE CURRENT CD "Eternally Undone," questions are answered by:
PAT FEAR: Guitar vocals, DOUG GRAVES: Bass, vocals, EL FEE: Guitar, vocals, TRACE ELEMENT: Drums, vocals, KIM CRIMSON: Guitar, vocals
Also adding some answers are long time members PICK Z. STIX: Drums, Guitar, vocals, JELLO B. AFRO: Bass, guitar, vocals

I am sure there has to be something behind the meaning of such a band's name like White Flag, can you please explain this? Maybe any negative inspiration from black flag, haha?
PAT FEAR: No, we love Black Flag. We just made fun of the name and the logo to piss off stupid kids who jumped on the punk scene just to be violent after they saw it on the television news. They had no idea what it was really about, they just took what television told them as the truth and that really attracted a really stupid, closed minded element to the scene. That happened in the LA scene in the early 80's, ruining the ”no rules” idea the music started out from. So we rebelled and did everything possible to fuck with these ”newcomers” idea of what punk was supposed to be about. All of the bands in the LA scene LOVED US!
EL FEE: We had long hair and dressed like rock and roll stars and played crazy hard-core music. We even pretended to be Christians at first, just to bother people, which is why some of the lyrics on the first album are so weird. It was all in fun, but also we wanted to shake things up again, make punk ”dangerous” like it was before it became ”acceptable.”
TRACE ELEMENT: It changed a lot in Los Angeles from 1977 to 1982. It wasn't as much fun and there were all these stupid violent kids with all these ”rules” the made up, even though it took them 5 years to get into the punk scene, they thought the could control it. We showed them they couldn't!
DOUG GRAVES: Our first two club gigs Black Flag got us on the bill, they were headlining. The even let us use all their equipment. All the Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Adolescents guys all wore our T-shirts when they played live, the were very supportive and got a lot of shows for us. Keith Morris used to sing the Black Flag song he recorded with them when he was in Black Flag, ”Nervous Breakdown” all the time live, the audiences went nuts whenever that happened!
EL FEE: Milo from the Descendants used to come up and sing KISS songs with us too.
Probably the worst question for the band that is active for 20 years could be : ”tell me the history of it all.” but due to total lack of information about your band here, I have to do it, so please inform us about the main facts from the history of White Flag.
EL FEE: The most important part about this band is the original five or six people all have known each other since we were six or seven years old, so it's more of a family than a band. We're from a small farm town 70 miles away from Los Angeles in southern California, a desert community called Sunnymead. NO PUNKS AT ALL until Pat discovered the Ramones in 1976!
JELLO B. AFRO: And no punks until White Flag in 1982! We were really hated by the local long haired hard rock freaks! They didn't even know what punk was so they just called us other bad names, it was funny.
PAT: Well, we were originally from such a small town there was not any sort of ”scene” here, especially in 1982. There were no clubs, we lived in a farm town with only 8,000 people, no stop lights, no street lights, no crime at all, no one even locked their doors or cars, it was a really nice small town.
EL FEE: And then we destroyed it!
DOUG GRAVES: We made our name known by driving an hour and a half to Los Angeles and playing there, then San Francisco and Phoenix, our first trip to another state, which is in Arizona. I would say we were part of the ”Southern California Scene” more than Los Angeles, because we didn't live there, and only Pat and Jello really hung out in the punk clubs there before the band started.
JELLO B. AFRO: Yeah, going to Hollywood and seeing The Germs, Black Flag and X on one show was pretty amazing. For only 4 dollars! Pat and I are in the Germs and Black Flag footage of the movie ”The Decline of Western Civilization.”
DOUG: A lot of the newer kids on the scene were more into fighting or slam dancing and didn't care who was playing, so we stopped doing gigs for a while, because people were getting hurt and we were getting tired of being the background music for that. We don't mind people dancing and stage diving, but it got to the point there were more security guards up front than real fans, and the fans up front were getting hurt, so we just stopped playing big shows. This wasn't just our shows, at the time it was the same for almost any band, and I hated playing to a front row full of bouncers! I think the last big one we did was with our friends The Necros and Motorhead, with like 5,000 people in 1984 or around then. That was an insanely large punk show in those days. Back then Motorhead was sort of a ”punk” band for people in the US even though I always consider them more of a rock band. Al Bum was still singing at that show, so it was before 1986.
