[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to Turn Out of Punk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Damien Abraham, and today on the show, a person I have known for a very long time, but really this is the very first time I've had any sort of extended conversation with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: what a conversation that is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jade Puget from the band AFI is on the show today and if you're not familiar with AFI, I don't know how to help you with this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Check them out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got a lot of cool records.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a very long history with this band you can kind of go back and listen the podcast with Davy that I've done over the years and I consider Davy a friend a long long time friend at this point and as you hear Jade Knight discuss it maybe just the lead singer syndrome but I have had a very little interaction with Jade and or Adam
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I've talked to you a little bit, but Hunter, as well, I've had very little interactions with over the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to get to do this with Jade, it was a long time coming, and oh my gosh, did I have a lot of questions that you will hear?
[SPEAKER_00]: Me ask in a second, if you were listening to this podcast, when it first drops, you can go and see AFI live, and you've never experienced AFI live, oh my god, they are a...
[SPEAKER_00]: unbelievable live end.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have some dates coming up in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what part of the United States this would be.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a little bit less cost stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I'll post a link in the description below.
[SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully there will be going on more tour dates as the rest of the year goes on and you would have a chance to see them because they have
[SPEAKER_00]: put out last year, and continues in AFI's constant kind of evolution, and it is out on run for cover records, and you can pick it up wherever you buy your albums or listen to your music, you know, somewhere if you are right now, probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: But listen the podcast first or listen the record then come back whatever whatever you decide to do Also there is a new Supergroup that Jade is involved with with Eric Ozeen from Unipri redemption E7 nerve agents other members of nerve agents are in this group The record is fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called beyond the ape
[SPEAKER_00]: cave and it's available now on revelation records.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'm, you hear us wax politically about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eric's various projects in a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I will say pick this thing up with their fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff in this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I have any notes to get to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there probably is something I'm forgetting about.
[SPEAKER_00]: But hopefully I get a chance to get Hunter and Adam on now too, because you got to collect them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a fun one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Apologies to Jade, but having to leave suddenly at the very end, don't where everything was okay, but yeah, I had to hop off very suddenly on poor Jade as you will hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm not going to ramble on anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Check out AFI.
[SPEAKER_00]: Check it all the records AFI ever did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you will be very happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now sit back relaxed and enjoy Jade
[SPEAKER_00]: Jade, thank you so much for coming on the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I feel like this one has been a long time coming for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was saying to you, off air weirdly, and I think it boils down to lead singer syndrome as I think we both arrived at.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know anyone else in the band beyond being fans of your music before FI and there's so much stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask you about that has been building up over the years, so this has been a long time coming for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also starting off with the fact I thought about it and did a little bit digging on the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are the first person who has ever been on the show that shares the honor of playing in a post-unit pride band with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you did as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I played with Timmy Pride in my
[SPEAKER_00]: very unfortunate solo project years ago, but uh, but it was a concept record in the concept is very flimsy in retrospect, but playing with Timmy Pride was a huge honor for me because Unipride is, I was first introduced to him actually through redemption 87, but a huge band
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know, so I feel like you're like my, uh, my unipried, uh, brethren, and if you unipried, descended brethren, I guess, yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're going to talk about redemption 87 probably, we won't have time to get to the new band, but I do an introduction so I'll talk about that shortly in the introduction because we're going to be digging deep on a lot of old stuff I'm sure, uh, but gotta start off the way they also have, which is Jade, had you get a punch from the first time you ever came across it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I guess as a kid, I feel like people that are our age that either get into punks through sex pistols or hormones, like you discover one of those at some point and so for me of sex pistols and I guess that was just, I was probably 12 years old or something looking for extreme music.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't really know what I was looking for, but I knew I wanted something that other people weren't listening to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always wanted to be countered what was going on
[SPEAKER_02]: make other people uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just kind of like, I don't know what appealed to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was looking for the, I remember there was these metal magazines in the local grocery store.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I get these metal magazines and I look at them and they have like pictures in the wasp and Motley crew and like, you know, black you'll all us with the, with the buzz saw cod piece and I just be like, whoa, I didn't know anything about metal.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like Iron Maiden.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I write these names of these bands on my book covers, having never heard them just because
[SPEAKER_02]: larger than life kind of people, but luckily I didn't go that direction because I discovered I bought Nevermind the Bullocks cassette at some record store and I was hooked and I went, you know, I got the Sid Vicious Solar record, I got a great rock and a little swan though, which is both are pretty terrible, but you know, I was, I didn't have access to anything else I was just kind of okay sex pistols, let me go deeper in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that was kind of my
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess in junior high I started hearing about punk bands like I heard about
[SPEAKER_02]: This kid in my, one of my classes just tell me like an older kid he's like, yeah, there's just been called minor threat and like that skin head music and you can only listen to it if you're a skin head and like if you're not a skin head, they'll like beat you up.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like damn that's crazy, but also like so exciting like I need to hear this band minor threat, no, and of course had minor threat, so I just heard about it and there was this kind of cool older punk girl, one of my other classes was one day she was singing.
[SPEAKER_02]: weapons by DI.
[SPEAKER_02]: M16s and 45s help.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just as lyrics, I don't know who it was, but those lyrics were so close.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like who is that?
[SPEAKER_02]: She's like this fan called DI.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like it's a punk band.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just I was hearing about these things that ever hearing them and becoming really excited about this music to try to find out more about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then
[SPEAKER_02]: Eventually, I got my hands on some real punk and the first thing I got, I got two things at the same time, which were really pivotal for me and kind of set me off, I guess, to be where I am right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: One was trash or magazine used to put out a skate rock compilation.
[SPEAKER_02]: just had all these cool bands that was discovering like actually here's real punk, you know, post.
[SPEAKER_02]: first way of punk stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I also got the first suicidal tendencies album.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was really, I mean, to this day, top five albums of all time punk albums, like no skips, just an incredible album.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once I heard that, you know, I threw it on for the first time I was in my living room and my aunt was walking through the room.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the song, I saw your mom and your mommy's dead.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's like, stop and she's like, I saw your mommy and your mommy's dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: what are you listening to and i'm like her reaction was like okay this is this is where i need to be this is what i need to be listening to this is the reaction i want from people that's gate rock compilation like just from the list of bands you're going through there it's like what a great starter pack because it's kind of not really one sound upon two with all those bands are all kind of doing different approaches escape rock i guess it's probably turned
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I had like the faction, which is just pretty much a skate rock band, but yeah, absolutely bunch of weird different stuff and it was kind of confusing that being my first
[SPEAKER_02]: real exposure to punk just because it was so disparate.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I because I really listen to the sex business, I kind of thought everything sounded kind of like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then all said I'm hearing all of this different weird stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then when I heard suicidal, that was really like as fast, you know, because I love skating as a skater.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was just exactly what I thought punk should be.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thongs about Reagan, I mean, come on.
[SPEAKER_00]: with the skateboarding thing, like thinking about it because it's drawing all these sort of disparate punks scenes together and really kind of weird, different views on punk, certainly from the big boys as well as out of tendencies.
[SPEAKER_00]: But everyone's kind of connected through this shared love of this sort of underground culture comes sport later on.
[SPEAKER_02]: When, for the first, I mean, the entire, almost the entirety of my skating,
[SPEAKER_02]: being indiscating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Honk and skating was were so sympatico that everyone listened upon it was so intertwined.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you probably talked a lot of people that those two things came together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they discovered those two things together.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, it was like, I always associate punk and skating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's interesting because I think by the time I was getting into punk, it was still associated
[SPEAKER_00]: with skateboarding, but I think skateboarding went through that period where it became like obsessed with sort of dinosaur junior.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it's like these skaters are mature, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like a lot of SST stuff, which now I love, but at the time was, you know, I part of dinosaur junior, but like, you know, certainly the minute man was not necessarily what I was gravitating to, and then a lot of skateboarding by that point is also kind of the warp tour era where we had kind of got more associated with sort of that style of things where
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the earlier on, it's like it is bringing together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess like it was such an underground thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like only freaks and weirdos skateboarded at that point.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was one of the appeals to me is in my town, we were like the lowest men on the totem pole.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we were everyone wanted to kill us.
[SPEAKER_02]: The jocks, the metal heads,
[SPEAKER_02]: the Hicks, like, every, we were enemies of everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So to me, even though that sucked in a way, it also was appealing, because it was like, okay, here's the most counter thing I could be doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Listening to this music, doing this activity that everyone hates, like the cops hate us, the teachers hate us, parents hate us.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, I was like, you know, I would carry around, like when I was really I carry around satanic Bible, just because like, you know, what's more counter than in the 80s during the satanic panic than carrying around
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird because like it's it's fraction so much, but there was like just sort of this idea of being
[SPEAKER_00]: countercultural and like it could be like engaging with the churches satin through, you know, carrying around the books, reading the books, it could be engaging in, quote-unquote, anti-social music from like noise music all the way to, I guess, at that point, it's like scomm music, but it was like you were, you were just like someone who was just out of step with like you're saying there's so many things that are more in touch with society that hate you because you're out of touch with society.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we didn't really articulate it in any kind of coherent way, but I think me and everyone hung out was we just want we looked to be hated in a way.
[SPEAKER_02]: We gravitated towards things that we knew were going to set us apart even though a lot of times when you're that age you want to fit in.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that's the opposite of like a normal kid doesn't want to stand out because you become a
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know it's in the it's in the book about Kirk O'Bane.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's in come as you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this thing about I don't know if it's Kirk O'Bane that says it or the author who says it, but there's this thing about.
[SPEAKER_00]: hurting yourself before the world can hurt you and kind of like being the one to bloody your nose to the kid is freaked out and what bloody your nose and this is like I think a lot of it yeah like eventually it became like I went straight edge because it was anti-social like it was a way of truly rebel against everybody and
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was what I was kind of searching for is like a way that was like a for me a positive rebellion in the sense that I could find like a way to do it and and not self-destruct like other people around me had.
[SPEAKER_02]: straight edge is just definitely a part of that too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that came a little later than this, but um, yeah, that was another thing that I didn't know anyone that was straight edge.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in the only guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was, you know, that was even more exclusive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of funny though, because like both AFI and loose changer from like the same town, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: to sport a diaspora with the bands, like going and playing in all these other bands.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a lot of punk that comes from this sort of like smaller town north of Berkeley.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is strange.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very small town.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my best friend, the guy I was in my first band was Nick's 13th from Tiger Army.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was all of this music happening and other bands besides us in a little tiny little town and bands that went on to escape this town and do something bigger.
[SPEAKER_02]: of punk fans?
[SPEAKER_02]: There was this one band in the early 80s called Second Shadow, which is a great name, by the way, that we're kind of this legendary, I think they weren't kind of gone for the most part by the time I became aware of them, but yeah, so there was this one generation before us, but we were kind of the first real generation of punk, you know, because we started listening to
[SPEAKER_02]: in the mid-80s and then start bands by like the late 80s or the 90s, so I guess we were the first real generation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Was loose change your first band?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I had a band with Nick 13 when we were teenagers.
[SPEAKER_02]: This was my first band, both of our first band, really, um, called Influenced 13.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um, and Jeff Cresgi was in that band to from the original for the second base player by FI.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jeff has one of the most interesting music resumes out of the is then all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when Dave first told me that he like jumped to New York and was in Planck 77, it blew my fucking mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, remember that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he's also in Tiger Army and then in the horror pops and then in a band from Canada called the daggers for a minute like yeah and then and then Viva Hey, too, like he's just in fear and fear and fear and I don't think he's in fear anymore, but I think you left.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but yeah, he's he's got an interesting CV for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what kind of style was influenced 13.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was actually really cool and too bad we never put anything out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that band could have done really well.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just couldn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nick and I were the only ones that were really devoted to the band.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know how it is, you got these flakes and you just can't ever seem to get it together because you can't find a stable line up.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was really a weird mix of all our influences like it was very like job-breaker,
[SPEAKER_02]: Sam I am because that was those were the local bands at that time like the small kind of local bands that would be first on the bill.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then also this weird mix of like thrash like capitalist casualties DRI so there would be the super melodic like really cool and then it would be this like biscuit blast beat song so I don't not together necessarily but.
