Rancid: Plotting a Punky Reggae Party

TIM ARMSTRONG once sang about punk-rock squats and dirt-cheap crash pads. Now the Rancid singer/guitarist is giving the grand tour of his Los Angeles dream house, a wooden two-story number built into a hill in the trendily shabby Silverlake neighborhood. We peer into the window of his basement home studio, in which the East LA. cholo-core quartet Union 13 is translating some of his lyrics into Spanish for a future Rancid B side. The walls are plastered with graffiti: ANARCHY! , THE ANTI NOWHERE LEAGUE, VIVA LA HATE! There may be a looming contradiction between all the revolutionary sloganeering and the protected-by-armed-security neighborhood watch sign posted on the wooden gate outside the enclosed front patio, but nobody seems to mind.