This past week, the Rx Bandits informed their fans that this 2011 Summer Tour would be their last. While initially this came as a huge shock, after letting it soak in for a few days, it honestly wasn’t as shocking as the initial punch to the gut made it seem. I have thought long and hard about why so many fans love RX and why this past week has been hard for them. To provide a little history, the Bandits have been my favorite band for the last 10 years, and in that time, I have had the opportunity to co-run their unofficial fan site/forum which, at times, was the most popular source of information for the band (at least until Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr sites made our website all but irrelevant). During the last 8 years that I have helped with rx-bandits.com, I have had the opportunity to interview Matt, and other bandits multiple times, and have been able to feel a connection to the band that most other fans have not. At least that’s what I thought. After reading stories from fans, and their responses over the past week, I was wrong, and I’ve determined why.
Part of what made the Bandits so loved amongst their amazingly passionate fans is that many of the fans felt the same way that I did. RX fans felt a personal connection to their music and the band. I have been to around 50 RX live performances, and I’m going to take a stab at why the fans feel this way.
RX has progressed over the last 16 years. It still irks me when you see RX classified as a ska/punk band. I used to love ska. That is what got me into the Bandits. But as the band has progressed and matured both musically and in their lives, so have I. I have grown as the band has grown. So have all of the fans that have been listening to RX. I can’t tell you how many people have told me that RX is the reason that they are so into music, or that their musical tastes have matured because of this band. RX fans feel like they owe their musical tastes to this band and are thankful for the band opening their eyes to new music.
Those who have been to an RX show will most likely tell you that it is one of the best live shows that they’ve been to. It is an experience. Whether seeing a performance at the 500 person capacity Nile Theater Basement in Mesa, AZ, the Food Not Bombs Shows at the Chain Reaction, or Bonnaroo and Coachella in front of thousands, each RX show has an intimate feel. It feels like the band is playing to all the fans that are there, and are playing for themselves, as a band collectively. The improvised jams between songs and the drum battles during the shows give each show a
Fans connected to RX on a personal level. It was fun to stand in line with your friends, waiting to get into the venue, and have Steve Borth come up to you to chat music with you and promote the new Satori release. It was easy to find Steve Choi and Matt Embree hanging out outside the venue after the shows and they never seemed to mind chatting with the fans, signing the occasional autograph, or even heading back to a fans house to party, or crash on their floor for the night. The band was real, and the fans appreciated that. When an interview was done well, (and by that, I mean, by asking pertinent questions, and not questions like “What kind of Ska band are you?” or “Why don’t you play teen idol anymore?”), it just seemed like Matt and the rest of the Bandits opened up and gave honest and thought provoking answers to their fans. They inspired the fans and they asked the fans not to blindly listen to everything that they say, but to search out information and to think for themselves.
I once asked Matt Embree in an interview if letting the members of the band have side projects allowed the Bandits to still come back and continue making music as “Rx Bandits”. He said that he had never really thought of it that way, but there are so many things that he, and other members of the band, want to do musically, that they need to have these other outlets for musical expression. I’m sure that without these other creative outlets, we would have had to say goodbye to the Bandits when we said goodbye to Borth or Sheets, cutting short one or two LP releases. I will probably miss some here, but Bandits fans have become all too familiar with The Sound of Animals Fighting, Love You Moon, Apotheke, The Machines, Technology, Coke vs. Bills, Satori, Seekret Socyetee, and 2 Drunken Poets and many other MDB Community Artists. They all seemed to have some sort of Rx Bandits influences, but were uniquely their own. Maybe this is why fans feel like RX have given them their musical tastes. We get to hear and experience what the band does outside of the Bandits, and it gave us an outlet to find other music outside of the Bandits that inspired us, as fans, musicians, and people.
The fans new that RX wasn’t making hundreds of thousands of dollars on each tour and living it large, but hearing the band talk about the music industry was refreshing. I can only imagine how pumped these 18 year old Bandits were when they got signed on Drive Thru Records, after releasing Those Damn Bandits at 16 years old. But as these musicians and young men learned the music industry, they determined that this record label wasn’t necessarily the best thing for the band, and for them as people. The fans got to read a very personal letter from Rich Balling as to why he felt he no longer could continue in the music industry in the same capacity. We heard in countless interviews from Matt Embree that they played for the love of the music and that the restrictions that DTR put on the band was wearing on them. RX just wanted to make their music, without any interference. They wanted to do their music, their way. When DTR wouldn’t allow that, they did what they needed to do to make music on their terms. Part of the included Cathy Pellow and Sargent House. Cathy has connected to the fans in the same way that the band has. From joining the community message boards, to twitter, to letting fans ask any questions they want of her on formspring for hours upon hours. There was something about buying and listening to an album that the band personally put out, and you knew that most of the money was going back to them. The way that the last couple of albums have been recorded live, and you can hear the musical imperfections. That is what makes them so perfect. There is no over-produced quality to these albums, just shear honest music, heard best through the Vinyl and Turntable medium.
Full album shows on back to back to back nights, Matt Embree cycling down the west coast on the 2005 Cycle for Peace Tour, maturing from a 6 piece ska band to a 6 piece band to their current 4 piece, fans being with the band in 2003 for the Food Not Bombs shows the same night that the US started bombing Iraq, listening to “Overcome (The Recapitulation)” over and over on repeat and listening to “…And the Battle Begun” for the first time, remembering a time when you could yell “Gun in Your Hand” or “Andrea” at a show, and it was already on their set list to be played. These are the memories that I, and so many of the Rx Bandits’ fans have.
When I heard the news that the Rx Bandits were done after this last tour, I was genuinely happy for them. They made the music they wanted, the way they wanted to, and are ending on their own terms. I took the last week to be nostalgic and look through old flyers, concert tickets, and set lists. If RX are really moving on to bigger and better things, we have a hell of a future in front of us. Thank you, Rx Bandits, for the last 16 years of music, and for letting me grow up with you. Best of luck in your future musical endeavors, and please rock out like you never have before on this final tour. I presume that as much as you will be thanking the fans, the fans will be thanking you as well.
Feel free to reminisce through some of my old interviews with Matt:
2003 - Resignation Release Show - 2003 Interview
2004 - 2004 Interview
2007 - 2007 Interview