[SPEAKER_02]: Coexisting, because we didn't think that was weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just like these are things that we like.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this sounds fucking amazing to just work at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's like two demos, but we never just kind of like fell apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: But Nick was like such, he was I think 16 and I was 17 that he was already such an amazing songwriter.
[SPEAKER_02]: like he was or like such a talent as songwriter even that early like really intricate advanced melodies and and and just songwriting is really amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So were you guys all meeting at high school like how are you guys all coming together and forming these bands?
[SPEAKER_02]: I met Nick and junior high um and I like discovered, started discovering
[SPEAKER_02]: all these things that I was into and there was this group of people that this is the only people in town that listened to punk and skated and I met them like in I think 7 3rd grade and then they had this punk house that we just hung out with this punk house like you know for weeks at a time never going home, never showering you know like skating all day listening to punk like it was great so I met him earlier early on and then the other got like an AFI those
[SPEAKER_02]: or two younger, maybe a year younger.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we kind of looked at them kind of like grommets.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, they weren't as good at skating.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were like way better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we kind of looked at them as like these younger dudes that we were cool with, but they weren't really on our level.
[SPEAKER_00]: So where were we guys going to first show?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is like we're going down to Berkeley for shows or going down the Bay for shows?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or where their show's happening around you guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, at that time, San Francisco was kind of the place, but there was a San Francisco Chronicle, which is like the main paper, and it had the pink section, which is a section that showed all the venues and all the shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were looking at the pink section before any of us had.
[SPEAKER_02]: our driver's license.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we didn't know any older people that drove.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we'd see the we'd see like black flag.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd see like Susan the Banshee isn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: We couldn't go to the shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was so painful because we didn't like we had none of our parents would take us.
[SPEAKER_02]: So finally like kind of the oldest guy in our group got his license and then it was on and that was like late eighties where you started going to shows in San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what was the first show you
[SPEAKER_02]: My very first show, most people have the story of like, I saw Brian Adams at the Enormodone when I was 11.
[SPEAKER_02]: I grew up so poor, that wasn't even a possibility to see a concert.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my first show ever was my first punk show, which is a saw in D.C., and it was a pretty amazing first show, because I mean, M.D.C. is no need to deadcops as one of my all-time favorite records.
[SPEAKER_02]: as my first show was pretty amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that wasn't insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that in San Francisco?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was in this little town called Gurnville, which was like maybe half an hour, north of San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a place called the River Theatre that used to have a lot of punctures.
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I think like black flag played there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a bunch of punctures, but it was what's interesting on that show.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the first
[SPEAKER_02]: The opening ban was green day and they just changed their name to green day and like they all had long hair still and they were handing out joints and like all their songs they're talking about weed and this songs about smoking weed and I was just like, whoa, what is this ban and it was like, you know, back in those days, every show in the Bay Area was like white power skinheads because there's such a huge presence of that in the Bay Area.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's so many and plus they all hated him to see, of course, because they had that song skin in it and they were, you know, super left wing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was always white power skin is down there throwing ash trays of green day and I was like, damn, this is rough for this band.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, yeah, so I don't know where I was going with that, but that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it like, what a weird, also time for the history of San Francisco punk like, yeah, you've got
[SPEAKER_00]: Sort of that pre period where I guess like it's terrorized by the like the the fuckups and they're kind of a crew of people and then it seems like yeah, the sort of like white power skinhead thing
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, when I first started going to shows that was like the kind of height of that like they had the war skins and the bash the various skin heads and there was just all of these skin head crews and they were just come to show they weren't there to see the music, you know, they were just there to fuck shit up and and beat people up and in this case, I think they were there to.
[SPEAKER_02]: try to kill Dave Dictor probably because he didn't care like he was so bold.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was little dude but he was totally antagonizing them, taunting them from the stage and they played that song skinhead and then all of a skin has tried to rush the stage and they're trying to drag them off the stage and I was just like this little kid watching this going like holy shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a hectic scene like surprisingly they didn't get him off the stage.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why he's talking to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe like talk them down somehow, but yeah, that was pretty garlic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I think when Matt Freeman was on the show, he said the first day he played with them or joined the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dave got beaten up by the cops in front of him like beaten down super fucking hard after the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like that's a band that had to live it every day, like you had pulled over by the cops, they go through your merch, like every, every interaction is a potential altercation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then certainly, like you're saying, he was a, a provocation artist too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll try to engage people on this sort of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he backed it up like I say on stage, it's like,
[SPEAKER_02]: There were all these huge skin heads that wanted to kill him and he wasn't going to be, you know, he wasn't going to back down and I mean, who could be more provocative than him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that what do that, right about 81 or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's 81.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, 81, 82, 81.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I mean, he's got a reman.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking about cross-dressing.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's saying he's like, saying fuck the cops.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's saying fuck skinheads, but, you know, capitalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: Basically, every fuck, everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, the most counter you could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like when they're still the stains and they're in Texas and they're doing John Wayne was a Nazi in like 70's something.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's wild.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I know doubt they had the what they probably would not have be here if they had stayed in Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine getting out of San Francisco, at least you're dealing with a slightly more liberal environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so, Brad, you guys formed loose change by this point, or as you guys saw the first man by this point by the time we went to the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that would have been like maybe 89, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: 88, 89, and when we first started going to shows and we formed our first band in 91, summer 91, and then loose change formed in 92.
[SPEAKER_02]: Were you seeing bands like CapCast and that sort of like power vones, Slap Hips or C?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, like that whole Slap Hips scene was very intertwined, like those bands would just be on shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: We played with Capals Casualais, loose change did this one show, and they...
[SPEAKER_02]: They were like, they're trying to get beer money.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they told us like, they offered to sell us the publishing of one of their songs.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were like, we'll give you full publishing rights to this song.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it was like a song about Paps' Lou Ribbon.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, we'll give you the rights to the song if you give us like five bucks so we can get some beer.
[UNKNOWN]: And I have pretty good deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the era of the gentrification of dystopia,
[SPEAKER_00]: You might be able to sell that to absolutely ribbon for a lot of money if you're taking a video.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we might just give them the money because we know that they were desperate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a live record of Capcaz playing at the Gilman and in it they like stop a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, all right, you know, like you guys, we got you guys in for free and you're fighting.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like stop it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I saw them at the Gilman.
[SPEAKER_00]: It must have been like six years after this live record was recorded.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the exact same banter was said from stage in the middle of a song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they still around?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think the leasinger passed away a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sadly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see no common-dever?
[SPEAKER_00]: No comments.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't specifically recall.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that about the Gilman scene is that it's like such a...
[SPEAKER_00]: a cool variety of punk bands that are all kind of just drawn together much against the skateboard thing around the fact that this is an all ages venue to play but like you've got like rabid last year unit pride playing with the capcaz people playing with like like green day or something like it it really does feel like it's um...
[SPEAKER_00]: an awesome melting pot of all things that were pugs at that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what's unfortunate is, somehow we didn't really become aware of the Gilman scene in the 80s.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why or how, I think it's because they were too underground because we were living in a small town.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were discovering venues through the newspaper.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we just know a new about Gilman Street.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we didn't start going to Gilman until like, you know, there early 90s.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that 80s, Gilman, like the original, first couple years of Gilman Street, we kind of missed that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so weird, too, because like the guy who ran alchemy records is like one of the founding people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess Aaron, comment plus his mom had been looking and found this building and that's how they found the building.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The origins of that place are fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and the guy from alchemy records is like related to Captain B-Fart.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a really familiar connection between Captain B-Fart, I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's some weird alchemy, I guess
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a great space in the fact that it's still around because I remember, you know, 30 years ago, being like every other weekend, it was like, oh man, it's over.
[SPEAKER_02]: Come on, shutting down.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it was always about to shut down and somehow, here we are, 2026 still gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can't think of another.
[SPEAKER_00]: All ages venue, maybe the one in 12.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you guys ever played that in Bradford, people in England.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's like another very political sort of like all ages space that I believe is still in operation now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, like to survive as a venue period is hard, let alone like a collective all ages kind of space.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and they opened that brewery across the street and that brewery is really trying to shut them down because they didn't want that kind of saying happening,
[SPEAKER_02]: way longer.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the weather that's done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's that's I think the unfortunate part about punk is is it's always going to be kind of like weirdly the part of the the beginning of the gentrification cycle of an April.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it feels like the punk venue moves in, punk's moving around the venue, record stores move in,
[SPEAKER_00]: Coffee shops move in, and eventually it starts enticing people that are completely counter to sort of the idea of trying to contribute to the community rather than take over the community.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, you see that my first experience is touring, you know, the punk venue was always worse part of town.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I, my first visiting, my first visits to all these major cities were like, I thought every city was just the worst place because I only got, you know, you drive right to the venue and it's in the worst neighborhoods.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you think that's the whole country is just
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, that's very true.
[SPEAKER_00]: We played, uh, it was called busy kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you have some place in Detroit, and they had to like lock your van in when you showed up to play.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, let us know if you want to go outside, but definitely don't go by yourself, but then I like the freezer from Detroit's just, uh, the freezer, like the legendary, you know, hardcore venue, and they approach all those bands played.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just around the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to go check it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we went and checked it out and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, it was fine walking around there, but I guess there have been
[SPEAKER_00]: not so fine experiences for bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, the first time I played New Orleans, we got out of the van and it was like record scratch.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone was like, we do not belong here.
[SPEAKER_02]: They do not want us here, but I load in quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where would you play with influence there, James?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man, it was like a living room with no one in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like,
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd play a show or would be like, hey, I'm having a party at my house, come and play it and we'd show up and there'd be no one, like literally no one at the party, so it'd be, we'd basically rehearsing and someone's living room or a backyard.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we played some real shows, but it was like that paid a play era.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'd have to sell the tickets to your friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have to sell certain amount of tickets to be able to play, like, you know, go around
[SPEAKER_02]: metal bands like you know like skit so and violence and all these kind of bury a metal bands um yeah we'd play wherever anywhere nothing good though no no really good shows we did play we played with green day um on the uh kerplunk album which is cool because they were starting to blow up and so playing with them was like a kind of a big deal we got to play with
[SPEAKER_00]: So he played some cool shows and then how long after that disloose change form?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like less than a year after that after we after we formed in Flint City and with loose change like I know Dave was when he was on the podcast he was like saying like yeah it was it was rough for us because we were kind of like you know behind the times right like he is which is what he said like the
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound they were playing, the type of hardcore they wanted to play was not in the step with the sound that people necessarily wanted to hear in the barriers, specifically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you guys go over better because the sound you're doing, like, I love those change records.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, it's like, it's more in keeping with Sam I am in green day and crimp.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I always love pop punk from the earliest iterations of it, you know, like the
[SPEAKER_02]: the kind of precursor to all the stuff we were doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that kind of, yeah, and that kind of music was obviously huge in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, but we were just doing it because we loved it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And men shine and like that was, you know, screeching weasel, peg boy, like all those bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just like, we got to do a band like this because it's what we listen to.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, I love that stuff too.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the worst reactions I've received on this show was when I had pin-end gunpowder on, and I made the mistake of referring to crimp shine as being like a pioneer of a pop punk sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: both Billy and Aaron freaked out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, what was the argument?
