[UNKNOWN]: Hello and welcome to another edition of Turned at a Punk, I'm your host Demi and Abraham and today on the show, someone that I've known for years on the internet, but never had a chance to sit down and talk to you.
[UNKNOWN]: So rub have it beyond is on the podcast today and
[UNKNOWN]: from kids for cash, to Edcil, to Savak, to his work with Archo Lindsey, who I think I fuck up his name when I say it the first time on this podcast, to his work with a rap central station, Chuck D's rap magazine, to his unbelievable YouTube page, which I can do a whole episode.
[UNKNOWN]: Just talking about his YouTube page with them because, oh, watch a lot of those videos over the years.
[UNKNOWN]: Sorab has been someone who has been involved in unbelievable amounts of cool culture, and this is a small fraction Discussed in this episode of the stuff he's been involved in but I'm excited for you to hear it, so I'm not gonna ramble on too much more Other than to say you can go check out rapcentralstation.net
[UNKNOWN]: to check out his work there, also go to a bit beyond at YouTube, at a bit beyond on YouTube to check out his crazy video archive of videos he shot back in the day in the mid-80s in DC.
[UNKNOWN]: We talked about it in the episode, so you'll know more about that in one second.
[UNKNOWN]: Some notes before we get into the episode.
[UNKNOWN]: Commander Venus is indeed the band's name.
[UNKNOWN]: That will make sense when you hear it.
[UNKNOWN]: That's for some reason.
[UNKNOWN]: Thought Commander Cody.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know why apologies to Commander Venus for that.
[UNKNOWN]: Also Ben Gosling was the guy who came up with the term promoter core.
[UNKNOWN]: Hipped to me by friend of the show.
[UNKNOWN]: Footnotes co-host.
[UNKNOWN]: Whenever ever comes back, crystal tool, uh, fart blossom.
[UNKNOWN]: I've got some note about fart blossom and I can't really fear it why I said it other than check out the records on fart blossom as they come out.
[UNKNOWN]: Pissed Happy Children, Pillsbury, R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.R.C.
[UNKNOWN]: Dane Bramage LP, which we talk about in this episode, the Hathscol compilations, or empty-scol compilations.
[UNKNOWN]: And also, I want to say, rest in peace to Rick Froberg.
[UNKNOWN]: Pick up this book.
[UNKNOWN]: It's fantastic, a beautiful book and a fitting tribute.
[UNKNOWN]: It was worked on,
[UNKNOWN]: Sorab talks about with rich Jacobs, rest in peace to rich Jacobs, because an unbelievably important presence in the history of punk and hardcore and culture and art, and just an unbelievable human.
[UNKNOWN]: Rest in peace to O, who we also talk about briefly in this episode, and rest in peace, of course, to Dave Sweet Apple, both fantastic people, and losing all those people around each other.
[UNKNOWN]: My thoughts and love go out to everyone who knew those people and was involved in their lives, or they were involved in your life, and my thoughts go out to you because they are huge presences that have been lost.
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm not to end this thing on the downout, but certainly acknowledging the greatness of these people and the lost that they
[UNKNOWN]: The loss of the world that happened when they passed away.
[UNKNOWN]: Anyway, I'm not going to ramble on anymore.
[UNKNOWN]: Sit back, relax, and enjoy.
[UNKNOWN]: Sorab Hibibion.
[UNKNOWN]: Unturned out of punk.
[UNKNOWN]: So, Rob, thank you so much for coming on this show.
[UNKNOWN]: My pleasure.
[UNKNOWN]: It's really nice to sort of see your face on the screen and get to hear your voice.
[UNKNOWN]: That's right, because when we were corresponding, it was pretty...
[UNKNOWN]: Pre-zoom technology it was back in the days when it was just text based on Twitter that's right, that's right.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, well, I think I probably told you this back then Obviously fan of all your musical projects you've had an incredible career and unbelievable resume and we're also going to be talking about this Rick Froberg book that you did too, which is an unbelievable book, but As I told you back then
[UNKNOWN]: the kids for cash, seven inch is a hugely important record, not just for Toronto, especially for Toronto, but I think, you know, there we'll get into it, but there's a lot of historical importance of that band.
[UNKNOWN]: That blows my mind.
[UNKNOWN]: You said that back then, too.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, before we get there, I got to start off the way they all started off, which is so rabbit, how'd you get in a puncture from the first time you ever came across it?
[UNKNOWN]: Um, first time I came across it was probably maybe 13 or some of that and probably heard the dead counties and it just didn't sound like anything that I've heard before and I was immediately drawn to it.
[UNKNOWN]: Um, and I just, I had never heard music that a sounded like that and B, could have lyrics that might be normal sort of,
[UNKNOWN]: Radio rock and roll kind of stuff and so it just kind of opened a portal from you where I just thought like oh, wow This is this is also a For actual legitimate form of expression.
[UNKNOWN]: It's not just stadium rock, you know Cuz I hear those Dead Kennedy songs in here like you know I killed children or let's lunch the landlord or you know like I never heard sentiments like that You know whether they were time in tea or not.
[UNKNOWN]: I just never heard somebody Express themselves like that and I was just totally taking with it
[UNKNOWN]: those songs in particular.
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's illustrative white punk is parody proof because there's nothing you could make fun of punk saying that punk hasn't said itself in a more extreme way.
[UNKNOWN]: Absolutely.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, like the first meatman record or something, you know, it's like, you can't, you know, it's, it's so extreme.
[UNKNOWN]: And also, you know, at age 13 or whatever, you're kind of vulnerable to these new emotions.
[UNKNOWN]: And so yeah, I was just really really taken with it, also not even realizing growing up in the DC area, what was in my own backyard.
[UNKNOWN]: So I sort of came to the D.C. stuff, living in the middle of it, not realizing it was right there.
[UNKNOWN]: And that was a really, that was exciting.
[UNKNOWN]: When I, you know, first time hearing minor threat and being like, right, these guys are from here, from this down, you know, so we're, what, drew to the dead Kennedy's?
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I think the name, the cover art, you know, I mean, again, it was just, it was so different.
[UNKNOWN]: Even, you know, the most extreme thing I probably had come across prior to that was like, you know, Ozzy Osbourne or Black Sabbath or something like that, but even that, there was something kind of cartoonish, whereas like that fresh food for Rodin Vegetables cover is just insane, you know, and like you see that as a danger and it just, it, it, it's really makes them, it made it a deep impression on me.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, there's like, I guess also, at that time too, in America, you can't underestimate the weight of a name like the dead Kennedy's.
[UNKNOWN]: Absolutely, absolutely.
[UNKNOWN]: And saying, you know, but old surfers, there were all these names that were just so evocative.
[UNKNOWN]: Jodie Foster's Army, you know, all these things that were sort of, you know, there were references to things in our culture, but just kind of squeezing them twisting them, turning them upside down.
[UNKNOWN]: And now it just seems so exciting that they still, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And then, not long after that, it was, you know, started kids for cash with my high school friends.
[UNKNOWN]: And that was actually from there's that Dutch bed and BGK and they had a 7 inch white male dominance and they had a song on there.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like a, you know, like a disson, they were basically riffing on the exploited.
[UNKNOWN]: saying that when they saw their audience, all they saw in the kids were cash.
[UNKNOWN]: I think the next year carried about the kids.
[UNKNOWN]: And that seemed really like a powerful statement for one band to be criticized as another band.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, you know, you don't really respect your audience.
[UNKNOWN]: You just see them as a source of income.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we just thought that was a good name for us.
[UNKNOWN]: BGK is like a weirdly underrated band for how unbelievable they are.
[UNKNOWN]: that jumps down a low-high record is awesome.
[UNKNOWN]: And that, what I mean, a dumbness, that's seven years to me still totally holds up.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I still live it on my won't list.
[UNKNOWN]: I just hope bootleg.
[UNKNOWN]: So.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so that's the thing, all those records are so crazy expensive now.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it really, I feel like I got the tail end of affordability and even then, people would be like, oh my God, you're paying 20 bucks for this record.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and now it's like 200 or a little more.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's crazy, you've got, you've got,
[UNKNOWN]: It got nuts very quickly, but going back where you like, uh, you're already into music by the time you found this day, Kennedy stuff was like, mainly heavy metal prior to that?
[UNKNOWN]: No, actually, I was never a metal kid at all.
[UNKNOWN]: Uh, so my, my dad's around in my miles of Americans, so I was, we were going back and forth between Iran and New York and, um, then the Revolution happened in Iran and we were forced to leave and that's when we moved to the D.C. area.
[UNKNOWN]: So that was like 1979.
[UNKNOWN]: And so as a kid growing up, I was really into like 50s rock and roll, and there were these compilations, a clock thing were called like let the good times roll or something, and I really love that early R&B, like 50s R&B and rock and roll, and then also I like Iraq and music.
[UNKNOWN]: So those sort of two things, but the first sort of commercial thing that I ever bought was
[UNKNOWN]: And I actually got that in Iran and when you had a chance to look at the cover art for that, it is bonkers.
[UNKNOWN]: And the fact that I was able to get that is like an 8-year-old or whatever, it's really pretty weird.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, you know, that was the most like pop music I had ever heard.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I actually missed out on a lot of...
[UNKNOWN]: American North American pop radio stuff until I moved back on 79 and then to play catch up really the queer, you know, I'm like, kids, the bus stop, like, hey, man, you look kissed.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, I've never heard of kiss before, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, so so I really, you know, I started playing clarinet, so I was playing a lot of music on clarinet, so I was like, listen, like, Benny Goodman, and you know, really does not not
[UNKNOWN]: contemporary music.
[UNKNOWN]: And so the stuff that I was hearing was stuff that I would hear sort of indiscriminately on the radio or at a friend's house, you know, Pink Floyd or whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it sounded fine to me, but it didn't it just seemed to already exist.
[UNKNOWN]: Whereas when I heard hardcore, it seemed like it was existing in real time right now in front of me, and that was super exciting.
[UNKNOWN]: I think I'm blanking on the name it, it's a graphic novel about the Iranian Revolution, Iranian Revolution.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh yeah, by such, yeah, she did those two volumes of the man they made a movie down on it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but yeah, it starts with the P, I'm sorry.
[UNKNOWN]: That's what a settler said.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: In that, I think she talks about finding out about new wave and punk in Iran, prior to did you kind of pick up on that stuff when you were living over there at that time?
[UNKNOWN]: Or I guess it's really early in 79.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, when we were the 79, but you know, I don't remember later in the mess of rock and roll, seeing scene reports and occasionally you'd get like a scene report from Tehran Anders and we were better with you like wow.
[UNKNOWN]: That is incredible, you know, but you know, that's the thing that I think is really appealing about punk rockers that it really it's it can exist in these little microcosms all around the globe and yeah, it's sort of it's it's available to everybody.
