Understanding Bass Guitar Chords, the Key Element to Mastering the Bass Guitar

Close your eyes and listen. Is there a sound that evokes much more emotion than a well-played guitar? Whenever you teach your self guitar particularly the bass guitar it ought to be a fantastic experience that fills you with the joy of achievement. Whenever you initial begin to discover the bass guitar chords, one of probably the most tough tasks to master would be to get your fingers to do what you would like them to do.

• So what Precisely is really a Chord?A chord is the underlying principle in each piece of music there’s. A chord is 3 various notes from 1 scale played together at the exact same time. For instance, G main is G-B-D, a root, a third, along with a fifth.G minor is G-Bb-D, a root, a lowered third (of course), along with a fifth. Whenever you play these 3 notes one the strings of a guitar, it’ll create a nice sounding harmony that’s pleasing to the ear.

• Understanding Bass guitar chord symbols

Guitar chords often consist of symbols within the chord diagram layout. The vertical lines are the guitar strings, the horizontal lines are the frets. An x above the vertical line indicates that a string is totally free or isn’t played, although an O designates an open string or a string that’s not played on the fret. A filled circle means the string has to be fretted.

To be able to discover guitar chords you should initial know the sound that every vibration on every guitar string makes. At this point you should also comprehend how finger placement will change the vibration on every guitar string. To discover guitar chords in this manner, practice and repetition are key to success. You’ll soon comprehend how various guitar chords come together to form a song. In the event you know the chords, you will know the song – it’s that easy.

Once guitar players get a couple of licks and tricks under their belt they turn out to be lazy. Whenever you think about the combinations which are accessible from just one chord in one position on the neck, it’s completely mind blowing, let alone the hundreds of other positions and variations accessible. Just by experimenting with one chord shape at a various starting place on the fretboard can take your mind and fingers to uncharted areas you could not have conceived of prior to.

* Why Would a Bassist Require Chord Symbols?

Even though bassists do not usually play a great deal of chords by themselves on bass, bassists are still extremely involved in forming the sound of the chord along with the entire band or ensemble. As a bassist, whenever you play with a group of musicians you’re playing one of those “3 or much more various notes” that forms the chord being played by the entire band.

In numerous situations bassists aren’t told what particular notes to play, but only what the chords of a song are. In this typical scenario the bassist is expected to play notes that support and complement the sound of every chord as it passes by.

So, bassists often read chord symbols in written music and make up or improvise a bassline that matches the chords of the song rather than playing a particular, written out bassline.

Do not get discouraged if you are attempting to teach your self guitar. Follow the actions below and soon you will be playing your favorite songs by learning fundamental guitar chords.

1. Get a chart of guitar chords and take a look at where the fingering is for every chord

2. Begin by merely selecting a minimum of two of the fundamental chords and work on the transition between the two.

3. Make certain that it sounds great. The reality is that if it sounds great you’re most likely performing it correct. (HINT: If it does not sound great to you, press down on the strings firmer together with your fingers.)

4. Now discover to appreciate playing guitar chords by selecting a couple of of your favorite songs that have these fundamental guitar chords and play them until you are able to sing along. (FYI: Beatles have a fantastic selection of well recognized songs that use fundamental guitar chords as the foundation.)

5. Play every day! You should keep in mind that even though its tough at initial, you’re going to make progress and it’ll turn out to be simpler to play the guitar by consistently playing it.

6. Practice! Keep in mind guitar practice makes ideal guitar music!

Indeed, learning to play the guitar could be a great deal of tough work. But then, nobody ever said that whenever you teach your self guitar it would be simple, only that it would be worth it.

To be honest, the Times of London hit the right tone when suggesting this band “summons the ghosts of forgotten acid revivalists” like Rain Parade, though I would add True West and Dream Syndicate to their keen mix, a way of summoning the 1980’s heyday of paisley and noir Americana combos. Think of Wim Wenders films like “Paris, TX,” the tuneage of lonesome pines, and swirl rock. With a hint of gothic country and a world weary sophistication, tracks like “Ocotillo Sundown,” when unfolding into waves of broiling guitar, could resemble the work of Wovenhand, mixing ambience with ample shots of tremor-fed volcanic energy in the right places. “Highs in the Mid-1980s,” the opener, in fact, feels like it could sit between the early era of the Church and 16 Horsepower. Perhaps we can call the genre shoegaze alt country: dark without being dismal, and moody and musical without being muddled and myopic.

“Cajun Prairie Fire” offers subtle worldbeat/reggae beats with rustic punk overtures, layers of crunch beholden to the lyric, “Why don’t you slip inside,” all while being alluring and miasmic. “Baby, Lets Switch Graves” tosses around some pop frequencies, a memory of Angie, and a warbly-voiced ode to headstones. “Venus of the Merchant Marines” probes the story of seafarers and seashores with slow ambling musical arcs. “When You Died” has a slight dark dub vibe, fuzz-drenched moonscapes, and lone star cosmic country underpinnings, while the crackling pop deftness of their woozy Roky Erickson cover, “Mine, Mine, Mind” comes with twang in tow and psychedelia injected in warm doses, making the acid-belt hallucinations feel like an East Indian carpet ride. To close, they offer the subtle shades of “One Longtime Feeling,” a gentle sway in a senorita’s warm tortilla arms. For curious craft and soft crunch, this is the path.

So Peter Buck terms them true believers sitting at a crossroad where Johnny Thunders and Son House intersect; meanwhile the co-founder of Bloodshot reminds us that they worked without a blueprint back in the early 1980s, wrapping together a sense of roots and rock full of songs evoking slummy avenues in Miami and lost cowboy dreams. All that may be true, for this confederate-tinged bar rock rattles through your speakers like lost tapes from an era that had yet to undergo a total chokehold by MTV’s faux musique. Sure, much of this seems dirty and derivative, a wink at swagger and sucking mid-1970’s booze and heroin rock, just in flannel and shit-kicker hats. It does not quite resonate with the thunder of Jason and the Scorchers (though they come awfully close on the speed-hitched, twangy, and nubile “A. on Horseback”), or measure spoonfuls of their bitter Nashville tunefulness, yet it does have a festering cowpunk cockiness that could shake and stir the likes of bands under the umbrella of Frontier (Pontiac Brothers, etc.) at the time. The live tracks at the end are mostly documents, not dire, though their cover of “Shake Some Action” lifts the beer-smeared tables and reveals the foundations of the band’s sensibilities to a degree. To prove their allegiance, “Slow Death” reveals the same underbelly — a steady diet of Flaming Groovies. Stand-out tracks include the honky core cretin rock of “All Love All Gone,” mixed by near-genius Steve Fjelstad, who labored behind the greatest acts of Twin Tone (Replacements, Husker Du…). This track is what Blood on the Saddle should have done : noisy, unctuous, toe-tapping, dusty, and utterly lovelorn. The follow-up, “Get Off On Your Porch” delivers all that Max’s Kansas City lowdown lurk, while the mellow fellow “Liked it a Lot” barely has pulse. The Australian rockisms begin on “In the Wildness” which sounds like a dead ringer cousin to the tunes of the Primevals, while the wise-crackin “If This is Love, Can I Get My Money Back?” keeps the irony on full blast. The bastardly, tongue-in-cheek blues of “Penny Instead” is dour and broiling at the same time, while the 1960’s frat rock of “Marlboro Country” will keep your Budweiser warm and frothy. To be sure, the dented heart-on-the-sleeve pop of “But I Didn’t” justifies another quarter in the jukebox.

A Killed by Death kind of historic hamminess seems to fit this blend of mutant 1970’s guitar fizz, with keyboard wizardry meets power pop crunch. Teachers Pet overflows with “new music” wiliness and wonk from the often otherwise lame “me generation” era. “Don’t Need You” has plenty of vitriol (”I don’t want to see you/you don’t belong to the human race”), and the whole energy verges on blitzkrieg boisterousness, but damn that quirky keyboard that gets lodged in my ear like a voracious electric tic. A sign of the old times, perhaps — white punks on hope. “Hooked on You” serves up a surfy, campy roar, replete with so much boy lust and grab-ass neediness that you’ll want to hitch to Lake Erie and hit the winter waves just to impress the barmaids throwing down Pabsts at the dive across from the junkyard. It’s so 1950s (they meet a dance, now he’s hooked…) that you’ll believe punk is no more than raunchy recycled AM dross. In case the pop culture references are lost on your Ipod blustered brain, then quickly turn to the quirky, unrepentant retroism of “Meet Me at the Hot Dog Stand in Half an Hour” (“to make me glad … to take you by the hand…”) to catch the cheesiness in mid-flight. Again, there’s a lack of pomp and pretentiousness that is energizing, but it also makes you feel a bit chumpy as your head bounces like a cheap Hong Kong toy. For blatant localism, try “Cincinnati Stomp,” with its tale of heading to the show early, all amped at 7:00 p.m., ready to pile drive to the front of the stage in order to get the music banging fast and hard. “Teenage Suicide” aims for the midsection, not unlike the New York Dolls meets the Dictators, with its young man angst and bile spinning in a world that fortunately has more girls in the pond, yet the loaded singer lad couldn’t figure it out. And if you are wondering where they literally yank their punk roots from, note the cover of Herman’s Hermits’ “Henry the 8th, I Am,” a garage nugget with stupidity and genius at it core — a knockabout goofball pop template that might have paved the way for every piece of punctilious punk from 1976 and beyond. Plus, Teacher’s Pet offers a homage to Eddie Cochran and company with the blistering, fomented “Summertime Blues.” Although a bit lo-fi, the track comes though bright and clean, live and lean.

“ to disgust

us a little more with ourselves

for being this useless body

made of meat and wild sperm,

hanging, since even before the lice,

sweating on the impossible table of the sky.�

-Antonin Artaud

“Bodies…I’m not an animal!�

-Johnny Rotten

“We are dreaming of sex,

of thieves, murderers, firebrands,

of huge thighs opening

to us like this night.