El FEE: I'd rather play a small packed club full of enthusiastic people who want to see the band than 5,000 people who just go to stage dive to whoever is on stage and don't care what songs they are playing. I don't condemn people for doing that at shows, but I just got bored with it.
PAT: I like playing small clubs, and I don't mind big shows and people stage diving and slamming and having fun, but it got annoying getting my guitar broken in the middle of a set, or my teeth broken by someone falling into the microphone stand while I was singing. I had my front teeth broken about 4 times in one year! I like small clubs like
EL FEE: I agree, I think we were playing in the Los Angeles clubs and were involved in that scene like being an accepted out of town band. Other LA bands loved us, they were our first fans. I don't think anyone from LA ever drove to where we lived to see bands when they eventually started having a club here in the late 80's. It's an hour drive at least so most people from that ”scene” stayed there and let the bands come to them. PAT FEAR: That's one of the advantages of being from Los Angeles, all band eventually play there. People in the middle of the USA still don't get to see as many tours as cities on the coast, especially in the early days. But we lived close enough we could drive there, play and get home by four in the morning, and get up in time for school or whatever, so we were playing three or four times a month. We'd play in Los Angeles and in San Diego, Huntington Beach, Anaheim, Fullerton, all of the southern part of our state. I like to think we were from our own scene from the small town we were from, Sunnymead California. Trace was from the bigger nearby city of Riverside, and the later members of the band were from all over, but the founding members were all from our little town, we grew up together. And of course we played our first shows in our home town, we even got in the tiny little local newspaper when the first album came out, the treated us like we were a huge band because it was so unheard of for anyone in our town to even form a real band, and we already had an ALBUM out, after playing only three or four shows!
EL FEE: Me too, because we were the ONLY punk band in town, so we had to be the BEST BAND on the Sunnymead scene haahh!
JELLO B. AFRO: I think you can lump us in with the LA scene because we played with all the great LA bands from that era, and we were friends with them and usually borrowed all their drums and amplifiers for gigs. None of us had a van or truck so we had to take four cars to a gig if we HAD to use our own equipment. So the LA bands, especially Black Flag, the Circle Jerks and Redd Kross really supported us and helped us get shows and let us use their amps. Social Distortion too, and the Adolescents. I would say yes, we were a weird, sort of ”guest members” of the LA punk scene. Like out of towners with lots of cousins in other local bands. The scene supported that a lot when bands were on tour in those days it was really a feeling of unity and being able to rely on your fellow punks if something went wrong or a guitar got broken or something.
PAT FEAR: That became sort of a trademark, we'd show up at a gig with only our guitars and drum sticks and just borrow equipment. Big bags of crazy clothes and our own album out, but no amps or drums! I leaned that from The Germs, but they always did that just so they didn't have to move equipment and could get gigs and just show up and borrow other band's equipment! A LOT EASIER! Ha Ha!
DOUG GRAVES: We didn't do much, we released alive album from the 84 USA tour, then did an album for a German Label and toured Europe in 1996, our first time to Europe, it was amazing.
PICK Z. STIX: 1987 the band 7 Seconds signed us to their label and we released the album ”Wild Kingdom” with me on guitar and vocals. We played a few shows but not that many, we just were not that interested in playing.
PAT FEAR: We did a lot of singles and a few gigs where we got flown to places like Russia for one show, stuff like that, but we never broke up or anything, we just were rehearsing, releasing singles, etc., but not relaying into touring at that point.
DOUG GRAVES: I spent a lot of time coaching the Jr. Olympic skate team, and El FEE Went to Africa to work with the Peace Corps for a while.
KIM CRIMSON: A condensed White Flag history from 1992 to present follows, feel free to ask any questions about anything:
W.F. History 1992-2001: 1993, another split single with Tesco Vee is released in Germany, this one shaped like a saw Blade!
PAT FEAR: 1994 we were invited to play the Swedish Hultsfred Festival by Swedish band Sator, who had covered our song ”On the Way Down” on their most recent chart topping CD. We played right before them, to 25,000 people, and Blur and Midnight Oil opened for US. Campino form Die Toten Hosen sings onstage with the band.
EL FEE: Blur were complete assholes to us! In the summer of 1995 we headlined the third night of Spain's ”Serie B” festival, in the city of Pradejon. Doug couldn't make it due to coaching at a speed skating competition, so Ken form The Posies named himself Kim Crimson, and played bass, joining the large group of people who rotate in and out of the band.