[UNKNOWN]: which is what I think why I never actually related to like the pink Floyds and all those because like that just seemed like it was a bigger, it didn't seem like real people, maybe a real people, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like potato chips or something, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: It just was made for you in this out the world, whereas like the punk stuff just seemed like you could relate to the people making it the process of how you make, you know, like all the rules were kind of tossed to the side.
[UNKNOWN]: And so as I came in, your thing is as good as anywhere else is.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and who doesn't want to hear that?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, especially with music, and I think it's probably growing up in Canada, getting sort of like the American, North American kind of like virgin of pop culture, like international music.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, oh, that's world music.
[UNKNOWN]: It's just like it fits all into one category.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes.
[UNKNOWN]: Whereas like when you find a punk, like you're saying like you're reading Max and rock and roll and you're like, oh, all these bands,
[UNKNOWN]: are equal.
[UNKNOWN]: And it doesn't matter where you're from.
[UNKNOWN]: There's like, it's sort of like this free exchange of culture, which doesn't really happen.
[UNKNOWN]: Certainly in Canada in a lot of music cultures that I've kind of witnessed or like with with other music from other places having the exact same weight, if not more weight placed on it than the local music that you're hearing.
[UNKNOWN]: Also, I think that there was pretty like in that sort of early
[UNKNOWN]: I think there was such a vocabulary for what is hardcore, what is punk was so broad, you know, so you'd have like the in-bred, or you'd have like, you know, the rhythm pigs and you'd you know, stuff that, you know, or even the minimum, I mean, it's not really hardcore if you, you know, by the minimum, don't sound like, you know, formula warning or whatever, you know, it's like they're not, it's not, but, and yet it's all part of the same,
[UNKNOWN]: thing, which I really love that.
[UNKNOWN]: I love how comes broad and open it was, and as a kid, it really turned me on to so much different, so many different ideas, you know, and also just made me aware of other places in the world.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, being pen pals with bands from Australia, and there was a woman in Poland that I used to swap tapes with, and you know, it just sort of opened me up to all this stuff that I just was not aware of, and so it was constantly a new source
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like, do you know that record label, Tiananmen 89?
[UNKNOWN]: No, no.
[UNKNOWN]: It's a guy who's right.
[UNKNOWN]: The Colman Max Moroccan was a French guy.
[UNKNOWN]: And he was, I guess he worked for like an NGO traveling the world to give different countries.
[UNKNOWN]: And we need to arrive somewhere.
[UNKNOWN]: He'd be like,
[UNKNOWN]: where's the local punk scene?
[UNKNOWN]: You'd find the local punk scene, leave copies of Max and Rock and Roll, and just take tapes from anyone and everyone, and then he would put out these sort of, like, I've got a collection here, like these compilations of, like, local music.
[UNKNOWN]: And this one's got Albania, Jordan, Madagascar, and reunion island, and that's great.
[UNKNOWN]: That's right, her first Iranian punk music, and the first place I've ever heard,
[UNKNOWN]: Well, certainly Madagascar punk music, Madagascarian punk music, I guess, and I mean, who knew right?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but like you're saying it's that's the thing that like is so powerful about this music is because you don't
[UNKNOWN]: need skill.
[UNKNOWN]: You don't need all these sorts of traditional things that keep barriers of entry to people and young people especially.
[UNKNOWN]: And I love that.
[UNKNOWN]: Like this was something that could become truly global because you didn't necessarily need the best resources to afford the most high-tech version of the gear.
[UNKNOWN]: You could just use whatever you had.
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, whatever you could record on it, there was a legit, you know, like your boobin box practice recording to put it out, whatever it's fine.
[UNKNOWN]: I think I'm a warm demo.
[UNKNOWN]: They're playing drums on a chair.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, actually speaking of Canada, I remember I used to correspond with, I think it was the younger brother of the guitar player from Sons of Ishmael, and so like we still block the kids for cash, but in for the Sons of Ishmael, seven inch and like, but you know, we'd have this regular correspondence, so he let me know what was happening in, you know, an Ontario, seeing or whatever, and like I'd be like, alright, well, Marshall asked a new record coming out and you know, it was fun, it was great, you know, like it was a nice way of feeling like you're connected to something bigger than yourself.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and it's also it's I was having this conversation with a friend of mine the other day where there's no there's nothing to gain from this like you're doing it because
[UNKNOWN]: you love this culture and you want to meet people from other places like there's no social capital like it's not necessarily happening publicly because no one would understand it.
[UNKNOWN]: So you're doing it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, an explaining it like family gatherings.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, oh, I played a bank on kids for cash.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, talking to this fan of bank on fucked up.
[UNKNOWN]: It doesn't really, you know, it's just a lot of raised eyebrows, which is kind of I think.
[UNKNOWN]: I wanted to part of the appeal, but it's sort of, I think, in a nice way, it keeps it, it keeps it very democratic, because it's for everybody, but not everybody is interested in it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and I don't know, I just, that level of correspondence, too, and you could really, like, you could be pen pals with anybody from anywhere in the world.
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, I still am friends with some of the people that I used to write with when I was 15.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, it's so different than any other social structure.
[UNKNOWN]: I certainly have encountered in life where success, in particular, financial success is not
[UNKNOWN]: necessarily a benefit, like I feel like there are certainly advantages to having that, but I think it certainly doesn't buy you more social capital in the same way that it does in a lot of other places that I found myself over time.
[UNKNOWN]: In fact, it's kind of, within it, it's almost like a hindrance, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, exactly.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But it's funny, because I also, I mean, part of that I felt like it was growing up in the DC area and having discord as a model for how, how you're a band, how you kind of conduct your business as a band.
[UNKNOWN]: When I was in the 90s, I was in the Bacled Edsel, and we started to participate in kind of the larger music world, the more, you know, whatever professional capitalistic music world.
[UNKNOWN]: And at first, it was a, I was like confusing to us, but like we weren't familiar with what all that stuff was.
[UNKNOWN]: Like we didn't know about C.M.J.
[UNKNOWN]: and about, you know,
[UNKNOWN]: old college radio.
[UNKNOWN]: We didn't know about all this stuff that we'd need other bands on tour.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, oh, yes, you knew record going to be, you know, servicing CMJ and I don't know what you're talking about.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and so it was a funny way to be introduced to this other part of the music world.
[UNKNOWN]: Later, you know, whatever we participated in for better for worse, but but we felt in a nice way felt really naive and sort of kind of idealistic because it was like,
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and it's one of those things where it's like, it goes on forever, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like, like, it's so, and I'm sure you weren't thinking this at the time, but like, this music that's made by teenagers, in some cases, sells for thousands of dollars now, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like, it's, people are still talking about these seven inches.
[UNKNOWN]: Dickens removed.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like the SOA 7.
[UNKNOWN]: I think those guys were like 13, 14, or something like that, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, it's just it's so that part of it's funny when when yeah, when the part of the thing that you did as a teenager, which was so distinctively.
[UNKNOWN]: itself, then later has this other kind of value to it.
[UNKNOWN]: It's a hard thing to kind of wrap for me.
[UNKNOWN]: It's a hard thing to wrap my head around because the two don't quite square.
[UNKNOWN]: So what was the first show you went to or like the live music period?
[UNKNOWN]: Um, a friend of mine's older sister took us, there was a, I'm sure you played the 90s, 30 clubbing.
[UNKNOWN]: Do you see, so did you play the old man's vertical probably?
[UNKNOWN]: Actually, know what?
[UNKNOWN]: I've never,
[UNKNOWN]: played it, I only did a live podcast at the 1930 club.
[UNKNOWN]: No, really?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: OK.
[UNKNOWN]: So there was the old one, which was not that far from where the new one is.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was a much smaller place.
[UNKNOWN]: It needs to have like a three bands, three bucks night, and a front of mine's older sister took us to that.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's funny.
[UNKNOWN]: One of the bands made a real impression on me, they were called Age of Consent.
[UNKNOWN]: And they were sort of a, I don't know, a new AV power pop band.
[UNKNOWN]: But they played with a real intensity and I was like, oh, this is really cool.
[UNKNOWN]: I've never heard music sort of a dad.
[UNKNOWN]: That proximity before, you know, we feel the air coming off the kick drum and like the guitar amp is like right in your face.
[UNKNOWN]: And so that was another thing that was exciting.
[UNKNOWN]: And that was not punk music, but it was just feeling that, you know, you're going to roam with people.
[UNKNOWN]: And there's like a certain energy and vibrancy to like the space.
[UNKNOWN]: And then I sort of go on to show us pretty quickly after that.
[UNKNOWN]: The first like hardcore show I went to was
[UNKNOWN]: I think Sterkel Jerks, COC, Martial Man, and that was completely mind blowing.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I was like, I guess 15 at the time, and COC, that was when there were three piece, and Mike Dean was just like his intensity was so incredible.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's funny, because again, I was not a metal kid, but you know, the guitar playing is a little
[UNKNOWN]: But the way he did was didn't seem corny, the way a lot of metal stuff it can be to me.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I was like, this is really interesting.
[UNKNOWN]: And so afterwards I went up to the guitar player and I was like, and Woody, I think, I was like, I was like, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, that sound is incredible.
[UNKNOWN]: What do you do, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: And he was like, you know, good guitar and happy playing with your friends.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, oh, okay.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, but now it's the thing like I really sort of felt like yeah, it really is that simple, you know, and also seeing those bands like COC and even circle jerks, they look like normal people, they weren't there was no costuming involved, you know, there was no like Mohican and the, you know, and so I like the fact that the people making the music.
[UNKNOWN]: were there to make the music and it wasn't like I don't know, the theatrics were built into the music and what they didn't have to, the performative element wasn't in the cost of maybe, and that made me feel like I could do it as well, because my tendency is not to dress in a flamboyant way or whatever, and so that to me was like, okay, I can do this, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Did you notice a stark contrast in the audiences between the two shows between the 930 Club Show and this one?
[UNKNOWN]: Yes.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And definitely the three band three bucks was more like, you know, the college kids high school kids.
[UNKNOWN]: Not just like, you know, very normal looking kids.
[UNKNOWN]: Whereas at the CSC, uh, serval director show, I had never seen skin ads before.
[UNKNOWN]: So that was that was one thing that was pretty crazy.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like, because at that time in DC, the skin had seen was pretty pretty rough.
[UNKNOWN]: So seeing skinheads for the first time, seeing a pit for the first time, and then, you know, yeah, there were kids of moharks and like, you know, it was definitely a felt more like, oh, this is how it depicted on television.
[UNKNOWN]: Kind of thing, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's funny because like there's a guess it goes right back to like,
[UNKNOWN]: 81.