Some folks like trains,

some folks like ships,

I like the way you move your hips

All I want is a taste of your lips,

boy,

All I want is a taste of your lips.�

-Kathy Acker

As I slunk down into my green hooded sweatshirt yesterday and entered the dank “adult bookstore� that sits besides the highway overpass behind a strip club on the far corner of town, the connections between punk and porn, the two engines that fuel my interest in radical body politics, appeared like voltage in the night sky, for the gal with the bad teeth behind the corner who was angry because I didn’t pay my membership fee was wearing an MDC shirt, the former Austin/San Francisco hardcore band that has waged a musical guerrilla war against every government administration since Ronald Reagan. I didn’t dare ask about the T-shirt, since she slipped off very quickly to clean the booths, places I don’t enter in the low-lit neon backrooms, where the bodies of uncles, priests, immigrants, and college kids loiter at 7:00 a.m. in body hunger, mesmerized by video screens chock-full of squirting penises and basketball sized breasts or somebody’s mouth between their own legs. My own interest goes back almost twenty years, when I first nabbed a peek at the sordid underbelly of Hollywood, the same Hollywood that reared bands like the Germs, X, and Joan Jett. This was the other side that didn’t show up at the Academy Awards, the one that heaved up Traci Lords, the sometimes voracious, (supposedly) drugged-out, titillating, and puckered-mouth 16 year old porn problem that uncovered a modern 1980s teenage wasteland in all of its un-glory before mainstream movies like Less Than Zero showed Robert Downey Jr. in a desperate blo-job fiasco.

Lords, who would end up with a lousy pop career, guest appeared on a Ramones record (Acid Eaters), and had a cameo on the sitcom Will and Grace over a month ago. However, in terms of limited limelight, she’s never got far beyond her early skin flick infamy, and although people like outsider film director John Waters tried to resurrect her for an art-house audience, most of the men I know were/are still much more fascinated by her curvature than her campy acting. By the way, the punk connection to John Waters is infamous, since he hired Stiv Bators from the Dead Boys for his middle class midnight movie schlock fest Polyester and Iggy Pop showed up in his spoof Cry Baby, which, coincidentally, also features Traci Lords. So punk, porn, and exploitation films have always had a trajectory that crossed paths in the journey to explore fertile bodies of the night. In fact, Mudhoney, the band name for the still running Seattle proto-grunge garage heroes, is the title of a 1965 Russ Meyer film, the notoriously heavy-handed director often recognized for his DD sized starlets and C-movie, sexploitation, boob-a-rama skinema. He was the director whose work Malcolm McLaren and Julien Temple basically re-created as The Great Rock/n/Roll Swindle because the project actually began as a script called Who Stole Bambi?, which was co-written by movie critic Roger Ebert (who also penned Valley of the Dolls), but it experienced a stillbirth after two days worth of shooting when the funding plummeted. Still, the idea of punk’s long-time influence of porn was cemented in my mind when I nearly bumped a Betty Vicious Punk Slut Sex Doll (replete with pierced nipples and short, choppy, dyed plastic hair), produced by Hustler, which was staring at me from a wire shelf in the middle of the same shop where seagulls stood silent and dumb outside and the MDC shirt behind the counter first triggered my concepts.

For those of us that have been staring with eyes wide open into the history of punk long enough, the fertile playground and wicked ways of punk and porn seem linked like umbilical cords. Il Duce, the sneering, slobby, meathead singer of the Mentors worked at a porn theatre, as did one member of Devo, the song “Electrify Me� by El Paso’s exiles The Plugz was used as the opening song to the infamous film New Wave Hookers and their music can also be heard in The Devil in Miss Jones 3 and 4, Damon Edge from the San Francisco acid-punk band Chrome found his music a brief home in 1970s porn, former Sex Pistols and New York Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren worked for a soft-core French porn company in Paris before managing Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow (whose 15 year Burmese singer Myant Myant Aye, rechristened Anabella Lwin, was coaxed by Malcolm into posing scantily for several 45 and LP sleeves) , Lydia Lunch from Teenage Jesus and the Jerks had a pistol shoved up her vagina in Richard Kern’s brutal black and white short film Fingered, and even Genesis P- Orridge, one of the founders of the noise-wave band Throbbing Gristle, staged the exhibition “Prostitution� at the Institute for Contemporary Art in 1976. Alongside his then girlfriend Cosey Fanny Tutti (later of Chris and Cosey industrial music fame), he displayed used tampons and porn magazines featuring 40 layouts of Tutti herself that were instantly decried by MP Nicholas Fairbairn, whose comments were featured in the Daily Mail next to the picture of Siouxsie Sioux. Much later, porn stars Jeanna Fine and Taija Rae ended up on the first two front covers of Chemical People records and the band enlisted the help of Jack Baker (famed for his Dark Bros. produced porn films) for back-up vocals, though one of their song titles, “A Pornography,� gives the connection solid footing, cameo or not. Lastly, the book A Misfit’s Manifesto, by Donna Gain, a sociologist, writer for the Village Voice, and all-around punk pioneer herself, wrote that some punks she knew in the 70s and 80s were involved in the sex trade, mostly as strippers, or in the case of Dee Dee Ramone, (“53rd and 3rd�) as hustlers. So, if street level kids were popping up in both worlds, it’s worth noting that Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons did a Hustler layout, Blondie was the front cover and main feature in an issue of Penthouse, the Dead Kennedy’s were the focus of a Playboy article, and Wendy O. Williams did a nude pictorial for Hefner’s rather mainstream magazine too, replete with shots of her posing thousands of feet in the air on a trick airplane. From the low to the high of punk hierarchy, sex and music commingled, sometimes uneasily, sometimes cocooned in conjoined “sin,� or better yet, resistance and effrontery.

Simon Reynolds’ new book “Rip it Up and Start Again� does not shy away from revealing the warts and all side of bands like Devo, who are most noted for their “Whip It� video and its timeless images of half-clothed new wave honky-tonk. Reynolds, a former editor at Spin, quotes singer Mark Mothersbaugh as saying, “Porn is important to the lower economic levels, simply because they can’t afford real sex.� As a keen and eagle-eyed writer trying to unfold the crinkles of post-punk, he doesn’t gloss over the “plain misogynistic� edge of the band, who loved “pornography, whether it was Bataille’s avant-garde version or Hustler’s mass-marketed hardcore,� even deciding that much of Duty Now for the Future “sounds like a robotic version of the Knack’s sexually pent-up ‘My Sharona,’ all choppy New Wave guitar and frantically pelvic jack-off rhythms.� Or, better yet, perhaps it mines and mimics the territory of The Vapors “Turning Japanese,� with it supposedly not-so-veiled homage to masturbation and equally quirky, lean beat. Also, punk devotees can point to songs like “Whip in My Valise� by Adam and the Ants and “O Bondage Up Yours� by X Ray Spex to draw their own conclusions about punk and new wave’s ties to S/M, bondage, and underground sex culture, where fetish and masturbation go hand in hand.

References to porn in punk rock abound, both positive and negative, partly because it is a topic that sends people into the boot-camps of their ideologies, unwilling, I suppose, to get their feet and conscience sullied by the other side. In the mid-1980s, right when porn home video had overtaken the cliché era of sleazy men in raincoats sizzling in Times Square/back alley bookstore exploration, the “newâ€? Clash toured America and hit places like Detroit, where Joe Strummer was apt to say, “Pornography is rape,â€? partly to offset the endless hedonism of rockers like Motley Crue, who relished teenage girls loaded up on speed and beer in their laps. To be more precise, a Creem magazine interview with Joe from October 1984 includes the writer Bill Holdship admitting, “I’d rather hear Joe Strummer telling a crowd of Detroit teenagers that “Sex Mad Warâ€? is dedicated to ‘a time when a woman can walk alone in the park at midnight with being afraid—which is her divine right’ anytime over Motley Crue’s ‘We love fucking girls in Detroit because their pussies taste so good!’â€? In their own words, Motley Crue told Penthouse in May 1992 that “That’s what we like– fat girls will do anything. We let ‘em on the bus, and we just started partying…all of us banging these chicks. We stayed in front of that 7-Eleven for like two hours…we’re drawing on them, fucking pentagrams on their nipples.â€? Coincidently, this interview is in the same issue that features proto-feminist porn filmmaker and photographer Suze Randall (of Newave Pictures) careful camera lens documenting and exploring beloved porn star Terri Weigel, a former Playmate of the Month who is still in the business. But back to the Clash, whose pretend roadie in “Rude Boyâ€? worked at a porn shop, as evidenced by the film itself, and I don’t recall Joe busting in and smashing the shop’s dildos and raw color-splashed magazines; furthermore, what Joe thought of a famous Bob Gruen photograph of bassist Paul Simonon with a Playboy in his outstretched hands is left to for us to conjecture about while we also look at the Sex Pistols American tour photos, especially the one with Johnny Rotten and the sex doll on the bus. Was this the precursor to Betty Vicious, the Punk Slut Sex Doll? Perhaps.

One might recall X’s song “Adult Books� or the Dicks “Saturday Night at the Bookstore,� which is, to some degree, an unflinchingly ode to glory-holes. The same godforsaken glory-hole spectacle figured in a story told to me from a member of another prominent Texas punk band on tour, so the hole’s presence is punk songs is no simple passing reference, but part and parcel of naked homoerotic candor, not unlike later queer core bands like Pansy Division who would write singles like “For Those About to Suck Cock,� “Nine Inch Males,� and “Touch my Joe Camel.� Speaking of naked, at least one Big Boys poster with a naked cowboy on the front nearly got Raul’s shut down in Austin, and punks from the 1980s regularly recall lawsuits and problems associated with HR Giger’s penis art from Dead Kennedy’s Frankenchrist album. Undoubtedly, penis, porn, and glory-holes are bound in the punk tradition, threatening good taste and overturning the rules of the body politic, in which mainstream culture tries to reign in the body, or at least keep it in neon alleyway backroom stalls, where the price of happiness is risk and temptation, the dualities of illicit sex that make one’s backbone fill with liquid lightning as the sound of toilets gurgle and morality is flushed down the pipes. Perhaps that is why when John Candy starred in the terrible comedy Armed and Dangerous, the director chose rockers and punks to hang inside and outside the porn store where Candy and Eugene Levy have to seek shelter and don the gear of transvestites and leatherboys. Obviously, he wanted to show these two “normals� or “squares� masquerading in the bowels of the beast, which is not too distant from Italian film director Federico Fellini using an all-girl punk band to stir things up in his surreal, some say plot-less, 1980 work City of Women, which ended up inspiring a Playboy pictorial that highlighted the film and spurred Gang Of Four to write the song “Woman Town.�

In fact, when my band London Girl played the rock club Cocodrie down the street from Chinatown and Little Italy in San Francisco five years back, our girl guitarist and singer disappeared into the booths at the strip club Lusty Lady, a cavernous cocoon across the street, where the screen popped up for a few minutes and a skinny, tattooed young girl shimmied, slinked, and snaked to an endless beat seemingly in from nowhere. In the periphery, you could see a bodacious black women with her legs arced in the air, but this grrl smack dab in front of us was engaging. As the gals from London Girl brought me into the booth, we had as much conversation with the girl as possible between semen smeared plastic walls. As soon as the band mates starting popping off what amounted to a giddy, impromptu question/answer session, the stripper became embarrassed, covered her chest, and told us how many bands appeared in the booth before or after gigging next door. So, in the spirit of free sexuality and sex worker appreciation, we gave her a CD, or simply left it at the counter and begged the guy to give it to her, then waited, hoping she might venture over to talk with us before we went south to San Jose with our Ford van with a broken back light. She never did, but the strip club motto: “Every day is a good day for masturbation� resides with me forever.