TRACE ELEMENT: In 1995 we returned to Spain for a full tour, with Doug, Trace and El Fee and Pat, releasing the tour e.p ”Sitar Power”, which actually featured demos recorded with Pat, Jello, Trace and Duke, a fan who became a member with Kim and Ronnie from the Muffs and sort of came and went as is the general situation with White Flag members. The cover is a parody of Sonic Youth's ”Star Power” single, because Sonic Youth mentions Pat Fear in their song ”Screaming Skull”. The bands are long time friends, and the front photo of Pat (posing with the sitar like Thurston) was taken by Eric from Hole's then girlfriend, actress Drew Barrymore!
PAT FEAR: I am also in the Sonic Youth video from the ”Goo” album called ”Cinderella's big score. You guessed it, I played a cop!
DOUG GRAVES: 1996 we played a one off gig in Budapest, and one show in St. Petersburg, Russia as part of a cultural exchange program.
PICK Z. STIX: 1996 the ”Wild Kingdom” line up of me, Pat, and Trace, release a single on Sweden's Planet of Noise label, put out by their friends in the band Sator.
PAT FEAR: In 1997 Ken and I formed a side project called CHARIOT, with Posies drummer Brian Young, and Javier form the Zeros. An album was released on Munster Records in Spain, and the band toured Spain, including Mallorca and Canary Islands, playing Chariot originals, with White Flag, Posies and Zeros songs mixed into the set list. It was really cool, lots of crazed fans of all the bands showed up, we had a lot of fun. It's a great CD you can get it through info@munster-records.com.
TRACE ELEMENT: in 1998 the band decided to make some recordings to see what it sounded like. Munster released a single of ”Ask Anybody”/”I'll never Turn you On” with Kim Crimson singing lead. The band then decided this lineup (Kim Crimson, Pat Fear, Doug Graves, El Fee, trace Element) will eventually make an album, but it still too a while...
PAT FEAR: We played a ”WHO” tribute concert, with everyone on the bill doing two Who songs. This RARE lineup featured Dale Crover of The Melvin's on Drums, Ronnie from the Muffs on Bass, Chris from Clawhammer on Guitar, and ended in a noise jam with Kim form the Muffs and Drew Barrymore playing feedback guitar! As is White Flag's nature, at this ”WHO TRIBUTE” show, the band performed two songs by The Jam! Pete Townsend later heard the recording of the show, and said it was ”something like the early WHO would have done at a thing like this!”
EL FEE: In 1999 a single was released in Germany with the line up of Kim Crimson, Pat Fear, El Fee and Trace Element, from the slowly taking shape new CD. Two songs on the single ”Soft Focus” and ”Andi's Island” are not on the final album. ”Andi's Island” is about a fictional punk rock paradise owned by Toten Hosen bassit Andi! FIrst pressing of the single is in glow in the dark vinyl!
KIM CRIMSON: Winter of 1999, Chariot again toured, this time Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, and Holland, in temperatures 30 degree below zero in some parts of Norway. The tour was a huge success and the band, this time featuring Jon Auer of the Posies, as I (Ken/Kim Crimson) was touring with REM!. They performed a live concert on national radio to four countries and 6 million listeners.
TRACE ELEMENT: In 1999 Houston Party Records in Spain released a 10” e.p. on what appears to be the Beatles' ”Apple Records” label! The title track ”Empty Heaven,” becomes heavily added to commercial radio playlists and jots great reviews in alternative and mainstream Spanish publications.Then, September of 1999, the band, this time featuring Javier form The Zeros on guitar, and The Adz bassist and long time friend of Pat's, Bruce Duff, on bass. Along with Pat and Trace, the band toured Spain to great response, including a live broadcast of an acoustic radio performance to 4 million people!
EL FEE: In 2000. Me Pat, Trace and Kim released another Swedish single, this time a split EP with ”Baby Demons,” who in reality are the very popular Swedish band Sator. It is released on Just4Fun records, the label in Sweden who reissued the band's first two ”real” records on their ”Step Back 10” compilation. Then in December 2000 Pat Breaks his back in a rodeo bull riding accident (yes, he really does that )! and the German release of the CD is slowed down by his inability to work on it.
TRACE ELEMENT: Pat also performed a one off song with a band called ”TUBE TOPS 2000,” backing up famous Los Angeles disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, doing a cover of Gary Glitter's ”Rock and Roll (part 2). Other members of the band feature Eric and Melissa from Hole, Kathy Valentine from The Go-Go's, and Clem Burke from Blondie on drums. The band's version becomes popular at large ice hockey events around the country!