[UNKNOWN]: There's almost like two parallel scenes that happen in DC where there's like that.
[UNKNOWN]: I guess the limp records and descendants of limp records kind of dolphin records kind of like is that power poppy new AV kind of world and then there's DC hardcore and they seem very at times there's like a little seems like there's a bit of aggression between the two scenes but like very distinct at least.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but interestingly, later there would be a crossover.
[UNKNOWN]: So Skip, who brand Limp ran yesterday into their records and all of the DC hardcore guys worked at yesterday and today.
[UNKNOWN]: And then Ted Nicely, who was a bass player in the Razz, who were on Limp, he ended up, of course, producing a bunch of the DC, you know, Fugazi and shuttered a thing, job box.
[UNKNOWN]: And he also worked at yesterday and today record.
[UNKNOWN]: So that was it.
[UNKNOWN]: They were sort of the older guys that the lymph records seen, and I think they actually, I mean, you don't have to ask you in a confirmed list, but I think they sort of helped, I think skip probably helped usher in, like, how you do certain, how you get a record press, how you do these things, and that was what I thought was really neat about the, I'm sure it happens everywhere, but my experience with TC was that somebody that was always willing to help you, I'm willing to say, you're like,
[UNKNOWN]: Hey, if you want to do this, this is how you do it, you know, it's like you, you may not be familiar with how to do it because you haven't done it before, but somebody is willing to like hold your hand or point in the right direction and I really appreciated that.
[UNKNOWN]: I learned a lot from it.
[UNKNOWN]: It's also interesting that I've noticed and this is, you know, maybe not your experience living there and maybe very far away, but there always seems to be two parallel scenes happening in DC in terms of punk and hardcore like certainly throw the 90s where there's like the discord and discord adjacent scene and then there's battery and damnation AD and they sort of like younger hardcore bands and from people I've talked to or like yeah, they were very distinct kind of separate worlds then too.
[UNKNOWN]: But there was also crossover, so like, but the edcel we recorded with can who was in battery in those bands.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, studio up in college park, I think, and we went and recorded there and so yeah, and there was I don't know there was I think.
[UNKNOWN]: and may have seemed more separate outside.
[UNKNOWN]: There was a lot, I mean, for example, like when an pencil was around, discord is active, team beat was active, simple machines was active.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, there was a bunch of labels, some were land was active.
[UNKNOWN]: There were all these labels, even though like a record on slumber land would definitely not sound like a record on discord, you know, like whatever Hoover did not sound like velocity girl, but you wouldn't be surprised if these people were housemates.
[UNKNOWN]: you know and going to the same shows together and that was another thing that I thought was really nice about DC at that time was that you know there was everybody was very friendly to one another and very supportive even if the thing that you were doing was different from the thing that your housemate was doing you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Well going back to I guess before the Revolutionary Summer.
[UNKNOWN]: You brought up the skinheads.
[UNKNOWN]: Did you have any interactions with Lefty and that I did a couple of unfortunate reactions with Lefty?
[UNKNOWN]: One was I was with a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa and we were at the record store called Smash and he was wearing the Union Jack T-shirt and her famous weapon was an eight ball in a sock, which is definitely you don't want to be on the receiving another hat.
[UNKNOWN]: And so he and I were like flipping through the bins at a smash and she comes in and sees it's sure.
[UNKNOWN]: And she's like, you know, what's up with that?
[UNKNOWN]: And he was like, oh, you know, I grew up in South Africa.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think she thought that he was messing with her.
[UNKNOWN]: And so basically, she just immediately wanted to get into it with us.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and I had to be able to go around.
[UNKNOWN]: He's he's thrilled, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And so somehow we talked her way out of it.
[UNKNOWN]: And then another time at a show at 930 or 930 club, I think it was actually the youth brigade, the California youth brigade were playing and we came out and there was a big group of skin that had just like looking for trouble and lefty was there and she sort of had her like minions with her and for some reason they targeted another friend of mine and I and you know
[UNKNOWN]: going home, you know, and this really surrounded us, which was a pretty, like a pretty frightening thing.
[UNKNOWN]: And one of the skinheads amazingly, I don't know what came over on, but he walked up to me and he was like, I've seen you at shows.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, yeah, he's like, that he kind of turns around, everybody's like, he's a cool man, he goes to shows.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, all right, we're out there.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, but it was really, that there was a moment where I was like, wow, we're gonna die tonight.
[UNKNOWN]: Was it was it any show kind of this could happen at or was it show's where it was no, it'd be any random show.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I just think they were like, whatever, you know, they're like teenagers early 20s probably had to hold it.
[UNKNOWN]: They're just who look as looking at them, you know, looking to have a rough fun tumble night, whatever you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's interesting though, how.
[UNKNOWN]: how the impact lefty had like so many people to come on this show like had of run-ins or new lefty and then
[UNKNOWN]: You know, when you think about the effect and where it ultimately leads, we're all these people are kind of getting out of hardcore at that point because it's getting ridiculous with his violence.
[UNKNOWN]: She kind of leads to revolution summer, which I think ultimately shifts everything forever in punk and hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: Like that's where politics kind of really get married to punk and hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: It felt the revolution, some of the things interesting because it really felt like people were trying to take something back.
[UNKNOWN]: It had gone too far and become violent and just became an unpleasant environment.
[UNKNOWN]: Like who wants to go to a show and fear for your safety?
[UNKNOWN]: Like that's just not where you're looking for.
[UNKNOWN]: And so remember going to see, I think it was scream and king face, maybe diagnostic, Georgetown University,
[UNKNOWN]: And it was, I think, Scream was playing and Mark Sullivan, the singer from Kingface, he just came into the middle of a pit and just sat down.
[UNKNOWN]: And I happened to be next to him, so I was like, okay, so I sat down.
[UNKNOWN]: And then a bunch of people just started sitting down, essentially blockhating the pit.
[UNKNOWN]: And it felt really powerful.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, oh, no, we don't have to suffer these people's
[UNKNOWN]: weird take on what you're, you know, this is like a weird reenactment behavior that they're involved in, you know, because the thing too, there's like, you know, if you really love music and you're there to see the bands, nothing is more distracting than some dude bumping into you, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And I also just, yeah, felt like a very nice positive evolution, I was like,
[UNKNOWN]: you know, this can be a positive thing.
[UNKNOWN]: It doesn't.
[UNKNOWN]: We don't have to be the recipients of an environment that, you know, we help to make and then we're no longer welcome.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it almost becomes a doctrine that unconsciously or maybe consciously spreads throughout, I guess the world when people are dealing with scenes that have gone too far and the idea of taking it back and
[UNKNOWN]: and sort of weaponizing softer music or more emotional music in a way that makes it alienating to these people like
[UNKNOWN]: they wouldn't want to be.
[UNKNOWN]: They wouldn't like this kind of music.
[UNKNOWN]: They wouldn't be here.
[UNKNOWN]: I think it's it's amazing how you see this cycle kind of repeat time and time again in different scenes.
[UNKNOWN]: Like to this day, I'm sure it repeats like this.
[UNKNOWN]: I think the nice thing about it is that ultimately if you're talking about a thoughtful group of people who are trying who are trying to confront something that that they feel that they can
[UNKNOWN]: you actually can do it, you know, and so I think that's a, that's a really nice thing to be able to keep in mind.
[UNKNOWN]: Because I think a lot of times social groups, the larger they get, the more fraction they are and the more, you know, different agendas come into play and, and, uh,
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know, but you can, you can be in control of it.
[UNKNOWN]: You can say like, no, we don't want that.
[UNKNOWN]: But you know, like we're not interested in that.
[UNKNOWN]: Um, I also think at that time it was interesting because like, you know, when I was early fuzzing shows, they were small.
[UNKNOWN]: They were really, really small shows.
[UNKNOWN]: And, um,
[UNKNOWN]: I've never asked you in about it, but you know, I imagine part of it was on purpose, like I've never saw mine or tried that it was before my time, but you know, you see the videos and then stuff and those shows were pretty not so.
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm sure for him at a certain point, I guess with them brazed too, but you know, just trying to again, make just make it smaller, just sort of make it more about kind of the core.
[UNKNOWN]: idea of why you're doing it.
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, I think that that I've never been in a situation where I've been like, oh, I'm going to make it smaller.
[UNKNOWN]: But I imagine that, uh,
[UNKNOWN]: it would it you know requires us because most people want that thing to be bigger right everybody's like oh it's got to grow it's going to be bigger and I really like the fact that you know there are people like Ian who are like it doesn't have to be bigger it can just it can be this you know and and that's a very appealing outlook to me yeah like I find that whole story of them maturing as this group of guys that brought
[UNKNOWN]: the type of tar court to the east coast like I think they they're they own that in that America's arco documentary at least Rollins does.
[UNKNOWN]: that and then here they are like you said realizing it's gone too far and how do we pivot and correct and sort of this idea like like I feel it's like a rejection of the commercialization of punk too like like it doesn't have to be bigger.
[UNKNOWN]: It can be smaller.
[UNKNOWN]: It can be just bunch of people in a coffee shop watching a bandplay and it's still valid and just as valid as hundreds of people in the Olympic auditorium watching bandplay.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I find it so fascinating that over the course of the whatever it becomes a genre at a certain point, I guess, right, like emo and it becomes a complete inverse of itself, where all the stuff that's from the beginning of it, like this sort of anti commercial.
[UNKNOWN]: complete monstrosity under the, I guess not the same name because no one wanted that name, but like at least kind of claim it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it is a funny thing.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I think in Brian Baker coined the email thing he claims he claims he saw right to spring and he's like, what's with this email course shit.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, he didn't really find a guy, so if you wanted to take credit, I'd give him full credit.
[UNKNOWN]: And I could imagine him saying it in that kind of sarcastic way.
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, I think at that time,
[UNKNOWN]: before before the word was who was coming to before that it really was just a way as you were saying getting away from that masculine and you getting away from that sort of like jockey, thuggish behavior that I think hardcore sort of became sadly and
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, seeing why it's spring, that was a pretty pretty amazing experience, and a tiny little cafe, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, as a, again, I think it was 16 at the time, and that really made just like move some molecules around for me.
[UNKNOWN]: I've always heard that like it's, your gut is wave of bands that almost inspires this whole.
[UNKNOWN]: come back like lunch meat mission impossible kids for cash like that that wave of bands being the younger kids that were coming in with this positive attitude and sort of these older punks for I guess other reasons too but like seeing that and responding that energy.
[UNKNOWN]: And do you like to go?
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I was going to say, I know that I think Scott's guitar playing in lunch meetings all side, I think was a huge influence on, you know, like early Fubazian stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I hear at least like those octaves and stuff that Scott would do, like I he was the first one,
[UNKNOWN]: that I heard in RDC area to sort of employ that in that way.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, yeah, I was at the younger, the next generation, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like all the younger siblings were starting to do stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: And I mean, that's really cool.