The walls between punk, fetish, porn, and stripping are flimsy, so it never surprises me when the adult film industry, which for years has been featuring studs whose tattoos reveal their punk proclivities (an anarchy tattoo is a dead giveaway, of sorts), ended up releasing punk, skateboarder, gothic-themed DVDs, some even featuring bands like D.I. Alas, “Johnny’s got a problem and he’s outta control…â€? now could include taste buds beyond the common saliva of quick meth fixes and petty crime. Yet, whether or not this represents some kind of insurrection remains to be debated. As Rachel Hall insists in the Independent Weekly: “The sex industry sells the familiar, the routine, the ritual, the stereotype, the role-play: In the words of Radiohead, no alarms and no surprises, please. Though it may claim to provide encounters with the alien and the outré, on one fundamental level its mediated exchanges are as exotic as McDonald’s. In times like these they have to be. The participants–in this culture, each of us, to some degree–apparently insist on it.â€? Yet, while I agree with part of this, she seemingly only examines porn’s bland, homogenized, face-lifted mainstream side, its normalization and gentrification via Jenna Jameson, as if this represented the whole slate, including S&M, midget, fatty, hirsute, and elderly sex films, which I don’t believe is true.

Look back at films like “Candy Goes to Hollywood� and you’ll glimpse a woman, later named Wendy O. Williams, shooting ping pong balls out of her vagina or later on cavorting with animalistic adorned women in “800 Fantasy Lane,� never having sex but always a kind of peripheral, otherworldly, and untamable creature. When I saw her smash TV sets and attack cars with chainsaws on ABC’s Friday night music program aptly titled “Fridays� (the same show who hosted the Clash for four songs…though I may be confusing this with her appearances on “Tomorrow with Tom Snyder,� which also featured the Clash), I knew this mohican woman, gruff and distorted as Maggie Thatcher in a Jamie Reid Sex Pistols poster, with electrical tap on her nipples, was every bit as volcanic and insidious as Iggy Pop slicing himself with broken beer bottles on albums like Metallic KO. This was punk recognizing the body as ground zero for the revolt against the Christian-Judaic-Islamic notion as the body as some kind of God’s temple chained to guilt and original sin. It was howling primitivism, the epitome of filth and fury spat out in a theatre of cruelty with a soundtrack as raw and “dis-chordant� as Detroit factories married to the sound of tribal drumming with a uncanny dose of noise musique, all attached to the hip of black bodied rock’n’roll guitar.

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An interview with Pat, singer of Youth of Togay!

Why did the band choose to “queer” not just hardcore punk culture but more specifically straight-edge? Do you think it adds to a sense of subversion, parody, or poaching?

First, Dave thanks for including us with your interviews. Sometimes I feel that within our “genre” we can be over looked as a novelty act, not worthy to be recognized because of the way we choose to carry our message. And although we take a more comedic stance on gay issues, our beliefs and feelings towards these issues are as strong as other artists who express them in a more serious manner.

I think that every artist takes his or her inspiration from those things that surround them. All of us grew up in the New England area, which has a very strong and long standing straight edge culture. At shows, the ‘old guard’ hardcore doods still talk of the grand days when Al Barile was king and Springa was queen. Growing up here, not only have we seen the positive effects of a chemical free lifestyle, but also the absolute ridiculous, excessive and moronic results of straight edge fanaticism. There is nothing funnier than watching straight edge kids come and go (pun intended). Arguing the destructive nature of chemicals one day, then pounding a Natural Ice 40oz. the next. I see the serious potential for humor in that.

I am not sure if our straight edge influences adds any special element to our music. From a humor stand point, parody must have distinct poles (pun intended). Our choice on some level was to break open a very real and distinct issue within the straight edge and hardcore communities that is overlooked and ignored, then approach it from our own experiences. I don’t think that we consciously chose straight edge as a focus point, I think it culminated from our own lives and where we grew up, which then influenced our choices. More that just straight edge, our focus was really the new generation of hardcore that is even further polarized towards violence and masochistic behavior. Standing on the outside and appreciating the music, yet somehow feeling distant and left out. Like being in a room of 300-400 people and still feeling alone. Feeling like we needed to call people ‘faggots’ just so other people wouldn’t think to question our own sexuality. These were the experiences that really pushed me personally to form this band. And the way we chose to express those feelings, were to write and parody songs that would bring them closer to us and make them our own. Whew… this interview is serious. Damn you Dave for actual asking real questions, usually I can throw in alot more jokes, but these questions, wow… serious.

2. I recall Henry Rollins talking about NY hardcore in the documentary Attitude, suggesting that all the matinee CBGBs slamming and sweating and maleness seemed fairly queer. Yet, hardcore certainly has an homophobic edge. Do you think that you are at all challenging that edge through parody, or providing a space for real homosexual desire — no bullshit fierce needs? or both?

Holey Real-Question Batman! I don’t think it is shocking to say that hardcore culture has a very real homosexual element in it. Dancing, muscles, sweaty dudes jumping and thumping their chest…. every show is like some kind of wild homo-mating ritual. The real issue is that most hardcore and punk cultures do not allow for its participants to stray far from the pack. In a generation where the lines between ‘underground’ and ‘commercial’ are rapidly disappearing, punk and hardcore have taken on a militant atmosphere when it comes to differences. This creates a very uncomfortable place for those who see things or feel things different from ‘the mob’. Clothing, musical choices and, of course, sexuality are all things that are carefully and strategically monitored to maintain a feeling of independence and ‘unity’. The tragic part is that as it becomes more and more militant, the more it pushes away the traditional principals with which it was born and in turn, a sizable portion of its own people. In some cases, these kids take it upon themselves to create there own scene where they and other like them feel more comfortable. In the case of Queercore, it would be our utmost hope that it wouldn’t be separate, but instead, a part of. I think some bands like Limp Wrist have made inroads to that affect, and I applaud them for it. With YOTG I guess instead we have really highlighted the differences instead of the similarities, but as an artist we do what feels right, hoping that someone will find a laugh and maybe the messages that lies beneath. In a bubble we would be able to play on a bill with any of the hardcore bands we parody, but unfortunately the reality is that with the divisive nature of hardcore and punk, sub-genres fill a very real need but force artists to be received by some, and excluded by others. We fit into a very small sub-genre, which include only a small handful of bands. Our hope is that we don’t ostracize anyone, but instead open people up to their own feelings and get them more comfortable with the idea that there are gay kids in hardcore. That they matter just as much as anyone else.

3. Why Youth of Togay? Because Ray Cappo is a well-known Krisna whose attitude towards sexuality is controversial? Because songs like “Break Down the Walls” sounds like Act Up/Queer Nation slogans?! Do you see something potentially/implicitly queer in those songs?

Funny you mention this because when I first moved to LA, I answered a Craigslist ad about joining a hardcore band and when I met the guy, he was a Krisna. I am probably one of the most open and accepting people I know. But I started talking to this kid, and of course it got around to sex. He was telling me that in Krisna it is unhealthy indulge in your own sexual desires. That means; No Jerking Off, No Homosexuality and No thinking/watching or exploring sexual acts. Wow… that’s fucked up. God gave us a penis for a reason… it doesn’t get hard just for kicks. But the real shocker was that this young guy, had actually considered castration, just so he wouldnt have to think about sex anymore. Because, of course, this poor 20-something kid couldn’t wack it, or fuck. This is the religion that one of hardcore’s greatest heroes subscribes to. Holey fuck. And on a side note, their food is terrible. But I digress. I think most of us in the band regret choosing that name, only because it hearkens back to an older generation, and not the current generation of hardcore that we grew up on. Really, I think it just sounded silly and made us laugh. Of course there is something inherently homo-sexual about YOT lyrics and content. Maybe it wasn’t intended, but the emotion and purpose of those lyrics relate to anything which separates two groups longing for an end to divisiveness. But lets not give them too much credit, ‘Breaking Down The Walls’ is a populous message that has been used by everyone from politicians to poets for hundreds of years.

4. Is the music perhaps less about queerness, or more just about re-claiming any kind of sexuality in hardcore, and humor, which seems to get lost in the politics and angst?

No bones about it, our music is about queerness. I personally have always seen the humor and ridiculous nature of sex. When I’m in bed, there seems to be alot of fun going on, and laughing and embracing what a silly process the whole thing is. While exploring my own sexuality, I took a very comical approach to my own changing sexual desires when it came to my attraction to men. Sex is silly, man sex is even sillier. I mean who cant see the humor in wanting to put your mouth where someone poops? Or rubbing two dicks together? Hilarious. So I think this attitude was fundamental in forming what YOTG is. People feel much more comfortable having a laugh about something serious than approaching it head on. I think it was Richard Prior and his influence on me as a child that allowed me to not only bring personal things and potentially painful things out into the open, but also be able to laugh at them. This in turn also makes me more comfortable sharing them with others.

Going back to the contrasting nature of parody, hardcore kids and the hardcore scene in general take themselves VERY seriously. This was even more apparent during Bridge 9’s hissy-fit over one of our parodies. It was said best on a messageboard: “Hardcore is serious business”. Again this allowed us to have a very distinct place to create a humorous contrast. The Have Heart song “The Machinist” is a very well written, almost poetic take on the human work force and its place in society. We wrote “The Gaychinist” about having sex with a S human sex-machine. Politics and anger absolutely have their place, but there is plenty of room for some fun and funny hardcore. And as hardcore kids in general are a cross section of actual society, the amount of people with uncomfortable feelings towards sex and sexuality is relative. The US and its population are in a holding pattern with their own sexuality. Sure we’ve made some progress, but compared to the rest of the world, we’re way behind.

