If there is one band that’s left an impression on me in the time since I started writing for Dying Scene, it’s definitely the Middle-Aged Queers. Based out of Oakland, CA Their shows are just as fun as their music, which is unapologetically tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic. While on the surface it seems like this quartet of East Bay punk rock veterans may not take things seriously, underneath you find there is a bond and love for each other that only comes along so often. While it wouldn’t be uncommon for a band with a catalog the size of the Middle-Aged Queers to release a “best of” collection, the band took a different direction for this release.
Greatest Hits isn’t a compilation of the band’s most popular tracks but a collection of cover songs from the band. Some of these were recorded previously, and rather than letting them collect dust, Shaun Osburn and crew decided to record some more and release them as an LP. The result is a sort of mixtape from the band that not only shows their influences but also their humor and the fun they have as a band. We sat down with Shaun, who gave us a breakdown of the tracks on Greatest Hits and some stories behind why they are so influential on the band.
Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis): I really liked the record. It’s a lot of fun. The song choices were awesome.
Shaun Osburn: A few of those were left over from tribute albums that never happened. Some stuff was just sort of like… at one point we had talked about Middle-Aged Queers and Tsunami Bomb combining forces to do a set of Faith No More songs. “We Care A Lot” was the first song that we learned for that cover set. The more we kind of looked into it, the more we were like, “Faith No More writes really simplistic stuff, but their arrangements are overcomplicated.” “We Care A Lot” is such an easy song, as far as performing it, but remembering all the weird changes. We were like, “Yeah, I don’t even think that this is possible for like nine people to divvy up and go. It’s not even going to be playing at once, not just, ‘We’ll handle this song.’”
We were going to sort of tag-team members. You know, like three people from Tsunami Bomb and then four people from Middle-Aged Queers would play a song. Then two people from Middle-Aged Queers and three people from Tsunami Bomb, was sort of how we envisioned it. It could have been cool, but the more I think about it, I’m stressed out enough playing my own stuff during Fest. Having it be a cover thing, it just seemed like too much of a hassle, but we played it out live a few times and we were like, “We should just record it.”
I saw you guys about a year and a half ago at The Sardine. I’m trying to remember if you played it when I saw you.
Was that with Hammerbombs?
Yeah.
We did play that.
That’s why it sounded familiar when I heard it. I think that’s what sold me, starting with Peaches’s “Fuck the Pain Away” into the song.
The first time I did that was in rehearsal, and we’d already decided we were going to play it at Gilman for an upcoming show. In my head, I started thinking about it before we played it. I was like, “Oh, I could like do “Fuck The Pain Away” and it would fit perfectly. Nikki (drums), like the first time through, just stopped and was like, “What the fuck are you doing? I can’t play drums while you do that.”
She was just laughing hysterically. I explained it to her, and then it just became sort of like, “We’ll do a mashup,” which we’ve done a lot of in covers. Like if you listen to the Operation Ivy tribute record that Sell The Heart and Lava Socks put out, we throw in Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized.” Just randomly, like trying to merge as much stuff as possible. We do that on some originals as well, where we throw in somebody else’s lyrics and wonder if someone will catch that.
We decided not to re-release anything that had been out on tribute albums, but there was an AFI tribute album that was going to come out on Lava Socks, and we jumped on it immediately because Josh, our bassist, had originally put out that AFI album (Answer That and Stay Fashionable) on Wingnut Records. When it came up in conversation with Lava Socks, we immediately were like, “Let’s do ‘I Wanna Get a Mohawk.'” Josh was like, “I don’t know if AFI would be cool with that.” I said, “As long as we’re paying for the mechanicals, they can’t stop us.”
That record never saw the light of day, and a lot of that was because when Lava Socks approached bands to participate, none of them wanted to do that album. They wanted to do something off of Sing the Sorrow. That one just kind of fizzled out because people weren’t really familiar with the first record.
It’s such a good record.
As someone who was introduced to AFI when they had two seven-inches out, as far as I’m concerned, like that record and Very Proud of Ya are the pinnacle of their career. However, I stopped paying attention after that, when everybody else started paying attention.
It’s just such a good punk record. That period of time at Gilman was just excellent, so I have really fond memories attached to that. It kind of felt like everybody who was going to get signed and be mega popular, that ship had already sailed. People were kind of doing their own thing. Other notable folks during that time would be like Black Fork, who was an unsung Lookout Records band. Hickey is another great one from that time period. The Bay Area just had lots and lots of music coming out that was clearly not ever going to be commercial. People weren’t really trying to gun for big success.
