Early years Formed in the late 1970s as The Stains and playing their first gig under this name in August 1980, MDC were one of three pioneering
hardcore punk bands in
Austin, Texas, in the early '80s, alongside
The Dicks and
Big Boys. These bands frequently played together and established the Austin hardcore scene. They released one single as The Stains in 1981, featuring a slower version of the future MDC song "John Wayne Was a Nazi" backed with "Born to Die". Both songs were later released on the debut MDC album.
1980s Dave Dictor cited
Black Flag and
D.O.A. as early influences of the band: "We saw [Black Flag and D.O.A.] in 1980 when they came out to Texas and they were cookin'. We said 'Man. . . They're feelin it'" By 1982 the band had relocated to San Francisco, California, and renamed themselves MDC. By this point the band were active participants in the growing hardcore scene and released their debut LP
Millions of Dead Cops on their own label, R Radical;
Jello Biafra's
Alternative Tentacles helped with distribution. The album is now widely considered a punk classic, and features songs such as "John Wayne Was a Nazi", "Dick for Brains", and the harsh criticism of the police, "I Remember". Other targets of criticism devoid of irony included
capitalism ("Corporate Death Burger"),
homophobia ("America's So Straight"), and American culture ("Violent Rednecks"). During the summer of 1982 they became involved in the Rock Against Reagan Tour, during which time they fell out with the band
Bad Brains when
Rastafarian singer
H.R. learned that
Big Boys' singer,
Randy Turner, was gay. H.R. and MDC's Dave Dictor had an intense confrontation. Upon Bad Brains' departure from the bill, they refused to return a loan owed to Big Boys and instead left a note that reportedly read "burn in hell bloodclot faggot". The incident resulted in the MDC song "Pay to Come Along". For MDC, 1982 ended with a tour of Europe with the Dead Kennedys which brought the band greater exposure in the punk scene outside of the U.S., especially in the UK.
Name change In 1983 the band began to deemphasize the "Dead Cops" aspect of its name, as drummer Al Schvitz noted in a
Flipside interview: Their involvement in the Rock Against Reagan activities continued through 1983 and they returned to recording with the EP "Multi-Death Corporations" which was distributed in the UK by British
anarcho-punk label
Crass Records and R Radical in the U.S. The EP broke new ground by addressing, in the lengthy
liner notes and artwork, the growth of corporations and the violent suppression of
left-wing politics in
Central America. In 1984 they released another EP,
Millions of Dead Children (also known as
Chicken Squawk), this time dealing with
vegetarian and
vegan issues via a
cowpunk tune. Iconoclastic punk rock cartoonist John Crawford, an outspoken critic of the band, was cynical in his assessment of the alteration of the band's initial name, which he characterized as "stupid" and "inflammatory". Crawford intimated that the name change had been opportunistic:
Smoke Signals was released in 1986, their second album featuring a more diverse style than previously, with a foray into '70s rock with the song "South Africa Is Free". This album also saw Gordon Fraser's first appearance as main guitarist. In the same year, MDC backed
Michelle Shocked on a version of her song "Fogtown" that appears as a hidden track on her breakthrough album,
Short Sharp Shocked. Their third album, ''This Blood's for You
, followed in 1987 and saw them continuing to showcase orthodox hardcore punk style and classic rock, including a cover of the Cream song "Politician". Themes again included intervention in Central America and criticism of the Reagan Administration. MDC toured Europe in 1988, where the live album Elvis – In the Rhineland
was recorded. The band released the album Metal Devil Cokes'' in 1989 with guitar player Eric Calhoun and bassist Joe Strom.
1990s The 1990s opened with a number of lineup changes, swiftly followed by the 1991 album
Hey Cop! If I Had a Face Like Yours ... , featuring Bill Collins (formerly of
Fang, Special Forces, Intensified Chaos) on guitar and
Matt Freeman (of
Operation Ivy and
Rancid) on bass. Collins wrote all the music on the album and sang three of the songs. This lineup toured the US and Europe. The acclaimed
Shades of Brown album appeared in 1993, released by
New Red Archives in the U.S. and
We Bite in Europe. The album featured the
hip hop vegetarian song "Real Food, Real People, Real Bullets". MDC, now with guitarist Chris Wilder (formerly of
Stikky) and bassist Erica Liss, marked the album with a tour of the former
Soviet Union, making MDC the first American punk band to tour Russia. This was followed by two more European tours and several U.S. tours until 1995, where began a lull in the band's activity. The lack of new recorded material, other than a 7-inch release on
Slap-a-Ham Records, and live performances after 1994, plus personal problems of band members, pointed to an informal break-up of the band.
2000s MDC's singer,
Dave Dictor, returned with an entirely new backing line-up in 2000, which included Long Island musicians Matt Van Cura (bass), Erik Mischo (guitar), and John Soldo (Drums). MDC released a new album,
Magnus Dominus Corpus, in 2004. They took part in a 25th anniversary world tour in 2005, with an all-original lineup. Following the death of Mikey Donaldson in September 2007, MDC has been touring the U.S. and Europe extensively with the Dictor/Posner/Smith/Schvitz lineup. In November 2016, MDC released a video for the forthcoming release of a new recording of "Born to Die", made to protest the
Donald Trump presidential campaign. The song's slogan "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA" was reported to be heard at anti-Trump demonstrations, at The Women's March in Washington, D.C., on January 21, 2017, and in Chicago. At the
2016 American Music Awards on November 20, the band
Green Day adopted the anti-Trump slogan for a controversial impromptu chant during their live on-air performance, which Dictor applauded and encouraged. The media spotlight Green Day's action put on MDC inspired the band to create new material based around the current political climate. The album, entitled
Mein Trumpf, was released in 2017. ==Members==