5. How do you relate, personally or musically, to “out” rockers like Knifed and Limp Wrist?

I think it shows great courage to put yourself and your believes out to the public in any fashion. And as artists, I think it is our duty to do so. I appreciate and admire bands like Knifed, Limp Wrist and Pansy Division simply on their merits as musicians. We’ve been lucky enough to meet the dudes in PD, and Mero from Knifed just put out an LP for us on his label. We draw influences from a wide variety of sources, and although I wouldn’t list them as direct influences musically, I would list them as inspirations. Personally I pull alot of inspiration from Wierd Al, Steve Martin, Richard Prior and a ton of comedians. I remember recording a tape as a kid doing my best Wierd Al impression and parodying “Blame it on the Rain”, I think I called it “Rame It On The Blain”. All of us come from a very solid background in hardcore and punk rock. We’ve all been in various bands and have had a life influenced by the principals and ideals taken from punk rock culture.

On a side note, “coming out” may seem like a fairly easy process to people on the outside, but it’s very difficult. Even within a culture that is suppose to encourage individuality, it can be a painful and difficult thing. When our first record came out, I was bombarded with questions about “who in the band is gay” and questions about my own sexuality, as I am the founder of the band and our spokesperson. I chose to be open, hoping it might inspire people within my community to be more comfortable with their sexuality. To some degree it has. But I paid the price. Once the word got out I was dragged through the mud personally and professionally. I heard it all. From how I wasn’t gay, to that I wasn’t gay enough, to all sorts of horrible things. A band even wrote and recorded a song trashing me and calling me a ‘faggot’. Also, the fact that I am bi-sexual seems to make everyone uncomfortable. So its not nearly as easy as it may seem. Try and be more open and understanding with your friends. As statistics go, there is a very likely chance that some of your friends have non-traditional sexual preferences, so support them and make them feel comfortable.

6. Much critical attention was given to Outpunk and homocore, which is now well over a decade behind us. Do you think it opened up punk rock for bands like you, or are you in fact reacting in some ways to the failures of them?

There is never failure when, as an artist, you follow your passion. Even though those bands may be gone, they definitely set a precedent from which newer bands have taken influence. I think that most of us understand that our time is fleeting. Bands and people come and go, things change, attitudes change, society changes and we all play our part. It’s our duty to not look at our art through egomaniacal glasses, but instead take a more humble approach. People make the difference, not which bands are hot or who’s movement meant what. We should do what we feel, and if there are others that can appreciate what we do, all the better. But the past isn’t what defines us. Outpunk came at a different time and place. What exists now shouldn’t be defined by what has happened, but instead by what is happening. If we dwell on what has gone, we will never be able to move forward or make progress. It’s very inspiring to see and meet young bands, that are doing what they love. Talking with young Queercore bands, I find them to be much more interested in what is happening today. As a new generation of queercore bands sprout in cities all over the world (and they are), we should be helping and motivating each other. We should be supporting our art and our communities. We cannot rely on a previous generation to define ours.

If you find this interview to be too serious, please pick up any number of our releases which will satisfy your need for jokes about balls, dudes-banging-dudes and dong-drenched-debauchery. I may take my opinions and beliefs seriously, but when it comes to YOTG’s music we’re all buttcheeks and gloryholes.

www. myspace. com/seriouslyhardcoreisalreadywickedgay

Interviewed by Ed ‘on 45′!

So most of the Knifed songs have pretty-self explanatory lyrics, such as “Pissed On� and “Fist You�; however, I was wondering if you could let me know how you came up with the idea of “Get Off My Bandwagon�?

It’s that whole thing about, which people still do, is the thing of like ‘I’m gay’, it doesn’t mean I have an exclusive on gay songs. But because punks are so PC now they can drop gay stuff in. Certain bands, I won’t mention any names, but a lot of people do it like ‘I’m so pc, I’m nearly bi-sexual, but I’ve never touched a cock’! But it was about people, as I said not that I should have an exclusive on it, but I’m the one whose fuckin gay and has to get on with being gay, and getting shit for it and you can do nearly the same jokes on stage even though your straight but you can get away with it because it’s a PC thing ‘we’re all cool here.’ So, it was like ‘get off my fuckin bandwagon’ — it was just the whole joke on that, the whole punk thing is so PC, but it’s for people who make jokes about it. But then touring England you meet other people, I won’t say where it was, but it was a town that had a whole load of ‘bloke punks’ that were into football and punk, and we played there twice and there was always shit, not much, but shit going on and I thought I don’t fuckin need this I’ll never play there again. It was just that they were doing the gay jokes, but they meant it a bit more than being ‘PC’, and they were a little rougher in their moshing and stuff. So it was just a funny song about ‘I’m Gay so I should get all the gay jokes’, cause with straight punks they’d say kinda gay stuff, and then if I started dropping in the real filthy jokes, people were like oh hold on I don’t wanna hear that. So, it’s that whole thing, I’m not allowed to do the filthy gay jokes, but they are allowed to say the little gay jokes. So, basically ‘Get Off My Bandwagon’ is me saying, ‘I’m really gay, I want to do all the gay jokes not you, you stick to your fuckin straight jokes’!It’s the whole thing about the George across the road (infamous Dublin gay pub) when you had bingo. They called it gay mass every Sunday, lots of straight people would go and ogle gay people kissing. It’s a bit like, get your own fucking pub, we’ve only got two fucking pubs in the whole of Dublin, you’ve thousands, so fuck off. You squashed us down into such a small corner we have to organise our own shit just to get through our lives. That’s why gay people cruise and do toilets. If there was a gay lifestyle fifty years ago it would’ve been great, but there wasn’t so we were pushed out into parks and toilets to have gay sex. But the thing was there were more gay pubs in Dublin when it was illegal, but when it went legal in 93 they pubs were gone, there are only about 3 pubs now.

Other great songs were “Wash Your Cock�, “I Love Pete From Narcosis�, “Dropkick Murphy’s Fuck Off“, and also ‘Don’t Camp It Up’. ’Don’t Camp it Up’ might have initially have got a bad reception off reviewers who may not have understood what you meant or picked it up wrong…

That was about people camping it up, cause I do know people who are naturally camp and they are more fuckin butch than most of the men who are not camp. See the thing about camp is, I have a friend who is camp, well people call him camp, but it’s his voice that is squeaky, but he’s more of a man than most of the other guys that I know. So, the whole thing was about gay people turning it on and off, just be you, you’ve seen people who are gay and as soon as you see them in a fuckin bar, it’s like ‘Oh she said this, she said that’, putting on this fuckin act. You don’t have to do that, just be yourself, you don’t have to be this gay cliché. Some people are born with this voice, like that friend of mine who since he was six has been called a ‘fuckin queer’, and he was queer but his voice was camp. The whole thing of when people see these guys in leather and they look butch as fuck, we call it drag, it’s leather drag. You’re dressing up, it’s not really you, you don’t wear leather trousers everyday, you only do it to go out to a bar. Or you walk in with a motorbike helmet and you don’t have a motorbike, it’s all drag, it’s all dressing up, it’s a fantasy, it’s a fetish. So ‘Don’t Camp It Up’ was just saying be yourself don’t put on this gay cliché, don’t put on a show for your fuckin girlfriends as in straight women, just be yourself.

It seems that the Knifed approach is a bit similar to say, GG Allin and The Feederz, using albums as concept pieces, meaning the whole package become agit prop, while the music unleashes directly confrontational lyrics meant to agitate any unliberated listener. But, do things like fisting gloves (or in the case of Feedez, sandpaper covers, or in the case of GG, mailing away for his body fluids, etc.) detract from the music, meaning the concept overrides the band? People become more interested in the concept than the music?

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Well, see the problem is, I was gay, there was a gay disclaimer on the record saying that I’m the only one that’s gay, the rest of the band weren’t gay. They were fine with what I did, but they weren’t gay so it wasn’t like there was a whole big show, I was the show. The name of the band came from the drummer. The record covers were agreed on by whole band, and they were never really kinda ‘gay’ covers. The songs were about things that I do or a like, they weren’t just fantasy songs. Cause I can only write about what I know, hence why you can run out of gay songs. Like I did thirty something songs, like I do like water-sports and I do like fisting people, so I knew what I was singing about. Like GG Allin he did do things, what he sang about, he did do it as well, even though he was a twat!

That he wasn’t doing it just to provoke, he was just singing about the life he was living like the same as yourself.

Oh yeab, but he still got a towel backstage, it was still an act for him too, but people thought he was that lifestyle, there are videos of him when he goes backstage and he has the towel and a bottle of water, it was an act too. But he had to live that lifestyle to an extreme for people to believe he was that mental. He was the most extreme artist at that time. He hated everybody, he was probably HIV positive, he took drugs, he’d fuck anything you know, like he was an animal. But in regards the original question I am trying to get a new band together, which might be an all gay punk band so the concept of that might be better, everything might match, the name, the records. I was talking with Joss about it. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen, but he’s been talking about it for a while, doing an all gay euro punk band, with Joss from LARM, and the drummer is from Italy and I don’t know whose the other guy. Don’t know if it will ever happen, but as a concept, the name would be gay, the covers would be gay, the people in the band would be gay, the lyrics would all be gay, the photos as well. I had this concept of us taking funny pictures all dressed up in Amsterdam, so maybe one day. But even when I went to London initially I was hoping to get an all gay band together. There is this thing in London called ‘queeruption’ which is gay punks but the things it they are more political than punk. Whereas I’m more into the music actually than the politics, so I went to one or two of their things and it’s just like another clique tribe thing, adolescent tribal thing where they won’t even talk to you. I’ve gone to these things on my own waiting for other people to arrive, nobody talks to you or no-one comes near you. It upsets me cause I don’t particularly hang out with people much anymore, or do that shit, because I suppose most people let you down so I mostly do shit on my own, unfortunately you need four people in a band!

You could get a one man band together!

Yeah! Even moving to London I thought there would be more opportunities to do something but there’s not. It’s pretty shit but hey ho!

In an interview with the German zine ‘Allday Hell’ you said how members of Knifed obviously had no problem with the homosexual orientated lyrics however you said ‘The last band I was in I don’t think they were that cool about me being gay� was this in reference to Control and what made you feel this way? Although didn’t you do a song called ‘I Like it Anal’ with Control?

Yeah that was control. Well, anybody who is not comfortable with me being gay are obviously not comfortable with what they are, you know what I mean. Why do you give a shit what I do or say, is it that disgusting to you? Well you do sex that is disgusting to me then. There was one person in the band, I won’t say, cause I’m still friends with them but he just, maybe he listened to too many Macc Lads records or something. I always felt that he had problems in his head about things. It was just that he wasn’t that comfortable about it, he’s not happy, it’s not an attack on me. I feel sad for him because he’s not happy with something that’s in his head or his life.