KIM CRIMSON: In 2001 The new CD ”Eternally Undone, is released in Germany in the end of summer. Pat co wrote the song ”King of Confusion”, about White Flag , for the Go-Go's, and it is released only on the Japanese version of their new CD ”God Bless the Go-Go's”
PAT FEAR: That's it so far, we're trying to get a lot of older stuff reissued for the 20th anniversary which is this year, and maybe tour in the late summer early fall.

Who from the present line up is original member of W.F.?
TRACE ELEMENT: Me, Pat Fear, El Fee and Doug Graves. Kim Crimson is on the current new CD and has been with us since about 1996 on and off.
Was also there back in early 80-ies any pop punk, or was it all more raw, aggressive and ”hard-core” then? More fights, nazis, violence in the scene?
PAT FEAR: Well punk started as more aggressive POP if you ask me. RAMONES, Sex Pistols, Generation X, even early LA bands like Weirdos and X had pop songs that were just more aggressively played and maybe about more intense lyrical themes than just love songs.
EL FEE: We were originally a hard-core band, in that our singer Al Bum, really couldn't sing, but the rest of us could, so we had a hard core guy screaming with nice harmonies behind it, so it gave us a weird edge.
DOUG GRAVES: When Al left the band and the rest of us took over lead vocals, we still had the anger and raw edge but it just sounded more pop, evening doing the old hard-core songs, which we always still do live, just as fast, we scream but it's more on key so it sounds ”better”. But we all love hard-core for what it is and what we did at the time we re proud of.
EL FEE: For someone who never even tried to sing, Al was thorn in front of a band with four people in the band who were ALL lead singers, so he did a good job with his abilities. He really isn't off key on records much, he just couldn't harmonize, which is fine.
PAT FEAR: I think Al Bum was great for what we were doing, he was an amazing stage performer too. Hard-core started with The Germs, and that band had no harmonies for similar reason, even though Pat Smear and Don Bolles sang great lead vocals, Darby Crash couldn't do it, so they just let him scream, and we all KNOW how great they wee.
EL FEE: None better in hardcore, ever.
DOUG GRAVE: Untouchable, the (GI) album is PERFECT punk rock.
TRACE ELEMENT: Middle Class and the Dickies were the other fast bands, bordering on hard-core but still with melodies. I separate ”hard core” from ”thrash” by saying hard-core AHD melodies where thrash just had aggression and chanting vocals. Minor Threat is pretty melodic.
PAT FEAR: Violence came into the scene when the media made it popular, it all started in a place called Huntington Beach, at one school called Edison High. All the famous hard core punk came form there, they were all ex football players who got the idea that a punk show could be like a football game, and it got really violent at times.
TRACE ELEMENT: Kids slamming is one thing,, but people started actually swinging chains around the pit and kicking with steel toed boots, really stupid stuff.
EL FEE: There really was not much ”nazi” stuff in LA, the skinheads were just fashion, not really racist.
PAT FEAR: Yeah there was really almost none of that, no organized movement or anything, it really didn't happen then in Los Angles, and hardly at all even nowadays. They stay o themselves and listen to their own racist bands I guess. You don't hear anything about nazis in Lo Angeles.
TRACE ELEMENT: Lost of early punks used to wear swastikas and stuff just to be shocking, like Siousxi Sioux and Sid Vicious did in the early London scene. They weren't nazis, just being shocking.
PATE FEAR: Roger from The Circle Jerks used to wear a Nazi armband when they played, and three of the Circle Jerks are Jewish, so you can see it wasn't a serious nazi movement, it was just being ”punk.” That Nazi symbolism is taken a lot differently here than it is in Europe, because we fought AGAINST them in the war so pretending to support them by wearing shirts like Sid did is more like saying ”fuck you” to society's rules, it was not saying anything racist, it was just punks being obnoxious. REAL Nazi skins like Skrewdriver came later, and they were just complete assholes.
From your web pages one can have a feeling, that White Flag is and alsowas one big happy family, even including the ex-members? is it only my feeling or is this what White Flag is about? tell me, is there anything more behind the music, if we talk about your band?
EL FEE: Yeah, we have a core membership, me, Pat, Trace, Doug, and then people rotate in and out as is convenient. We added new members along the way, there's about then people but most of them are busy a lot with their own bands like The Muffs Posies, so it is mostly the original lineup that does stuff.
