Fifteen's Melodic and Lyrical Interpolations: Striving for Beauty and Change Within Punk Rock

Crimpshrine and Fifteen songs often interpolate or play with the idea of reworking/reusing lines from earlier famous songs within the lyrical and musical framework of songs, Ott's and Jack Curran's melodies are deceptive because they bury them in layers of distortion. However, just as their lyrical ambition often tells complex stories through the framework of deceptively simple choruses, the lyrics hide Easter eggs within simple love and relationship songs. Crimpshrine's "Tomorrow" borrowed lyrics from "Tomorrow" from Annie, but Ott has continued to include popular lyrics in interesting ways. Pop melodies were common in many of the bands that played with Fifteen at 924 Gilman Street in the 1990s, but Ott's hardscrabble songs stand out because of their wordplay and insistence on melodic invention. 

Other bands that played with them reveled in wordplay and definitive walking East Bay basslines, but generally fitted into different frameworks. While they do not all fit into these categories, Gilman bands align themselves alongside what many punk bands were doing within the post-hardcore eighties with a few exceptions. Hardcore bands like Neurosis reconfigured heavy guitar tropes and eventually influenced post metal, a process that mirrored how many hardcore bands incorporated thrash into their sound. Power pop leaning bands like Green Day reinterpreted the love song and eventually became part of the mainstream pop punk revival. Goofy bands like Isocracy created beauty from trash, both metaphorically with their lyrics and rudimentary musicianship, but also with literal trash strewn stages. Others like Samiam morphed into more indie rock adjacent sounds. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, punk morphed into other sounds to maintain relevance, but the Berkeley and Gilman Street scenes generally had more of a sense of humor in how they approached these changes.

Fifteen are no exception but their songs stand out because of  inventive songwriting and positive messages. Playing with Chuck Berry riffs and clean guitar lines amid the distortion, they also utilize Ott's literate and anthemic slogans put to music. The call and response pattern of his songs incorporates lyrics and the melodies to challenge social and scene conventions, but also ask for participation in creating change. For example, "Resolution" asks listeners to reconsider violence while shifting between a love song and a plea for change. While not directly referencing the Beatles' "All You Need is Love," it considers its message in its repetition of "Love, Love, Love" in a coda. "Definition" utilizes a similar structure, replete with questions that do not offer closure. Ott loves to write songs that end with the suffix -ion as he attempts to understand the results that society relies upon. Fifteen's discography includes many clever interpolations and lyrics that stretch the lyrical and musical punk formula, and it is a shame that they are not given as much credit as they deserve.