You did ‘I Like It Anal’ with Control but do you think you would’ve done more stuff like that if people had been comfortable with it?

Well no, cause I was the guitarist in that band anyway so it was Burkie singing..

I remember seeing you with Oi Polloi downstairs in Frazers years ago.

Yeah we did a good demo, we did a twenty song demo that was twenty minutes long, that had some really good stuff on it. I thought we were ahead of our time a little bit, cause Burkie didn’t scream or put on some kinda silly deep or high pitched voice so therefore it was a bit more honest which much more people are doing now. They are going back to 1985, like Heresy, just raw vocals and pretty thrashy music cause that’s what we were, and that was 2001, a lot of bands have been doing that for the last couple of years, but there was more Discharge-y riffs in there too. Like I wasn’t a great guitarist, and the bass player liked Spazz, we liked Spazz, we liked Discharge, the drummer liked hard fast music, all the stuff thrown in, some of the songs were really good and some didn’t work at all. From the demo we’d only use 15 if we ever had to put it out or something like that, but some of it is fun.

How did the split release with Limpwrist come about?

Well I obviously saw Martine when Los Crudos played here in ‘96, I videotaped them, but I never got to talk to Martine and then through email I heard he came out, I think towards the end of Los Crudos he came out, and then I came out and I started emailing him and we started to chat on phone as well, he used to live in LA with his boyfriend for about eight years. So I used to ring him and we’d chat and stuff, and he had just put out the Limpwrist demo, got that sent to me on tape and then the album came out, and I was hoping to do that, but I didn’t get the opportunity to put that out the album. Then I said look do you want to do a 7�, and kinda pestered him and stuff, and they had a few tracks left over so we did the split. First 100 on pink vinyl with a limited edition thing. I just did it to piss of the record collectors but I think it fuelled them more. So then the second pressing I did 100 on brown vinyl, but it was supposed to be for the song ‘Bum Gravy’ and you were supposed to get a free chocolate finger in a bag! It didn’t really work, so I put in some tissue paper wrapped around the 7�, did a few of those and then said fuck this. I always have good plans, but trying to execute them is another thing!

The next questions was meant to be ‘are you still continuing to work on Knifed material while in England’ cause I had heard from somewhere that you were planning on contiuing knifed in England?

Yeah, I was thinking about it, but I didn’t want to turn it into the fucking UK Subs or Oi Polloi, because the last line up was pretty cool, and it was a time and place, like Gary is a really good guitarist, and he loves hardcore since he was a kid, but he actually was never in a hardcore band, so when he did Knifed songs were just falling all out of him all over the place right there and then, he loved the music, he loved the genre and he could just drop songs like that. I mean I was having hard time keeping up writing lyrics cause he was just dropping songs everywhere, it was amazing. So the whole point was it’ll never be the same again, you know it was a time and a place, the moon was aligned with the planets and all that bullshit, but it was a good band, drummer was good, bass player was good and Gary was good. It was a good little band and I was afraid to do it in England even though I wanted to because it mightn’t even reach that, mightn’t even reach half of what we did and that would be disappointing to put out a record and people would be like ‘meh’, or ‘it’s not like the old knifed’ or whatever.

Yeah it could destroy the memory of it

Yeah cause all the records have technically been the same kinda people in it, and I wrote the first few songs that came on the first 7�, so they were mine, I wrote them music and lyrics, but the rest were Gary’s music with my lyrics.

Oh I didn’t know you wrote all the songs on the first 7�

Yeah I wrote something like six cause Knifed at that time were a three piece. Some of those songs made it and some didn’t when we did the first demo but then Gary recorded the second lot of songs that came out on the Limpwrist 7�., they were all Gary’s songs like ‘Fuck Dublin’ and all that.

The editors of Homocore said that the gay movement had been co-opted, and that one way “to avoid such co-option is to present a movement that refuses to conform to the standards of sexual decency and moral conduct expected of even the most rebellious of youths.” Meaning, I believe, that even so-called “rebel” punkers often shun explicit sexual confrontationalism, regardless of their plugged ears, mohawks, and bondage trousers. Is that partly why Knifed did things like include fisting gloves? Not directly to offend the mainstream as much as confront sheepish punkers?

‘Sheepish Punks!’ well the thing about punk is, it’s PC. Punk in the early 90’s went so fuckin emo and PC. The thing was what we had in Knifed was, we are all equal. That’s the thing were all fuckin equal, but still woman are ‘frail and timid’ you know that type of thing, but we’re all equal so why would I treat you any different? I wouldn’t treat anybody different if we’re all equal, so I did that. The thing about punk is you respect each other, therefore as they say — men are dogs, they just want sex. I don’t even think men and women should be together. A man has sex, then he falls asleep, I have sex I wanna chat all night. Chatting with people is more important with gay men than the sex bit and with women it’s the same. ‘Sheepish Punks’… I dunno I guess different people have different sexual drives, cause I know punks with mad sexual drives, and you know they’re mad PC punks but they love fuckin sex. Unfortunately, they go through a lot of women and women fall out with them because they don’t close it properly. If you fall out/break up with women, women want closure, respect, and friendship but men do it so badly, they can’t talk they blow it and women hate them for them doing it. ‘Sheepish Punks’ I really dunno everybody has their own different drive. The reason there was the free glove was cause there is the song ‘Fist You’ on that record. The whole point with Knifed – and I’ve always said it was – I did Knifed for me, I dressed up when I wanted to, I never did anything for the audience, some of the gigs I never dressed up. I did what I wanted to do so anything I did was for me it wasn’t a reaction to anybody. It was what we wanted to do as a band. It wasn’t about how would people react, yeah some of the songs were shocking and that is the way the lyrics came out, and some were wrote that way.

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But you weren’t gonna tone em down or change them…

No, that’s what I hate! I know other bands – won’t mention there names who said ‘oh you should do more ska songs’. What the fuck! ‘Oh we’ll do the ones off the first 7â€?, people like them’. No, fuck that, like fuck off! I didn’t even play for the crowd when we played live. I never saw the crowd, I usually closed my eyes or just fucking ignored them, or ran into them! It wasn’t for them, it was about me doing music. I would never do anything performance unless as the joke goes ‘I wouldn’t perform for anyone unless they paid me’. Or people coming to our gigs to see what’s happening, because what I look like, cause I’ve always been punk, dreadlocks, or Mohawk, I’ve been looked and laughed at all my life, and you think I’m gonna do that on any other stage apart from a venue with a band and music, it was never for other people it was always for me.

At the same time, Homocore advises avoiding “repeating the mistakes of the gay movement: ghettoization, liberal reform, class capitulation.” Were Knifed consciously trying to link queercore issues to a permanent kind of social revolution that went beyond gays in the military, fair housing, and marriage, or is that kind of “reform” necessary prior to really changing the debate, social attitudes, even political structures?

I’ve done serious bands and I wanted to do a fun band, because you know the message is out there since 1977 or since Crass and The Feeding of the 5000. The message is out there and if people want a message they can go and find it. I wanted a fun band, I wanted people to have fun. See I hate people that quote from these fuckin books, these fucking magazines, have your own thoughts. I’ve known people who’ve done straight edge fanzines, really militant, you shouldn’t drink, you shouldn’t do that and guess what years later they drink. So never mouth off unless your gonna back it up for the rest of your fucking life, a lot of these people fucking fail anyway. I just hate people quoting out of a fuckin magazine, like this, that or the other, think for your fuckin self. Read it yeah obviously but some kids read stuff and they think that’s the Bible. Like the feeding of the 5000 by Crass. Crass weren’t all that — they weren’t fuckin politicians, they weren’t fuckin bombing animal shelters. They weren’t that political. They had an anarchy ’A’ sign and a peace sign cause they were in the middle, cause people would come to them who would be bombing shit and they all went ‘No, you can stay with us and all’, but they were the music part. People thought they were really political, but they weren’t that political. They were hippies most of them. I make my own views up. A lot of people just quote from fucking books, like do you have a thought of your own, do you have to quote from Henry Rollin’s book, you don’t have to quote from some punk book.

So Knifed was definitely something that was for you?

Yeah sure, we’re in Ireland, do I give a flying fuck if anybody heard us outside Dublin, NO! Like you say it was for me it wasn’t about anyone else, that’s the thing with whatever I’ve done. The one famous quote Ian MacKaye said was, ‘If you do something you do it for yourself, and everything is an achievement,’ and that’s what it was. Anything that happened after the first day of Knifed was brilliant. If we broke up the next day, whatever, who cares? And things did go on for us, and we did get a bit done which was really nice for an Irish band. So, no, I never thought about anybody apart from just the band, and what we were gonna do, and release records and if it goes on forever, fine, or if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. It was a bit of a shame cause we did pick up a good momentum, and we could’ve went further, but as I said I changed, I moved to London, things changed for me. Things have changed for me over the last few of years. Coming back here is kinda funny cause I hated Dublin when I left, cause the thing about Dublin is it’s so fucking small that if you fell out with people you’d see them every fucking day, and I fell out with people you know. I fell out with other punks. And doing the record shop had totally killed my passion for music. I only bought two records when I had that shop. Cause you’re listening to music all day, and it’s cool, but seeing the new punk kids coming in and it’s all about the clothes and the last thing they buy is the CD. When I was a kid, the first thing I’d buy was the record, then the bottle of cider, then combats and a pair of boots, the last thing I would think about would be….

Band T-shirts and clothes…

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Yeah I mean everything was cheap, army clothes were always cheap, but now with kids it’s all about the fuckin clothes and that. Even now punk kids what they’re exposed to is MySpace. Like I was exposed to Crass and the Subhumans and all the early hardcore records and kids don’t even know, it’s gone. It’s a new set of punks, and it’s just like this is so wrong, I call them mod-punks. You know with this black hair fringe thing.

Yeah there’s a lot of them in Dublin!

And you go ‘they’re into punk‘, and they’re not, they wear studded belts, but they’re not really into fucking punk, it’s just a fashion thing, and punk has been a fashion thing throughout the years but it’s getting less and less to do with fuckin music. Cause music is disposable now, and thank god there are still people doing squatting and protesting, people doing very political stuff, thank god for that. But it seems like they are getting less and less cause the kids now, like when you were younger you were one of the kids who got into that side of it, but how many of you is there to the fucking hair kids now? It’s unbelievably small you know. It’s a shame.

