This page is about the US punk rock group.
The Vandals are a punk rock rock band originally from Long Beach, California. Despite having never signed to a major record label, the Vandals have managed to maintain a dedicated following for over fifteen years as a result of constant touring and the release of several acclaimed albums.
The band was formed by Jan Nils Aukerman in 1981, and went through many line up changes over the following year. The Vandals were the first band signed to Epitaph Records, and released their only EP Peace Thru Vandalism in 1982. The band released their first full-length album When in Rome Do as the Vandals in 1984. After that, the band went on hiatus. The two previous releases also appeared on a 1989 compilation album Peace Thru Vandalism/When in Rome Do as the Vandals on Time Bomb Recordings, a label by Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness.
Briefly during 1989, there were two separate versions of The Vandals, but the differences were eventually sorted out, and the classic lineup stabilized as Dave Quackenbush (lead singer), Warren Fitzgerald (guitarist), Joe Escalante (bassist) and Josh Freese (drummer). This lineup is considered by most fans to be far removed from the early 1980s version (of which only one member, Joe Escalante, remains). The new lineup released their first LP Fear of a Punk Planet in 1991, and soon after signed to Nitro Records.
The Vandals had also begun to get younger fans, and a rivalry between the two punk generations that Vandals shows were attracting started. Escalante recalls, "We'd play with Blink-182, and there'd be some assholes yelling for us to play 'Pat Brown' and these old songs while we were trying to concentrate on new songs. At one point, we just told ourselves we wouldn't play those songs until these people went away. So the old tunes weren't really doing anything for the 90 percent of the people at shows who were now supporting the Vandals and the new material, and the people who weren't supporting the new stuff were only coming to shows to try and relive their glory days, and quite often were beating up the small kids standing next to them. We'd get a lot of people screaming fuck-yous at us because we weren't playing the songs they wanted to hear, but we'd smile and just say, 'That guy won't come back.' The guy he was punching, though, he might come back. We'd rather have him."