[UNKNOWN]: Then the older siblings were like, that's pretty, pretty dope, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And but they're also,
[UNKNOWN]: shared all their stuff with us so you know like we and that was the thing going to yesterday to their records and you'd go there and be like Michael Hanks and Gee, Brendan, Bert Keroz and all these people were working there and you know it was a musical education you'd go there with like a 20 dollars and
[UNKNOWN]: You know, you would be like, right on the 7 inch room, you know, if you had a separate story that was all 7 inches, he's like, you know, do you have this digital finger 7.
[UNKNOWN]: No, do you know, do you have this empire 7 inch.
[UNKNOWN]: No, and you know, it's just sort of like, it'll really lovely way to sort of schooling me on the music that.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, made him make the music that excited me to make music, you know, and so it kind of helping connect the dots.
[UNKNOWN]: And so it's cool that then later the younger generation was reconnecting dots for those guys.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, eventually, you spend enough time together where the five years which meant the whole world at another time doesn't mean anything.
[UNKNOWN]: It does, yeah, yeah, it's an old way to, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: How do kids for cash come together?
[UNKNOWN]: Um, I mean, we all went to the same high school.
[UNKNOWN]: And then, uh, I don't make sure remember that how we started, but Frank, our singer, he, uh, his parents were Lebanese Christians and very, very religious.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, they never knew he was in a band.
[UNKNOWN]: So, he was always studying at the library or something like that whenever we were practicing, or coming over to my house to spend the night if we got a show or something like that.
[UNKNOWN]: And, but he would order records like nobody's business.
[UNKNOWN]: He was like, it's been our systematic mail order, let us see how we're just going.
[UNKNOWN]: That's a bad for sure.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so he'd get the systematic catalog and he'd like go through and
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know by today's numbers, what it would be, but at the time it seemed like a lot of money who was spending on records, but because of his parents' very, very Christian background, the records could not go to his house, so they would all come to me and I would get to tape them all and sort of hold onto them and then finally he would take them and scroll them away under the ping pong table on his parents' basement.
[UNKNOWN]: But it was great, that too was a big musical education
[UNKNOWN]: And with systematic, I think if you bought $50 with the records, they would send you a free record.
[UNKNOWN]: So part of the deal was, I got to keep the free record.
[UNKNOWN]: So that was also a good deal for me.
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, that was like the first camper van Beethoven record.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that one that's on the independent project.
[UNKNOWN]: That was the free record for one of those.
[UNKNOWN]: And again, like I had never heard, because at that point, I was like, so deep into the hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, what is this?
[UNKNOWN]: Can't prevent the Beethoven band.
[UNKNOWN]: But I let's do enough times.
[UNKNOWN]: ended up turning me on to other more kind of jangly music that I got more into later, but like I didn't know about bands from New Zealand or whatever, that's not how I knew.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, but hearing stuff like that early, Kipperman, Beethoven, you know, was was a neat sort of ear ear awakening.
[UNKNOWN]: in the wake of the recent jar of causal like dude from cracker beef.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I'm not aware of it.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to fight on Twitter really.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, over Max and rock and roll, which also makes this rich.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so it led me down on a path of looking into camper van Beethoven.
[UNKNOWN]: That first record's like close to $500 now.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, it's like crazy.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, it's a great record, but yeah, I think you got a good free record that day.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, also the cover, again, like I had never that independent product that Bruce looked just I mean I had never seen printing like that and so that stuff like that that was so I might arguably day job is a graphic designer and punk rock also completely informed that you know having to make your own record cover is and seeing a lot of people did in you know in DC Jeff Nelson's designs were incredible there was this other guy Peter Hayes was an awesome designer.
[UNKNOWN]: and then seeing like the independent project, you know, those those records and what they looked like.
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, I was it was we're just like, you know, a lot of British stuff like all those buscocks singles that designs are amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, it was definitely it helped it open me up to a lot of stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like I think that's it's like I'd shepherd ferry was just on the podcast and we're we talked a lot about like the
[UNKNOWN]: the graphics and punk and sort of the, you can't think of too many other genres, like obviously people that are into design and into artwork and name these artists, but like where the record cover artist becomes a superstar within genre.
[UNKNOWN]: Like on part of the bank.
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.
[UNKNOWN]: Possibly.
[UNKNOWN]: Possibly records.
[UNKNOWN]: They were instantly recognizable.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, Petty's Brian Mazda too.
[UNKNOWN]: Brian Wallsby Madmark rude.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, there's a man I'm leaving people up and I don't mean to be just respectful and doing that, but there are a number of these artists that like Be sure to integrate who did the New York hardcore stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and it's it's amazing how And it's also film.
[UNKNOWN]: It's also fast and like food too like all the people that open vegan restaurants in the wake of this But yeah, this was this permission to do whatever the fuck you want it
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just take a risk, which is really, really cool.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, one thing you asked how kids for cash comes together, one thing that I think is more mentioning is, so we were just a high school harker band from the Virginia suburbs of DC, and you know, we were going to see other bands playing, going to see going to 930 Club DC space, various places where their hardcore show is, there would do shows in like,
[UNKNOWN]: a bar and downtown DC, but on the weekends, it would open it up to hardcore shows.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like an after work bar and DC.
[UNKNOWN]: And places like the complex, which were like, I think that was a more like a gay dance bar.
[UNKNOWN]: But again, they would open it up to hardcore shows in the weekends and stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: But we had no idea how to play a show outside of,
[UNKNOWN]: within our friend group, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, I didn't know, I was a, do you call the 930 club?
[UNKNOWN]: Who do you ask for?
[UNKNOWN]: I just didn't know how it worked.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, I remember talking about my model about it.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, yeah, as if we really love to go and play it, but like, I don't know what to do.
[UNKNOWN]: And she was like, well, you know, there's a local community center here.
[UNKNOWN]: where we are.
[UNKNOWN]: Why don't you rent that out and you can do your own shows.
[UNKNOWN]: And so my mom was totally like the DIY, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we ended up doing a ton of shows there.
[UNKNOWN]: And we would we would add, you know, we'd call discord houses.
[UNKNOWN]: And like hey, you know, we'd mark someone coming play, would screen, would be feeder coming play.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we would actually, we had to bring the bands to us because we didn't know how to go the other direction.
[UNKNOWN]: And then the real coup was one time we got seven seconds to play and that was like our big It was a big moment.
[UNKNOWN]: I can't please ten seconds to play.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that's awesome.
[UNKNOWN]: I ran into our mutual friend Nick's soul last night at a movie premiere and he hit me to the fact that you maybe weren't behind this but at least had the archive of all those amazing videos of all the DC area bands playing and it's like
[UNKNOWN]: It's like the same venue and it's almost like the same angle for a lot of the the show.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, so that was a lot of those are at the community center and then and so basically again shout out to my mom.
[UNKNOWN]: She basically she she the her her grandmother when she died had some Paul tree some of the money left over and so you know gave it to her and my mom was like, I want to give a little bit to you to you know, do you want you know, she wanted to get me something and she was like, how about if you know, that point the Sony beta camera just come out.
[UNKNOWN]: And she's like, why don't I get you that?
[UNKNOWN]: And then you guys can videotape your your band's playing.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, I don't know man, you know, like I was just kind of, I was really not interested, but my mom was super cool and I didn't want to be rude.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, yeah, sure, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And so she got it.
[UNKNOWN]: And basically, as an act of trying to be on, you know, an appreciative son, I was like, all right, I guess I'll videotape the show.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and then essentially, then I was actually just kind of fun.
[UNKNOWN]: And then so started taping other shows, it would go, see, you know, different venues, DC space, and some places at Georgetown University would then have shows and various community centers, and we're just video taping.
[UNKNOWN]: And
[UNKNOWN]: Honestly did not think anything of it.
[UNKNOWN]: It was just kind of a fun thing to do.
[UNKNOWN]: And then occasionally I would make, you know, I could make them for the bands or whatever, like I remember I had at some point I had like three or four gray matter recordings.
[UNKNOWN]: And so Steve Niles, the bass player was like, hey, is there anyway, but you get a copy of that.
[UNKNOWN]: I was to get a score.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, so, but that was it.
[UNKNOWN]: I never actually touched them until the pandemic came along and.
[UNKNOWN]: Scott Crawford who did salad days and so he was like, you know, you should digitize these and he said that I told me that David Groll has a production company and I guess they were doing that HBO series at the time where they go into different studios Yeah, and so they do actually wanted some of the footage that I had and Scott was like, you know, you should ask them if they would be willing to digitize everything
[UNKNOWN]: I was a little sheepish about it because it seemed kind of a heavy ask, but I was like, I had a email and I was like, you know, I was kind of these tapes.
[UNKNOWN]: You have the resources.
[UNKNOWN]: Is there any way you'd be willing to help out?
[UNKNOWN]: They wrote back right away.
[UNKNOWN]: They're like, absolutely, here's our FedEx number, put them in a box, send them to us with a hard drive.
[UNKNOWN]: And they digitized all this stuff for me and sent it back, which was pretty amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: And then in the pandemic, obviously, we all had a little extra time at home.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I just started going through and editing them and just putting them online.
[UNKNOWN]: So there's, and it's, well, thanks to your mom for this, there's some bands that there's no other
[UNKNOWN]: Maybe not.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, well, I think Dane Brahmich is a Dane Brahmich requirement is the only because I'm a huge Dane Brahmich fan.
[UNKNOWN]: I would argue with that.
[UNKNOWN]: So good.
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's maybe one of Dave girls best bands like I think that I like it more than a lot of stuff that I probably should rate higher, but I just think that record's fucking amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: It's a great record.
[UNKNOWN]: And like I Ruben, who's both ways an incredible photographer, the guitar player or singer and that band.
[UNKNOWN]: But he just had such a cool guitar sound, really cool voice.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was just a, to me, later, when I heard early screaming trees, I was like, oh, this kind of reminds me of Dan Bramage.
[UNKNOWN]: But they were, I mean, I think at that time, they were doing something that had not yet really been tapped into them.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, a phenomenal band.
[UNKNOWN]: And Dave Grold, drumming kids for cash, too, for a brief period, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Very briefly, yes.
[UNKNOWN]: So our drummer went to college and we had not yet got another drummer.
[UNKNOWN]: And he, well, he was in Mission Impossible.
[UNKNOWN]: Mission Impossible, kids for cash were played together.
[UNKNOWN]: And then his mom and my mom became friendly.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we would hang out a bunch.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I was like, can you, Dave?
[UNKNOWN]: You know, we got this show coming up.
[UNKNOWN]: So we played a couple of shows this.