Like Stonewall and Max’s Kansas City shaped the sensibilities of Wayne County, the punk scene, very early on, seemed to be shaped in part by outsider clubs like The Roxy (an old gay club) and Louise’s, a lesbian bar where the Pistols hung out. This suggests that it was not just gays, but actual gay clubs, that helped mould punk history. Yet, most people think gay music lovers were disco-centric. Why has this stereotype been so exaggerated, and don’t gays love rock’n’roll as much as anyone else? I keep thinking of Rob Halford…

Well the Roxy before it was the Roxy was called shagga ramas (?) in London. It was a gay bar. The reason it wasn’t a gay bar anymore was they didn’t make any money so that’s why, the Roxy was such a shithtole fuckin club that you couldn’t make money, like CBGB’s. It was a shithole of a club nobody wanted, so therefore it became used for the punk thing. Because the gay people don’t give a shit and the punks are obviously freaks to them too, cause they were drag queens, like Jayne County, like she was dressing up as a woman, so it kinda meshed. In San Francisco there is a gay bar called ‘The Eagle’ they play rock and metal all the time.

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Yeah I’ve been there, it was where I saw that band that are on Alternative Tentacles, Ludicra, the crusty black metal band

It’s a great bar, like Martine from Limpwrist lives near there and they have played there with the Dicks, the Dicks have reformed with Gary Floyd. I’ve seen Gary Floyd in San Francisco before and stuff. The reason the gay scene and the punk scene matched was because they are both outsiders. In 1976 punk was just fuckin absolutely outrageous, you know it was all progressive rock, so they were all outsiders,. Even my boyfriend, he’s forty nine and he was in a punk band when he was in college, like 79 or 78, cause it was cool, it was fun, because they were both outsiders, they were both ‘freaks’. They were both all dressing up really differently, they kind of helped each other a little bit, and crossed over a little bit but only by accident, I think really because they were both outsiders, and the whole scene like the first wave of punk was outrageous to the general public, ‘oh my god’ n’ all’ but the second wave of punk, unfortunately became very macho and the exploited, and then you hear the guitarist for the Exploited is gay!

Really, that is something I didn’t know and is incredibly interesting considering the audience the Exploited have been sometimes known to attract, bonehead/page 3, beer and birds punks for the want of a better term.

And of course Dave Dictor from Millions Of Dead Cops. He’s bisexual, but he sings about ‘fuck the cops’, fuck this shit’ and then they (the kids) hear he’s gay too and all these macho kids freak out. Cause like any scene, when I first got into the scene and met Boz and all these people who were all from the same era, the early 90’s and there’s twats, course they eventually fade out because it’s a fashion thing, but you always got wankers and twats in any scene cause unfortunately there are wanker and twats into every type of music.

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How did they feel about bands like Dead Fingers Talk or just a little later Tom Robinson (who was derided by the Business, not so much for being gay, I suppose, as being privileged), who was able to have mainstream success and still be firmly outspoken as a gay man. Billy Bragg says that Tom’s eventful Rock Against Racism show with the Clash made a huge difference in terms of exposing him to a whole other set of political ideas. Was Robinson a hero, or a pawn, or something else?

Oh the ‘Glad To Be Gay’ thing. He’s not gay, he put on the gay pride, but apparently he’s not gay. He just sang that song, whatever, but he didn’t care,. He was so open he just sang a song about whatever, but unfortunately it went fucking huge for him. But that’s the thing about ‘Get Off My bandwagon’ you know?! But like I said when was listening to punk and hardcore – the underground stuff – and the only bits I picked up were like Jayne County. I got to meet her last June, that was nice, reading her book at a book signing, it was nice to meet her, but she’s fuckin senile! Kieran from ‘the Restarts,’ he’s gay and he’s in the band (Jayne County’s) the new ‘Electric Chairs’ type thing, so he was playing with her. It was nice to meet her, but she’s half deaf and stuff, so you couldn’t really talk to her. Because I read her book, and the struggle she had to go through was insane. Growing up maybe I would’ve come out earlier if I had more heroes, but I did meet a guy in 93, when I put out my fanzine, a guy from New York came over called John Schindler, and he was gay, and he was out. He wrote poetry and stuff. I met him a few times when he came over, but I didn’t tell him I was gay. I didn’t tell anybody for years, only after five or six years later. But it was nice to meet somebody. He was the first gay person I met, and he talked about his life and stuff like that, but I didn’t tell him. It was nice to meet other people, because I very rarely met other people until I came out and I very rarely noticed even in records, like I should’ve been reading Out-punk and stuff, but I didn’t know it existed.

Of course it was before the Internet!

Before the Internet yeah, but you were lucky to get the Lookout albums in the early 90s, American stuff rarely came over to England for many years, nobody had heard of Minor Threat when they first started. The first time I saw a Minor Threat t-shirt on someone in England was 1986. It took a long time to get that stuff over here, unless you were writing to people.

Yeah, that is something I think that may have disappeared, like people forget how long it took to find out about this stuff. Like I remember writing off for so many zines and records, even your one page catalogue?! Cause I got into it through football fanzines that covered punk, and it took a long time to get into things, like I got into English punk 77’ stuff originally, and it took me four years to get into American punk, whereas people now get into Crass and tomorrow they are into Spazz and Heresy!

Yeah, it is great now that you can download stuff, and hear it for free. Cause as a kid it’s hard to, how do you get the records? You have to buy them. Now you can have a little sample and if you wanna go out and buy the album you go out and buy it. That’s the thing, remember ‘home taping is killing music’ in the 80s? That’s the same thing with the downloads now. If you really want the record you’ll go out and buy it, a lot of people will tape it or download it. The thing though is it’s not about the music for a lot of kids, its about the fuckin accessories; therefore they are not gonna buy the album anyway. It’s just something they have on their Itunes and swap with their friends, and the rest of it is about clothes and mobile phones and fuckin whatever, nail polish!

An interview with guitarist/vocalist Jim Kaa of the Crowd!!

One of the important themes of the records seems to be how the band fits into history: “we kicked the door wide open.” Do you feel the band has been under-represented in punk history, including the recent American Hardcore, and for what reasons? Do people have amnesia about the inbetween bands, the pre-hardcore Eyes, Skulls, Controllers, you?

That song, “Run for the Money?” was more in response to the Green Day/Offspring commercial success, not begrudging those bands, but all the bands both old and new seemed to be lining up for the big punk payoff. I play because I love playing guitar, writing songs, playing shows, being part of local music scene. I would love to sell a million copies of our next record, but that is not why we play. It was more about having fun than changing the world early on.

Regarding American Hardcore, the people who were there know how things were and that is what matters, not one filmmaker’s opinion. I am sure we will be in the sequel, American Pop Punk(ha ha). The bottom line is that there was no HB/OC punk scene when we started playing parties in 1978 and by 1980 there were thousands. Jim’s lyrics just tell the truth of what took place. Most bands do not realize there were no clubs to play at, very few stores that stocked local music and no accepting audience for music that was actually different from was going on at the time.

The album’s themes seem really prescient, from the emphasis on terrorism and the failure of old political parties in “Politics” (idiots in power…kidnap, hijack, etc), to the eco-consciousness of “Solid Waste” with lines about dumping it in space, sea, or underground. Do you think the album is just as relevant as the day it was originally released?

It’s funny you mention, Politics and Solid Waste, because I wrote the lyrics to those. I think they really stand up well, Politics was written in 79/80, but never recorded until Letter Bomb. I guess the world really faces the same problems that is always has, it is just more in your face in the information age.

There is a strong garage rock vibe to parts of the record, especially on tracks like “And Her Curse.” Was the band at all inspired by the emerging garage punk hybrid bands of the day, like the Humpers, and New Bomb Turks, which seemed like a fresh contrast to the hair punk that suddenly had become vogue?

If we were it was not intentional, but Mark Lee from the Humpers later played guitar with us for a few years.

The album pays homage to the Who (Yardbirds?) and the Buzzcocks. When the band was playing shows during both the 80s and 90s, how often did they incorporate these covers? Do you see punk as being a conversation between eras, not just a “clean slate,” a break from the past? Even “Booze Blues” has a bit of punk soul going on!

We have always played covers in our live set, we have been doing “The Kids are Alright” lately, we done David Bowie, the Weirdos, Magazine, the Yardbirds, Hendrix, Stones, and Elvis songs and more at one time or another. I listened to a lot of hard and glam rock in the pre-punk era, Bowie, Thin Lizzy, Mott the Hoople, Lou Reed, Be Bop Deluxe, UFO. So I think that comes through in our music. It is funny that people call us surf-punk, while we grew up at the beach and surfed, but we are really not influenced by surf music.

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As many people have noted, the early punk scene was multiracial (Tito from the Plugz briefly played with the Crowd, right?), yet people still have a cliche concept of punk rock as a white boy youth rebellion (hmm, the Cheifs, the Gears?). How diverse was the scene that the Crowd found?

Wow Tito, in the Crowd, I never heard that one before. No he never played with us. Our original drummer Barry Cuda (Miranda) was black. The scene in LA always had a strong latin/mexican/asian presence, though HB was very white. It was never any problem in the early days, 1978 -1980 and while the 80’s brought a great deal of violence to the scene, it did not seem gang or ethic based, more punks versus hippies/authority thing. It seemed the 90’s spawned the serious skinhead/gang/race violence.

Just last night on college radio in Riverside, CA, Mike Watt spoke about seeing the early Hollywood bands and being inspired by the fire in the bellies, but also how the Minutemen felt that they owed these bands for their work, so they should not mimic them but create something new. The Crowd really does not sound like others: a mix of punk, surf, and pop. Something innocent and something broken. Did this just happen by accident, or did the band try to stake their own ground purposefully?

Just for the record I love Mike Watt, he rocks like no other. I don’t think we had the forethought of the Minutemen, it was just what happened we you put 5 guys who grew up in HB, listed to the rock music of the 60’s and 70’s growing up and tried to play what we thought was punk rock. We were young, naive and needed a lot of practice. We did have very distinct visual look, we wore very bright or day glow clothes, and having blond hair and a tan was quite contrast to the pale skin, black hair image of much of punk. We also had a wild stage show, everyone flying all over the stage.

By 1982, the band broke up partly due to violence at shows. Punk show at Elks Lodge, the Starwood, and the Cuckoo’s Nest highlight punks versus cops, punks versus punks or long hairs, and punks versus hillbillies. Some of that seemed inevitable, but some might have been stoked by the media (the media creating a lore of punk violence, thus attracting more meatheads). Why do you think violence emerged?