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause I'm in a limited.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were telling me that it was a bullshit made up thing by the media post-screen day, and they were offended because there like no one was ever a pop punk band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone was just a punk band and you know, and I'm like, no, no, it was a style.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you know, I'm like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, it's referred to as a style like pre-dating this period that we're talking about too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the reference is the buscox being a quote unquote pop punk band.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, yeah, and I didn't mean it in any sort of like antagonistic way, but it definitely was taken as something that I felt like it had been used in a negative way so many times that there was a carry trauma.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, labels, especially musical labels, especially if you're the one being labeled, it always kind of sucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I have much experience with this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I can understand that.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one wants to be, no matter who you are, you don't want to be labeled a thing that everyone calls you generally.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but it's a convenient label.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, crimp trying to me, I would say pop punk, I mean, it's got elements of both.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you want to call it?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I mean, and I only mean it to distinguish it from a sonic approach where, you know, like, a neurosis would be doing at that or felt.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, it's not felt.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's still punk, but it's not that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not neurosis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I feel like certainly in a post green day world where now it's used as a marketing term or has been used and misused as a marketing term for so long, that
[SPEAKER_00]: It's lost that sort of like innocent connotation that people have.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think also now like it's become like such an influence on to kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that there's like bands that are like we want to be a pop punk band.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there was even back when I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I'll always have the most love for that style of music, whatever you want to call it, like, you know, I love melody and I love punks to me that was to something that I was really in trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you wound up on one of the mechas for that sound for me, shredder records.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, shredder records like I feel like shredder doesn't get as much credit for kind of like putting out so many well they obviously the job breakers stuff, but like I feel like they don't get as much credit as a certainly a lookout or or a very small even like there's other labels that I think get but like shredder put out so many great things those cops are unbelievable
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, we were on a couple of shredder comps and that was it was a big deal for us because we were just a such a small band of the fact that Mel would put and Mel was such a cool dude to like that he would put us out and we did our first or we did a seven inch did I guess that's the only thing we really did on shredder besides the comps we did a seven inch on shredder and it was like we recorded
[SPEAKER_02]: in the studio where job record did unfun, which was, you know, unfun was like one of my top still to the stay on my top records of all time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that alone was like so exciting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Nicky Parasite from the Parasites, like kind of produced it, I don't know how much production was going on, but that was exciting as I lead love the Parasites.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is another great shredder band.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it was a really cool experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'll fucking love the parasites so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of pop, you know, once I got an error, I'm gonna get, you know, I feel like I'm in a safe space to use it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pop on bands that like, from that sort of pre, arrow like pink link in, parasites, like a lot of bands that were kind of like, finding this sort of like sound then that I've, there's just so many great records that are kind of like a little bit forgotten now, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like one that I always, at least goes one of Western.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love Western.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That should be, got beat up as one of the best pop punk records ever, like that should be up there with my brain hurts or anything else.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or my leg goes to college.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not definitely that Western and it's funny, like Western and digger.
[SPEAKER_00]: 90s was a very second era for that kind of pop punk that I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: it was such a great like it's only I think comparable to like maybe the 60s garage rock boom in terms of and maybe the like soul boom as well like where you had a period where there's just so much underground music or like non-mainstream labels, non-major label production that's going on like how many thousands of seven inches we're still coming out at a time when no one's pressing vinyl
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, and there were so many little unsung bands that, you know, like jolt, I love jolt, like when I'm a favorite pop-up band.
[SPEAKER_02]: Another one, I got the seven inch right here behind me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to give some love to this band, one man running, this is one of the best, if you've never heard this, this is one of the best pop-punk releases of all time in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_02]: two songs on a lookout comp and they had this stress of an inch and that's it only releases they had are they on the pork one or like a yeah can't a pork I can't have one one song on that and this is on curved dog records which is another great local record label which influence 13 try to get on that record label I think early a fi try to get on that record label because they were putting out like the coolest kind of underground pop punk and punk
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, you should get your hands on one of these because this is a really cool disk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, every time I go to the Bay Area, it's just like there's just so many cool random seven inches that I've like, oh shit, I've never heard of this or something to it on the one list cause it's just like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like, it's kind of becomes the punk capital in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's certainly everything kind of folks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's so many labels there, distribution places.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, the labels were running through plus everything mortem's doing and it's interesting because Larry Livermore, when he was on here, credits it all to like faith no more and the faith no more, kind of exposure that happened and was like, yeah, Nirvana was, you didn't really affect us in the way it affect everyone else because we already kind of had everything going from faith no more.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's interesting, I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's kind of like a weird take to think.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then you feel like, oh, yeah, Green Day and Nirvana, both are putting other records at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like parallel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we covered a smells like teen spirit.
[SPEAKER_02]: My influence they're deemed it when it came out, because it was just like, you know, it was, you know, that song swept the nation, swept the world, so we had to take a shot at it
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, you certainly had to, uh, you know, win over those parties.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're not going to win them over if you're doing like a capcaze cover or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: We would always put the capals covered as part and the cover.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we covered, unshamed melody, but didn't have a blast beat part at the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: No matter what we covered, it had to have the blast beat part at the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so who ran key lime records?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that was, I mean, you know, ran, that wasn't really a real record label, I think, but I think it was Jeff's kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They put it on a CD last year, an AFI CD last year for something.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that there's been some kind of a, releases that are not okay by the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, without getting into details about everything there,
[SPEAKER_00]: you guys have had a real rough go of record labels and like for the pre you joining the band experience I mean too and then certainly you joining the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were some like bumpy roads in that and I feel like there's always that argument like you know it's certainly like this Steve Albini argument like don't sound a major label they will fuck you over.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think AFI could
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we've actually had pretty great experiences on major labels.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the drama was, you know, well, my perspective was on an indie label.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and even before you join the band, it's like, you know, the things we're talking about and it's only the stuff with wingnut records as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a lot of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: not great experiences on the indie side to make you kind of want to stay necessarily out of like this loyalty to these people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the wing that thing I don't think at least was didn't have any long lasting effects.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just kind of like
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that was kind of a my compared to the stuff that happened after that that was kind of a minor blip even I wasn't in the band at the time, but you know, I was great close friends with those guys at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So luckily that one had didn't have much ramifications.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going back to a much more pleasant label experience with a shredder, the first seven inch, the seven inch is called Lucky Dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that in reference to Lucky from 15?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I mean, we had swings for a spike ride, played the shit out of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I must have been around the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the dog on the cover of that seven inch is our friend Alexa dies dog and the dog's name was lucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was totally unrelated for somehow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very weird, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was thinking like you must have known him because he's rode for green day, I think, even before 15, even or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we didn't know him.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like I said, I don't know when
[SPEAKER_02]: But if it was around that time, and we would have been aware, I guess just been looking at the cover of the album and seeing who's in the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a Cheetah Chrome motherfuckers, Cheetah Chrome for the dead voice thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're Cheetah Chrome motherfuckers of the Italian hardcore bands claim they never heard of Cheetah Chrome.
[SPEAKER_02]: It has came up with the name Cheetah Chrome in the penalan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just can't believe I had to flip the top.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I could have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cheetah Chrome mother fuckers sounds good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got a good phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good phonics going on there, so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then your guys are also on loose change.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told you we're going to talk a lot about loose change.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know I talked about the change.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're on cold front records, which is another really super fucking cool label.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Brett.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was nice because he just wanted those dudes that was like ran it out of his apartment.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a very small operation, but he's like, I love your music.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really want to put a record out and he's like, we did that fire it up CD album with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, you know, to pay for the recording he, he had a
[SPEAKER_02]: Marshall Halfstock and he of his, his band, he was in, he basically was like, gave it to the engineered a pay for our album.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was like he was putting up his own possessions to make our record happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you know, it was cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he could tell that he was really devoted to the idea of our band.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting because like it's all the smaller labels and like the the people that are doing it that are losing money and on to themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like seemingly the most generous sometimes with music.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like when there's money on the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of a sudden that's when like sort of like the the weirdness starts happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess that's the difference between doing for the love and doing it for the money.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know these these people in these small records labels like Mel Shredder and Brett cold front.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were doing it for the love, you know, they don't think.
[SPEAKER_02]: the money ever even really came into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you kind of had like an interesting perspective.
[SPEAKER_00]: I imagine until you joined AFI as like watching as this band that, you know, once again, I'm just going on what Davey said like was not necessarily liked in the Bay Area suddenly become sort of like the main band, even pre-black sales it seems like in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: They, you know, once again, because I was
[SPEAKER_02]: good friends with those guys and I was a fan like they I moved to Berkeley in 94 to go to the university and they were the low you know at that point AFI and square 32 were like the local heroes they were like the two biggest bands in the scene so that like not being like thing I think was pretty brief they were very quickly very liked so you know
[SPEAKER_02]: So, well prior to me joining the band, they were pretty big in the Bay Area, at least.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of love that area of the Bay Area too, where it was like screw 32, AFI, and I guess like swinging others would also do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, getting gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those creeps on candy.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are their bands were happening at that time?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, retention 87 had started at that point.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still wasn't around anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, swinging out of his man, those two, those two, I mean, the EP, those two albums are just incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: When the streets of San Francisco came out, like I just played that incessantly such a good album.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was listening to it the other day and God, that, yeah, it's like one of the perfect records from that era.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just definitely perfectly produced, like Lars did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess he did the Union 13 to drop first drop in Murphy's and
[SPEAKER_00]: a business, the business come back record around then, and all four of them are, sound fucking awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, he knows that sound inside now, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was really dialed in perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, I think, Ken Casey, we're traffic when he was on.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very heated at fat records for the next record turned out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I love that record.
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand fat records was a very polarizing thing at that point and I remember it being like a very big deal in the scene that they were on fat records because they were such heroes of the Bay Area scene, but I didn't give a shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't really buy into that bullshit.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought the production was different, whether or not it's worse, I guess that's a matter of taste, but I thought it was a great record.
[SPEAKER_00]: Given that like the barrier is so antagonistic to the major labels in that era, did you guys have to deal with it when you guys signed or as it kind of peed it off a little bit after the Green Day stuff?
[SPEAKER_02]: It had not only changed things and started shifting,
[SPEAKER_02]: a local band anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we were kind of like, we weren't just playing in the Bay Area all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: We played in the Bay Area as much as we played in New York or anywhere else.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it didn't really, even if people had a problem or some people had a problem, it wouldn't really affect us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, had you guys been, because there was like a time where you guys couldn't play the Gilman anymore, because of just popularity, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Two.
[SPEAKER_00]: But had you been in the Bay Area?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we signed to a major in 2002.
[SPEAKER_02]: So at that point it would have been kind of crazy for us to play Gillman because, you know, it would have been such an underplay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, probably would have done it, but, you know, just I don't think it really really came up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting because AFI is a band that I find's taken up so differently by depending on what area you're first exposed to the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also geographically, where you lived in that era, like when you were exposed to the band,
[SPEAKER_00]: You must have, I'm trying to remember if it was 99 or 2000, I went to Santa Cruz and saw AFI play in DBS opened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was, and I was just like blown away because on the East Coast it was much more kind of assumed into like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, like the epiphat pop punk kind of world, but on the on the west coast, it was like crazy moshing and kids doing insane stage I've one of the biggest circle pits I've ever seen in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was a a really different kind of fan base, it seemed like or at least the way the fan base interacted with you guys was very different.
[SPEAKER_02]: That first, the black sales tour, which was 99,
[SPEAKER_02]: was very much, most of the places we went, hard work kids, you know, it wasn't, at least in my memory, it was not epitaphat records, kind of seen type of kids that was like hard work kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but also I guess Toronto's different can it's different than America's.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm only basing it on Toronto.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you talking about that show?
