GenturZine

To celebrate 25 years of making independent music, playing the dive bars around the world and rail against the establishment, San Francisco punk band NOFX played many shows around town this week: Tuesday, Slim's, in the middle of the Great American Music Hall, Friday at Fillmore , on Saturday at Thee Parkside and next Sunday at Slim's. In the event that's not enough, the group also plans to issue its Fuse TV series documenting her last world tour,"Backstage Passport,"on DVD next month. We spoke with frontman and bassist"Fat Mike"Burkett from his San Francisco home.

Q: Why are you playing every venue in the city?

A: Well, there are certainly ones we're not. Last time we played, we played four nights in the same club and it just gets kind of boring and weird. It's like some "Groundhog Day" movie. So doing it this way is just more fun. All the shows sold out in advance, and the clubs are happy to have us because they make a killing at the bar, too.

Q: Did you consider throwing in a free show at the Dumpster behind Safeway for the people who didn't get tickets?

A: Well, you know, the shows didn't sell out instantly. They were on sale for months. So we're not going to play a show for lazy people. We did enough free shows on the world tour.

Q: On that tour you played places such as Colombia, Ecuador and Peru just because no one else does - often with disastrous results. Are you happy you did it?

A: Oh, yeah. It made us feel like we're in a punk band again. It was one disaster after another, but we had a good time the whole time. When the cops shut down the show in Peru, I just went to the casino and got a nice dinner. Whatever happens doesn't matter because we're going to have a good time anyway. We went to some crazy places and saw some crazy people. I would just walk down the streets and see weird things.

Q: You never wanted to be on MTV, but you did this documentary last year for Fuse TV. Is that because you knew no one actually watches Fuse?

A: No, we did not realize until later that no one watches Fuse. They had nothing to do with the production of it. We filmed it all ourselves. We showed it to some TV stations because so much crazy s- happened, and we went with them because they seemed to be independent. In the end, it was just a corporate nightmare. But I'm happy how the show turned out.