PAT FEAR: Yeah, as you know there are a lot of people in and out of the band, sort of a rotating group. The most recent album Eternally Undone, is most of the early line up: Me, Trace Element, El Fee and Dough Graves, which is the line up from the German tour of 86, plus newer member since about 96, Kim Crimson, who is also in The Posies and Big Star...
If you should talk about your releases, and we don't have so much time and space to comment them all, can you take 3 of all as a representativestuff of the White Flag? Please be concrete why exactly these three ...
PAT FEAR: Without a doubt, the first album S. IS FOR SPACE, represents what White Flag started out to be, pure musical chaos, funny but also making a serious point about how confined the punk scene in Los Angeles had become in a very short period of time. Then I think the major transition was the fourth album, WILD KINGDOM which was the first after our original singer Al Bum was fired, and Me, Doug and Pick Z. and El fee took over the lead vocals.
EL FEE: Al Bum was great for thrash and hard-core, but we started singing and were better singers so the music was still fast and wild but had more listenable vocals and harmonies.
TRACE ELEMENT: Rolling Stone called us the punk rock Everly Brothers!
PAT FEAR: And now all the magazines reviewing our new CD Eternally Undone” are calling us the ”punk Rock Beatles” which I find very amusing!
OK, but it's still only two records, so the third one would be ....
PAR FEAR: Okay, S. IS FOR SPACE, WILD KINGDOM, and then the new one, which is representative of where we are now. Not to say we won't change, or even go back to our older styles, we do whatever we feel like. IF I am inspired to write a hard core fast song, we do it. On the cassette we are giving your label, there's a new unreleased song called ”Skating on Glass” It's a thrash surf instrumental I wrote a few days ago, it's available now here else but the cassette.
TRACE: I agree the new album is one of our best. The cassette is called ”Dying in the Future, Living in the Past.” It is an overview of all our different lineups, including when we had a girl in the band, Kim from The Muffs. It's a pretty interesting compilation, so I would say as an over all representative of White Flag, the cassette would be a good place to start.
EL FEE: I agree.
I am sorry about another such an ordinary and non original question, but please try to understand me, I have not opportunity like this each day so I have to ask: how do you feel present hard-core punk scene, what have changed the most during that 20 years you are in this scene.
PAT FEAR: well, the big change is that bands are now getting rich! Punk has stopped being an ”alternative” music, it is accepted and seen as just part of rock and roll or pop. I think NOFX, rancid, Green day and those bands all deserve their success, as none of them changed or sold out. They just kept doing what was in their hearts and they worked hard for years and finally the general public got used to it, was no longer threatened by people with green hair and leather jackets.
TRACE ELEMENT: yeah, it's not like in the old days when you could get beaten up for looking like a punk, now day's it's accepted as away to look. I guess that makes it safer, but it seems less ”personal” now.
EL FEE: Yeah, 20 years ago, if you saw another punk or went to a punk gig, you knew you had something in common with that person. These days it's spread wide and all kinds of people are into the fashion and the music, so it's not as close of a scene, but still, it's better than really ”commercial” horrible music like Britney Spears and 'N Synch!
PAT FEAR: I remember when you could hardly find a indie punk record, you had to go to small specialty stores. Now you can go to a shopping mall and buy a punk record, and in Maximum Rock and Roll there are thousands of records released on thousands of small indie labels. I think it's great that it's lasted this long, and is still growing.
TRACE ELEMENT: One thing for sure is it hasn't grown stagnant, there are always a few new bands who take it in a different direction and make something different while still sticking to the punk roots or whatever. It's a wide open category, and it's getting wider.
PAT FEAR: I am not really a computer person, but the Internet really has given people more access to obscure bands, music, websites whatever, making it easier to explore the music, especially if you live in a small town or a country where it is still hard to find the record s. So that has really helped keep it moving. It's a different scene now, but in most ways I think it's better...but it still was something special in the early days to see Black Flag with 1o0 people in the audience, that will never happen again!

Well, but some people think, when you are once on MTV or you sell records released on big labels, you are not punk anymore. with all the respect to the bands who has done really much for the punk scene in the history, i also think that first it should be rebel culture, not the name for three loud chords and colorful hairstyle. i do like some music on MTV, but i can't stand when these bands are called as ”punk”, i will better like them if they'll be honest, and call it pop or whatever. you know, that stupid strange angry punk image on safe, corporate TV that can impact Nobody, pretty sucks, don't you think? what bands you named expect from MTV or EMI records .... who watch that TV station, listen to that kind of label records? punks? ... I doubt.
