LA Times interviews Bad Religion

The L.A. Times have published a new interview with Bad Religion. The band mainly discussed their 30th anniversary and the celebration performances set for Southern California. Greg Graffin noted:

We couldn't be around for this long if it wasn't for the expansion and the continued vibrancy of the punk scene. To me, that's the celebration. I've tried to deflect the accolades [for the band] and say it's really about the community. If you didn't have a community to play to, then what good is it? We actually got lucky: We wrote some lasting songs that we can play today and that actually have some thought-provoking ideas. There are, some songs from those early records that we might still play, but it's hard to stand behind the lyrics. Most bands who are celebrating a 30th anniversary are celebrating the glory years. They had a hit record in the '70s, or maybe a big song in the '80s, and they're still playing that [stuff] on their 30-year anniversary. The saving grace for me at least is that we continue to put out new records, Brett continues to expand on the label and the marketing side and the intellectual development of the band.

Brett Gurewitz added:

Far from being the great iconoclast, punk rock has turned out to be the most successful movement in rock 'n' roll history. It has spawned myriad genres. . . . Whether it's indie rock, emo, screamo, hard-core, post-hard-core or whatever the hell it is, they all have punk rock as their common ancestor. We were very young when we named the band Bad Religion and we started writing about what we considered to be serious topics, Maybe the reason we started in that direction was because we were serious kids or troubled kids, but whatever the reason, it has served us quite well. We can age gracefully with that. We weren't a zany band that found ourselves as adults trying to change what we write about.

Check out the piece here.