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the procedural.
[SPEAKER_00]: That cathedral show was fucking crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a great show.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was one of, yeah, one of my favorite shows ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: That cathedral show.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that was because it was also like,
[SPEAKER_00]: By that point, it was already clear that you guys were kind of like leveling up in terms of like audience size and attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it felt like that was like a probably a bit of an underplay for you guys at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was on black sales, wasn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that was after black sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was living in the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stole my friends, copy of black sales before I went to England for a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And stole his copy and I remember listening to black sales on the plane and it just came out and being like holy shit, this has been saying so it must have been after that because I'd moved back to Toronto by that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: But probably after.
[SPEAKER_02]: In my mind that was the last show on the black sales tour.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, that is a long asked time ago, so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it was a stands up very vividly in my memory that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Me too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that was a great show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hot as fuck, I remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just one of those where the sweat and concessions is raining down from the ceiling.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was also,
[SPEAKER_00]: one of the first shows because Toronto, you know, there's a, a little bit of a provincial quality to Toronto.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we didn't necessarily have that sort of crazy style moshying yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only people weren't necessarily head walking at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the, one of the first shows like I remember just kids head walking all through, like from the front of the room to the back of the room, type vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not how back it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Toronto is a, I mean, I guess we started playing Opera House after that, but those shows are always incredible, it was always such a joy to go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it like the first time you guys, well, you would have played the Opera House, but like for them going back to the Opera House after the FI ride, was there like a weird vibe for in the band?
[SPEAKER_02]: going to play there, probably even at the Cathedral of was like, oh, well, you know, maybe some of these people could show up or something could happen, but it wasn't really like a fear, it was just kind of like a, this happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: There might be some blowback, but probably not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I guess they had played Toronto at least one time in between that cathedral show and then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and also those kinds of things happening at shows, it wasn't like that out of your
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we weren't, we weren't like a huge riot band, you know, like a lot of rides that now today, I find shows, but just when the scene may came up in and just how things were, it wasn't like that was that crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's only reading that Gilman history book that I really got an understanding like, it's a very dramatic scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that whole, yeah, I mean, the Bay Area scene in general was very,
[SPEAKER_02]: very chaotic, you know, like going to see like agnostic front in the 80s and having at the stone, which was like, we're so many great shows happen when I when I started going to shows and having like
[SPEAKER_02]: all of the white power bikers, health angels and skin heads there and like riot breaking out immediately, it's like, it's like exploited GBA, check all of these crazy shows or it's just like, that was what happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a riot, a crazy brawl, some kind of insane chaos.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just like, that's how it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Roger told me they played the Gilman the next day after that show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really got invited by Narosis and kind of like jumped on the bill, and it was interesting and early controversy I guess of the Gilman Yeah, I mean that was right after he got out of prison and I remember like he had a long hair and he came out He had a shirt off and he had the crucified skin and I was just like whoa sky as crazy Like guys intense and I was in Craig was in the band and yeah, it was like immediately a riot and like
[SPEAKER_02]: They probably'd have to show, so it was a great show, though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did verbal abuse play that show, too?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was planned Bodians, which was like a local kind of thrash band that played every show.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember if verbal abuse was on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: possibly.
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of bands with those guys gravitate to, maybe Slambodians, like the kind of the Nazi guys, like was there like a Nazi music scene also kind of running parallel?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean white power music was always really bad, so things that they had to come to and they wanted to come to the shows that were big because that was where they were going to get to those are way to round, you know, so they came
[SPEAKER_02]: certainly some, you know, I remember seeing DRI and they're being a so many skinheads there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, like I said, they came to MDC, which was like there clearly not wanted there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I saw Fugazi, and I don't really remember them being there, which is surprising.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, I went, I saw
[SPEAKER_00]: Clansman there in the barrier like due to the clan tattoos and shit, so like yeah, they come out to anything Because it was also like a parallel kind of like you know like certainly anti-fascist sort of oily thing that's beginning to pop a lot like a sort of a strong anti-fascist kind of skin and thing too, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that that was always there too like when I saw the exploited
[SPEAKER_02]: at the stone, there was a big brawl between the sharp skins and the white power skins.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like, there were a lot of sharp skins there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was like, the skins, the white power skins would target the punks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you had a mohawk or, you know, spike leather jacket, they'd target you.
[SPEAKER_02]: and so it was like the punks and the sharps would sort of band together to fight the skin hands and we were like kids so we were like luckily not targeted we were like not really involved but you'd get fucked up in the pit those pits were crazy like when I went to MDC my first show my shirt was immediately torn off in the pit bloody nose and so I had to like ride home in the back of a truck with no shirt on but yeah luckily we were we were just kind of flying out of the radar
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, with the mashing thing, it was definitely born out of wanting to hurt people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it feels like people can be like, no, no, it's not about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, yeah, it might have evolved to a place where it's not about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it certainly sydvicious when he invented the poca was trying to hurt people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says it on the record.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, um, it kind of just is also the excitement of the crowd.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you what, some of the most intense circle pits I've ever been in were at those early green
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other playing popunk, yeah, like at the Phoenix theater and stuff, like the circle pits would be as intense as any of the most heavy music I saw.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just so exciting.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was such an energetic music that that caused the chaos.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've also heard that Green Day was kind of like, not maybe not out of the gate when you first saw them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like sweet children, it kind of air.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like later on was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you could tell they were going to be big.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were popular and they were probably at a different kind of fan base than like a normal pun show would.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, we especially when Kirk Plunk came out, but even on the first record, I remember like, we were listening to Green Day like right away.
[SPEAKER_02]: We loved that first record.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think we all knew that this was a different kind of band.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, job record was great and one of my all-time favorites, but you didn't really get that feeling that they were going to be some massive sensation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until those guys were on the show and I kind of realized like how deeply rooted they are to like that New York sort of like Sonic Youth underground art scene kind of world through Canberra, Fowler and just like playing those kind of shows early on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, they do kind of have like an anti mainstream kind of already quality to them where like you're just saying green day, there's just like it's just made to be enjoyed by everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I don't think Billy Joe was aiming to be some pop star.
[SPEAKER_02]: He just, that's what he loved to play.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was so good at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Such a great songwriter.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just kind of written in the stars that it would happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of look at Green Day versus like Nirvana and just like the two different bands and how they weathered success and also how
[SPEAKER_00]: They're kind of respective punk scenes reacted to their success.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think, obviously Grid A received this major backlash, but the immediate circle was tight, it seems.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think Green Day had a similar...
[SPEAKER_02]: I think by the time they blew up so fast when they signed to a major that it didn't, I mean, they would probably sad that their old scene was turned their back on them, which would have sucked, you know, because they came up in that scene, but they were immediately like, for the world, it wasn't like they were still stuck playing in the bay area and now everyone hated them.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, I don't think it affected them at such a level as maybe job breaker where like they got, it's just gross.
[SPEAKER_02]: The back last they got was gross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I've always wondered, and I've, and it's, and I'm trying to maybe build from, um, paint again, I've had a product up even.
[SPEAKER_00]: That like, was it because job breakers not truly a local band?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they're obviously,
[SPEAKER_00]: but loved in the Bay Area at that point in the Bay Area, but they're also like an LA band and they were also kind of briefly in New York.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like, it feels like when Jesse Lushes was on the show like, you know, he has still as the troll towards job raker, but Green Day was okay and I'm like, it feels like it's a lot of like, I was like a lot of like home town love that went into the Green Day, successfully immediate circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've also brought all the friends with them too.
[SPEAKER_00]: that for the ride.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I guess everyone probably has their own perspective on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mine was kind of like Green Day, like I say, you kind of knew this was in the cards for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for them to sign to a major and blow up, it's like, how could it not happen?
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas job breaker was like an art ban and so cool and the lyrics in it was like, I guess it was more of a betrayal because it wasn't something that was written in the
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, then they sign and got all the backlash, but none of the success.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like, that's just double painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's interesting to think of like, what would have happened if they had stayed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they weren't really a look outband, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they didn't really have like that cool indie label that could kind of be built around them to kind of stay with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like interesting, like, what would have happened to them if they had signed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not signed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're like signing somewhere else, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I mean, I feel like they would have been a, maybe like a, I don't know, like a cool mid level indie bands?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like, unless they've started from the crypt or something, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, but rock from the clip signs of the major two, right, like for a period.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, like, yeah, I guess success wise, you know, just being like a band, everyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, your mom doesn't know about, but it's like a cool band that the cool people know about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never had to worry about it being a bank I'll fucked up and doing what I do on stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for a lot of friends that were faced with that choice and chose either two or not to do, now in retrospect, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't moment for your band, because eventually your scene is going to age out of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this is your opportunity to kind of find a new scene and to expand your world or you can kind of stay there and to hope that people stick with your band.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is people are going to change and the punk scene is certainly not going to ride with you forever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, and you know, making decisions based on other people's idea of what you should be doing that don't even know you.
[SPEAKER_02]: is definitely not a recipe for success and unfortunately the signing of the major has not worked out for so many bands but I do think you got to take that leap and just see what happens you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's worth just if you have that opportunity because it's better than regretting it and regretting having never at least tried.
[SPEAKER_02]: At least that's my opinion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got so much weight especially at that age when we're all younger that this is like
[SPEAKER_00]: religion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're all like adhering to these sort of like weird principles that someone said that may not have adhered to themselves ultimately or certainly some definitely have like Yemikai and Timio Han and I think went to the grave kind of by his principles.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're also kind of like been given this doctor and throughout your teenage years that you're like, I can't do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shouldn't do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm letting everyone around me down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like we were talking about earlier, how we all want attention because we're in punk rock.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of it's probably born of the fact that there's a lot of insecurity in punk rock.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when people like sign to the major label, there's like a personal attack felt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like you're leaving me to go, I'm not good enough for you anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: This seems not good enough for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's like a hard thing to be faced with I can imagine for bands like I guess you guys had already achieved success enough that maybe it was different but like I could see why bands would wrestle with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was such a false doctrine, though, and such a zeitgeist thing, because look at today, I don't care anymore, if you sign to a major.
[SPEAKER_02]: People probably still have morals, and they probably still have a code of ethics they had here, too, but it's not based on who your recollable is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was such a...
[SPEAKER_02]: a sort of bandwagon that everyone jumped on, like major labels are bad and you're a sellout.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the sellout thing was such a bandwagon thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's why it doesn't really exist anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you have to do something really and I agree just these days to be labeled a sellout.
[SPEAKER_02]: But back then it was just like, kids that didn't give a shit, didn't know, didn't have any code of ethics.
[SPEAKER_02]: They would call you a sellout, just because that's what you're supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a very hard time for bands like that, like, you know, rancid face that major label question,
[SPEAKER_02]: And job accuracy being kind of the one that got the worst part of it that I can think of at least from the Bay Area scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like it was definitely back last.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, don't even like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was that aggressive sort of attack like you sold out, but then there's also that like even worse thing that happened and I certainly haven't had bands from up here that signed to major labels where everyone just gives to the shrug, true next record.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like a lot of those records where music's gone kind of age pretty good, but like at the time, people were just like, no.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think that's also sort of the sign of the times is like, oh, this sounds too produced.
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand that to a certain extent, but I mean, tear you as a incredible record.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, and things like Pinkerton or Sam I am signed to a major label and put out what I think their record clumsy, which is like a fucking great record.
[SPEAKER_02]: And everyone, like you said, it was like kind of a shrug thing, but that's a great record.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think to the stage, a great record, and people would have
[SPEAKER_02]: looked beyond this sort of surface level politics and just enjoy these records for, I mean, DairyU is obviously stood to test the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's in my hand, we played with them recently with the flat liners, that the flat liners Christmas show up here, and they were fucking unbelievable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that band.