I remember in like 1998, around the time Very Proud of Ya came out, I was chatting with the head coordinator at the time at Gilman, Chris Sparks, and he asked, “Do you think that there’ll be another Gilman band to make it and become super popular?” And I said if there was a band, it would be AFI. His money was on Screw 32, and Screw 32, I think, abruptly ended that year.
I didn’t realize that Screw 32 was a Gilman band.
Oh, yeah. In fact, AFI and Screw 32 always played together. It was decided that AFI and Screw 32 weren’t going to play together because it just got way too wild. At that point in time, Gilman didn’t really have an official maximum capacity. We weren’t really answering to the fire marshal, anyway. I’ve been at Gilman where there were like 1200 people crammed inside. The legal capacity now is about four hundred. That just tells us how crunchy things got up in there. We’ve played that cover live, too. Although, we always say that it’s by a band called Abuncha Fucking Idiots, their original acronym. We’d be like you’ve never heard of it. It’s really obscure, It’s a deep cut off of an unknown band.
There’s also some funny ones in there like the Dr. Know cover (“Fist Fuck”) came about because Josh and I are friends with Brandon Cruz. They played a show in Berkeley where someone yelled for it, and Brandon was like, “I’m not going to sing that one,” and said, “Shaun is.” I’m just standing there like, “Okay, I guess I’m singing.” After that show, I guess on stage they said “We’re not playing that song ever again. It belongs to the Middle-Aged Queers.” So, we ran with that and started playing it live and saying that Dr. Know had stolen it from us.
A band that got together twenty years before you guys were a band or whatever.
Well, their doctorate is in quantum physics, and they invented a time machine, went back in time to steal the song.
Makes sense.
We did our own little spin on it because they were like, “It’s your song now, go cover it.” I think with Flipper, because Josh is such a mega fan, he played in one of Bruce Loose’s iterations of Flipper called “Not Flipper.” I think the flyer was in tiny letters. Bruce Loose organized some other players and did a set. Josh was in that. When he was fourteen, he used to go up on stage when they’d play at the Mabuhay Gardens and fill in on bass for them. That’s kind of how he learned.
It was like, “What is the Flipper song to cover?” and I suggested, “Ha Ha Ha,” because that song will just out of nowhere get stuck in my head. I definitely don’t have to worry about ever forgetting the lyrics to that song. For the most part, everybody kind of chose a song. We had all these things that came up organically, and then everybody picked a song. The other four songs on the record are just kind of things that we were like, “What is the song that you want to cover?”
For Nikki, that was Bush’s “Little Things,” which I was not into at all the first time she played it. I couldn’t imagine us doing this cover any sort of justice. I definitely took some liberties in how it was delivered, but it turned out better than I expected.
I like your Gavin Rossdale voice, but it’s a little lower.
I dropped a few octaves on it, and that was mostly to entertain myself in the studio. “How low can I go on this?” I joke that my range is limited to New Wave voice or Grimple voice. I wanted to kind of push myself a little bit there. I’m happy with the results. With “Keep On Living,” it was decided that I was not going to sing on that song. I was fine with that. I was going to play the tambourine, but then Fureigh (guitar) was already in there with the box of toys and shakers. I don’t need to play on every single song.
“Anti-Hero” was the one that I was like, we need to cover this. Josh couldn’t make it to practice that day. On the drive over, I was memorizing the lyrics and I played bass. We came up with the arrangement while we were all there, and then Josh came in eventually. We were going to try and do it exactly like Taylor Swift, same tempo. Then I said, let’s just try and play this like it’s a punk song.
Those drums sound like “New York’s Alright” at the beginning.
A friend of mine, Dave, the bassist of Dollar Store, said, “For someone who doesn’t like Bad Religion very much, you managed to take a Taylor Swift song and make it sound like a Bad Religion song.”
Oh, I didn’t even take it there, but I guess so, huh?
The Mazzy Star cover is interesting, too.
Josh really wanted to cover that, and we weren’t really feeling it when he played it for us on his iPhone. Which, you know, is always fun and entertaining when someone’s trying to convince you. We cover it like a hardcore song. I play bass on that, and he sings. That’s how we do it live, as well. That one we did a few times and went, “This is gonna be easy.” We can just knock this out in the studio. We did it in one take. It was the first time I ever did that sort of surfy, like, intro on the bass.
