I grew up in a mid sized Canadian city in the late 90’s & early 2000’s at the height of the nü metal era. Think baggy cargo shorts, studded bracelet, puffy skate shoes, a Korn t-shirt & that was me. My friends & I were part of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater generation of skateboarders. After skating the curbs of our local library to death we eventually found the guts to explore outside our neighbourhood. The downtown skatepark was a bit of a mythical realm where the teenagers hung out. It was an intimidating place for us pre-teens just starting to skate. The first time I ever encountered NOFX was in the year 2000 at the skatepark. Not their music, just a crudely tagged logo in the kidney shaped bowl.
“Life is fast but I don’t wanna live past you because you are my only roots.” – NOFX
My mom worked downtown as a bartender & had connections to the venues that hosted touring bands. I loved a Canadian nü metal band called Project Wyze so my mom called in some favours & got myself & three friends on the guest list to their show. It was a transformative experience going to my first concert but what I remember most was seeing a teenager wearing a green NOFX shirt. The logo matched the graffiti & a connection was made in my memory from the skatepark to that night.
I wasn’t blessed with an older sibling to introduce me to punk but I did have an older cousin who made me a mixed CD. I like to imagine she thought it was her sacred duty to do so. The burned CD was filled with hits from the Napster era like “Blue” by Eiffel 65 & “Last Resort” by Papa Roach. She also threw on a couple NOFX songs. “I Don’t Want You Around” was the first song I ever heard by them.
To this day I still have a fondness for the odd bouncy ska rhythm of that song. “Kids of the K-Hole” was mixed among the Y2K hits as well. I ended up writing “Kids of the K-Hole” on my skateboard grip tape. I had no idea what the term meant, I just thought that it sounded cool because my hometown’s name started with a ‘K’.
Much of the music I had been listening to up until then was something my mom listened to. I grew up on Sinéad O’Connor, Melissa Etheridge & Amanda Marshall. My mom’s boyfriend listened to Green Day so I had heard the term “punk” before. At that age I was eager to find things for myself. I’d see a “Rocky Horror” patch at a rock shop downtown & then find the film on VHS at the thrift store. My exploration of queer culture ran parallel to my discovery of punk.
One day I went into a music store in the mall while my mom went off to do her own shopping. “Do you have any punk?” I shyly asked the employee at the counter, not really knowing what I was asking for. The employee searched the store’s database & went to dig a CD out from the rack. They handed me a copy of Punk-O-Rama 6, an Epitaph records compilation, & shrugged. It said “punk” right on it so I was stoked. I bought it with my mom’s money & put it on during the car ride home. I was painfully self conscious but my mom insisted I put it on. I was only 12 years old.
A few tracks in & “Bath of Least Resistance” came on. I lost my mind at the lead bass line thinking this is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. The vocals were bizarre but familiar, a high pitched raspy shout with a tinge of melody. Something I could see myself yelling. It’s that band NOFX! I realized, looking at the track listing.
I shared my copy of Punk-O-Rama 6 with friends & we all ripped it to our computers & made copies. That compilation burned its way into my brain in such a way that I couldn’t separate the songs. If I hear “Bath of Least Resistance” to this day I subconsciously expect the Millencolin song from the CD to come on after it. My friends & I started to obsess over NOFX in particular. We spent hours downloading the music video for “Leave It Alone” on dial up internet & watched it on repeat. They looked so cool. I started wearing stripped t-shirts & plaid shorts like the band wore. We started drawing the NOFX logo on our school binders with white-out pens & sharpies. I must have read the band’s history on their O.G. official site a dozen times. It was the era of crappy internet fan sites & I devoted myself to making one on Geocities with photos of NOFX that I found all over the place. Somehow a mislabelled photo of AFI got on there too.
Suddenly it didn’t matter that I was being bullied, that I had girls spitting in my hair & other kids telling me I was poor or that I smelled bad. I had a secret & it was punk. That compilation hinted that the world was bigger than school. All of the songs on that Punk-O-Rama CD became a lifeline to me but NOFX was the one band that I truly connected with.
Not long after I got a copy of Pump Up the Valuum. My friends each gravitated towards an album of their own. Between us we explored their already massive discography.