[SPEAKER_00]: So good, and like, and like, it's weird because like,
[SPEAKER_00]: pre-date.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're like, the inception of the Gilman kind of seems certainly members were in other bands at the actual inception of the Gilman scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, they did the major label, they were on so many different labels over the years that it's hard to appreciate kind of the run that they had as a band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when Darrell from ZapCase was here, he was talking about how like, yeah, like meeting those guys and then talking about being friends with the Google Dolls back in the day, back in the Google Dolls were still like a punk and hardcore band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they were like doing the thing before the thing was really a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's nice to see a band like Sam I am still.
[SPEAKER_02]: Putting on great music, I mean, they're still putting on great music and still going and they weren't, you know, destroyed by that whole nature label, part of their career and Yeah, definitely one of my all time favorites.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you guys did black sales was there because it was like, I guess it wasn't a sonic shift in any sort of major way because but it is feels like it's a great leap forward in the direction that was kind of being indicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: was it sort of an immediate response where you guys knew that this was gonna be a change for the band?
[SPEAKER_02]: You mean, response from people that heard it when we released it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like, certainly from people like at the shows and like coming to see you guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there was like, I, you know, like, it was in that beginning era of message words and all that, which it kind of actually started happening on the previous AFI record, which, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: before I was in the band and I would go on these messages boards and I'd be so angry because people would be talking shit about AFI, about Shretcher Mouse and like this record sucks and like I'd be like how dare these, I wasn't inoculated to trolls yet, you know, and I didn't it was because it was so early on, like these people on the internet are talking shit, like how's this happening and not realizing that that would come to define the world for the next, you know, several decades.
[SPEAKER_02]: But
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so there was, there was some people like every AFI record.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like this different, this isn't very proud of this isn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even at that point, it's like, this isn't stretcher mouth.
[SPEAKER_02]: People that were talking shit about stretcher mouth were now like, this isn't stretcher mouth, but it really quickly caught on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like, it was weird, we got these reviews and like metal magazines, like metal magazines were like, this isn't incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could've got like a 10 out of 10 on this, and this one big metal magazine.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was being embraced,
[SPEAKER_02]: more widely than maybe previously if I had been.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we did that first tour.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't like we were selling out big venues, but it was the passion, it was crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we would go to these places like Minneapolis.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd be, you know, the next day would be Minneapolis and the guys in the band would be like, yeah, Minneapolis fucking sucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like Boston sucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like no one likes us there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's gonna sucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just wanna look warn you that it's gonna suck.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we get there and just be like the most incredible show.
[SPEAKER_02]: So something had started shifting because of this record.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because as you mentioned before, it wasn't weird moment, because the audience wasn't that epiphate.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then once again, I'm just judging it from Toronto, like certainly in Toronto, because of touring with Rancid and certainly coming through on shows playing with good riddance and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there was an audience that would come and see the band that was sort of this like, I guess, at this point, aging out of teens, kind of skateboarder type crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then there was like a much younger kind of hardcore scene that was also happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on that record, those kids were all out too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it also just like lots of other kids, people were finding out about this record.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was kind of crossing over, except to believe in to me, it's someone watching from the sidelines.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think even that previous record, Richard Mhausen and the Affirncyte EP and in the black sales, the hardcore elements of those releases were so much more prevalent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, you look at,
[SPEAKER_02]: day from that area, he's wearing, you know, he's got the braids and the like the choker and like he looks like a hardcore kid, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like we definitely there's a lot more harker kids coming into to our fandom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, deep was acting up too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think early on at one point as well and like there's like a straight edge kind of vibe around the band and also hardcore was shifting
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like that, that if I ride Joe Weston played, and but also life time played on hollow bastards, and by the time they broke up New Jersey's best answers had come out, and I feel like that was such like a a type change in hardcore and kind of like people embracing more melody and kind of like it, it began so much stuff, and and obviously like major sonic shifts in punk, but I feel like
[SPEAKER_00]: AFI also was kind of like those earlier records before this huge explosion or benefiting from that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there was bands, you know, like a night and stuff that were considered harker bands, but were super melodic and you know what we were doing was not that far off from that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like melodic, hung with hardcore.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we kind of appealed to kind of a broad base of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, the geographic thing, I think, comes into play.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and I bring it up on the show a few times, but like, like, on the East Coast power violence, and I say this is a nerdy person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was nerd music in the Bay Area when you go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like sketchy graffiti dudes, hard party or type dudes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, there are certainly nerdy people that enjoy it, but like, it's also like,
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot harder of a scene that is enjoying that kind of music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way, like, I feel like East Coast hardcore, particularly in the early 90s, like the born against kind of era, it was such like a defined thing, and it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: very DIY, very, you know, almost like anti-enjoyment of the audience, you're not trying to bring anyone into this kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously it starts changing as we go through the 90s, you guys are kind of like riding that changes happening on these coast almost, it seems.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we didn't, I guess we weren't really aware, so much aware of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were more, I guess, in spirit, more like youth crew, like pausing inclusivity, like we're not trying to antagonize the audience or trying to include the audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which I feel is like definitely more of a West Coast mentality in punk at that point than it was on an East Coast mentality where there's,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a real, deep bitterness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I almost like the lack of sunshine or the cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, particularly the Northeast, but yeah, like it's not even just confined to the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's in Canada too.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like this difference between the way Vancouver stuff happens versus Toronto stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate that too, you know, that
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of flipper mentality of just like, you know, I'm trying to make you leave the venue.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to just be so dismayed at what we're doing here that you don't even be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what we were talking about earlier, like that's what we all wanted to do in the beginning when we get into punk rock, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're like, I want to make everyone that I don't like leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I feel like because there is a path to popularity at that point, like you're
[SPEAKER_00]: there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's like, oh, there's a way to bring more people in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's like an upside to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're on these costs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still like, no, 20 years in, still playing the same 15 fucking people in this basement.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm bitter as yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, I think I was influenced by being
[SPEAKER_02]: passion for what you're doing, coming from people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand how you could ever want to have the opposite because nothing likes that feeling and to want to have the opposite of that, I could never be in a headspace, I don't think.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting though, because there are people that are, you brought up a flipper, but then you look at like obviously G.G.
[SPEAKER_00]: Allen being the most extreme, but even like choke from slap shot, when he was on the show talking about like,
[SPEAKER_00]: just wanting that, like, just saying this shit to piss off the crowd and Seth Putton, you know, kind of, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, these people that are almost like pariahs, like, just give themselves over to like being hated because they're getting the, I guess they're getting the charge from that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's, I appreciate that kind of meetman kind of thing where you're,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's either coming from a place of just anger and confrontation or some extreme level of comedy, mental health, mental health, mental health, mental health, my play a part to and mental health, yeah, I can understand that I appreciate that because that, you know, that's what the sex vessels were doing, I mean, it has the deepest roots and punk, but I think both things are equally valid and and you know, whatever, whatever it feels you as an artist, you know, I got a problem with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think going back to what you said like that's what I think draws so much of us to this thing initially is the idea of like alienating the people around you like they don't fucking understand this it's my own thing but then as you get older in this and you're like aging through your 20s you're like how do I how do I exist in this world and bring the lessons I learned from this thing with me carry them for us my life but like
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I can't, you know, like, know these people live choke, obviously, who's at a very long life and knock on what do you love?
[SPEAKER_00]: Continue to have a long life, but like Seth's dead, Gigi's dead, like sadly two members of Flipper are passed away, like there's like, there's like a, it's not a path to longevity with this sort of like, just for going from anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it depends on how, I mean, Gigi, obviously,
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there was any possibility to have him living to an old age.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was just two on the margins.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, like a, so do change.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people like that, it's just like, they were living this, they were on this path that was gonna just go one place.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, if you die of cancer or something, that's different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if you're in the most confrontational band but you die of cancer, I mean, you can't say that's because,
[SPEAKER_02]: of like what you're saying on stage very true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I definitely and I think I don't know what Seth did pathway for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't cancer.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a drug overdose, I believe, as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm on the taken.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will correct that in the intro.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think sadly, I think, you know, flipper as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are in case of drug overdose.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll do you.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of conversation we could have around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll do you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jay's death.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I'm not quite on the fat Mike side of the conspiracy theory side of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, like I think it was
[SPEAKER_00]: involved in sort of like living on the margins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I mean, go on, sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see that Frankie Saibata movie that came out a couple of years ago?
[SPEAKER_00]: About oh, did you know both Frankie side bottom.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like a British Liverpool performer.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really interesting It's got a great cast, but Frankie side bottom was like a new way for former who were to wore a big paper mash a mask So old time and it was like writing in the middle of the new way, but this music was decided to leave kind of like I don't know
[SPEAKER_00]: can't plodvilly kind of vibe to it too.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a great novelization of the script and by the guy wrote the script of a Frankie side bomb.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a quote in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, the margins are always the most interesting part but living in the margins.
[SPEAKER_00]: You always risk falling off the page.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm probably brutalizing it with a paraphrase.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, these people just surrender themselves to the margins and, yeah, I'll fill off the page.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's kind of the oldest story in the book
[SPEAKER_02]: the town that I'm from, I have so many friends that have died and people that were living on the margins, not involved in the punk scene, but just, you know, it's easy to live on the margins, regardless of, you know, many people's many walks of life, having that life where it's just like you see it happening, you see the future and it's like, it's just unfortunate.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess I and
[SPEAKER_02]: other, but we didn't want to be self-destructive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's only, you know, what's the, I talked about earlier, but like the, um, the idea that people from different time frames take FI up differently, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's obviously a huge band for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: getting into it as as a young person getting into this music.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I'm recording vocals in the studio with Dylan who does all my vocals with me and he's younger than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was calling Dave to set up Dave coming back on the show last time and he's like, and he's like, are you just talking to Davey Havick?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, yeah, and I'm like, oh shit, this is his Nirvana.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, because he was slightly younger and like this was so it's like for a whole generation you guys, you know, because I think punk is people that we were all on the margins in our own little ways, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was a place that provides us an off-ramp.
[SPEAKER_00]: from the margins or at least the way to live on the margins and not fall off that page to just crush this metaphor to death.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like like for a lot of kids, you guys became the on ramp to this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's obviously very much involved in punk and plays in all these punk and arcor bands and and like yeah, it's the bands that
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately did make that risk or that jump and maybe yeah, like you fail and it doesn't happen on the major label, which is a lot of bands.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it does happen, you wind up becoming the next generations entryway to this thing, like the suicidal tendencies for the next group of kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, which is crazy and not something I really think that much about.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you meet some dude at or some woman at a show that's like an adult and they're like you or my, you know, when I was in high school, you're so important and you're just like damn old, but also it's very fulfilling to be to be that man and also just like the way
[SPEAKER_00]: The aesthetic shift of that brought to what gets labeled emo, what's now also labeled post punk, post hardcore, I think I've heard people call it now too, but that whatever that scene is, like the aesthetic and the sonic influence you guys had on that, like in the way that kind of, there's like emo trap now, like there's it really did kind of like cause like a whole cultural change in kind of like the wake of you guys being on MTV
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting, I don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like AFI is not when you're talking about a static or a sound at AFI, people don't often do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: credit us was being one of the genesis of that thing, which is strange, not that I care, not that I'm looking for that, but you know, I just really hear it very often, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, and it's funny because like my friend and I are working on a project right now and we're researching a lot of different things for it and he was reading this book and I'm like, where does it start?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's about the mainstreaming of the emo type thing
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, oh, with follow or my chemical romance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, that's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if I had been on MTV years before that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, the, the, what was misogynistically became guideline or at a certain point, but the idea of like wearing makeup, you didn't see bands necessarily doing that, like unless they're dressing like vampires and ink and dagger.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that influence is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: that changes all post-AFI.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like the all these bands give me that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you would think, and like I'm not one to say what our influence is, that's not for me to decide really, but definitely there was a, you know, especially Dave and his look.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he of course got it from other places like Dave Vanian and stuff, but those people that came after us weren't getting it from Dave Vanian, they're probably getting it from Dave's.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, death so.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's other things like, you know, we were the first band as far as I am aware
[SPEAKER_02]: see online mystery thing when you're promoting a record like the mysterious kind of like clues and go here and get this dumb drive like which kind of became a big thing for a while and like nine snails did it right after us and I think they get credit for it but like no one like we never get credit for for doing that which is interesting it's interesting though justice from trapped in the rice and angel this when he was on the podcast we're talking
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, yeah, like, you know, they're, I like I love Nirvana, but I'm like at the same time, like, what they were doing wasn't completely revolutionary when you look at the wipers and you look at.
