What Remains

Let's talk about the concept of DIY.
It means "do it yourself," which is, according to Wikipedia, "a term used to describe the creation, alteration or reparation of something without the aid of experts or professionals."
These days, there's a whole television network dedicated to DIY home-improvement projects. But for years, DIY has been a basic tenet of punk rock, and the culture around it.
No punk bands in your town? Grab a guitar — doesn't matter if you know how to play it — and do it yourself. No one in your scene wants to book a punk show? Do it yourself; throw a show in your basement. Mainstream music magazines won't cover punk? Use scissors, glue, a photocopier and a stapler and do it yourself.
The DIY ethos is ingrained in the men of Danger Death Ray. This is, perhaps, because of their roots in Juneau, Alaska, a town of 30,000 that is accessible only by air or by sea. There are no roads from Juneau to the outside world.
So in Juneau, if something's not at your fingertips, you do it yourself. You make it work. In Danger Death Ray's case, that meant a move to Portland, an "amazing city," according to drummer Walker Janelle, with a top-notch music scene and, y'know, roads to other places.
"We kind of wanted to get out of Juneau," said guitarist David Conway, who grew up there with Janelle. "You can only take a band so far in a town that small, especially when you can't drive out of the town."



Portland is a town with plenty of DIY culture, so Danger Death Ray, which also includes bassist Ryan Sotomayor, fits right in. They've turned their home into an all-ages music venue called the Zombie House (www.myspace.com/zombiehousepdx), where they host punk, hardcore, metal and acoustic shows. And they've taken advantage of those aforementioned highways, booking their own shows and touring a ton across the West since they solidified their lineup in May, when Janelle completed school and moved to town.
Danger Death Ray's version of pop-punk is steeped in the late-1990s punk/emo movement, as embodied by record labels such as Jade Tree, Polyvinyl and Vagrant, as well as Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph. Conway describes it as a "catchier, more concentrated version of the Minutemen" before recoiling a bit: "Well. I don't know if it's catchier."
But it is. Whereas the Minutemen's famously econo punk was angular and funky, Danger Death Ray owes its knack for melody to the bands that surfaced in the wake of the punk explosion of 1994.
"Green Day breaking big with 'Dookie' pretty much opened this huge door for me," Conway said. "I would read all their interviews and they would talk about Operation Ivy and Screeching Weasel and Fugazi, and we just started checking out that stuff.
"And then you just meet kids in school that are really passionate about (music) and they would be like, 'Check out this band. Check out this band,'" he said. "It was like a snowball effect."



Conway eventually discovered bands like Lifetime and Face to Face and the Promise Ring, not to mention pop-punk forebears such as Elvis Costello.
"If somebody influences you, you should find out what influenced them," he said.
As a result of all that digging, a stop at Danger Death Ray's Bandcamp site — www.dangerdeathray.bandcamp.com, where you can download the band's music — sounds like flipping through a textbook on the integration of pop and punk over the past quarter-century. Conway's guitar buzzes, Janelle's drums pound with urgency, and Sotomayor's bass is no wallflower; it's a melodic workhorse that drives many of the songs. Most of all, though, the tunes are catchier than Velcro, and polished, not sloppy. That's by design.
"Lots of people think, 'Oh, punk rock is for people who can't play,'" Conway said. "For whatever reason, people don't think it can be serious business."
Janelle, who handles the band's graphic design and online presence, followed up on that point: "Even though we're a DIY band, we want to be able to do everything ourselves as good or better than bands that are on smaller labels and have management and all that sort of stuff. We try to make everything as professional as possible."
It's a tricky balance between DIY and "as professional as possible." But Danger Death Ray walks that line, not so much for themselves, but for all the other do-it-yourselfers out there who could benefit from strength in numbers.



"Basically, what we want to do is build a community here, because with a movement like punk rock, if you have a bunch of different bands trying to do things for themselves, they're not going to get anywhere," Conway said. "What you need to do is build a community because once you build a community, then the support for the community becomes undeniable by the general public. That's what we're trying to do: Build a community and get a buzz on people's tongues."
-Ben Salmon, The Bend Bulletin