By BERNICE YEUNG
No Use for a Name, perhaps Sunnyvale's best-known punk band, recently left home for a tour of the United States and Canada.
By the band's fourth stop on Feb. 29, the wicked Midwest weather had already left an impression on band members used to milder climes, but the group heated things up at a Chicago club despite subzero temperatures.
"It's been cold out," vocalist/ guitarist Tony Sly observed at the show, which drew about 200 people.
NUFAN attacked the stage and sent the audience into a frenzy with its brand of melodic punk.
The band's unrestrained performance was truly infectious, inspiring participation in the nearest mosh pit. Sly and Jake Jackson's guitars raged and pulsated with untamed aggression. Steve Papoutsis' bassline pogoed with urgency and vigor. Drummer Rory Koff lambasted the cymbals, pummeled the bass drum, and hammered the snare into quick rhythms while Sly offered on-tune, hard-laced vocals.
Slick-city teenagers snuffed out their cigarettes and abandoned their amateur flirting to mosh with frightening ferocity, which is exactly the kind of audience reception that NUFAN revels in.
"We've been playing small clubs on this tour, and it's been really cool because the intimacy of a small club is always so much better than a big giant stage with barricades and bouncers," Sly said. "You get this great energy from the kids in the front."
NUFAN hasn't always received such an enthusiastic response, however. Though the band is currently faring well in Europe, its first shows in England were attended by only three to five people. Even Bay Area shows produced meager turnouts in the beginning. When NUFAN played San Jose's Cactus Club a year ago, the body count barely reached double digits. Eight months later, the band played the Cactus again to a nearly sold-out audience.
"We're just finally getting our local draw," Sly said. "It's been rewarding, especially after being together for eight years and drawing just 10 people in your hometown--and those 10 people are all your friends."
Although it was a challenge for the band to gain recognition on a national and international level, Sly said he sees both the positive and the negative sides of the situation.
"You'd think it'd be hard coming out of Sunnyvale by just playing in your garage and going, 'God, there's no kids that come to our show here, and there's no substantial record label in the area--how do you get signed coming out of Sunnyvale?' It's like the impossible dream," Sly said.
"But it's also easier in that in Sunnyvale, there's not very many shows and not a whole lot of labels so it gives you more ambition to just go out there and do it. That just made us start going out on tour. When we booked our first U.S. tour, we just floated the whole time. There probably wasn't one good show on that whole tour but that's what you gotta do. You gotta take the stairs, instead of the elevator."
The band's persistence has certainly paid off. The release of its latest album, Leche Con Carne, together with appearances on the main stage of the 1995 SoFA Street Fair and extensive touring with bands such as the Offspring, this past year has finally brought attention to the band.
"We're getting better response off this record," Sly said. "It's good to see that a lot of kids know the lyrics to the songs; I think our new record has circulated more."
True to Sly's hypothesis, two audience members at the Chicago show boasted about driving four hours to see the band; another audience member discovered NUFAN in his hometown of Long Beach, N.Y.
As the show wound down, the band suddenly remembered the Chicago winter night into which all would soon disappear.
"Don't go outside with your sweaty T-shirts on," Sly warned, somewhat paternally.
"You guys are all gonna catch pneumonia," Papoutsis finished.
They weren't in temperate Sunnyvale, after all.
Bernice Yeung is a former Metro Newspapers intern and writer.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, March 13, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.