[SPEAKER_00]: the source material they're pulling from the Melvin's and like, and he's like, yeah, but like, those bands were never going to be what Nirvana was, Nirvana is the master of it because what they could do is take other ideas and synthesize it into something that made it completely consumable to a mass audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of true, like, you know, it's never the pioneers of stuff that get the credit for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always the people that kind of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: found a way to make it more acceptable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like as big as the strokes are in people's mind, the killers found a way to make it streamline that thing, or streamline interpole maybe, or whatever it was, and make it huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the, I think you see it happen time and time again.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, that would make sense, but we, if we had stayed an underground band, but we did that, and then also became a incredibly mainstream band.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that was going to be me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was only me to carry off, but I'm hot now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just topic.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's just, you know, like, maybe one thing of,
[SPEAKER_02]: And once again, let me preface this by saying, I don't need any credit for influencing anyone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, please, I, you know, I don't need that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not necessary.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not looking for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just an interesting sort of intellectual topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I live for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if we were to stay that small band, then I can understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like most people aren't going to reference the wipers.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's not something that everyone knows about.
[SPEAKER_02]: or even the novins for that matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if like AFFI had remained that kind of like little natural records band, you could be like, okay, well when you're talking about my chemical growth man, so they use or whatever, you're not gonna mention AFFI because maybe you don't even know AFFI.
[SPEAKER_02]: But because we became this huge band with that aesthetic still in place to not at least say that like there must be some kind of correlation.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be kind of strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, here's my thing is what you guys did
[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, like these bands stayed underground, like you brought it, you made going mainstream from the underground.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like, no one had done that.
[SPEAKER_00]: smoothly or tastefully in a way that kind of like and I think a lot of those best practices that you guys introduced bands that would make that move next or bands that were already kind of like playing the game kind of shifting their way to kind of follow those.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the way you kind of kept your fan club and the sort of like insanely rabid fan club and a way I think a lot of bands tried to I know bands that directly tried to copy that
[SPEAKER_00]: It was still like a, it was like you shifted your sound when you got to the major label like the, the, the, the sound was the way it was going and that was clear to everyone that had followed the band.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of bands do that now as opposed to prior to that where there was be that sort of try to make it more polished or completely reinvent the wheel and change your band sound to try and sound like the red actually peppers for you to or whatever it would be right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's what a lot of people kind of copy from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then definitely the aesthetics.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, no, we just really not underground, but I think you guys being on MTV broke down the barrier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think about, I didn't get to go to this warp tour, but there's that warp tour 2000,
[SPEAKER_00]: one, maybe 2000, you guys played the Skydome in Toronto and it wasn't one we did on, it did the whole work to her that year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and which I got, imagine you got stories from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like Davey was walking around, people were like, yeah, Davey's crazy, Davey's walking around with a parasol, he's wearing makeup and his hair's teased up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like these are like friends telling me this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then fast forward, how many years on the work to earn every fucking band doing that aesthetic?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, once again, I don't want to be like, hey, we started all this makeup, that's AFI, like, but it should be, you know, I would say it would be in the conversation at least.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once again, we take it from, you know, like that early Dave, before I was even the band is very devanian, you can look and see direct parallels and you know, wearing makeup also, you know, from the hair metal is an influence and bowie and all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not like we invented this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but you brought it into punk, and I say this, I've also said it to Justin from the locust, and I said to my friend Jason, who played in the orchid, at the time, punk in hardcore was very much like this sort of Protestant austerity approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there wasn't like, you know, like you talked about Dave, how Dave used to dress.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and he always had a little bit of flare, like this is spenders and all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, you were sweatshirts, you were skate shoes, like it was very,
[SPEAKER_00]: You wore the same clothes on stage that you wore off stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like that sort of presentation of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there are bands kind of in the late 90s that start styling their hair or paying attention to their clothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, they taken up in a super negative way by the next generation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like AFI did bring sort of this goth vibe to the party.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are other bands like, you know, Indian dagger doing it, but not like in the same sort of aesthetic way, not like you're saying, going back to Dave Vainian and like,
[SPEAKER_00]: like a buy house and kind of that world of got stuff like that wasn't really happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's AFI bringing that into the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember anyone looking doing what Dave was doing in, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember any of our peers doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they probably was, but I don't remember it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to talk to Jesse from DBS at that Santa
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't believe how Dave looks.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is in like 99, 2000 kind of era.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, I couldn't believe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's just so shocking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, because no one looked like that back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one looked like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, we went on that tour, sick of it all, in decision, hot water music, a vibe tour.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Dave is like in white face with like crazy makeup, lipstick,
[SPEAKER_02]: PVC, like full PVC outfit and we're, you know, and sick of it all, it's like most people there are there to see sick of it all.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like all these kind of like hardcore tough guys and they're like looking in, it was a good tour.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't like we were getting abuse.
[SPEAKER_02]: People were so shocked by him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we come out and are playing this fast, aggressive music.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people are just like, they couldn't focus that because they were so taken aback by us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also the music starts ending so epic at that point, too, where it's just like, yeah, it's fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's still like, you're still doing that hardcore thing, but there's also like these like build ups and sort of this epicness that's kind of coming in around that point where it's just like, especially in those small rooms, like no one as great as these bands are, like no one sounds like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I think as being a songwriter, my,
[SPEAKER_02]: coming from hardcore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like before I joined AFI, like the band I was in, but I'm still on loose change, but you know, I was at a redemption.
[SPEAKER_02]: So big, like epic buildups is a very hardcore thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I was, you know, seeing rancid early on, like.
[SPEAKER_02]: I started seeing plants like even before, Lars is in the band.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like I was immediately like on board.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like that first seven inch.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember Jeff Gregg has actually played me that seven inch right when it came out and the first song on it, I blew my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like looking back now, it might be like, well, why would this blow your mind?
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was like, it was so fucking good to this day like one of those watershed moments where I'm like, what the fuck is this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were so good at that.
[SPEAKER_02]: explosive chorus thing where it would be like this trashy kind of dirty, mangy punk verse and then it goes to this major key chorus and then all three dudes are singing like Matt Lars and Tam are all singing this incredibly simple hooky amazing thing and that really struck me and that was an influence on like, you know, write these choruses that are
[SPEAKER_02]: just glorious and have everyone singing like in the band singing like so we would have all four of us singing the choruses and like so you know that that's a little bit of the genesis of that thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah it was like a complete presentation like it's you know it's like all that error is unbelievable live like one of my favorite live bands out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like everyone came out with the exact same vibe like you guys did at that point and then obviously lighting's coming
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you could tell that this was like a, and I want to say more professional because it implies like there's like a negative connotation too, but it was like this is like a, a more cohesive presentation of of a band, then you're seeing in hardcore at that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we definitely had a, our thing like, you know, we have the pumpkins that we got a like Walgreens like plastic pumpkins and have them all going to one power strip and then, you know, the likes would cut and.
[SPEAKER_02]: My brother was our tour manager like hit the power selection like these like a little punk and it's the most simple kind of janky production you could ever have but it was so effective.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing how effective that was for a couple of like two dollar pumpkins.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also funny because you look at the Gilman scene and there's like there's performance art happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like the diesel queen.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a lot of bands with like these sort of like
[SPEAKER_00]: production aspects to them on that DIY level.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you guys are kind of coming against from that tradition too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, like, like Babyland was the one of my favorites, like seeing a panic Babyland.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they were the kind of just doing like a strawberry and gristle thing, but they were incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they don't, that's a band that doesn't get enough recognition of my opinion, but I'm seeing them doing that kind of stuff on stage at Gilmour Street was so shocking because it was like, you know, it's not something usually see at Gilmour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was like that infamous life, sex show thing that happened where the cops got called on the performance.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are pushing boundaries in that space at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there a weird moment for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was listening to you, you and Dave, on an Adam Corolla podcast today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to go from this world that you come from, to all of a sudden, this moment where you're now thrust in these situations, where I think you said it on this thing, you guys have the record for being on love line in one year, where you're on these other platforms.
[SPEAKER_00]: a whole different side of society.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like was that something that was hard for you to reconcile with or was an easy shirt shift to kind of balance?
[SPEAKER_02]: You mean as far as being on these big platforms are just kind of being like a popular band?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, just interacting with these kinds of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I feel like, you know, I don't know how to cruel a person or anything like that, but I imagine I can't think of a few, there are very few people on this planet that would have known
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam Corolla and, you know, been in a band with members of Unipride type thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, you're like interacted with like very disparate parts of your character.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was weird because in our minds, it was such a gradual and organic thing, even though we went from being an underground band,
[SPEAKER_02]: to us we didn't have that and we were you know we were in our late 20s early 30s so we had we were pretty grounded and so it was just fun and it it could be bizarre but it wasn't you know like going I remember we went to do some MTV saying and it was like we're sitting in the green room and it's like us and John Heeter who played an
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we go out on camera and ludicrous is interviewing us and asking us questions and he obviously doesn't know the hell we are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just so bizarre.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, what is going on here?
