The Lives of Famous Men's Dylan Mandel shares his listening habits; Bad Cop Bad Cop's Stacey Dee shares the ins and outs of the touring life
This is Punk Rock Bach for May 7, 2026.
Road trips can be exciting, fun, aggravating, tedious expeditions, but throw a performance component on top of it, and you have one of the most unique travel experiences ever. This week, Punk Rock Bach chats with Stacey Dee of Bad Cop Bad Cop about what the band’s touring life is like.
Plus, Dylan Mandel of The Lives of Famous Men shares the albums he’s listening to.
All this and more in this week’s issue! Onward!
The Lives of Famous Men’s Dylan Mandel goes camping with jazz on the speakers
When the name “End Times Elevator Music” came across my radar, an image of a glass elevator descending into a volcanic pit with urban ruins surrounding it — music playing in the background — popped in my head.
If The Lives of Famous Men have anything to say about it, that music will be from their new album, titled exactly that — “End Times Elevator Music.” The album, which is available for purchase on Bandcamp, debuted late last month and includes the tracks “Wish I Were Here” and “Parallel Lives.”
But the end times haven’t arrived yet, and album collectors can keep the music playing. Dylan Mandel, a member of The Lives of Famous Men, said he’s always listening to music — and in different ways. This week, he shares with Punk Rock Bach how he’s listening and to what.
Editor’s note: Q&A has been lightly edited for style, syntax and typos.
Punk Rock Bach: How do you prefer to listen to music?
Dylan Mandel: I listen to music constantly, so it depends on the situation. I tend to stream while walking the dog and exercising because of the convenience, and that is usually my opportunity to discover new artists. I love listening to the radio in the car though. I drive an old Pathfinder that doesn’t have Bluetooth or even a functional cassette/CD player, so the experience is real analog.
Philly, where I live, has an awesome local station (WXPN) with an incredible curation of classic and contemporary music, so I’ll bounce from that to the local jazz/classical station (WRTI) on road/camping trips. I do also love vinyl as a preferred physical media. My youth was before the streaming era, so I still enjoy the committed experience of whole-album listening. The arduousness of picking out the record, placing the needle, smell of the wax, all of it. I love the sound of vinyl too, with all the thick low-end, reduced top-end, artifacts in the lathing that come through the speakers. It’s a special thing.
I believe the general experience of music listening has become too passive with the takeover of the streaming medium. It’s turning the whole art form into a product that’s simply filling airwaves in the background. While there’s definitely a function for that, save it for AI.
PRB: What are you listening to now?
Mandel: Well, obviously the new The Lives of Famous Men album, End Times Elevator Music, that drops on 4/24, is getting some heavy play. There’s also been a ton of great indie music coming out of Alaska right now that deserves attention (Glaves, Fairdays, Evan Phillips, Paul Jacks, Joshua Labuda, Colette Auburn). Aside from that, Jeff Tweedy’s triple release Twilight Override is a journey. Medium Build’s latest takeaways is simply incredible. And Donald Byrd’s Blackbyrd and Slum Village’s Fan-Tas-Tic, Vol 2 are also throwbacks worthy of everyone’s revisiting.
PRB: What do you listen on?
Mandel: As mentioned, I’m listening through a variety of mediums depending on the situation. Pretty much everything. I have a huge CD collection and have been thinking about adding an old portable CD player to the inventory, too.
The Lives of Famous Men’s new album “End Times Elevator Music” released on April 24. It is available both on vinyl and digitally via Bandcamp.
A taste of Bad Cop Bad Cop’s life on the road
Romanticizing life on the road as a touring band is easy to do. Moving from city to city, and sometimes country to country, with the singular goal of rocking out with adoring fans sounds like great fun.
Reality is a bit more grounded, though. The expansive tour bus is often more of a crowded van crisscrossing the map.
I wanted to disabuse myself of an idealistic music road trip and get a real picture of what it’s like to tour as a band. Last week, I sat down with Stacey Dee of the punk band Bad Cop Bad Cop to get a sense of what that traveling life is really like. Her band is traveling throughout the year, with the next tour date on May 9 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Dee told me the reason Bad Cop Bad Cop tours is because it helps the band sustain itself.
“It helps us grow our band, and we like to travel and rock in new cities,” she said. “Well, they’re all cities we’ve been to now, but we just, you know, we like to go back. We like to keep building our audiences.”
But it’s not an easy way of life.