PAT FEAR: Well then you have to decide, ”WHAT IS A PUNK”? NOFX plays to 20 thousand people, and they all ”look” punk. Are they punks? I don't know, who can say what that is anymore. Punk has been swallowed up, it is mainstream music now. If you don't like that I can appreciate it, but I would rather have Green Day on the radio and TV than Journey or dance music. Punk has been out of the hands of the original scene punks for 20 years now, so you have to just deal with it. If you want a small, insular scene, you can make one, but he big world outside is still going to watch these band son MTV and be 100% sure it's punk music, there's no stopping it. I never watch MTV or listen to the radio, really.
TRACE ELEMENT: You have to recall, the Sex Pistols were on EMI, The Ramones on Warner Brothers, all the original bands were on major labels, that has nothing to do with if the band is punk or not. I think anyone with any common sense can tell if a band is sincere or if they're faking it. Punk is a wide spectrum, from hardcore to punk pop. I know, we've done all of it, as is illustrated on the cassette you're releasing. If it pleases one person to listen to it, then the music is valid. Who care if you don't or I don't like t, it doesn't hurt me or you. If someone wants to think they are punk because they like Green Day, i don't care, as long as they have fun and nobody gets hurt.

What do you think about present pop punk, is it only popular MTV kind of melodically songs doing by peroxided short-piler guys ...? don't you think that ”real” punks are affraid of the word ”pop” more than anything else? (well, except the ”nonalcoholic beer”)
PAT FEAR: well, I like NOFX and Rancid, and some Green day. We are a pop punk band, but different from the style most people assume you are talking about. We sound NOTHING like Green Day or Blink 182, but our songs, even the early hard-core ones, have melody you can sing along to and we always did harmonies.
TRACE ELEMENT: A god song is a good song, if you like it who cares what category it is. Most of the big ”POP PUNK” bands a relay groups that started out poor and worked and worked to get to where they are. Sure there are some fake bands manufactured by record companies, but anyone smart enough to like punk can see through those kind of phonies, and they get ignored.
JELLO B. AFRO: I like all kinds of music, it's nothing to be afraid of as long as it entertains you. I get a little bored going to a show with five hard-core or speeder bands all screaming and playing so fast you can't tell the difference between one band or another. I KNOW a lot of people like that, and it's great that there are those kind of bands out there, but they don't hold my interest for more than a few songs. I'd rather listen to Social Distortion or the Adolescents, bands with hooks in their songs and choruses you can remember.
What do you think about technical evolution that often helps a lot even in progress of punk scene, but on the other hand it is quite often refused by some old fashioned punks? Is Internet, digital recording, emails .... your cup of tea?
EL FEE: We like to record analog as opposed to digital, digital sounds to ”clean” for rock and roll and punk music to us. I think Pat answered the Internet question already in a previous question.
PICK Z. STIX: Computer can make it so some band who can't afford a recording studio or can't get to one because they live in a remote are, make music that sounds very professionally recorded. Since it's almost free if you own the computer, more people can make music, then use the Internet to get it out to people.
PAT FEAR: And the best part is you can GIVE TI AWAY FOR FREE by letting people download it form your website. We're going o have some free songs on our site soon.
OK, just for a minute back to the topic about doing the tape on my k.a.z. rec. ... how and when did you get into this idea to put out your music on totally unknown labels like somewhere in east europe?
PAT: It started early on, we got letters from what were then communist countries like Poland, Yugoslavia, etc., saying they had bootleg tapes of our music that they sold very cheaply and gave away, because it was illegal to have this kind of ”subversive” music in their country then. We thought that was great, so we decided to ALWAYS support a small label no matter where they were form, if they wanted to do something to help support the punk scene in their area. We started giving singles away and we still do it, like this tape, and also a compilation album called T IS FOR TWENTY coming out in Germany this summer, on another small label called Killer release. Itis run by a big fan of the band and we jsut decided to help support his label.. You can email them at hq@killer-release.de to find out about it .
EL FEE: We just try and do our part. Some people form bands, others do fanzines, others start labels, and we appreciate the money and time and deaccession it takes to do that, so we support in the best way we can by giving them a band to sell that people will probably recognize.
DOUG GRAVES: We support the independent scene, that's what punk is all about!
PATE FEAR: We released the ”Freedom Fighters” EP in South Africa when it was still Apartheid. It was on an anti Apartheid label, and the guy risked his life putting it out, that is the record we are all most proud of.
