On Sunday, the L.A. Times ran a pretty interesting/obvious article about No Age and their struggle to remain true to the punk ethos while their cultural cachet rises (this is essentially the plot for the middle third of The Future is Unwritten, the movie about Joe Strummer).

The band talk about playing on Fuse and FNMTV, touring bigger and bigger venues, being approached by Mountain Dew and Hot Topic, and how much attention has been hitting the Smell scene as of late.

“It feels like everybody wants a piece,” said guitarist Randy Randall in the interview.
The story is as old as punk itself (i.e. how do you maintain the reasons you started playing for when you’re playing to thousands of people?), and even caused a lot of artists driven by the punk ethos great fits (Control posits that this was one of the factors of Ian Curtis’ suicide).

But the story is interesting in that it captures what it’s like to be a band leading a scene on the cusp of national hype.

You can read it here.