[UNKNOWN]: Actually included in the seven seconds show, which is the funny thing about that was,
[UNKNOWN]: So it's a community center show.
[UNKNOWN]: So it started like, I don't know, say six PM.
[UNKNOWN]: I was still light outside.
[UNKNOWN]: So our friends band PMS played and then we played seven seconds had been shown up yet.
[UNKNOWN]: And then so they show up and we're like, hey, great.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that's already for you to go.
[UNKNOWN]: And so they play and it's probably like 731.
[UNKNOWN]: They're done or something eight o'clock.
[UNKNOWN]: And we still we had the place till night or something.
[UNKNOWN]: And
[UNKNOWN]: Like, all right, well, I was cool and Kevin seconds was like, well, are you guys going to play?
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, oh, we already played.
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, last time, you guys should tell the play.
[UNKNOWN]: And so basically, we played again after seven seconds.
[UNKNOWN]: And Dave was playing drums with us.
[UNKNOWN]: And I just remember we're playing and literally all of seven seconds is just like staring at this kid.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, what kind of maniac is this on the drums?
[UNKNOWN]: You know, so that was a
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, the day-bramage video is amazing because it's not mixed like that LPs, so there's trumpets are so fucking loud.
[UNKNOWN]: He was a pounder, man, I mean, honestly.
[UNKNOWN]: And the thing that I remember was not, was I remember the first time going and spending the night at his house and he was a K-lets gym.
[UNKNOWN]: And he had a guitar, and I didn't know what it played guitar.
[UNKNOWN]: I just thought it was a great drummer.
[UNKNOWN]: And so he said, yeah, we're kind of the song, we should tell a jam out, and we were whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, oh my god, this guy's a really good guitar player, too.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, what?
[UNKNOWN]: It kind of, I was like, oh, he's one of those guys.
[UNKNOWN]: He can play anything.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, because there's that song on that simple machine's box set that he did Neapolitan, I think it was the
[UNKNOWN]: And that first tape was on simple machines and one where he said everything.
[UNKNOWN]: That's right.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: It's so funny.
[UNKNOWN]: How like Dave has that connection of like simple machines on in DC.
[UNKNOWN]: And then Kurt's got that connection to K records in Olympia.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's almost like the parallel labels.
[UNKNOWN]: Weirdly with each other.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, there's like the each their each other sort of like with each
[UNKNOWN]: Like I don't even know what type of music you'd call it like punk indie, I guess, for but it's like it's very distinct kind of sound that both works.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, dance around.
[UNKNOWN]: No, it's true.
[UNKNOWN]: It's true.
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, at that time, I've not seen it as I said before, like there was just such a great mix of, you know, the sounds might be different, but the people were very sort of integrated in terms of, you know, community.
[UNKNOWN]: So like, as this stuff is kind of happening, were there skinheads that you would see that had previously been sort of antagonists that were crossing over or is it just completely separate?
[UNKNOWN]: That's interesting.
[UNKNOWN]: I just remember them kind of disappearing in a certain point.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it would be really great if you could somehow track them and see who they became.
[UNKNOWN]: Because I really don't know, I just remember
[UNKNOWN]: we played with the mosquitoes are gone the picnics fun again we played a show years ago with the the crow mags at that time what was the crow mags and got instinct did us a reunion show before the crow mags said and i think a lot of them came out for that show
[UNKNOWN]: They look very normal now all the grown up they're here.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know if the Fred Perry shirts fit It's well at this point.
[UNKNOWN]: So boots and braces one thing.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but they definitely I still would not want to mess with them.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that kind of impression.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I'm sure the muscle memory is there if they need to tap into it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I think so until me that one had gone on to become a special forces soldier and they were
[UNKNOWN]: I wouldn't be surprised of January six that it was was well represented.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's it's it's kind of tragic too with lefty because there was a someone I found online that was detailing how lefty passed away because she passed away recently like a couple years ago.
[UNKNOWN]: And the thing I read was one of the.
[UNKNOWN]: The person who was holding her hand when she passed away was a woman who she had previously like slashed with a razor blade at a show who had met her as adults sort of towards the end of lefty's life and become friends and was with her in the hospice when she passed.
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, really, like you're saying, it's like such a...
[UNKNOWN]: such a pleasant way to go through life that like there's only so many ways you can go with that.
[UNKNOWN]: Like you're going to live in that aggression and probably die in that aggression or hopefully find some sort of peace beforehand.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it really makes me wonder like what sort of child that they have that this is, you know, their
[UNKNOWN]: end up there.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, hopefully that's not what they need.
[UNKNOWN]: Hopefully they evolve into something better.
[UNKNOWN]: But, you know, it is whatever junk you are in your life where you look in the mirror and you're at skin it and you know, you're I just cannot, I cannot imagine what that feeling is like.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, but I think part of it is like there's a culture element to it too, right?
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, Jen trying to instill this pride and, you know, in things where it's really, I think kind of taking advantage of people's vulnerabilities, whether it's intended or not, but it's like you're creating this, you know, I think the army does the same thing, you know, any sort of like we're creating a force, just manipulating people's vulnerabilities to your advantage, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I think the, the, the, the family structure that you can park or kind of offers people.
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, the amount of people that are coming here from, not that I was like in a dire family situation, but I was in a like a weird family situation when I found pumpkin hardcore and like that's the great thing about it, but I like you're saying that could also be the terrible thing about it.
[UNKNOWN]: And I'm sure that what draws some people to military service is also looking for that structure and that sort of
[UNKNOWN]: Right, the thing that's lacking in your need or you want, but also, yeah, I think that I think the anything word that sort of says to like, misfits that, you know, hey, it's a we've got room for you, you know, and that can be a positive thing or I guess it can be manipulated in a way as well.
[UNKNOWN]: But I think that, yeah, the outside of the misfit, the other, um, and but that's, you know, honestly, when I moved here from Iran,
[UNKNOWN]: I definitely felt like another.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I think that's when I when I heard hardcore, I was like, oh, okay, like there's another there as well.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: The reason obviously I said that you're seven it was so important to Toronto is because we are my band and a bunch of bands are here part of the sort of wave of town of hardcore bands, which is the name of a zine.
[UNKNOWN]: We know way.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, which was
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, fat Steve Steve will see who's saying in the band R war was a huge kids for catch fan use the guy who turned All of us on to it and that is insane.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, town of hardcore is the name of is which was even the first to be like, yeah, I got off the kids for cash seven inch.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, man.
[UNKNOWN]: We were joking.
[UNKNOWN]: We were in our little rinky dinks separate was called Burke and we would joke like yeah, Burke town of hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: that's that's that's that's so amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: I got to find that scene.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I can see I can see copies.
[UNKNOWN]: There's a town of hardcore cops, seven-inch compilation that a bunch of us are on and and oh man that's so cool.
[UNKNOWN]: They did a book of them of all the issues and I wrote the intro to the book too, but that definitely the the legacy of kids for cash looms large and the T dot.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh man, that is something.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, gosh, you're not way to tell the other guys about that.
[UNKNOWN]: You guys are also on the incredible son of Quincy tape.
[UNKNOWN]: That's a great compilation.
[UNKNOWN]: I crazy good compilation.
[UNKNOWN]: What a weird mix of awesome bands.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: I love the cover art and that too.
[UNKNOWN]: The bright yellow with illustration.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: It was that just like through sending out tapes that that kind of happened like, like your type of tablespoon.
[UNKNOWN]: Those MRR man, that was the beauty of MRR.
[UNKNOWN]: Like we sent our seven to MRR, it got reviewed and then people started writing.
[UNKNOWN]: And the
[UNKNOWN]: But essentially a couple of different people wrote and were like, hey, we don't have a song for a compilation, and that was one of them.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like, okay, sounds good.
[UNKNOWN]: Is cancerous growth on there?
[UNKNOWN]: Cancerous growth, scared straight, which is blind wall to be Scott Redinsky, baseball future baseball star.
[UNKNOWN]: Activating ingredients?
[UNKNOWN]: We, the guy from scared straight is a baseball star?
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, Scott Redinsky, became a pitcher for California Angels for
[UNKNOWN]: Cleveland, and he became a pitching coach for a while as well, and wow.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: So crazy.
[UNKNOWN]: They get scared straight.
[UNKNOWN]: Brian Wallsby left the band, of course, and became Brian Wallsby, and was Brian Wallsby the whole time.
[UNKNOWN]: But the game 10 football, and then eventually Scott quit and did pulley, but and was also playing baseball the whole time.
[UNKNOWN]: So,
[UNKNOWN]: And also seven seconds are on it and our I guess my country mates in your friends sons ofish mal or on there as well.
[UNKNOWN]: Also anti-scene.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh right, a rare intersection of that.
[UNKNOWN]: Subculture as well from North Carolina and that's some culture records.
[UNKNOWN]: So good.
[UNKNOWN]: Is that a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is it a fart blossom or is
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's seven inches fucking amazing no one talks about that record ever so I'm glad we can talk about it But yes, that song barriers on that seven inches one of my favorite hardcore song.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, ever And yeah, far-ploss him is one of those labels that you go through it.
[UNKNOWN]: You're like damn a lot of music history on fart-ploss on records
[UNKNOWN]: for plus and enterprises, right?
[UNKNOWN]: For, sorry, exactly.
[UNKNOWN]: Correct.
[UNKNOWN]: Which is just some hilarious.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, they also did pissed happy children.
[UNKNOWN]: The pre-man is a bastard band.
[UNKNOWN]: Was on there.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I didn't do that.
[UNKNOWN]: Okay.
[UNKNOWN]: It's, that's what I think such a great thing about this era.
[UNKNOWN]: Like you're saying, there's like, as much as there's great music like this in DC, it seems like every city had this explosion of just DIY punk bands.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, and also I just like again, you know, you couldn't record like I think the kids for cash are first take just on my four track cassette that we made it, you know, it's on the fine sounded appropriate sound like we sounded, you know, so happy so is there there's a demo tape before the seven inch.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, yeah, I actually to be honest, I prefer that tape to the 7 inch because the recording and there's something kind of cool and murky about the recording that I actually think is, yeah, I like I'll send it to I'd love to hear it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: Did you guys make covers for it and sell it or is it just like, uh,
[UNKNOWN]: We did.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I used to, I used to basically do put it in my friend.
[UNKNOWN]: I'd like one of those boom boxes with a, you know, to take, to do the cater and, uh, so I used to do that and take them to that record sort of smash and they'd buy like five or 10 at a time.
[UNKNOWN]: Um, and I guess maybe I'll send it tomorrow.
[UNKNOWN]: I can't remember.
[UNKNOWN]: Um, yeah, that's all we had.
[UNKNOWN]: And then we finally did the seven inch.