In the seventh grade my friends & I started to talk about forming our own band. That Christmas I asked for an electric guitar & my mom gifted me a cheap blue Fender strat knock off. One of us picked up bass & we met a drummer who lived in our neighbourhood. I came up with the name for our first band. We called ourselves “NO EVIDENCE“, a blatant NOFX rip off. We started out playing “Brain Stew”, “Blitzkrieg Bop” & “Skulls” after our drummer’s older brother schooled us about the Misfits. Our band slowly got better but not by much. We hadn’t figured out that bass lines should at least be in tune with the guitar. I mimicked Fat Mike’s vocals by shouting & pushing the sound up out of my eyeballs. By grade nine we were asked to play a local gig at an all ages space. It was a huge moment for us. We opened up the show for our friend’s brothers band & it was one of the best nights of my life. The year was 2002.
In 2003 I was sitting at a lunch table with my friends taking turns listening to The War on Errorism on a discman. While a bit more polished sounding it followed the typical NOFX mix of fast hard hitting songs & a couple really stupid ones. Mike’s vocals sounded dope & super pissed off. My favourite song was “The Irrationality of Rationality” & I wished the whole album sounded as forceful & gut punching as that one.
At age 15 I got my first after school job working in the kitchen of a halfway house for men. Most of my measly paycheques got spent at the record store. Browsing the NOFX CD selection was overwhelming but I slowly started to collect every album they had released by that point. I developed a special fondness for The Longest Line E.P. & listened to “Remnants” constantly while riding the bus home from shows.
One day my friend helped dye my hair in their parents’ kitchen. We were doing my hair half orange & half blue & listening to The Decline CD on full blast. When my friend’s mother asked us to turn down the music, my friend broke down, nearly in tears, completely sincere, “Mom! This is an 18 minute long punk song! Like, you don’t know how important this is!”. Their mom just shrugged & turned it down herself. To us that song was beyond explanation. It was something that couldn’t be fully grasped, just experienced. I once forced my own mom to listen to the whole song as if hearing it would explain something about myself that I couldn’t quite verbalize. I remember feeling disappointed when she inevitably zoned out or didn’t find that part as special or meaningful as I did.
My friends & I kept skating together until a few older guys from the punk scene joined our friend group. Inevitably some of us started smoking weed, drinking & going to parties more often. I got wildly drunk on red wine & stoned for the first time at a house party. The hungover walk home the following morning convinced me to hold off on alcohol & drugs for awhile longer.
In 2005 I was 16 years old & had the chance to see NOFX live for the first time in Toronto. To my severe disappointment none of my friends would go with me. They were less interested in NOFX by that point & were listening to bands like Total Chaos, The Casualties & Dayglo Abortions. Meanwhile I was rocking NOFX, Propagandhi & Against Me – bands with overt progressive politics but completely different approaches. The passion we once shared for skateboarding & the music we mutually discovered was suddenly not enough to bind us. Our punk world was getting bigger & there were subtle divisions that I was too naïve to understand. Eventually I quit our band, cementing the steady drift I’d had with the people I’d known since kindergarten.
Around this time I admitted to myself that I was queer & started wearing a rainbow belt with my Catholic school uniform. I denied that I was gay or bisexual to anyone who confronted me about it. The truth however was that my sexuality even being questioned was extremely freeing to me.
Before class one day I went into the record store & scored a ticket for the NOFX show. I ended up getting a ride with an awkward older punk boy who picked me up from the mall after school. Together we drove a couple hours to see them in a big warehouse in Toronto. Against Me opened the show & even though I was a fan I couldn’t have cared less. I was there for one purpose, like my whole teenage life had been leading up to that night. It was like seeing the Beatles or Elvis for me. When NOFX came on stage I saw they had a rainbow pride flag draped over an amp. I started crying immediately. The show was a blur beyond the emotional tidal wave that came over me. Out of nowhere they played “The Decline” in the middle of the set. I could not believe it. It felt like a dream, caught up in the swell of bodies with tears streaming down my face while I sang along to every word.
A few tragedies happened to my younger brother & I in the last couple years of our teens. While at a house party my brother’s best friend was killed after getting jumped by some older boys. My brother saw his best friend die on the floor after a few punches. This was one of several things that contributed to our rapid loss of innocence. Struggling to come to terms with what had happened I ended up listening to “Malachi Crunch” on repeat for days, finding the lyrics relatable. I tried to be there for my brother. I even tried to get him into punk but music didn’t help him in the same way it helped me. He became very angry at world, lashing out at my mom & me. I became frightened by him & we drifted apart. Not working through things with him back then is my biggest regret. There were years that we didn’t talk. It’s the saddest thing in my life.
