Descendents

Early years, Fat EP, Milo Goes to College, and first hiatus (1977–1984) In 1977, friends Frank Navetta and David Nolte began writing songs on acoustic guitars with the intention of forming a band. They initially called themselves "The Itch", until Navetta came up with the name "Descendents". Nolte sang with the group at several of their early performances alongside Navetta, but by the spring of 1979, The Last were becoming more active and he left the Descendents again, being replaced by bassist Tony Lombardo. Navetta sang "Ride the Wild" while Lombardo sang "It's a Hectic World". Nolte produced and mixed the session, and his brother Joe turned the lead guitar level up, resulting in the guitar being very loud in the mix. After a six-month trial with a female singer, Cecilia Loera, they recruited Milo Aukerman as their new vocalist after Navetta and Lombardo got tired of singing. While still short and fast, the songs on Milo Goes to College were also melodic. Aukerman later reflected: "It's interesting: we started very melodic, then moved to hardcore, but melded the two at a certain point and became melodic hardcore." The illustration was done by Jeff Atkinson, based on earlier caricatures by a high school classmate of Aukerman's named Roger Deuerlein, who had drawn comic strips and posters depicting Aukerman as the class nerd. Aukerman later recalled that the band took his departure in stride: When I decided to go to university, the guys in the band were pretty hip on it because they knew how big of a nerd I was. Like, "What else would you expect him to do but to go off and be a geek?" I mean, I've got a Ph.D in biochemistry — how uncool is that? At the same time, Stevenson had also joined Black Flag, intending to be in both bands at once but soon finding it too difficult due to Black Flag's touring and recording schedule. After three tours in support of ''I Don't Want to Grow Up, the band recorded Enjoy!'' in March and April 1986 at Radio Tokyo studios in Venice, California. Drummer Bill Stevenson acted as producer of the album, working with recording engineers Richard Andrews and Ethan James. The band supported Enjoy! with a tour through the Summer of 1986. Dez Cadena sang backing vocals, while Stevenson created the album's cover graphics and Alvarez provided illustrations for the sleeve and liner notes. The album was released through SST Records, who had purchased the Descendents' previous label New Alliance Records that year and also re-released all of their previous albums. All was released in LP, cassette, and CD formats, the latter two containing the additional tracks "Jealous of the World" and "Uranus". The band supported the album with a 60-day Spring 1987 tour, followed by the 50-day Summer "FinALL" tour, so-called due to Aukerman's decision to leave the band to pursue a career in biochemistry. Original Descendents members Tony Lombardo and Frank Navetta made appearances on the album: Navetta wrote the song "Doghouse" and both he and Lombardo played on it, marking the first recording by the original Descendents lineup of Aukerman, Lombardo, Navetta, and Stevenson since Milo Goes to College in 1982. Both All and the Descendents signed to Epitaph Records, who released Everything Sucks, the subsequent All albums Mass Nerder (1998) and Problematic (2000), and the All/Descendents double live album Live Plus One (2001). It was rumored that Epitaph would not sign All without getting the Descendents as well, but Stevenson explained that the arrangement was made because Epitaph head Brett Gurewitz would allow both bands to make albums at their discretion: When we signed with Epitaph it was for both bands. It was a thing of knowing Brett forever, and so I just sat down and said, "Well, we want to make records!" At the time we were leaving Interscope. We weren't happy with Interscope at all. So we sat down and told them we wanted to make both All and Descendents records whenever we want, at our choosing. Brett and I worked out a deal like that, so it was really flexible and we could basically do whatever we wanted. Music videos were filmed for "I'm the One" and "When I Get Old", and both songs were released as singles in Europe. Third reformation, Cool to Be You, reunions, Filmage, and Hypercaffium Spazzinate (2004–2017) In the early 2000s, Aukerman took a break from biochemistry and reunited with the Descendents to record a new album. The recording sessions for Cool to Be You took place with Aukerman in February 2002 at The Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado, with additional recording done in April at Planet of Sound in Wilmington, Delaware, and were produced by Stevenson. The band recorded the music for the songs live in the studio with minimal overdubbing, and Aukerman's vocals were recorded over the instrumental tracks. In 2010 the Descendents reunited again for a series of gigs. According to Milo, the reunion is not an official reformation. He classified these as "one-off shows", usually occurring when he is able to take advantage of vacation breaks as working as a biologist to perform with the Descendents. A documentary called Filmage documenting the story behind the Descendents and All premiered at Bloor Hot Docs cinema in Toronto on June, 15th 2013 as part of the NXNE Music and Film festival. Directed by Matt Riggle and Deedle LaCour, Filmage had a limited theatrical run in Los Angeles starting September, 26th 2014 and was released in the US and Canada on VOD, Digital and Blu-ray/DVD September, 30th 2014. In May 2015 it was announced by Stevenson that the band had been working on some demo songs for a new album, which could possibly be released mid-2016. On April 22, 2016, it was announced that the band's next album, Hypercaffium Spazzinate, along with an accompanying EP with five bonus tracks from the recording sessions entitled Spazzhazard would be released through Epitaph in July. On June 7, the debut single from Hypercaffium Spazzinate, "Victim of Me", was released on all streaming services. In July 2016, Milo announced he would be leaving his scientific career to pursue the Descendents full-time, citing burnout with biochemistry and getting laid off from DuPont. New singles and 9th & Walnut (2018–present) In a March 2019 interview with OC Register, Aukerman revealed that Descendents were working on a new album: "When we put out the last record we thought, 'OK, I bet we could put out another record after this one and not wait a decade to do it.' It was such a rewarding experience and you know what? Our fans deserve better. They deserve more than a record every decade or so. We started writing almost immediately after that record was done. I have been writing and Stephen (Egerton) has really picked up the mantle, too. Between us I think we have like 20 songs written and Bill (Stevenson) and Karl (Alvarez) have been writing songs as well. We've done some basic tracking, but it's still a work in progress but I hope we'll have something out by the end of the year." In 2020, they released a single to streaming services, entitled "Suffrage" and including two songs, "On You" and "Hindsight 2020". On May 4, 2021, the band put out a single called "Baby Doncha Know" and announced their eighth album that would be released on July 23 titled 9th & Walnut, named after the intersection in Long Beach, California, where their first rehearsal space was located. The album was recorded primarily during a 2002 session featuring the original lineup of Stevenson, Frank Navetta, and Tony Lombardo, with Milo Aukerman recording his lead vocals for the album at home in Delaware during the COVID-19 pandemic. It contains eighteen songs written by the band between 1977 and 1981, including re-recorded versions of "Ride the Wild" and "It's a Hectic World". The album serves as the band's first recording since Everything Sucks to feature this "classic" lineup. ==Artistry==