[UNKNOWN]: And that was like, you know, we're so excited because we went in and recorded
[UNKNOWN]: What, you guys tore much or at all outside of kind of DC area?
[UNKNOWN]: No, we actually, we basically, most of the played shows in Northern Virginia, mostly community centers, friends houses, we played one show in Bethesda, the community center there, and I was like a bigger show with a government issue.
[UNKNOWN]: And, but yeah, not really, not, not, we didn't, again,
[UNKNOWN]: So how did kids for cash kind of end?
[UNKNOWN]: And then it's like right afterwards because a few years before Edcil puts at a record between the kids.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, well, basically, so kids for cash, we had, we were all in the same high school together.
[UNKNOWN]: Our drummer went to college, Dave played with us.
[UNKNOWN]: We got another drummer from a different high school, but then our bass player in Singapore they were a year older than me.
[UNKNOWN]: Then when they went off to college, that's when the band was done.
[UNKNOWN]: And then I started a new band with some friends
[UNKNOWN]: not to be confused with the inside out.
[UNKNOWN]: A third inside out, because there's inside out New York too.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, you know, it was probably 35 inside out.
[UNKNOWN]: But the guy Brian, who does that, um, that end on end podcast.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: He was the base player inside out.
[UNKNOWN]: And then our friend Ken played guitar.
[UNKNOWN]: and then our friend Mike Dugan played drums, and Mike went on to play with a bunch of people, including he played with Ken Chambers from moving targets for a while.
[UNKNOWN]: He now lives out in Portland.
[UNKNOWN]: But we had that ban for, it wasn't super long, maybe a year, tops, and then I started going to college at American University, and that's when Edsel first started, it was at 1989.
[UNKNOWN]: And then you don't have to call it, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And then, but it was probably like another year or two before we put out our first record.
[UNKNOWN]: Again, like, so much that we just didn't know what we were doing.
[UNKNOWN]: So we just took a while to kind of figure stuff out.
[UNKNOWN]: And actually, I remember that the first sevens we put out, I call up Ian.
[UNKNOWN]: There's a question that we want to be in discord, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: And I said, I was a Canadian, so we've been in awe.
[UNKNOWN]: And he was so great.
[UNKNOWN]: Now, his response, it's very positive, very encouraging.
[UNKNOWN]: But essentially, it was like,
[UNKNOWN]: You should, you guys should do something yourself first.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and, you know, part of me, of course, felt completely rejected, but on the other hand, I was like, you know, he's right, but we haven't, we haven't done anything, let me should do it.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was such an instructive thing for us because, you know, I put up the kids for cash seven years, but that was like, whatever, lifetime previous.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, like, just to figure out again, how you put it a seven and so, okay, you get a master and how you do the artwork, trying to distribute it all that stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, learn to time, learn to time from doing that.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: The kids were catch up and if you had pretty good distribution with it, like, I know there were copies floating around up here.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, we, I remember, I don't know, discord help with distribution, but yeah, I found somebody also, remember at that time, you couldn't just press up like 200 copies that you had to press, I think.
[UNKNOWN]: There's like a thousand or something.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it was a lot of records.
[UNKNOWN]: Like when they showed up in my mom's house, I was like, whoa, that's a lot of boxes of records.
[UNKNOWN]: And so in any time I went somewhere, you know, like my mom and I would go look at colleges or whatever, I would take a stack of seven inches and we go to the record store to the cage.
[UNKNOWN]: You guys can sign five kids for cash records.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, so I would try to get them around that way.
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, it got around okay actually on part of it too is because it got reviewed in MRR people are writing and ordering directly so I'm a you know shipping shipping by myself Something to this day I still have a really hate doing shipping out records But yeah, but then so there's a couple years before Edcel and then a couple years between when Edcel started and we actually started to put out
[UNKNOWN]: records, but then when we started touring, that was when we finally started to understand how kind of things were to, you know, we met up with do the band pitch blend.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, absolutely.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, that's how we sort of, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: So we, we toured a bunch of pitch blend.
[UNKNOWN]: And then at the time Suzanne was booking them, helped was helping us out.
[UNKNOWN]: And then we met this guy, Joel and Chicago, who was booking Chavez and Silkworm.
[UNKNOWN]: And so then he started booking us.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we got to go.
[UNKNOWN]: We did a bunch of tours of Silkworm.
[UNKNOWN]: And that really was, I mean, at that point, I would say between 93 to 95,
[UNKNOWN]: we were touring a lot.
[UNKNOWN]: It was great because we had never, we had never been in a situation when we could actually be that active as a, as a, as a began.
[UNKNOWN]: So that was very exciting, super fun.
[UNKNOWN]: So going back to inside out DC.
[UNKNOWN]: What did inside out DC sound like?
[UNKNOWN]: It was basically, I would say, you know, the right to spring 7 inch?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: That was probably the inspiration was there.
[UNKNOWN]: So it was sort of jangly e-mo.
[UNKNOWN]: Was it harsh, Volk?
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, or a canvas, the singer, and his voice was kind of a little bit more chirpy.
[UNKNOWN]: He had kind of a higher pitch voice.
[UNKNOWN]: But I remember we used to cover fortunate sun, which was pretty fun.
[UNKNOWN]: But since he ever saw him.
[UNKNOWN]: So who would you guys be playing with in Inside Out when you were playing shows?
[UNKNOWN]: Who's it?
[UNKNOWN]: We actually did not play very many shows.
[UNKNOWN]: We played one show at this Grange Hall.
[UNKNOWN]: I think it was a shutter to think.
[UNKNOWN]: I think Dean Grange was supposed to play there.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think they were playing.
[UNKNOWN]: There was another band from that area called Fourth Coming, played with them a couple times.
[UNKNOWN]: from us, I can't play that show or not.
[UNKNOWN]: Anyway, yeah, but we honestly, we more, we've been more time in my parents' basement, just practicing and writing some songs just hanging out.
[UNKNOWN]: That's awesome.
[UNKNOWN]: So are there recordings?
[UNKNOWN]: I have a four track cassette recording somewhere.
[UNKNOWN]: Just throw it up on Spotify and steal some
[UNKNOWN]: Revelation records how much money they've made off Connecticut slipknot being accidentally sold to kids that thought they were buying Midwestern.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: It's got to be just after Gorilla biscuits and inside out is one of the biggest selling things on the label because of that.
[UNKNOWN]: I bet.
[UNKNOWN]: You're right.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: That's so funny.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and it was a short live band, but it was fun.
[UNKNOWN]: And again,
[UNKNOWN]: Well, much like fart blossom, another record label I'm obsessed with is grass records where edcil winds up for a time.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes.
[UNKNOWN]: How did that whole relationship with them come about?
[UNKNOWN]: Well, Camille who ran the label was awesome, such a cool person super into just like, she listened to tons of music and had really interesting taste.
[UNKNOWN]: So when we were on grass, the rens were on grass, Brainiac was on grass 15, 15, the mouse trap.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, there was just so many bands on grass.
[UNKNOWN]: It was really,
[UNKNOWN]: It was really, really fun, honestly, because we would play with a bunch of those bands.
[UNKNOWN]: And I see it's been nectarine, which the guy Joel who looked at so they were on grass.
[UNKNOWN]: And in that that chairman of the board comp that does on grass, it's a great, that's a great compilation.
[UNKNOWN]: The job box coverage of soundtrack covers awesome.
[UNKNOWN]: The job should be record,
[UNKNOWN]: Commander Venus, is that what I'm thinking of the first, the first, the coronavirus, yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
[UNKNOWN]: I thought it was going to go to the Maze Commander Venus, I believe.
[UNKNOWN]: Commander, I'll fix it in the intro.
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, she just, she had really, really cool bands and I don't remember how we met her, but she was very, very upfront, like I want, I want you guys on the label and so it's not worth getting into, but we had a weird thing with the label that put out our first record, which was Merkin, which was a Baltimore-based label, we had signed a contract that was
[UNKNOWN]: We didn't have a lawyer.
[UNKNOWN]: We thought we didn't know how the whole thing worked.
[UNKNOWN]: And so the guy who ran the label basically walked through a contract with us and made it seem like it was all kosher.
[UNKNOWN]: We signed it later to be told by a lawyer that it was worse than any like 1930s blues.
[UNKNOWN]: But so we wanted to leave we couldn't leave and so Camille had offered us a record deal and we basically took the money from Camille and gave it to Merkin to get out of our contract.
[UNKNOWN]: But then we did the two records for grass and then we did one record for relativity which was part of the Sony world.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, your murk in situation sounds very much like our, uh, I guess former shared label situation with J tree.
[UNKNOWN]: J tree.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, we got the J tree treatment, it's, you know, it's funny because it's, uh,
[UNKNOWN]: It's a weird thing, because you know, it's like sometimes you feel like you have so many shared interests with people and then you introduce finances into it and it gets murky fast.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like my my my friend told me about this term that his friend invented, which is this term promoter core.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's the idea that like, you know, concert promoters have the broadest tastes ever in a certain type because they have to then because they're able to shift, you know, and record label people bands are seemingly the only ones that get stuck in time, where you can't pivot in a band like you start a new band or something like that, but it's not the same as where the business side of this industry is able to adapt in a way that the creative side can't really do it.
[UNKNOWN]: It's true.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you sort of get pigeonholed as being a certain thing.
[UNKNOWN]: It's funny my wife and I joke about this in terms of siblings and a family, you know, like very early.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I'm an only child.
[UNKNOWN]: She's one of three, but we talk about the fact that like each sibling kind of gets pegged as being a certain way.
[UNKNOWN]: And then your entire life, you're that, you know, it's a matter of if you've changed or not, you know, you're still the one that does X or Y, you know,
[UNKNOWN]: I've also found like, because I've got three kids, now we have four kids living here because we had another kid move in with us.
[UNKNOWN]: So we've got four kids here, but like there's, but my three kids that I've kind of raised and I see this with my friends, third children are always the chillest.
[UNKNOWN]: first children always have the most anxiety.
[UNKNOWN]: Second ones are always dealing with the fact that they're caught in the middle.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's like as much as I tried to prevent that from happening with my own kids, I'm like, oh, of course, like I'm a first time parent, so I'm going to be terrible with raising my first kid and an anxious wreck.
[UNKNOWN]: You're just so worried about every 100% right?
[UNKNOWN]: And then now with the third kid, it's just like, yeah, whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: You're gonna be good.
[UNKNOWN]: And that's why it's like all my friends with third children because they're always the most chill people It's my wife is the third.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, they're always the chillest right.
[UNKNOWN]: I see this is the first child.
[UNKNOWN]: So I I know what I'm doing.
[UNKNOWN]: I just wrecked my own that It's weird how it goes, but yeah, I'm I guess like going back to grass like it feels like
[UNKNOWN]: She obviously has an incredible ear like these bands that she signed toties are on there too.