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I think it was all of the above, some of the people joining the scene, were more interested in fucking something or someone up, than any music.

People from Spot, Jack from TSOL, and Lisa from Fancher have noted, along with others, that punk changed when it reached the surf community, and that as the fan base grew, so did the rough attitude and style. It become more male-centric, a boy’s club. Less tolerant to homosexuals. Did it feel that way to the band? Were women coming to shows, being a part of the scene. Did you feel that punk was changing beneath your feet? Did the open-mindedness really fade?

There was never any anti gay feeling to me. When we started playing at the Whisky and Starwood in 79/80 and 200 kids from HB would make the trek. All of sudden there are these classic California beach babes showing up at punk shows, that did not hurt are draw I can tell you that. Again, the all male thing is perhaps more perception than reality. But the original concept of anything goes musically really went out the window. When things began there would be a hardcore band, with a rockabilly band and an art noise band at the same show and it was all cool. Later, it became much more segmented by style.

The band at one point reached #5 on the Rodney’s KROQ, even featured on his record (with Agent Orange, Adolescents, Red Rockers, and even Brooke Shields!), yet we all know the Angry Samoan’s disdain. Was Rodney the John Peel of your generation, a hammy celebrity type, or something else entirely?

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You have done your homework at that one. He had a knack for finding and playing new and exciting music. More importantly, he would always play local bands, just give him your record at the Starwood and it would be on his show that weekend. He did a great deal to help bands of all kinds. He is truly a unique guy who really made the LA music scene happen.

The band page reveals some great samples of flyers, some of look like original mock-ups. Did the band have much input over them? Was it all DIY, just the band, or were fans making flyers?

We made most all of them, give me copy machine, exacto and a glue stick and I can make most any flyer. It is really easy now with computers, but I still make mine old school style. I got many originals in my home archive.

And what was posting like in Huntington Beach, since every locale seems to have terrain and lore. Channel 3 has described using flyers to talk with girls, or posting them on wooden poles that looked like cacti, full of staples, and Black Flag semed to have an army of poster people. Did the Crowd ever use graffiti to get out the logo, access people’s attention etc?

Our story is the local Snack Bar at Brookhurst Street Beach, It would get graffitied one week and painted over the next week. It would happen over and over. It was also the culture of suburban house parties, a band, a keg and whole bunch of people having a good time. We had to hide the location of parties, because the large crowds drew the HBPD and the party would be busted before we played.

Looking back on the 1990s, what does this record capture in terms of the band; what kind of snapshot do you think it offers, which might be different than when your originally recorded it?

It is the last recording with Jay Decker on Bass and vocals, he was an original member. He left the band in 1998 to move to Hawaii. We had only had one line up change in 1980, prior top that. So to me it is the “classic” band line up for this record. And by adding the songs from the Dig Yourself EP/Single you really get the songs we were writing and playing live during the 90’s. When I listened to everything again, it reminded me how much I miss playing some of those songs. So we are going to put 4 or 5 in the set the next few times we play.

Due to a variety of circumstances, Letter Bomb was poorly distributed when it was first released. We are really looking forward to many more people everywhere having the opportunity to hear these songs!

According to one web site, you learned how to lay out artwork by hand, how to use stencils, and manually reproduce designs for the fashion industry. This was an extension of your education, which was, by your account, a bit more commercial than fine art. Could you talk about this manual sensibility, and how it might be different than a young kid raised on Adobe Illustrator?

I went to school for commercial art. I was already making flyers for gigs and other graphics when I started, but that’s where I learned about reproduction art, halftones, stat cameras and graphic art in general. If you wanted to learn about fine art, that was your business. My first full time job was at an embroidery factory that catered to fashion designers, and I did production art there. I did things by hand because that’s all there was. Computers were only being spoken of when I graduated L.A. Trade Tech. The more skills you have (computer or hand) the better, but having a good idea and imagination is the most important thing. It should never matter what tools are being used.

d/Visible notes that your work conveys the “weight of comic books, Teen Angel magazines, and punk rock.” As you began making fliers, were you aware of the presence of people who also did comic work, such as Jaime Hernandezand Shawn Kerri? If so, how did this maybe shape your approach…

I was aware of Shawn Kerri even before I was aware of Shawn Kerri. By that, I mean that I used to buy Cartoons Magazine when I was a kid, and back then (or even now) I never paid much attention to who the artists were. Shawn Kerri’s art was very likeable, especially early on. She was one of the artist that made me just look around myself and see what’s there. What are you wearing, what are your friends wearing, what do your cars look like? Comic books affected me like everybody else in that they taught us all how to draw. I was not big on comics except for Mad Magazine. Mad had a big impact on me not only in the drawings but because it was subversive and cynical. Mad kind of primed me for punk. I wasn’t aware of the Hernandez Bros. until I was grown and doing my own thing. I have a respect for them, but I can’t say that I’m a big fan.

I have always noted that the most vivid fliers are rooted in a DIY approach — an often less polished, even crude aesthetic, made evocative by hand drawn lines or cut and paste efforts. Granted, as Fucked and Photocopied proves, the approaches were dizzying and different. But the fliers I have of yours are entirely hand drawn, really a complete expression. What led you in this direction, and not using rub-on texts, collage, etc?

I didn’t use rubdown type because I didn’t know it existed. I make a lot of collages now, but when I started I was just drawing. We all did things by hand because that’s how you did things. I think my friends and I made flyers, “By any means necessary.â€? Now, you use a computer like a pen, brush, exacto or whatever. Sometimes I still do things by hand if its quicker or for an effect.

When you went to show Ginn at SST your work, you have said he basically art-directed you into another style, different from the Pettibon era. But you have not said whether this is what you wanted too. Did you feel it was time to widen the style envelope, or did you find yourself cursing him under your breath?

I don’t think you read the answer/question correctly you are referring to here, or it was not clear. This was in reference to a cover I made for a Black Flag single. I made mock-ups for Greg Ginn to look at, of what I thought was cool. Greg going through my art director at SST, art directed what I had done down to something that I would have never done on my own. He simplified what I had done almost to abstraction. It didn’t have anything to do with “widening my style,â€? it had to do with being a commercial artist and abandoning any preconceptions when dealing with Greg Ginn. I worked at SST for nine years, the last few as Art Director, and I left with nothing but respect and admiration of Greg Ginn. He had parameters and expectations of what he wanted as far as graphics for the label, but if those were met, he was very open minded and willing to do some pretty radical things. You should’ve seen some of our Christmas cards…people bummed.

Interestingly enough, you and Pettibon have been close for years, collaborating, among other things, on art projects like the art book “Faster Jim.” What do you think you and Pettibon share, and how do you differ? Is it rooted in punk rock, a sense of place (Long Beach), or a fascination with pop culture permutations?

I think it’s kind of like we are from the same gang but from different generations, like the Veteranos (older guys) and the Baby Locos (younger knuckleheads). I can only speak from my end and say that I am a big fan and feel lucky to have been able to learn so much from that guy. He is someone that I feel comfortable asking questions to about anything (art, cars, life). Really funny and the nicest person you would ever meet. I guess we differ in that he is a genius.

You have worked with stenciling, spraypainting, screenprinting, and flyer making, just to name some. What is the relationship between these media? Do you find that they overlap, and how does the different material allow you to pursue specific aesthetic goals or expressions?

I make my original pieces with spray paint and stencils. Those are like my paintings except they are multiples. But because of the technique they are all one of a kind. Serigraphs or Lithographs are ways to get a consistent, high quality reproduction of an image. A fine art print. In my case with a print sometimes there is also a stencil version but not always. Flyers are fun because you can usually do whatever you want. I still like to do them if I get the chance. Something needs to be advertised or promoted and it usually needs to be done quickly. One of the things that people want from the flyer is for it to be noticed. Flyers are a cool place to monkey around and experiment. They are not meant to be some permanent fixture, so there’s more of a chance to do something radical or mean (funny mean). Before computer graphics the people asking for the flyer were even more stuck with whatever you might do and they would even go along with something they were not totally down for. They would just grin and bear it. When I would see other peoples flyers at gigs or record stores some would just stand out and make you laugh or at least smile. One that comes to mind is a quick and dirty one with a picture of Ron & Nancy Reagan with a monkey. The artist had erased the hair off of them so they were bald and the monkey had a speech bubble that said, “Bring your mom and dad, I am.” Pettibon was the king of this stuff.

Your Hispanic/Chicano identity is something that informs your work a great deal, such as working with Self-Help Graphics and creating your Mexican wrestling figures or lowrider images. In terms of your punk rock output, do you see yourself as part of the community established by the likes of Hernandez?

As far as Hernandez (the Bros.?), I guess we both made flyers and we made record covers, and we were punkers. But they are legendary and I don’t see myself alongside those guys. Where I’m from, the L.A. Harbor Area, I am part of a clique of artists (Craig Ibarra, Aaron White, Scott Aicher, Roger Mejia, also Amos and Pablo from the big city, L.A.).

It seems that Hispanic punk rock, from the Zeros to Los Crudos, has not, outside of magazines like Maximum Rock n Roll, or being featured as a chapter in the punk exhibit Forming (1998), has been given short shrift. Do you feel that this reflects a basic Anglo prejudice, or reveal that punk rock simply hasn’t lived up to its ideals?

I think we can all name a few bands that we felt should’ve gotten more attention (Detox, LB/White Cross, VA), I think that it was just the brakes. I got into punk because it was inclusive, for better or for worst, it’s where I belonged. Nobody ever told me about any ideals that needed to be lived up to. I think that was the hippies you’re thinking about.

You mentioned that you were doing flyers for gigs even before you went to school, but how did this come about? Did you simply volunteer, or did people know you had “the skills” to make an interesting advert and approach you? Could you maybe walk me through how it all kicked into gear?

I was at hall punk gig and I got this flyer for a record store that had just opened up in Long Beach. It was a pretty crude flyer and I figured I could make a better one. My brother and I went to the store and I brought my sketch book. The owner of the store liked my drawings and told me to go ahead and redo the store flyer. What I hadn’t known was that he had booked the gig where I got the flyer in the first place, so it all started from there. Right away I was making flyers for a lot of local gigs. The store was called White Slug and the owner ran Sluglord, which booked and put on the shows. He would later book a club in Long Beach called Bogarts, and I would also make flyers for that place.

You said you felt punk rock was inclusive, and that’s what I meant by its idealism. Granted, I felt that way, but I am white and suburban, whereas I just did an interview with someone involved in 1980’s NY hardcore, and he felt that race/ethnicity was always complicated: people pretended that it didn’t matter, but it did. All the preachy straight-edge calls for unity really just masked unease. Yet, Al Escovedo gave me the feeling that when the Nuns started, race was a non-issue. How did you feel?