Musical style and instrumentation Over the years, the Descendents style of music has changed from short under a minute hardcore style songs to average length 2–3 minute punk rock songs. Critics have cited that their earlier music style which reflected hardcore punk being influential to modern day skate punk and pop-punk. Steven Blush, author of American Hardcore: A Tribal History, remarked that their "cheeky love songs disguised as hardcore blasts became the most aped formula in rock." Bill Stevenson attributed the change of their sound to the band's invention of the "Bonus Cup": "We took of a cup of instant coffee grounds, added some hot water, threw in about 5 spoonfuls of sugar, and proceeded to play 10 second songs. The Bonus Cup became a part of everyday Descendents life." Merican" addresses positive and negative aspects of American history, celebrating cultural figures such as Otis Redding, Duke Ellington, and Walt Whitman while condemning slavery, Joseph McCarthy, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Vietnam War. Stevenson wrote "One More Day" about the death of his father, who he had taken in and cared for throughout the last year of his life: "He and I always had a terrible relationship. We spent a good part of my adult life being somewhat estranged from each other. He became ill and I took care of him for a little while. And then he died. That song is just about his and my relationship. Just to get that out of me and not holding it inside anymore, is a huge relief for me [...] Every single time I hear that song, it just freaks me out. I've never, ever written a song that's freaked me out that much." ==Milo character==

