No Age, No Rules, No Problem

words by Callie Enlow
photos by Randy Cremean

Remember when punk music had principles? Frantic guitar-driven sounds matched ideal-driven identities, like being straight-edge or anarchist.  At some point–probably between Blink 182 highway and Fall Out Boy junction–the aesthetic got separated from the intellectual core, and punks who stood for something  fragmented, hitchhiking across an increasingly divisive musical landscape.

Recently, a big Ken Kesey-style bus has been picking up those loners from the side of the road and connecting them via the “DIY” [Do It Yourself] aesthetic. L.A. art rockers No Age are some of the best-known passengers, and people from MTV and the New Yorker are climbing aboard, attracted by the duo’s abrupt punk and hazy melodies. Randy Randall, 27, and Dean Spunt, 26, the vegan skaters who defected from hardcore outfit Wives to form No Age, gleefully bypass normal rock club destinations to join fellow travelers (and hangers-on) in seeking out unconventional stops on the way to their anti-consumerism wonderland.