DOUG GRAVES: It was like a James Bond spy mission getting the master tapes through South African customs, because they were such strict censors. It was pretty crazy.
EL FE: The money went to poor black African children
TRACE ELEMENT: email us at whiteflagmail@aol.com, or go to the website to see videos and stuff http://ww.chaser.net/whiteflag/
Do you like tea?
PAT FEAR: Yes
TRACE ELEMENT: YES
EL FE: NO
KIM CRIMSON: Yes, with milk and honey
What do you personally think about the position of united states in the world nowadays? I think many people outside of the USA take your policy like too expansive and aggressive. How does you feel it, as an american person, from inside?
PAT FEAR: We are not a political band and don't get involved in this stuff, we are an escape from the headaches of politics and things like that.EL FEE: If a band wants to spend their time making political statements, that's great, but we are not that kind of band, we're more funny and crazy fun punk. If I want to hear about politics I will go to a debate or read a newspaper, don't want it forcing it's way in to my music, since I use music to forget problems.
TRACE ELEMENT: When we toured Europe for the first item, we found out that a lot of people have really strange and incorrect idea what the United States and living her s like. Some of the things people said were so silly, it's hard to believe ANYONE could believe it. So there's no point in discussing politics really,, as no one has the same information or perceptive and real life information on the subjects,, so nobody is going convince anyone else they are wrong and make them change their minds. It'd just be a big headache and waste time you could spend doing something productive or fun.
EL FE: I work with poor people through the Peace Corps, helping them learn about farming and irrigation, that's my political activity, I do humanitarian aid.
PAT FEAR: Boring question...
OK, bad question for you ..... but wasn't also white flag that kind of political rebels in the beginning of their career? If yes, why did you turn into this more funny punk band?
PAT FEAR: We have never been a ”funny” band. We HAVE FUN and we don't take ourselves seriously. We were never ”political,” we did make SOCIAL COMMENTARY about the punk scene, how it was changing and became closed minded and a lot like what it started out to eliminate.We are sort of funny some times, with our parody album covers and band member names, but we are serious about being funny!
TRACE ELEMENT: We are very serious about our music, our lyrics, our shows. We're not like some band who doesn't care. We started out to shake things up, we have done that, we still do on occasion, but we do whatever we want, no categories for us.
EL FE: We do hard-core, we did pop punk years before NOFX or GREEN DAY, we have done slow heavy metalish songs, we do whatever, we live by the original PUNK RULES which are NO RULES!
PAT FEAR: I was talking to Fat Mike from NOFX today and he was saying how White Flag influenced them because we have the same attitude. They're not a ”Funny” band but they have fun, like they have the song ”Fuck The Kids” and things like that. They are a great band, one of my favorites. I co-wrote a song with Mike for NOFX called ”Lucas' Theme,” it going to be on a cartoon show called ”Motel Spaghetti” some time this year in Europe. You can email them to get the website for video clips and stuff at: motelspaghetti@airtel.net
DOUG GRAVES: We did the them song, and I sing it. There will be a soundtrack with a lot of great bands.
Don't you ever have any problems because of the name of your band ... you know, some people when see a word ”white” think right about racism. Wasn't there any misinterpretations ever?
PAT FEAR: Only once in 1986 a few communist punks tried to cause trouble because we made fun of communism, saying how in real communist states they didn't HAVE punk rock back then. They tried to make us sound like we were a white supremest band with their propaganda but nobody believed it except their own group. Half our band is Jewish, Jello is African American, we had Duke who is Japanese in the band for a while, so I think it's pretty obvious we're not racist. Ian MacKaye or Fat Mike wouldn't be a fan if we were, would they?
EL FEE: ANYONE who knows ANYTHING about punk would see out name was a joke on BLACK FLAG, how hard is that to figure out, we stole their logo!
I don't want to ask you anything about 11. September, just want to know, If you, as a person, feel anyhow less safe now when you walking down thestreet or waiting for subway?
PAT FEAR: well, not really, but it does make you realize anyone can do anything anywhere with enough money and planning. There's no point in being scared all the time, that's what a terrorist regime wants to happen. I just go on with my life.
TRACE: me too, you can't live in paranoia all the time, it something is going to happen, worrying about it all day and all night isn't going to stop it from happening.
Please tell us how old are you and if you want to talk about it, do you have any plans for the future ... can you imagine yourself on the 28th of august 2017.