How often do you get asked to do things like comp albums or tribute albums like it seems like you’re on a few of them.
We’re on the Jawbreaker one for Dear You called Lawbreaker,” and we’re on the Operation Ivy one. Just those two. We missed the Rancid one by just a little bit, and we passed on a Blink-182. We went through Blink-182’s catalog, and honestly, for a lot of people my age and younger, their introduction to punk rock was through Blink-182. I’m totally not going to criticize that because it’s valid. Whatever gets you into it. There was just nothing in what I was hearing where I was like, “Yes, I want to cover this” and think I can do it justice or have fun with it. So, we passed on that.
The Operation Ivy one was fun. We got to that one kind of late, yeah, out of everything that was left. I was like, “Let’s play ‘Sleep Long,'” just because that’s the closest to our wheelhouse. I’m stoked with how that one turned out. We would play that one live often, like the first few times that we went through the East Coast. We had a cover by a band called The Middle Class.
We covered “Home Is Where.” I love Middle Class, but there was something about that particular song and the drumming on it that always bugged me. Nikki took a more straightforward punk approach. I think it turned out cool. It also turned out cool because she was singing too. It’s kind of dueling femme and masc vocals.
The Operation Ivy one, we know that they heard it because it was important to the labels that they gave their blessing before it was released. With Jawbreaker, we know that they heard it because Adam went to Nikki’s work with a Jawbreaker care package to thank her. I even mentioned it to him on Saturday because he was my plus one for The American Steel show at Bottom of the Hill and he was like, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you guys play.” I forget how it came up. I was like, “You’ve heard us because we covered one of your songs.” They intended to take it with them on tour when they were doing the Dear You anniversary tour, but it didn’t get back from the pressing plant in time.
They were really stoked that somebody did a collection of different bands paying homage to that record. It’s really cool; if you listen to it, there are so many different takes on how people did it. We played with it lyrically. There’s some stuff that kind of feels a little bit more like electronic. It’s a pretty eclectic mix of bands in there, most of whom are from the Bay Area.
I like how you updated the lyrics with the Faith No More cover. They were timely.
Doesn’t the original bring up Garbage Pail Kids at some point? There was a little bit of contention around Transformers because “there’s more than meets the eye.” Some folks were like, “Leave it as is,” and I was like, “That’s a dated reference to a dated thing.” Also, the bad guys were called Decepticons. We took that out, but we still left in something that was relevant to trans folks in there as kind of like an homage to the original lyrics. Some of them remain just as relevant; I’d say the bulk of them didn’t get updated. Things like, instead of talking about AIDS, it was monkeypox.
I kind of know when this was written or when they did this. I’m certain that will somehow get filtered back to Faith No More. We’re not too separated from them. We played with Roddy Bottum’s new band, maybe two years ago. I was decent enough acquaintances with Chuck (Mosley). Not that he can hear it or maybe he can; he’s just in another dimension.
Outside of the cover albums that you talked about, are there any other cover albums or any covers you like in particular?
That’s a good question. I liked Blatz’s cover of “Nausea” by X, which is worth checking out. So much of this is going to be very relative to the Bay Area, too. That one kind of stuck with me as being one of those examples of the cover being better than the original. This is all subjective. I just think that there was something a little bit brattier and unhinged about their version than the original. Good Riddance’s cover of “I Melt With You.”
That’s a great one, too. I remember that one. I remember that one when I was getting into punk.
Gosh, I keep bringing them up, but Black Fork covered GG Allin’s “Don’t Talk To Me,” which I’d never really even heard GG Allin. It was sort of like, “Oh, that’s GG Allin. He’s on the Jerry Springer show.” They covered him on one of their records. Maybe it was a demo, and then when I went back and listened to the original, I was not impressed, but I will say his cover of Carmelita is amazing. Actually, I would say that that’s probably my definitive answer for the best cover.
Were there any songs that you wanted to cover or that you guys didn’t get to put on here, or maybe got axed?
I wish Josh were here because he had so many. One that was a contender for a minute, and ultimately it just got too unwieldy, was “Be Quiet and Drive” by the Deftones. At one point it was like this weird freeform noise jam that we were trying to do. At another point it was just like a straight-ahead hardcore song, but we wanted to do it. It just never really worked out in a way that we all liked. Not completely ruling it out because I know Josh would really like to do “Everybody Dance Now.”