[SPEAKER_02]: I just still felt like the same kid, but it was like, put in like weird situations like that and like, you know, so the Adam Crowler, like, loved one thing, wasn't was way less weird than some stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We experienced like that and being on, you know, being on TRL,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, like these talking heads that run TRL is just it was weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't like something that felt very natural, but it was just I guess part of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's it's only when I, you know, worked at other places that I realized like how much of a bubble punk rock is and like the fact that like within reason, everyone's kind of on side on all these different issues and everyone knows has this sort of shared musical history that we
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's an entertainment, I find it the most shocking, like certainly other places in my life, I don't expect people to know who a geopop is necessarily, but when you're in these entertainment worlds and you're like, oh yeah, you came to this thing entirely differently than I did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not necessarily in a negative way all the time, but certainly sometimes in a negative way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like how these people are engaging with this culture is so alien that I find it was like, it was an adjustment for me, and I'm kind of doing it way after you guys are doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot more punk people around when I'm doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, there were definitely situations where we were in where, whether it be, you know, like, nickel-shape or his wife, interviewing us on CRL and, you know, they're nice, but you could tell they're like, you know, or these guys, like, what is this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm talking to these guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, you know, we did MTV's New Year's show.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're like playing in the studio above time square and it's just they filled this and we're with three six Mafia and like they're they're like Okay, we're going to do this part where I went, but you guys are going to play and then three six Mafia is going to like freestyle over and it's just like
[SPEAKER_02]: They were like central casting characters, but they're like dancing like doing the kind of sexy dancing as if they were a huge is just it's so weird, but you know once again, you just kind of roll with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like in a few years later, it would make a lot more sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now certainly, like these kind of worlds are combined.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's because there's a generation of kids that are watching through SIS Mafia perform with AFI on the MTV Nears special that are like, well, I can mix these two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you get, yeah, certainly, it probably makes more sense now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely, it makes it a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then again, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's I think it's because the world you guys are coming from is so the antithesis of this kind of world and you guys are like kind of like the antithesis of this kind of world as people to like the straightage thing, like you know, I assume everyone's begin right like like there's like the or vegetarian like there's like sort of like the sort of like
[SPEAKER_02]: There's definitely that thing where
[SPEAKER_02]: when we were at the height of mainstream success and you do interviews and people just wanted that they expected you to have that hedonistic rock and roll lifestyle thing and they wanted to hear about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't know who you were, but they're like, so let's tell some crazy stories from the road and it's just like, we have zero crazy stories like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no girls in the bus ever.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no drugs on the bus.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no alcohol like we don't do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that we were the successful
[SPEAKER_02]: in their eyes like really edgy rock band and yet we were so straight-laced.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you was straight-edged too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the straight-edged thing is that of a huge mainstream moment in the wake of CM Punk who used AFI famously as entrance music for years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that was, yeah, it came back with it and I think it got announced that it's going to be in the new video game.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a special old school style CM Punk entrance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, and I think so there's now a generation of people that probably have no idea about minor threat for instance, but nobos straightage.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even in like the early 2000s, that's not the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: He impunks till all the Indies.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's like it's still like a very alien thing to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and probably still is, you know, I don't think something like straightage, even
[SPEAKER_02]: with the preponderance of veganism in popular culture now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still think people, it is blows people's mind that you don't want to eat meat or that you wouldn't drink.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, at people can't wrap their heads around.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it never will be able to get such a fundamental aspect of the human experience to drink alcohol to eat meat.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it kind of goes against people's
[SPEAKER_02]: And they just can't really grasp the desire with their lack of desire to do these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's also threatening to people when absolutely, you know, especially if they've been thinking about it for years or they know deep down, like it's probably a better idea if I don't eat this or drink that for my health, the world's health, everything, but yet it's so like you're saying, it's so much part of our society, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's every show you play.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your paid and beer before you're paid in money in the music industry.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is something as, you know, being straight edge for, you know, almost 40 years now, something I've always experienced and even back in my hometown before I was ever in a band.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's people feel judged by you, even when you're not judging, even when you're completely okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: You drink, I'm totally okay with that, but they feel because they know that you don't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They assume you look down on someone who does it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so now they're feeling judged by you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're creating this whole scenario that you're not a part of, but it's like, oh, you hate me.
[SPEAKER_02]: You think I'm a piece of shit?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, fuck you!
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though I don't care, you know, I don't care what you're doing, but they, so, you know, everyone always thinks that your judgmental towards them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe some people, like David's probably more judgmental towards people than I am, you know, when it comes to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, rightfully so, because, you know, he's a Spanish vegan warrior, but, you know, you get a lot of people being
[SPEAKER_02]: preemptively pissed off at you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's like it's that sort of, it's amazing how much of like sort of like the hate and anger and vitral in this world comes out of like an insecurity of one form of the other from people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I know this is not a revelation by anything, but like certainly with straight edge, obviously with a lot of like the negativity towards LGBTQ to plus people, like I feel like,
[SPEAKER_00]: How many of these people are fucking insecure about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like how many times does it come out later on?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, like, yeah, the guy that was running screwdriver security for all those years, he was also very out in the gazing at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like, it's kind of reconciling these two worlds that you know, led him to commit violent crimes towards gay people because he just couldn't deal with himself because he's fucking insecure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, all of these things, all of these various forms of big fear crazy, but to me, homophobia is one of the craziest ones to me that I just cannot wrap my head around.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so prevalent.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been just such an intrinsic part of the fabric of society since day one, since we're living in caves.
[SPEAKER_02]: across all time, across all geographical barriers, religion, race, people, the homophobia is just like I just cannot, I can't fathom it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I feel like it's what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like part of our cultural are like being
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also this thing that's a society, probably, because they want everyone to just make babies so they can have a cheaper workforce to draw from.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure that would it goes back to when religions are kind of finding a way to put this stuff into their doctrine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think these two things slamming up against in some people that caused them to not be able to reconcile and resort to violence like...
[SPEAKER_02]: I suppose, but you even look at...
[SPEAKER_02]: societies that aren't, you know, these monotheistic Western religions, homophobies there, homophobies always there, non-religious societies.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like some poor guy living in the mountains in Tennessee, who maybe isn't religious, but hates gay people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Well why do you hate gay people?
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't care about there being more people for the workforce?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's been bred into them, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's been taught to people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been, and I guess right, like there's certain lot of all cultures, but like you can see how this thing has become part of who we are, because it's just told to us by these religions, by music in some cases, by that's definitely part of it, but there's something weird in human nature.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's some kind of like,
[SPEAKER_02]: biological Darwinian imperative or something is something I don't know maybe it's part of ignorance some I don't know facet of ignorance I don't know but I just I can't understand it because anyway we could talk about that all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a separate podcast we'll have a look I and I've realized now I've kept you for a very long time Jade and I uh that's okay I didn't I was in look at the clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't even talked to you about redemption 87 which is a huge band for me
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just start touching on it a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like redemption is end by the time I got the record I think it was pretty much towards the end of the band because like by the time you joined the band It's not too many more years before it's over completely, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it was two years But I think it had only been around for maybe a year or two when I joined.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the new age record comes out in ninety six.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Okay, well, then ninety seven, maybe
[SPEAKER_02]: was a record that I was on what came out in the ninety nine right no no no no it says ninety nine but it like the band was way broken up by ninety nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe LP comes out in ninety five then and I didn't get it to ninety six.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah because I think the one I was on came out in ninety six or ninety seven and I think it's either wrong somewhere it says has the wrong information
[SPEAKER_02]: Algan's pool site was listed in 99, which is definitely not the case because I was touring in AFI in 99 so it was well after the ban of broken up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think Algan's pool site at the very latest came out in 97, so anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay, yeah, because I was trying to figure that out because by the I got the LP eventually a very damaged copy of the orchestra because it was the only one available.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like it was just ahead of the youth crew revival, which would come a few years later.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also like a band that I think you guys had toward more on the East Coast, it would have found maybe more of an audience because it was very much keeping with the way hardcore was going.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we did that one.
[SPEAKER_02]: The only tour we ever did was we did like a two week thing on the East Coast.
[SPEAKER_02]: First time I'd ever been on an airplane, just pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't tour really, it was, we played a lot of shows in California, played a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, yeah, I just never, I don't know, it never became a bigger thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird because I don't think I've seen too many flyers for that East Coast for run.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, where are you guys playing, like, as soon as you New York obviously in Boston?
[SPEAKER_02]: We played, yeah, we played in Virginia Beach at like a skate park.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: A few other bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we played in Maryland, Jersey.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, maybe New York.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: Few other places.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That shows sounds incredible ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genevieve show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a good one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That plate crunchers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we, I think a plate cruncher might have played all the shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe in my eyes did too.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's wild.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess, yeah, because that would have been that youth career revival kind of era, which is also where hardcore I think gets its speed back in a lot of ways without being grind.
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts kind of going to, yeah, we were talking about more melodic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It starts finding kind of like that era.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like that redemption 87 record was certainly one of the big records of that era doing that sort of sound.
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I started out in the park where the 80s, all those, you know, the first way of parkour bands, but like by the mid 90s, it was like Earth crisis and, you know, snap case, like that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was still listening to bands that were playing fast parkour, but like I loved that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you like any of that evolution stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like downcast and those kinds of bands?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't downcasting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, downset too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, downset's the LA band that, yeah, that was a very good machine VOD and one away and there's just so many kind of like, you know, heavy slow kind of more metallic bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that scene was, I really liked that scene a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: So coming into a band, my prediction was was kind of going back to my roots of listening to youth push stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there a big scene for you guys at that point in?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bay or is it more on the East Coast?
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys have to fall away.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, we didn't really know what kind of following we had anywhere because, like I say, we never left California really.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there was a good Bayerian harker scene, you know, it was like none of the bands were big, but it was like the powerhouse and I guess powerhouse and redemption 87, probably the two big, biggest bands in that scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, we would play, we would go down San Diego and play with, you know, like a suppression
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, like the band like Tracerotops and there was this whole scene at the time of mid-90s hardcore.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like I say, all the shows were pretty.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't, it wasn't a huge scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were pretty, like we played with H2O.
[SPEAKER_02]: We did play some cool shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: We played when the Beastie Boys played under the name Quasar and they came.
[SPEAKER_02]: We played two shows with the Beastie Boys in
[SPEAKER_02]: Pretty killer.
[SPEAKER_02]: We played with Western.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just pretty sweet.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you guys play that show with four punch?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the hoods, when there's that riot fight with the Nazis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-oh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where was that one venue was it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's at the Gilman.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's photos from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Sammy, all that soft Sammy, resting piece, like about to crack a Nazi over the head with like a crowbar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think is.
[SPEAKER_02]: possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like that kind of shit was just like every show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe not Nazis.
[SPEAKER_02]: By that point, the Nazi thing had kind of petered out.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, Sammy getting into a fight was certainly mini shows.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, yeah, I'm not sure if I was that that show, it might have been before me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the, you know, I think we'd been after your time, but I don't know if that happened or okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's sort of like you, I think you would have been playing with Redemption,
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I probably never planned for a bunch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, cause they did that one at West Coast run on pretty sure around that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that's off fantastic band.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that guy Sammy, first person I ever met when I went out to the Gilman.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went and showed up at like two in the afternoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's outside of the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And was just super nice to me as a sort of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Punisher kid that was like tourists going down to see the show and gave me the first all that soft split.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and he was like mayor of the scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the Harper scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it felt like that was the, like, that was like almost like the next wave after you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like had kind of like blown up the felt like.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like, yeah, like the hoods and all bets off for kind of like the small like rely.
[SPEAKER_02]: locked out 44 where there was this there's a huge scene but like I say none of the bands have really took off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah it's interesting how it happens in that way where there's like certain errors where there's just like a bunch of bands that kind of like get found but then there's like someone's like a hangover period that falls it directly after where the scenes slightly smaller and you see it happen all over the place like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just thought it was weird that
[SPEAKER_02]: There was such a sort of thriving harkour scene with so many bands, but none of them ever broke out of that scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: You look at like New York, which obviously New York is a much bigger scene, much bigger place, but I mean, how many legendary bands came out in New York?
[SPEAKER_02]: There wasn't even really one legendary harkour band that came out of that scene of the East Bay scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess like neurosis, but you're right, they're more legendary for going more metal, and yeah, I mean, I, even the early, I got some talking, you know, there's like that semantic thing of hardcore.
[SPEAKER_02]: like hardcore is like second way of punk, but I'm talking about when I say hardcore, I usually refering to hardcore the capital A, which is like, you know, AF onwards.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chrome ads onwards.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I just call a hardcore punk, like, you know, if you're talking about adolescence or black flag or whatever, I just call that punk.