I don’t think race was any more or less an issue in the punk scene than in the rest of society. My experience was that we were all young and maybe more open minded to getting along. Back then it was a minority of people that decided to get into this thing so if you saw somebody in the street or school that was a punker you kind of sympathized with them. Deciding to get into this music at that time could mean losing friends, getting threatened, being harassed and so on. It was like you were already an outsider among “your people,” so you knew that didn’t have anything to do with getting along or having things in common. At least that was my experience, but people can always get goofy and the punk scene was no exception.

Did commercial art school make you feel that flyer work fell within that tradition, or did you ever feel that it was also a street style, in a way resembling a kind of graffiti, in that it was often quick, illegal to post, and had a “tag” (style) that could often define an artist? I basically make that kind of assertion, but would find your input, for or against, as an essential way to see that history better?

I see it as a low end form of advertisement art. By the time I was doing flyers (1985) people did not post them because you would definitely get busted. They still get posted in parts of L.A. like Silverlake and Hollywood. In the big city, the movie studios have always been going off and must have some shady agreement with the cops because I’m sure it’s just as illegal for them to do it. Posting doesn’t happen in the suburbs much though. I don’t see it as part of the graffiti scene because flyers were serving a commercial purpose and even though you had a lot of freedom it was not for the purpose of total self expression. It was a place to develop an illustrator style. Experiment with graphics, typography, and a way to participate in punk besides being an audience member. I see it more in following the tradition of the rock posters and poster bills of the 50s and 60s.

You say that you enjoyed CARtoons and loved the subversive approach of MAD, and do you feel your own illustrations echo or reflect any of MAD’s style or meaning, even unconsciously? Whereas a lot of punk flyers are rather plain and crude, your flyer for the Adolescents you sent me a PDF for has all kinds of buried, maybe ironic, images relating to consumer culture: the shape of a head buckled down, wrapped in mouse traps, locks, U.S. mail boxes, paper clips etc. I hate to dig deep on the varied meanings, but do you see it as commentary?

MAD was like the big brother helping us get hip on consumerism, politics, sex, absurdity in society, celebrity culture, and not taking things too seriously. MAD magazine was one of first places I ever heard about punk rock. It was really subversive because your parents would buy it for you and they had no idea what it was. It just seemed like some stupid kid thing because it was illustrated. I wasn’t for the most part purposely slipping in some heavy social comment into my art. I think because of being influenced by stuff like MAD, when I saw other people do that, it seemed kind of naive. It was a gig flyer, I wasn’t trying to get people to think like me or overthrow the government. I was just trying to do something original. People like Ray Pettibon, Winston Smith, Rick Griffin, Wes Humpston to name a few, were influencing me too. I was just looking around my back yard and trying to see what I could use. I was showing you what I knew about, what I have seen. Not to say that there aren’t any meanings in the images. The better images keep telling more, showing more. Even though a drawing was made by me, I keep finding new things that I hadn’t considered. Works of art have a life of their own.

One thing you described before was that a promoter could keep all the art generated for show, the flyers, posters, etc., which seems to bring up issues of ownership and distribution. A few artists have told me that they are concerned with their images being on T-shirts, etc, without their control, input, or profit. Has this concerned you?

I don’t think the promoter that kept a bunch of my art would do anything crooked with it. But if he did, I feel kind of powerless to do much about it. It was kind of work-for-hire, no contracts. I mean he didn’t steel the art I just didn’t see any farther down the line than the gigs themselves. No thought of books or history? I was paid my $10-$15 a flyer, got into the shows with my friends, got a place to exhibit my art and didn’t think to ask for the original art to be returned. He was older than me, and his mother was an artist, so I know now that he was aware of the potential value of this stuff. He was really good to me in a lot of ways so I’m not complaining, I just wished I had asked for those things back at the time. I’m pretty sure he would’ve gave them back.

Your description of doing the flyers by “any means necessary” seems revealing and accurate, and would that include “by any material on-hand”? What was a turnaround on a flyer — hours, days, especially on illustrations that were detailed?

The turnaround on most of the flyers I did was usually two to three days, but that was including the day I would get the call. Sometimes one day. Most of the time the bill for the shows was not yet realized and things like dates and venues might change. The materials were always the same for me — Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph Pens (technical drawing pens), pencils, on white drawing paper. When I said “any means necessary” I meant as fast and tight as possible, on deadline. The gig was more important than the flyer.

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You mentioned that the time-sensitive nature allowed you to experiment, since people were in some effect stuck with the product, and that the nature of the work meant that it was temporary. In some way, did flyers allow you to stepping stone towards new ideas, and did you ever see your flyers posted long after shows, as a kind of residual reminder of your ideas in process?

The flyers where you really got to do whatever you wanted were usually the ones where you weren’t being paid. I have a really good friend who is also an artist and was always playing in bands or putting on shows. He didn’t really enjoy making flyers or being an artist for that matter. He was a natural born commercial artist. Sometimes he would have too much going on and he would ask if I could do a flyer for him. He didn’t like a lot of things about the flyers I would do, but he knew I could knock them out quick. He would emphasize the gig info. to the point of often including maps and directions. I saw it as a chance to try out a typography idea like running all the type together with every other word in bold instead of spaces between them. Using a Xeroxed picture that I might’ve had laying around or taped to a wall. Something out of the newspaper or a year book from the 30’s or 40’s. Make the whole flyer look like one of those little religious self help booklets or take the packaging from some Farmer John’s Wieners and just change all type to the gig info. Some flyers would have a large image with really small type, that sort of thing.

Could you talk about some on the specific work you generated while designing for SST? For instance, it is well-known that you have a working relationship with Calexico that has helped shape the band graphics, but what projects were directly shaped by you at SST? Also, did the bands have much say in terms of artistic control during that time?

I worked on things that promoted the record label like ads, T-shirts posters. Ad campaigns for store sales. I came up with this character we called the SST Lifer that was featured in ads and posters for the label. He was based on a cholo tattoo icon crossed with Posado (Day of Dead) and coming from a punk eye. We also used him on gift certificates the label made. Like I said before, Greg Ginn was pretty open-minded. That’s the one thing that I can think of where my aesthetic came through working there. I did most of the New Alliance Records ads while I was there, working with Robert Vodicka, the guy who ran the label. We would have campaigns where we kept using the same headline and change the image. “Out Now On New Alliance” and have a close-up of a guy getting a tooth pulled. I also designed many of Greg Ginn’s solo projects including two albums where my actual art was used (El Bad). The bands had total say on album art and things like that. They could provide the whole thing ready to go or provide an image to work from. Sometimes they had no idea and would ask for suggestions. They usually did have some clue or were working with an artist they knew. We would take whatever they had going on and shepherd it through the process of laying art boards and getting them to a color separator and then to the printers we used. Later with computers we did the same. Because the bands had 100% say on album art, that insured that there would be no consistency as far as a format being developed that would identify them to the label as you saw with Netwerk, Sub Pop, 4AD and others at the time.

If you don’t mind, what are some of things you have learned from Pettibon? Could you provide an anecdote or two?

I consider him a good friend so it feels uncomfortable discussing him in the context of an anecdote. I was a fan of his art for as long as I knew about punk. I grew up in the Harbor Area (Torrance and Carson, Ca) and in the summer we would drive to Redondo Beach. On those drives is where I first encountered his art on Black Flag flyers that were plastered all the way down to Redondo from Torrance. When I started going to commercial art school in the late 80’s a friend of mine and I would hunt down any gallery show he was in. Group shows or whatever. It was this friend of mine that really taught me about Ray’s art. By chance, I met Pettibon at Al’s Bar in downtown L.A. around 1989. He gave my brother and I his phone number because he wanted us to be in one of his movies. We never had the nerve to be in the movie but I have known him ever since. He was already a legend

when I met him but I have since seen his career really explode. One thing I have learned from him is that things never have to be the way other people say they do. There is always room for a new way to do something. One of the things about Black Flag that I didn’t realize until years after hearing it was when in the Decline movie someone asked Greg what Black Flag meant. He answered, “Black Flag means anarchy.â€? I thought of this at the time as a very simple answer in a knucklehead way. Years later after meeting Raymond and working for Greg I realized these guys meant it. They didn’t mean get drunk, pass out on the floor, break windows, duh…anarchy. They meant no rules, no authority, don’t tell me what to do, I will not tell you what to do.

“The poster exists somewhere between the unique art object and the mass media. It blends the formal qualities of both in order to reach an audience neither cares about: urban exiles in search of commmunity. As such, the poster’s message is inherently complicated, making the poster ideally suited to the Chicano experience.”

How would you respond to that assertion?

It’s interesting to think about flyers or posters after not just reading the above quote but also after answering all these questions. It made me realize that the flyer is one thing when it is created (a commercial vehicle to get people to the show) and then something else the minute the show is over. I started thinking about this when I answered one of your questions. When I told you about my friend’s idea of making a flyer and my idea of taking the opportunity to monkey around with it. I knew it was the right thing for me at the time and now I feel that it was best for the gig too, that I did the most creative work possible and that now unless that gig was filmed, my flyer is all that’s left.

From the Silos:

It is with the greatest sadness that we inform you of the passing of Drew Glackin, seen in the picture above at Rudyards, Houston, TX.

He was unaware of an overactive thyroid condition that led to severe heart damage. He was surrounded by family and friends during his final days and hours and we are all still in a state of shock and disbelief.

Drew was adored around the world and his larger than life spirit and contagious jovial energy touched everyone he met, everywhere he went. He was a musician of the highest talent and made his mark in countless bands, record albums, and many thousands of live performances. He will be sorely missed and the memories of his music, his great humor, and his magnanimous generosity of spirit and love will be with us forever.

Konrad, Rod and Walter.

A fund has been set up in Drew’s name to help with funeral costs.

Send a Paypal donation to: theandrewglackinmemorialfund@yahoo.com

DONATE

To send a check, make payable to:

The Andrew Drew Glackin Memorial Fund

Skylands Community Bank

Lopatcong Township

201 Strykers Road, Suite 20

att: Sherri Abel

Phillipsburg, New Jersey 08865

If anyone is interested in sending anything else, a sympathy card, etc, or in addition to, you can send that to Drew’s mom:

Margaret Glackin

819 Wilbur Avenue

Phillipsburg, NJ 08865

http://www.thesilos.net/