The following year NOFX’s Never Trust a Hippy E.P. came out & as a Catholic school kid the album art & focus on the hypocrisy of religion felt poignant & hilariously subversive. The full album Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing dropped a month later. It quickly became my personal favourite. Zeroed in on religion & politics, the album had clever lyrics that were pro-lesbian, pro-gay, pro-trans, anti-racist & I cherished them even more than before. They were genuinely my band by then. They spoke for me.
Meanwhile I was planning on running away from home & had been saving up money. I managed to stash away $700, thinking that would be enough to help me survive on my own. My plan was to leave the day after high school ended. I told no one. Late at night I signed into MSN Messenger & changed my screen name to a lyric from “Instant Crassic” – I’m living in Bakersfield.
I’m at a month long hip hop festival. I felt like I was being funny & vague. My mom understandably flipped out when she discovered a handwritten goodbye note instead of me in the morning. She called all of my friends in a panic, heartbroken & confused. Based on my screen name they all thought I had run away to Bakersfield, California. I finally called my mom from Montréal & told her that I needed to get out. I reassured her that she did nothing wrong & that I loved her. She accepted this so long as I kept in touch periodically which I agreed to.
I ended up on the East Coast in Halifax, Nova Scotia. For the first few nights I slept curled up around rocks under the casino with the harbour waves crashing endlessly. My sleeping bag wasn’t worth shit & I shivered all night. On a sunny day I rented a bicycle downtown & rode it to a beach outside of the city. It was my first time seeing the open Atlantic Ocean & it was hypnotically gorgeous. I ran dramatically into the waves & was hit with watery blades of ice. It was colder than I thought possible. The water shocked my system & I nearly got taken away by the force of the surf. A week later I hitchhiked around the South Shore & slept in strange places each night. A gazebo in the town of Mahone Bay. A unlocked display shed in a Canadian Tire parking lot. A floating dock in Lunenberg. I wrote in my journal constantly & read Arthur Rimbaud poems each night. I was 17 years old & had to turn down sexual advances from adults almost daily. In my backpack I had only two CDs to listen to the whole time – Wolves In Wolves’ Clothing & a copy of The Bends by Radiohead that I stole from a hostel I stayed at. I fell in love with Nova Scotia during that trip & knew I’d return.
Upon returning home a close friend died in a car accident down the road from my house. I swore I heard the crash in the middle of the night even though that was likely impossible. He hit a tree so hard that his heart exploded. I remembered that when I came back from the Maritimes he was the only one besides my mom who cared that I had left. He told me so serious & pissed, “Don’t ever do that again.” My childhood friends mourned & spent every moment in each other’s company. The loss brought us back together for a time, but after a few nights the pills & the powder came out & it all started to feel so selfish, so numb. I decided to move away for good & returned to Halifax in the autumn. I never regained my friendships with the people I grew up with, many of whom I had known since kindergarten.
In Halifax I moved into a crusty anarchist punk house & quickly came out as queer to my roommates who said “Duh”. I felt accepted immediately & without explanation. Soon after turning 19 I started dating an older woman who laughed affectionately when she went through my CD wallet & saw several pages of NOFX. My new house was stalked by white supremacists & surveilled by the police simultaneously. When I called home to my mom I could hear the phone being tapped on the other end. People would show up in the middle of the night & knock on our front door with baseball bats. My roommate would get arrested walking home from work & thrown in jail for breaching bogus conditions from a protesting charge.
While I was working nightshifts as a janitor Coaster came out. I listened to it non stop while on shift but hated the Tegan & Sara song. “My Orphan Year” hit hard, not because I’d lost my parents but because I never knew my dad. Mike’s lyrics about neglect made me wish for even a shitty relationship with my dad. Something that I could at least hate him for, but he was a blank space in my life. Less than nothing.
Fast forward a few more years & I was on tour constantly with my own bands playing DIY shows all over the United States & Canada. When I wasn’t in a van I was train hopping & hitch hiking. My music taste moved into crust punk, sludge & other genres. I started different bands, toured, worked jobs, quit jobs & repeated that cycle for several years. While on a winter tour I found out NOFX was coming to Halifax on a cross Canada tour. I woke up at 5 in the morning in a freezing cold squat in Pittsburgh to buy a ticket over the phone with my credit card. I went to that show alone as well. Mike having a red mohawk is my most vivid memory. During the set a former roommate who I hadn’t seen in years found me in the pit & gave me a big hug. He pointed up with a mischievous grin. I shook my head “NO” but it was too late, he crouched down to boost me up. I crowd surfed for what ended up being the last time that night. I was 23 years old.