[SPEAKER_02]: So excuse me, like ignorance of these jokes.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, we all have different definitions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when people come on this show, I think that's the interesting thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like write down a punk, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what is in his and punk,
[SPEAKER_00]: like what falls under these different little sub genres and into these little sub sections.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like I understand that hardcore originally referred to those, you know, kind of second wave punk bands, terms, et cetera, all those bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we should just call those bands punk.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now in 2026, we should reserve the term hardcore with the capital H for what we generally recall hardcore, which is,
[SPEAKER_02]: bands like Chromags and AF, it's sick of it all and, you know, grilled this against.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just make it easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's a lot to go on this one right here, like I feel like we could definitely debate this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like there's a sonic through line that I can hear in early AF to what black flag was doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's decided break, I think, and it
[SPEAKER_00]: where bands didn't necessarily want to be punk bands that got faster than became hardcore bands.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like bands were coming in being like, you know, we don't want to be a punk band.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be a hardcore band.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was like, I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's capital A chart core period starts there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like, I think if any stigma says something like that, like he came from punk, but he is like, we're doing this thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is our thing, this is a different thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's interesting how it spreads too, because like in America's hardcore, I think Henry Rollins says like we went on this road trip with the teenitals, we brought back all this west coast hardcore stuff that we saw in terms of like.
[SPEAKER_00]: the way you dance, the way you crude up, the way you dress, and all this kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the engineer boots, they're freaking circle pet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then they go to Boston, they go to New York, and they kind of spread this gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can see all these other little scenes kind of like pop up in their wake, and it's like, yeah, but I agree with you, it's certainly, there's those L.A. bands, especially that first wave, they kind of wanted to be
[SPEAKER_00]: Rockstar still or like one it there's still like the idea of getting popular and then with hardcore It's certainly like the idea of like no one's gonna like this shit So we're just doing this because we like it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so me that was honk Because when I came into it it was you know obviously the first wave of punk was extremely mainstream to the clash the Ramones
[SPEAKER_02]: Sex pistols, damned even like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Vazcox those were all extremely mainstream bands, but when I came into a punk was that thing where you're like, no one knows what this is.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one cares about it anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyone that like those bands, they don't know when cares anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone hates you if you listen to this like that's to me, that's like the punk to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like the hardcore's where you take a pride in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I want it like this and you see it with like revolution summer stuff too where there's almost like that's where the politics kind of enter it because a lot of that first wave stuff and even into sort of the second wave it's largely a political or in some cases downright anti-political but then you're like oh yeah post revolution summer the idea of being political becomes part of this thing and I guess in the bay area it probably comes from more of a
[SPEAKER_02]: There was probably not that many apolitical Gilman Street bands or, you know, like, you kind of had to take a side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you probably wouldn't be playing at Gilman too long if it took the other side, I imagine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you wouldn't be planning it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's wild.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, in fucked up, there's been, I can count on maybe two hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe three hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many fights there's been in a fucked up show in our, our whole history.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vast majority of them have been, uh, at the Gilman.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they're not slurring brawls many times.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, I actually haven't seen as many times that I've been to Gilman.
[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't seen many brawls at Gilman Street.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I see brawls, I should dial it back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like just intense street standoffs after fights broke out in the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it felt like for a while there, every single show we played at the Gilman would have something like that happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I have seen a lot of fights outside Gilman Street.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I should amend that.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's very few fights in my experience inside,
[SPEAKER_02]: There's been a lot of violence outside of Columbus.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know why that is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, lots of standoffs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been involved in some myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if it's because of like the the idea that this is a melting pot of all these different interpretations of punk and an R core too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when these different subcultures run into each other, sometimes there is in that warm acceptance of other cultures going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think some bands come into Gilman Street, knowing that they are not accepted by that scene and having chip on the shoulder ready to kind of be part of a confrontation, being like we're playing there, but I know these people hate us, they're like the Tamio hand in MRR types and we're not going to fit in, so we're going in ready for a fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and stage diving also, I think the no stage diving rule mixed with people that are like, I want to fucking break that no stage diving rule leads to some conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what an amazing experiment is like that it's still able to kind of be there and do this all these years later and spite of all these, venue clearing brawls.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know, I just like, it's still shocked me, I think because I have not.
[SPEAKER_02]: lived in Berkeley and so long, but to like know that the shows are not five dollars anymore, and that you don't need a membership card anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think they like the side door isn't there anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like all these things have changed or like they made the side door and do like a double door.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just all these things are like shocking to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that even a man so long?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think making a side door into a double door would have served all those fights really well, because the security which was always really good about getting the fights outside, like you said, would have more area to kind of push these people outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, all those classic security cards like Nondo and Jeremy's view, like those guys are like legends in their own right, just for being security at government streets.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like almost as like going back to hardcore versus punk, like the service that you do, because you love the thing like you're volunteering to do a job that people are paid reasonably well to do in other places because you just want this thing to be able to happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it was all volunteer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, even Dave was a flyer boy there for a long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to walk around with him and I was putting up flyers on telegraph and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, people just gave their time in this idea of this community and this sort of socialist type of collective.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a great idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jumping back to when you guys because you guys are obviously toured with other bands now, like as an opening band on like stadium type tours or large venue type tours.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you've gone back to your own tours.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's only like bad experiences that change the way that you approach how you guys tour or interact with the opening bands.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like because you've dealt with once again, people so far were moved from punk rock and some of these experiences.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because we have always treated opening band the same, which is we have that same mentality and ethos from the earliest days.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you don't treat, I don't care if we're playing headlining arenas and you're the first band you never treat someone as lesser than or big time them or make their show shitty because we've definitely had that happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you have like this tiny sliver of stage, the plan because the headline event doesn't give a shit if you have room for your gear or not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you don't have a dressing room because the headline artists needs a room just for their freaking teapot.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like we've had all these things happen where it's just like the the band you're touring with clearly does not give a shit about you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't give a shit about
[SPEAKER_02]: making your show go well or having just basic amenities.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we would never visit that on someone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just just general kindness.
[SPEAKER_00]: You find like obviously playing the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably way better playing your own headlining show.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in terms of like just what's required of you mentally throughout the day, you find it easier to do an opening slot like that where there's less stakes or you find it just like
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you wish you were doing your own show because it's always better to play to your fans rather than people that don't know you were don't care, but the low stakes support thing is very attractive it is very nice to just be able to play and it doesn't matter if
[SPEAKER_02]: how many tickets are sold, it doesn't, like none of it matters.
[SPEAKER_02]: You do your thing, you play your show, you do your best, and that's all your responsible for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is nice to do those ones in a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, those offers have definitely tried up for us, but I would much rather be playing in no sticks opening slot for a big band than doing my own slow show.
[SPEAKER_00]: For the reasons you mentioned.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we've luckily got some really good ones over the years.
[SPEAKER_02]: We continue to, you know, and playing like, we just last year went down and played.
[SPEAKER_02]: in Brazil with system of a down to 80,000 people, which was like the biggest crowd you've ever played to and just, you know, and it was fun and we played with Lincoln Park down in Mexico to 60,000 people to play in these massive shows and getting people still wanting us to open up for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't need AFI to open up.
[SPEAKER_02]: System of down does not need AFI to open up for them in Brazil, but, you know, we get to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've lived after the opener, I'm not talking, I guess I am talking just that way, but I'm saying I would have been there in Brazil, were you guys, did I got a record shopping?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I tell you what, I don't know if you've seen footage, look at, look online at footage of that show, it is crazy, it would have been worth to stay and see a system of
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say anything bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see as good my taste of not matured in any way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I would find it, I think very difficult to be on a tour with a band where I found no entry point to like what they were doing and like, but I guess that's because I'm not a musician.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can never respect anything for like the musical side.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a pretty broad taste.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can usually appreciate something in a band.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, toxicity is a great record.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's a great record.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can say otherwise, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, I maintain, that's a fantastic record.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me to play, that show, that's not, you know, it was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, for you guys, like it, I feel like that's the thing is you guys have had to,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, like, you guys became on your own terms, part of this sort of like world, whereas I don't know, and it was, again, the option was never presented to me, but I don't know if I be able to have the maturity to exist in that world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think, like, let's say, you know, like, this gets having this big moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right now, if they said, we want fucked up, six week tour.
[SPEAKER_02]: direct support.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not chance.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can tons of money.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just like I couldn't do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we would neither, but yeah, you know, is there is there a cutoff point for a certain type of band?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to like find a way in, you know, like we and we've only done like a few.
[SPEAKER_00]: big tour supports.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like the food fighters and arcade fire, like I knew that they were all in punk and hardcore bands.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had that relation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that has to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't think if that has to be as a connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it necessarily has to be the connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like, let's say the kinks were like, hey, we're going to get back together.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just fucked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Want to go on tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be like absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think like I'd have to like understand the cultural side of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we open for public enemy one time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that to me was like a no brainer.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably some brain should have been involved for all parties involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was a fear of black plants on the best records involved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I met Chuck D on the phone beforehand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought it was going to be an amazing thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the reality was maybe my slight taste of jamming live on MTV was three, six mafia kind of vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like, yeah, for the most part, like I don't know, like there's
[SPEAKER_00]: there's definitely bands that aren't from punk and arc where that I'd love to tour with and and I could find a way to tour it, but like there's bands that I find like in particular with Olympus get and I know it says it dance a completely different beast but like it's so different to or just I don't know and maybe I just put too much weight on this music bullshit I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh hey like I think it's a lot of all to have
[SPEAKER_02]: these lines.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we have lines too, obviously.
[SPEAKER_02]: These lines you wouldn't cross.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, no matter how big the check is, we're not doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't like that band.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't like what they stand for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have that recently with a band where I'm like, no, I know there's shitty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like, there's a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would, I'm not in position to turn down stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then it becomes like, like, the money will go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then forever, you've got
[SPEAKER_00]: something I didn't want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, you know, and it's different than signing to a major label.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when you know something actually feels wrong versus something that just feels unknown.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've done that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in retrospects.
[SPEAKER_02]: I or we have been like, you know what, we shouldn't have done that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't at the time that where it was like, this sucks, but we're going to do it because we want to get paid or we want exposure, whatever the thing was, but there's things in the retrospect where you're like, down it, like, what are we thinking we shouldn't have done that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've probably every band has that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not like we have a perfect track record of always making the right decision.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I can remember playing a festival one time beside a giant inflatable teodorant thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if this is a bit for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this might have been a mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's just like,
[SPEAKER_00]: But then again, I think you guys did it in such a cool way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like it has served to bring more people on board as I talked about like directly, it served me because you brought people on to punk because I know I'm wants to record my vocals other than Dylan.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you guys hadn't gotten Dylan to punk, I don't know what I'd be doing right now for vocals.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like it is like the sort of like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And with Nirvana, I think you've really see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like this weird, maybe sacrifice that you're going to have to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a leap of faith, certainly, as a band, because you might wind up influencing new generation, but you might wind up all your friends hating you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the case of Nirvana, you might not live through the experience for one reason or another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's a, yeah, it's like it's a lot,
[SPEAKER_00]: that goes into this thing that ultimately like you said way back when doesn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like some artificial thing that you kind of put on.
[SPEAKER_00]: These things that are external forces that you're kind of listening to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, we talk specifically about sign-to-a-major.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think all of them kind of rolled in together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, they're major is very different than compromising your ethics.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, like these decisions that you've made in the course of being in a band and how
[SPEAKER_00]: they affect and are interpreted by your community?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, some things are kind of out of your control too.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you know, just recently we did a fan thing like for their fan club or it was like some kind of little thing, you know, for a fan club.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was this image we put up,
[SPEAKER_02]: And apparently, unknown to us, the artists had used AI to help them make this image.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so all of a sudden, we're getting this backlash because of AI, even though we made no conscious decision to use AI nor would we have.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's these things that just happen where it looks like you're doing a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You didn't do it, but you get the backlash for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because you end up, AI thing is, I've had a couple of friends that have fallen
[SPEAKER_00]: with the full expectation that it was just going to be them doing it and it ultimately became something that AI was involved in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shoot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to go because my kids just got sent home from school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just seeing a note.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Jane, at some point in the future, would you come back for a part two?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.