“Do you boys want a ticket?” It’s a cop talking. I had met with Chris Armes and Eric Davis of the punk band Agent 51 here on a dead-end street at the edge of the business district in Poway, San Diego to take some photos, but parking is not allowed in the area. Eric and Chris look at each other, then reply evenly that no, they don’t want a ticket. The cop stares for a second after such a blunt answer to a rhetorical question, then seems flustered and simply tells us to leave before driving away. We get in our separate cars, pull away from the curb with the “No Parking at Any Time” signs clearly posted, and drive back down the road towards the heart of Poway. Agent 51’s bassist, Sean Scura, is late and is just now driving up the road. Eric sees him, and gives him a quick ‘follow-us’ hand gesture out his window. Sean whips an illegal U-turn and follows us. Everything is calm and collected in the world of Agent 51, and they’re still the coolest band around.

The fact that we didn’t get tickets seems appropriate for a band that has as much of a badass image as Agent 51 does. Since their formation in 1995, Agent 51 has been a raw force in the San Diego music scene. They wore suits and sunglasses on stage to fit their agent moniker for a time, playing to always energetic and thoroughly angst-ridden crowds. At a show at Canes in Mission Beach, the venue pulled the plug on the band only to see the four members continue playing with no power whatsoever. And the loud, arrogant, aggressive noise for which Agent 51 became infamous didn’t even quiet down. Agent 51’s small army of punk followers in the crowd were too busy screaming the lyrics to “Red Alert” to care if the proper course of action would have been to let the next band come on. And when Agent 51 really became big, they were still too loud, too obnoxious, too brutally honest to cast off as just another sellout.

(this interview is a collaboration between sandiegopunk.com and A New Thought, finish the story, and get the full multimedia experience, at http://www.freewebs.com/anewthought/).