“It’s incredibly hard to, you know, throw six to eight people in a van and not have any private space, and be in there for hours and hours,” she said. “It’s a lot harder than the glamor of it all.”
Dee said Bad Cop Bad Cop usually goes to Europe every year. For instance, Dee said the band did a European support run last March, and followed that with a headline run. The band also did a second support run in the United Kingdom, and plans to go back to the U.K. to perform at some of its festivals this year.
The band is still in the touring cycle for its latest album, “Lighten Up,” which debuted in 2025.
“The record’s only been out since September, so, you know, it’s only eight months old, or something. It’s not that old. So, we’ve got a couple years to tour on it, and so we want to get out and get in front of as many people as possible trying to sell the record,” she said.
It’s an album Dee said she loves “as one piece of music more than any one song on it. And every song is good.”
“We’ve made records in the past that were unapologetically strong,” she said. “Now we’ve made a record showing you why and why we’ve had to overcome those things. And to say, ‘lighten up’ in the grand scheme of things, and through all of the hardship on the record, just really is… It’s, it’s activism.”
Prepping for the live show
Bad Cop Bad Cop has a flow to its live performance set-up. Dee said once the band arrives at the venue, they will check in with the promoter and start unloading their gear.
Band members and a tech or two will start putting everything together, Dee said. Crew members will set up the stage.
“Then we go out and we check that, and we do our sound check, come back, and then we’ll probably have dinner before doors,” she said. Though she notes some band members wait until after the performance to eat.
Before the show starts, Dee said she meditates and preps her voice.
“I do my vocal warm ups, and then I’ll put headphones on, and I will listen to the set to make sure that I’ve got all my lyrics in place,” she said. “As I get older, I’m having a harder time remembering all the words all the time, so I’m trying my best to alleviate that from happening.”
Dee said the meditation helps her get in the right frame of mind.
“Well, that headspace for me needs to be cool, calm and collected, because my energy can get real jittery and weird, and if I feel like if my energy is out of control, I’m going to go up there, and for the first couple songs, I’m going to be spastic and unsure of myself and weird,” she said. “So, I need to go up there feeling calm, feeling, you know… I’ve done everything I can do to get ready and prepare myself for what I’m about to go give, you know, emotionally and energetically and all that.”
Before the performance, members of Bad Cop Bad Cop will come together for “Hands.”
“We hold hands with everybody in our crew, and then whoever might else be in the room, so if anybody crosses our paths, like, you can’t walk past hands without being asked to get into the hands,” Dee said. “And then we talk about being grateful, and we talk about how the day’s been going, and how either we’re feeling great or we’re going to shake that shit off. We’re fine. We just kind of come together and relax and have a little bit of a grounding meeting of the minds, so we all know what we’re going out there to do and to stay connected.”
Dee said Bad Cop Bad Cop does about an hour-and-15-minute show, and includes a handful of songs from “Lighten Up” in the latest set.
She said while on tour, the band is “always trying to just survive out there.”
“We’re constantly learning, constantly learning where we could do it better, easier, less stressful,” she said.
Bad Cop Bad Cop will perform next in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on May 9. In June, the band will make stops in Nashville, Atlanta and Richmond, among other U.S. cities. Visit the band’s website for a full tour schedule. Their album “Lighten Up” is out now.
Building the C-Notes, Part 2.5
Procrastination hit me hard this week when it came to my C-Note DIY speakers, but I was able to complete a few minor tasks. The most important, I think, is applying the first coat of shellac primer to the first cabinet’s bottom. It needs one more coat, which I’m aiming to apply this weekend.
Once that’s applied and has cured for 48 hours, I’ll add the two coats of polyurethane to the cabinet’s top and sides. And after all of that, I’ll finally be ready to start installing electrical components, and the tweeter and woofer.
It’s a shorter update than typical this week. I fear time somehow got away from me. I’ll have a more robust update next week!
What I’m listening to…
The album that cemented me as a David Bowie fan was, unfortunately, his farewell: Blackstar. I remember ordering it online after hearing he died in 2016, putting it on my turntable and absorbing the final Bowie masterpiece — as dark and mournful as it is.
This week, that record returned to my turntable — and I still find it an emotionally charged. Bowie likely knew this would be his final work. The first track, also titled “Blackstar,” is very reminiscent of a funeral. But the final track, “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” plays more hopeful. Not quite happier, but the song has a glimmer of optimism in the face of death.
I strongly recommend this record, especially on vinyl if you can find it.
Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next Thursday with more music journalism and DIY energy!