In the spring of 2012 I adopted a black & white pit bull & stopped riding trains, hitchhiking & touring as often. Wanting to be the best dog mom possible became my new calling in life. Self/Entitled came out while I was in school to become a veterinary assistant & I was severely let down by it. The album felt weak, uninspired & unfinished. A year later the redeeming Stoke Extinguisher 7” dropped & the title track instantly became one of my all-time favourite songs from them. Around this time I discovered opiates for myself after avoiding them for so many years. They didn’t ruin my life but I realized quickly that I’d probably always yearn for the euphoria & warmth that they gave me. I experimented somewhat secretly for several years.
My queercore band covered “Liza & Louise” while on tour in 2014, making the song faster & crustier. I met my future wife at one of the shows when our bands played together in Montréal. Our connection was instant but it would be a couple more years until our lives converged in earnest.
First Ditch Effort came out while my life was in flux & I felt that it was among their best albums to play from front to back. My primary gripe with NOFX was that I’ve always felt like the band was terrible at choosing what songs end up as B-sides & what songs make an album. Some of their joke songs aged badly & killed the momentum of otherwise flawless records. First Ditch skirted that tradition by being fully playable. “Six Years On Dope” instantly became a favourite song & in my opinion is their ultimate album opener. As a fan hearing the “Travest-lite” song, I felt a great deal of sympathy for Mike & him being open about his desire to cross-dress & explore his sexuality. It allowed me to forge a deeper connection the band & validated my lifelong love for them. Fat Mike’s shamelessness, while at times obnoxious, may have even allowed me the courage to vocalize my own kinks to future partners.
While on tour my band played the best show of our existence at ABC No Rio in NYC. Of course “I’m Telling Tim” came into my mind. We played in the upstairs gallery space but one of the venue volunteers showed me the infamous basement. I dorked out remembering a shit quality video I saw of NOFX playing the same basement.
After ten years in Halifax I decided to move across the country, a decision spurred on by a terrible heartbreak & my cat passing away suddenly from cancer. I planned to move as far as I could to Vancouver on the Pacific coast. Quitting my job as a Veterinary Assistant, something I had worked so hard, for felt like a huge risk to take at age 28. A few friends & I got a van, stuffed it with our possessions & started driving the Trans-Canada Highway in the late spring of 2016. My record collection had to be severely pared down & I sold off a ton of LPs that I’d later regret. My NOFX collection stayed largely intact aside from me selling my copy of Liberal Animation.
With my dog cuddled next to me I read Hepatitis Bathtub, the band’s newly released book in the back of the van. The book drew me closer to the band as I could relate to some of their stories of pain & loss. Parts of it were completely disturbing but it never felt mean spirited or exploitative, rather just terribly sad. Every band member had a story that I could relate to, for better or worse. Feeling very much like I did when I first left home at 17, I ended up analyzing my life up until that point on the long trip across Canada. The move felt like the start of the next phase of my life. Like a new book on a new coast.
Arriving in Vancouver I found a city that gave me opportunity & the desire to keep going forward. I quickly started to crush on one of my new bandmates, who later became my wife. My first mixtape to her featured “Instant Crassic”, the best love song I knew. I worked for 7 years at a medicinal cannabis dispensary & found friends through skateboarding. Although I was nearing my late 20’s I somehow skated more than I ever did before. Six staples in my head eventually gave me a reality check. I turned 30 & my partner & I got married in the forest with a party downtown.
A year later the pandemic happened & I started listening to all the old NOFX records as a familiar comfort. Suddenly “Just the Flu” from Ribbed felt eerily prophetic. In the insanity of the COVID era Single & Double album came out & both had a ton of really incredible songs. “The Big Drag” & it’s accompanying music video felt comparable to “The Decline” in its artistry & quality. Keeping with tradition amongst the 20 songs there was one perfect album – if someone other than Mike could have chosen the track listing.
One day NOFX is the punk rock Rolling Stones endlessly existing & the next day they’re suddenly breaking up or retiring based on which band member is asked. I can’t say I was surprised given the way the years had caught up with me. I can only imagine they had with them as well & I was in my mid 30’s, not my late 50’s like Mike, Smelly, Melvin & Hefe.