[UNKNOWN]: There's a bunch of great bands, but it just seems like it never really Connected or like just I don't know there was some issues with the label.
[UNKNOWN]: It seems and then eventually a pivot So it becomes like FNF since this label
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, because there was a guy who owned, I think it was called CD Direct.
[UNKNOWN]: I think it was the name of the company, and, you know, this is obviously peak of the CD era, because actually that that's enough never came out on vinyl, our son, which is obviously a vinyl, but the CD, those albums, no vinyl release.
[UNKNOWN]: Across was weird about that, too, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like there's very little vinyl in the vinyl that's very rare.
[UNKNOWN]: It's hard to find.
[UNKNOWN]: And so the time, mainly things were just coming out on CD.
[UNKNOWN]: And so the guy who on CD presents had made a mint distributing CDs.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think I don't know if he was a vanity project or who I decided he wanted to label.
[UNKNOWN]: And he essentially bought grass and made it whatever he changed the name to.
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't follow that.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But at that point, actually, that's it's the same by Joel that I mentioned in bookdusts.
[UNKNOWN]: who was in the nectarine, he was hired as an a and our guy, and he was handed what's the band?
[UNKNOWN]: It's the terrible terrible band.
[UNKNOWN]: On the live?
[UNKNOWN]: Oh life, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Is either live or if it's not live, it's like it's one of those like
[UNKNOWN]: 90s, grunty, radio bands, you know, uh, it's not what's, yeah, whatever that band is, a camera, collective soul.
[UNKNOWN]: It's, it's one of those, it's like, you know, whatever, somewhere between Latin collective soul, this band exists and they're massive, um, even basically handed, they're like, you're, you have to deal with this band, and they became huge.
[UNKNOWN]: And so then, which was great for Joel, you know, uh, and graved to the link.
[UNKNOWN]: But I think at that point, I don't know if Camille was gone or not, but yeah, they had a totally different, you know, they were much more commercially oriented when it was Camille.
[UNKNOWN]: So it was part of Dutch East and so I'm going to go into their warehouse out in Long Island and homestead.
[UNKNOWN]: you know, was there too.
[UNKNOWN]: So it was basically homestead and grass in this giant warehouse.
[UNKNOWN]: And we always love the homestead bands, like those homestead compilations for us when the holy grail, like, you know, the whaling ultimate, that that compilation was for us just like the most amazing, you know, like dinosaur junior, Sonic Youth, live skull,
[UNKNOWN]: Squirrel Bay, you know, it was just like all the greatest music of that time period was on this one record and so we're like, oh me and we're on grass and we liked our friends bands were also on grass were like, if one could be unhosted, you know, but I don't know what to deal with with grass, it didn't, it couldn't gain traction for every reason, maybe it was the logo, I think it's also Dutch East, like that's towards the end of Dutch East, right?
[UNKNOWN]: It brought down, it took down a lot of stuff when it crashed to the ground.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And I, because I couldn't, I would see the ads for these records in CMJ or Spin Magazine, but you couldn't find them.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, at least I couldn't find them at my big chain record store that I was going to.
[UNKNOWN]: So that's what I guess I was going to need records for this point.
[UNKNOWN]: And like, maybe it's because we're in Canada, but the didn't seem like the distribution was at least getting up here for a long time.
[UNKNOWN]: Interesting.
[UNKNOWN]: They, in the US, they did a pretty good job, because when we were on tour, we definitely were finding our records were in CD, is were in stores, and there were posters up, and stuff like that.
[UNKNOWN]: So we were lucky in that regard.
[UNKNOWN]: Part of it too was we were just too returing a lot.
[UNKNOWN]: So maybe there was an easier cell, it was like, you know, it's bands on tour, you know, take five copies or whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But yeah, I don't know.
[UNKNOWN]: But they were also putting out a lot of records at that time.
[UNKNOWN]: So, you know, maybe, maybe it was just that the expenses were more than the income, I don't really know.
[UNKNOWN]: But, you know, I will say that the number of good bands, while maybe not, you know, proportionally not appropriate for making money doing a label, the number of good bands were kind of shocking.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, and I feel like it's all over the place in different scenes and like we're touching on with like Connor Obers like there's people that would go on and have other careers like and clearly we're great songwriters on that stuff there's bands like the rents who have become massively collectible and people seem to have a new appreciation for them like it feels like a lot of it was wrong time maybe for some stuff for
[UNKNOWN]: It's, and it's also, I feel like, as much as there's this sort of like alternative boom that happens, the major labels like you're saying with like live collective soul, whatever it sounds like are are
[UNKNOWN]: consolidating this stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's like very much becoming like integrated into the machine in real time.
[UNKNOWN]: So by the time like 93 94, it's like an alternative music sucked like so quickly it sucked in the mainstream.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, it became.
[UNKNOWN]: seemingly the sort of the industrial complex of rock and roll, you know, where the radio stations driving these big alternative festivals and, you know, it just sort of becomes like,
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know, just thought or for just mainstream culture, which so many of those bands like that wasn't our background, you know, and I will say, you know, there's a feeling of excitement.
[UNKNOWN]: Sometimes when you participate in these things that you recognize is being part of a world that's not yours that you don't ordinarily participate in, but at the end of the day for me, that's not really what it's about, you know, so it's.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: The movement of excitement is there.
[UNKNOWN]: The satisfaction is not there.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And like to get to like really succeed in the music industry, like on another level like.
[UNKNOWN]: Um, Chris from the Foodfighters on the podcast and I was like, do you think no use for a name could have done what the food fighters did?
[UNKNOWN]: Like, obviously, like, economy of scale considering he's like, no fucking way.
[UNKNOWN]: We don't have, we never had the work ethic that the Foodfighters have.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, and there's also like a constitution, stomach component because I think a lot of us coming out of a pumpkin hardcore don't have the stomach to do the bullshit that you kind of need to do to get famous.
[UNKNOWN]: winds up holding bands back a little bit and I say this like we were called fucked up so we didn't really have to make a lot of these really hard decisions but even when we did it was like oh that's so cool like that's so corny we can't do that like
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, it's also, I just remember like when when Edsel finally into the record on Relativity, we had to fight all these really just dumb fights with the label, you know what I mean?
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, I remember when the record was coming out, we're like, hey, can you just make, make the price low?
[UNKNOWN]: Don't put a sticker that says special price, just make the price low.
[UNKNOWN]: it'll be recognized as being a low price when they see the price.
[UNKNOWN]: And when you put the sticker on the thing, please don't say featuring this song or that song.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not featuring any songs, it's just an album.
[UNKNOWN]: Sure enough, the record comes back and it's like, you know, special low praise, featuring, I'm like, oh,
[UNKNOWN]: We asked you, you know, and then they're like, well, we could send them back to the warehouse and take all the stickers off, your record will come out a month later.
[UNKNOWN]: Like fine, just put them out there.
[UNKNOWN]: And again, at the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter, but it's just you realize it's not your world.
[UNKNOWN]: You're not living in your world.
[UNKNOWN]: It's their world.
[UNKNOWN]: And you're just like tiptoeing through it, hoping, you know,
[UNKNOWN]: And it's, yeah, it's a weird team.
[UNKNOWN]: It's a lot of luck, like you're saying too, like getting like the right person that understands your band and like can see what you see in it.
[UNKNOWN]: Like it just feels like right place, right time,
[UNKNOWN]: Like how we don't have the reference points, you know, they don't have any of the reference points.
[UNKNOWN]: I remember some dude came to the meeting with a baseball bat.
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, I'm looking to hear it hit, you know, I was like, this is gross.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I'm like, I'm like, this is so late.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, who is this joker?
[UNKNOWN]: You know,
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like by the time you guys signed to relativity, we're like internally, was it still like cohesive, it's like the fourth record by that point, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like are you, as you said.
[UNKNOWN]: Actually, no, it actually, it was, we for us we thought, oh, this is the chance to do.
[UNKNOWN]: To do with always done, but to basically have a little bit more resources to be able to to do.
[UNKNOWN]: To do in a way where you didn't have to live in your parent's basement, you know, and so what we did, we didn't get a ton of money, but Jeff or base player was really smart about this, he's like, okay, let's figure out a recording budget and then let's figure out the rest of the money that where we could pay ourselves a monthly salary, so we can actually be on tour.
[UNKNOWN]: and cover our rent or save that money.
[UNKNOWN]: So we'd come back from tour.
[UNKNOWN]: We're not totally living on scratch, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And so that actually worked out really great.
[UNKNOWN]: And a bunch of our friends, you know, job box, shared a thing and stuff, they made these amazing records.
[UNKNOWN]: Those made their major label records.
[UNKNOWN]: I think really, really excellent records.
[UNKNOWN]: But they basically took them by the head and made like more robust versions of records they had kind of already made and we thought, well, we don't want to do that.
[UNKNOWN]: So we actually we went to Liverpool and recorded with people who have worked on like my book is on the time.
[UNKNOWN]: Loveless and worked on worth, you know, spiritualized and people that you thought would be interesting to work with and wouldn't would be sort of out of our wheelhouse a little bit.
[UNKNOWN]: give us a more interesting experience because at the end of the day we also do this in Oboots like we've realized this is all experiential stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, so it's it's your life that you got, you know, and like I'm the same way that I don't want to work for corporate job, I don't want to be a band to serve the man, you know, because I've got to experience it.
[UNKNOWN]: It's my day, you know, and so we're like, all right, let's go to Liverpool.
[UNKNOWN]: We had an amazing time and it was truly look at one of the greatest recording experiences that I've had.
[UNKNOWN]: It's been five weeks in the city like Liverpool and to work with these really interesting people and to really just focus on your music and think about where it is you're trying to do.
[UNKNOWN]: And then also to have enough money where you come home and you're like, all right, my reds covered, so I'm good, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Were you guys playing shows when you were over there, record or is it just recording?
[UNKNOWN]: play one show at the very end of it that we played one show.
[UNKNOWN]: That was one thing, that's a little never cracked the code for going to the UK and going to Europe.
[UNKNOWN]: It wasn't until O'Bets that we started going over.
[UNKNOWN]: And I, I mean, we're glad this Tuesday was going to work.
[UNKNOWN]: But I wish that Edcil had gotten a chance to go over and play in the UK and to New York because I realized when O'Bets was like, ah, this is so much fun.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, it's like it's it's interesting though because it like it's so normalized come the late 90s to go there, but like prior to that it feels like it was there's certain bands like certain capital H hardcore bands that would be able to go over there metal bands, but it wasn't just necessarily as open as it would be.
[UNKNOWN]: No, I mean, our friends who are in DC bands on Discord, they were able to do it because they had a connection with DeConcurrent in Netherlands.