PAT FEAR: In 2017 I hope to be releasing the 35th anniversary White Flag box set and touring.
EL FEE: In wheelchairs!
DOUG GRAVES: I will play bass from my retirement home via the Internet and broadcast it at the concerts!
Is it true that your bassist is the national couch of the speed skating team? What do you think about this year's Olympic games in USA?
DOUG GRAVES: Everyone in every interview we do is confused about that. I coach the Jr. Olympics, it isn't the ”real” Olympic team. I thought the figure skating corruption scandal was terrible for everyone competing in what is supposed to be a fair competition. It made me sad, but I coach speed skating, not figure skating.
PAT FEAR: He's misdeed some tours and shows because of his coaching commitments, but it's okay we have three bass players we can pick from!
Please don't take this as a recommendation for your band, it's just a question: tell me, how do you think band should stop its existence? Is it better to stop it on the top or keep on rocking like Rolling Stones, AC/DC ... until the last breath? Hey, do you know any other punk band active for like 20 years?
PAT FEAR: I guess a lot of the early English bands are still sort of together, like the Damned, 999 and some others, with a lot of new members. I can't think of any US bands still together after 20 years, but a lot of them have been around like 10 or 15. I think a band should stop when it stops meaning it, when it become a job and not a passion.
EL FEE: A band should do what they want as long as the want to, it isn't required that people listen to them or go see them, that's up to the fans. I lie being in a band because it's fun, so as long as it's fun I will keep doing it, for myself. If anyone else enjoys it, that's a bonus.
DOUG GRAVES: As long as I have a good time, I will keep doing it too, if I was hating it and going through the motions just to make money, that would be fake and a rip off for fans so I think that is when a band should stop, when it's not real anymore.
PAT, does anybody told you that on some pictures you look like Freddy Mercury from the Queen (haha)?
PAT FEAR: YES! I think that's funny. Most people say I look like a cop, because a lot of cops have mustaches. When that first started happening we pretend I WAS a cop just to freak people out. Kids who had fathers who were real cops would start stealing their Dad's uniform and give them to me so I would wear them on stage (which is really illegal to do )! And it was really funny. Very punk I think!
EL FEE: A lot of people REALLY thought he was a cop when they saw him in those uniforms, it was really funny. Some people HATED him for it, other punks thought it was really cool that a ”real cop” would like punk and play in a punk band. Just more White Flag chaos and confusion, just like the name of the band. We always like to make people question what they are seeing and hearing and think about it.
Please can you tell me anything about the Gasatanka Records ... is it your label, is it still active, what that interesting word ”gasatanka ” means, sounds like some Indian word ..... ?
PAT FEAR: I quit doing the label in the 90's as we were getting ripped off by distributors going out of business. We did it for 13 years and released a lot of good records I think, but the business end of it was bad. Now a lot of those records r eon eBay for a lot of money!
EL FE: The name Gasatanka and the logo were a joke on the old label KISS used to be on, CASABLANCA. Out logo had guy at a petroleum station holding a gas pump to fill up a car.
I was 8 when your band started, wish you my son is 8 when your band still don't want to stop. Thanx for this interview, pat!
PAT FEAR: Well thanks for the interview, it's our pleasure. We really like reaching countries where we have not had much time to tour or do interviews.
EL FEE: Releasing the cassette and soon hopefully a full CD on your label is great. We love giving small labels free releases to support their scene, we've done it a lot, even one in South Africa and Japan. We REALLY support people who take the time to contribute to the scene as opposed to just being fans and going to shows. We know what kind of effort it takes, so we try and help whenever we can.
TRACE ELEMENT: Plus we really like getting to know people in other counties, and getting email form them etc. It's great to know some person in a country we have never been to is listening to our music. We used to get letters from the old Communist countries all the time, saying they had bootleg cassettes of our songs and were really happy to have American punk music as it was banned there. That was a great thing for us.
EL FEE: We want to play Slovania and Czech republic when we tour, probably in September. Any labels in Poland o other countries who want to release White Flag, feel free to ask us!
PAT FEAR: We'd like to hear form people, our email address is whiteflagmail@aol.com and our website is http://www.chaser.net/whiteflag/

MUSICAL TOP TEN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
1 The Ramones
2. NOFX
3. WHITE STRIPES
4. THE VINES from Australia
5. THIN LIZZY
6. KISS (makeup period only)
7. MINOR THREAT
8. THE BEATLES
9. Generation X