''A caricature of singer Milo Aukerman has been a mascot for the Descendents since the early 1980s, appearing on the covers of six of the band's eight studio albums. The character was created by Rodger Deuerlein, a classmate of Aukerman and drummer Bill Stevenson's at Mira Costa High School who taunted Aukerman by drawing comic strips and posters depicting him as the class nerd. "He usually used me to make campaigns for people running for class office. [...] I remember him making one that said 'Don't be a nerd like Milo, vote for Billy!' or something like that." In addition to appearing on much of the Descendents' merchandise and promotional materials, the Milo character has been reinterpreted by other artists for all of the band's releases since 1996: • Reading a newspaper on the cover of Everything Sucks (1996). • Dressed as Uncle Sam, in two versions, on the cover of '''Merican'' (2004), as drawn by Jeff Hagedorn • Drawn on graph paper on the cover of Cool to Be You (2004), as illustrated by Chris Shary. • As an Erlenmeyer flask on the cover of Hypercaffium Spazzinate (2016). • As a ballot box on the cover of Suffrage (2020); the full illustration also depicts a hand with a spiked wristband depositing a vote into said ballot box. == Legacy and influence ==

The Descendents have been cited as hugely influential to a large number of modern-day punk bands such as Blink-182, MXPX, NOFX, Green Day, Pennywise, Propagandhi, Rise Against, the All-American Rejects, the Bouncing Souls, the Offspring, and the Ataris. "Everything about how I sing and play guitar came from this band [...] Blink is absolutely a product of The Descendents," said Blink-182 vocalist/guitarist Tom DeLonge in 2011, while vocalist/bassist Mark Hoppus called "Silly Girl" from ''I Don't Want to Grow Up (1985) "the first song that really altered my life. [...] It spoke to me in a way that nothing did." In 2014, Filmage: The Story of Descendents/All'', a documentary on the band, premiered. The film features interviews with Hoppus, Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, and Mike Watt of Minutemen. Milo Goes to College has been included in several lists of noteworthy punk albums. Spin has listed it several times, ranking it No. 74 in a 1995 list of the best alternative albums and No. 20 in a 2001 list of "The 50 Most Essential Punk Records", and including it in a 2004 list of "Essential Hardcore" albums. In these lists, critic Simon Reynolds described the album as "Fifteen Cali-core paroxysms that anatomize dork-dude pangs with haiku brevity", while Andrew Beaujon called it "Super clean, super tight, super poppy hardcore about hating your parents, riding bikes, and not wanting to 'smell your muff.' The German edition of the Rolling Stones The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time ranked it at 349. In 2016, a Descendents branded IPA entitled "Feel This Coffee" was released by the San Diego branch of Mikkeller Brewery. It is named after a track from their 2016 album Hypercaffium Spazzinate. The staff of Consequence ranked the band at number 4 on their list of "The 100 Best Pop Punk Bands" in 2019. ==Band members==

Current members • Bill Stevenson – drums, occasional backing vocals (1978–1983, 1985–1987, 1995–1997, 2002–2004, 2010–present), vocals (1979–1980, 2002) • Milo Aukerman – vocals (1980–1983, 1985–1987, 1995–1997, 2002–2004, 2010–present) • Stephen Egerton – guitar, backing vocals (1986–1987, 1995–1997, 2002–2004, 2010–present) • Karl Alvarez – bass, backing vocals (1986–1987, 1995–1997, 2002–2004, 2010–present) Former members • Frank Navetta – guitar (1977–1983, 1996, 2002), vocals (1977–1980, 2002); died 2008 • David Nolte – vocals (1977–1979), guitar (1977–1978), bass (1978–1979) • Tony Lombardo – bass (1979–1983, 1985, 1996, 2002), vocals (1979–1980, 2002) • Ray Cooper – vocals (1982–1983), guitar (1982–1983, 1985–1986) • Doug Carrion – bass, backing vocals (1985–1986) Timeline ==Documentary==

In 2013 Rogue Elephant Pictures, an Austin Texas-based film company, announced the pending release of Filmage: The Story Of The Descendents / ALL, a film by Deedle Lacour and Matt Riggle. The documentary film has more than 40 interviews with band members past and present and keynote commentary by associated musicians such as Keith Morris of Black Flag, Mike Watt of the Minutemen, Kira Roessler of Black Flag, members of Rise Against, and many more. The film was released on June 15, 2013. ==Discography==

Studio albums • Milo Goes to College (1982) • ''I Don't Want to Grow Up'' (1985) • Enjoy! (1986) • All (1987) • Everything Sucks (1996) • Cool to Be You (2004) • Hypercaffium Spazzinate (2016) • 9th & Walnut (2021) EPs • ''Ride the Wild / It's a Hectic World'' (1980) • Fat EP (1981) • Sessions (1997) • '''Merican'' (2004) • Spazzhazard (2016) ==References==