That was a contender, and Mötley Crüe’s “Live Wire” was kind of scrapped early. I think part of it is that, like us, we make fun of Mötley Crüe, but we don’t need to cover them. There are already so many parodies of them. We would have to change that for it to be something that we, as people in a queer band, could get away with putting out there, and that we’d feel comfortable putting out there. When you do that, you run the risk of getting sued by the people who own the publishing rights to the song.
When you do a cover, you’re totally allowed to do a cover. You just have to do it. Like, you have to keep to the lyrics and the arrangement, or they can come after you, which is why I misgendered myself in the cover of Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.” That’s totally done on purpose. We didn’t deviate because her people would sue me, whereas with Faith No More, I just don’t think that Billy Gould is going to come after me.
Would you say that this is a mixtape from the Middle-Aged Queers? Would you say these are like the cornerstone influences for you guys?
I think there are songs in there that, at least lyrically, are more important. The one I’m thinking of in particular is “Keep On Living.” That was really important to do especially because in the past few years, so many of our trans friends have died from a number of things. It’s health issues, It’s mental health issues. Some folks have self-exited. The foundation of this band is defiant joy. Outliving your enemies just as a big fuck you and being ridiculously queer and punk, even in this time of our lives is an important thing that we want to get out there.
So, you know, “Keep On Living” probably had more meaning than anything else. Two of us in Middle-Aged Queers are sober and in recovery from substance use. “Little Things” in some ways… There were conversations and questions asked of us, as the sober people, “Are you going to be comfortable performing this or having that be on a record?”
It’s not painting a glamorous picture of drug use at all. I think the two of us who are in recovery can relate to it. “We Care A Lot,” in many ways, came about as an anti-protest song. It was on the heels of “We Are The World” and so many others, like milquetoast MTV anthems that they were trying to make fun of. It doesn’t really take away from the things they’re talking about. The inclusion of a lot of them was intentional. So, updating it was fun and interesting to go line by line and be like, “Nope, that’s still a thing” and “it stays,” or “Do young people even know what a Garbage Pail Kid is anymore?”
They still have them, but they’re very much targeted at our generation.
I mean, you’re 42, 43. Yeah. OK, so like I was peak Garbage Pail Kid age when they hit. I was seven years old. I had series one through nine and was a pretty gung-ho collector of them until my parents watched some sort of TV show about them and how they were like ruining children and made me get rid of them. There was some sort of special about them. Like the jokes were just going over our heads. We were just kind of like, oh, boogers and vomit, which I still find funny at 46.
I forgot to ask you about the Spongebob cover in Korn style.
One of those instances where one of us realized that it lined up perfectly and that you could do the vocals that way on it. It was Josh. I think it started organically, like they were going to surprise me with it at one point. Like they weren’t going to tell me about it. They were just going to do it and show it to me and surprise me. Finally, Josh, one day, was like, “What do you think if we did it like this?” And the idea originally was that it was going to go into another one of our songs, like, “Are you ready?”
Then he came back a few months later and was like, “Actually, this lines up perfectly, and we can just do the ending of SpongeBob SquarePants and have it be like a mashup.” That one’s interesting because we intentionally fucked with how Korn played it. It’s not actually the Korn chord. It’s a little different. With the arrangement, one could make an argument that it is not a cover. So, the only people who can come after us are the owners of the SpongeBob song, but we didn’t change the lyrics.
Every once in a while, we’ll all be together in a song, and someone will be like, “All right, so Greatest Hits Volume Two.” Let’s put out some originals again, which we’ll get to. We have some in the can that we’re not sure what we’re going to do with. I think we’re kind of sitting around, waiting for it to be on a split or something. We did manage to eke out a few originals while we were finishing up the covers. For the time being, we put out an album of originals last year. We’ve got this covers album coming out now. It’s not like we’ve been a dormant band at any point in our short history.
Middle-Aged Queers Greatest Hits is available on Sell the Heart Records. Catch the Middle-Aged Queers on the road at the dates below:
- May 14 – The Wood Shop – Brooklyn, NY
- May 15 – Pouzza Fest – Montreal, QC
- May 15 – 1st Republic Brewing – Essex Junction, VT
- May 26 – Bottom of the Hill – San Francisco, CA
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