The final tour got announced & a few months later I flew to see them in Toronto. Of course I went alone yet again. The day before the show I ended up getting their logo tattooed on my leg. It’s risky to get any band logo tattooed but I did it anyway to commemorate the occasion. To my surprise I met Smelly within a few minutes of entering the show. He was very polite & I got him to sign a cassette tape insert of White Trash. My heart was pounding & he was cool enough to let me & a dozen other fans take selfies with him. It felt surreal to meet someone who has contributed to your favourite music, remembering the Hepatitis Bathtub book which at its heart is Smelly’s story. He’s the ultimate punk drummer & who I considered to be the backbone & hero of NOFX.
During the opening bands a thunderstorm rolled in & the grounds were hastily evacuated so we could all get hit by lightning outside of their liability zone. Myself & countless other fans stood in the rain talking & complaining to pass the time, hoping desperately that the show wouldn’t get completely cancelled. The event staff told us they were obligated to wait a half hour after the most recent lightning strike before they could re-open. Every far off thunder boom felt like a “FUCK YOU” from the heavens. After a few hours the sky quieted long enough for the gates to reopen. I started running through the mud puddles full speed with the aim of getting a spot on the railing. I held my spot through five bands & it rained the whole time, creating a hot steaming cloud as people crowded together.
After a long day of being soaked & cold, NOFX came out on stage to the Rocky Horror track “Dammit Janet”. For about 2 hours I endured getting elbowed in the spine by a short drunk middle aged woman who no matter how many times I pleaded, would not put her arms down at her sides. She kept slurring “I’m sorry” in an obnoxious tone directly into my ear the entire set. At one point I was scared my neck had broken as a crowd surfer fell on my head & my forehead collided with the metal barricade. I heard a loud crack & thought the worst but my body held up. It was a near constant barrage of crowd surfers but nothing could extinguish my stoke. I told myself it was definitely the last time I’d ever ride the railing though. My ribs were already bruised & I knew I’d be fucked for days after. Still I held on & took it all in like I was young again. I was happy to be standing facing Karina as I was a Dance Hall Crashers fan in high school. Even though they didn’t play any of my top fives the set was epic with the highlight being “Green Corn”.
The band announced they had to cut a bunch of songs from the setlist because yet another thunderstorm was rolling in & the authorities were threatening to shut the show down. The band promptly set up for “the long one” as Hefe called it. Emotions flooded as the band played “The Decline” one last time in the same city I saw them play it in 20 years before. I saw so many old punks with broken voices crying out the lyrics. During the song’s climax the storm picked up & wind started violently ripping at the stage banners. I could feel the rain hitting my face, mixing with my tears. Tears of joy. Tears of sadness. Just the culmination of all this time I’d spent listening to this band. I cried not for the end of NOFX but for the overwhelming feeling of having come full circle. To have lived long enough to be there at that show. To have survived the pain of growing up, all the suicidal thoughts & struggles to be there on that night. To be living in the dying groan of capitalism & the humiliation of modern life. To be young & free again for just a few hours. To be singing along with people who shared my passion, who have had their lives scored by the broken melodies of a stupid punk band. It all hit me like a tidal wave in that moment, in the lashing wind & rain.
At the end of the set I managed to have a short interaction with Mike as he was greeting fans on the barricade. Over the cacophony of voices I said, “NOFX has been the soundtrack to my life.” He gave me a big hug & responded, “This is gratitude.”. I showed him my homemade NOFX/Rocky Horror mash up shirt which had Mike depicted as Frank-N-Furter. I said “Mike, look! It’s you! Fatty Whorer!” He pulled up his pearl bracelet to show me a Rocky Horror tattoo on his forearm. Don’t Dream It. Be It. During this interaction countless fans were poking him, calling his name & trying to get his attention but he stayed focused on me & gave me another parting hug. I had never wanted to meet Mike because I was afraid he’d be a douchebag. Part of me always related to aspects of the guy but I’m such a sensitive person that having a bad interaction would have broken my heart. I felt happy & lucky to have had a sincere moment with him. As he walked away to greet other fans I heard someone yell “I love you Mike.” His response was immediate. “Don’t be gay because you love me. Be gay because you love men’s cocks.”
Melvin came down briefly to the barricade & gave myself & a few other fans his guitar picks. I left the show as the storm fully collided with the grounds, drenched with mud in my socks, at age 36, with my hair not parted but long & green. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. My final NOFX show was everything I needed it to be.
A couple months later I watched the final shows as they streamed live from L.A., sitting on my couch with my dog at my side. My wife asked me, “How are the shows?” & I felt thankful for everything that NOFX has given me. A soundtrack to my life. 25 years on NOFX.
This piece is dedicated to my friend Judy, a true punk rocker & a lifelong NOFX fan.
– Elly Ryland Beggs