[UNKNOWN]: And so a lot of those band, like SoulSide, made one over.
[UNKNOWN]: They went to Eastern Europe before the wall came down.
[UNKNOWN]: So they were going over there from like 1989 and stuff because it's pretty amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: And the screen was going over too because they used to stay at my time, so.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, really?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's funny.
[UNKNOWN]: It's funny because he's like a pro wrestler.
[UNKNOWN]: And he's also like a big time hardcore kid.
[UNKNOWN]: And when I did the show with the guys, I was like, you know, Robbie Brooks, I and they were like,
[UNKNOWN]: That's amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Those bands were able to go over, because they had that connection with Discord, DeConcurrent, but we did not.
[UNKNOWN]: So Edson never made it over there.
[UNKNOWN]: But Bob had still, and I was so glad about that, because it opened up the whole another world for me, both on a musical level, and also just a meeting people, and I've continued to do that with the band that I'm in now, and we go to Europe once a year, at least, and it's just, it's amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: Welcome back.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for having me back.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I felt like I had a lot more to talk to about, and I felt like rather than rushing the end of the last one, given a break, you had a chance to step away from the punishment, and so you came back.
[UNKNOWN]: I was shocked at how much we talked about, and yet we don't like gotten to like 1986 or something.
[UNKNOWN]: It moves slow.
[UNKNOWN]: There's a podcast.
[UNKNOWN]: I'll jump ahead now because I think we could probably wind up doing a part two down the line.
[UNKNOWN]: No, it was like 93 at least.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, we'll move into a bit of a more rapid pace, but I guess I guess I kind of wanted to know when you first came in contact with all the people in San Diego
[UNKNOWN]: uh you know it's funny when uh when i was an edcil we would play out there and we were sort of in a circle adjacent to the one that i ended up becoming friends with but we didn't first meet Rick and John and those guys until until i was in obits with Rick really um before that when edcil was out there we would play with like a miniature and bands like that and so and you know
[UNKNOWN]: those people all knew each other, but we weren't aware of who knew who, but we always liked it out there, we really love playing out there and love some of those bands, but just didn't make actually that connection, like I didn't meet Rick until years later.
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, it's so fascinating in San Diego, how many different kind of scenes and like you're saying they're all interconnected, but there's all these sort of like separate scenes going on at the exact same time.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, yes, there's a couple people who kind of you know work like they're kind of the venn diagram of you know like like Rob Crow or somebody like that I feel like he has a foot in so many different things and I'm actually I think it's a play with thingy or have you vegetable one of those bands of his and again I didn't know that he was good friends with Rick and John you know just I hadn't made those connections yet so but yeah it is amazing like
[UNKNOWN]: And DC has a similar thing though, you know, where there were so many bands that happening simultaneously, that maybe musically you don't think of as being locked up with one another, but the people were all are the same, you know, social group.
[UNKNOWN]: I had this conversation yesterday with two people that it's kind of the same
[UNKNOWN]: same like weird thing happens over time where these like little minor differences between scenes become invisible to people as you get further away from it and
[UNKNOWN]: It feels like big divisions when you're in it at the time.
[UNKNOWN]: Like sometimes it's small divisions, but like as people step further and further away, it's like, oh no, no, it's all the same thing.
[UNKNOWN]: All this sort of like my newshut that separates everything, just doesn't seem to matter.
[UNKNOWN]: And all these, it feels like we're on an island and as the water level keeps rising as we get older, like we keep getting force closer and closer together.
[UNKNOWN]: And these people that you never thought you'd wind up in bands with or just didn't know about you wind up becoming really tight friends
[UNKNOWN]: Absolutely, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And I also, I think there's a deliment to older you get sort of the more of the life or factor comes into play.
[UNKNOWN]: So, you know, a lot of people, their other parts of their lives become more of the focal point.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, the music part and those things start to taper off.
[UNKNOWN]: But for those of us who can't seem to get away from it, you know, we're there, you know, looking for the longest draw to breathe while the water rises.
[UNKNOWN]: I also feel like, oh, um, in San Diego is another person like you're talking about like, well, those great joiners of all these different scenes.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, yes, for sure.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: It's also funny, like, I didn't realize that people I knew in DC knew other people in San Diego,
[UNKNOWN]: You know, again, there were all these other various crossovers, so for example, like, you know, I played a band with James Canty and so he would know a different couple of people in San Diego that I wouldn't know until later, but I wouldn't have known then at the time that he knew those, you know, it's just, but also at the time if you're into touring band, you're busy and so you're not necessarily sitting around chitchatting about like who you're hanging out with or whatever, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And also, media was at a premium back then and even like, scenes and things like that.
[UNKNOWN]: So you might not even hear about bands that could be happening, even in your own hometown at the same time, like it's amazing how many times people come on this show being like,
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I had no idea there was a sort of parallel punk scene happening at the same time, because it just didn't cross over to where we were.
[UNKNOWN]: Taps over.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, no, and I think scenes were so crucial in terms of having that kind of local localization.
[UNKNOWN]: and getting to know about, you know, I mean, obviously they were the scene reports in MRR or whatever, but to actually have a local fanzine.
[UNKNOWN]: In fact, I remember Savak, the band that I plan now, we did a couple shows with Mike Watt in Europe and he did a Q&A thing and people were asking him,
[UNKNOWN]: You know, in the early days of the minute man like how did you guys know where to play or what band to play with and he was like, it was all zines, you know, you just you'd get the local zine and that kind of like tip you off like, you know, who you should try to call and set up a show with and I was like, man, that's still.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, obviously we have the internet now, but.
[UNKNOWN]: well into the deep into the 90s, it was still zines, you know, I mean, I'm sure it's still as for some people, but you know, in terms of the music culture that I was participating in at the time, it was like deep into the 90s where flip side was still growing concern, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I feel like Max and Rock and Roll.
[UNKNOWN]: is weirdly like this great unifier, but also this thing that if Max Rock and Old didn't like your band or if you didn't like Max Rock and Roll and choose not to engage with Max Rock and Roll, you kind of were left out of a large part of the punk conversation at the given time because it was so red, especially here nationally, like we came
[UNKNOWN]: the uh I would actually love to know what their circulation was because thinking about it now I mean it really is kind of nuts how deep you know the veins of MRR went all around the world.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah and I think it's one of those like I remember when vice was popping off they would always brag about the fact that like they had a circulation of you know however many hundreds of thousands at that point but each of those issues were going to be read by
[UNKNOWN]: five or six other people.
[UNKNOWN]: And so there was like this massive sort of greater circulation.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think Max and Rock and Roll, like every issue was read by like 15 to 20 people.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I kept, I mean, I don't have them anymore.
[UNKNOWN]: But for years, I kept them.
[UNKNOWN]: I had just stacks of them, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: I will.
[UNKNOWN]: Go on, sir.
[UNKNOWN]: No, go on, so I need to be cut off.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I was just going to say, and actually have a friend now, who's in Leon France, and he's going back and he's trying to collect all the flip sides, and I think he's close if he hasn't gotten yet.
[UNKNOWN]: But it's like, you know, and he, because his in France, he's found some of the U.S.
[UNKNOWN]: He's had sent to me, so the next time I see him, I deliver them, and so you know, I get to flip through him.
[UNKNOWN]: And man, it's, it's, it remained a pretty great fancy, you know, and covered so much stuff was pretty, pretty impressive.
[UNKNOWN]: It's, and I maybe it was just my age, but I got the tail end of flip side and Max Rock and Roll, I think, kept going strong for a few more years after.
[UNKNOWN]: I always felt flip side, like I was looking at someone else's club, a little bit.
[UNKNOWN]: Whereas with Max Rock and Roll, it really felt like, oh, any idiot can just get their band interview in here.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, my friends were getting interviewed for Max Rock and Roll.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I actually, for me, was a really big deal when the kids were cash sevens got reviewed and MRR.
[UNKNOWN]: That was just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, like, you're part of the same thing that you're reading all of a sudden, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: It made my, it made fucked up.
[UNKNOWN]: Like our Max and Rock and Roll review was from the demo to the first seven inch.
[UNKNOWN]: I think we're really what established our band and even legitimized it to me a little bit.
[UNKNOWN]: That's so, yeah, it's cool.
[UNKNOWN]: Like you're saying, it was like, it's such a key review.
[UNKNOWN]: it was it was like the pitch for review of its era.
[UNKNOWN]: Totally totally yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And then also I remember I mean after we got that review different like you meant last time we were on we talked about a couple of these compilations.
[UNKNOWN]: I got in cancer's growth was one and we talked about and those all came from basically being getting a good review in MR because you know you had our address and so then people contacted and it's it is amazing what what came of those and you know
[UNKNOWN]: It's also just that, you know, when you're 15, it's really exciting to see yourself all of a sudden in the mix with stuff that, you know, has always just been outside of you and all of a sudden you're a participant and that's a really pretty, pretty fun thing.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, yeah, definitely.
[UNKNOWN]: And like to have these writers that were influencers, like the columnists, right?
[UNKNOWN]: And like to get like a certain columnist to write about your band.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm recognized by this person who I've read every month and I love and I trust their tastes like tastes like these people.
[UNKNOWN]: Absolutely personalities, you know, like Tim Yoyan and like a personality, like I don't know if his Michael or McCell board, whatever, like that guy super personality, you know, yeah, I really like that.
[UNKNOWN]: It was a really, um, I don't know, it felt made of basically really vibrant and exciting, you know, like these are real people with like strong opinions, you know,
[UNKNOWN]: Did you ever meet Tim when you were out?
[UNKNOWN]: Services gone?
[UNKNOWN]: I did once.
[UNKNOWN]: I did when they were, I can't remember when we were like in a sort of a townhouse in San Francisco and I visited.
[UNKNOWN]: But they had already gotten to, like it was a pretty slick operation at that point.
[UNKNOWN]: And I met him once there and I tried to, you know, he was your Ronnie and so I tried to be all like, hey, you know, but he was busy.
[UNKNOWN]: So I was like, all right, well.
[UNKNOWN]: figure because even though like you're saying, it's a pretty slick operation, it's got this crazy circulation.
[UNKNOWN]: There must be money coming through and the temptation at that point would be, we'll let, let's,
[UNKNOWN]: take this to the next level.
[UNKNOWN]: Let's see what we can do with this thing.
[UNKNOWN]: Let's make some real money.
[UNKNOWN]: But yet he still did this as a second job and worked in sane hours on top of a full-time job as he did.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, he was a custodian.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, wow.
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.
[UNKNOWN]: And so that's the problem that MRR face when he passed away.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, how do you manage this operation that any other place would be,
[UNKNOWN]: as a.
[UNKNOWN]: He was also looking at an actual adult too.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: He wasn't like a kid.
[UNKNOWN]: His parents being similar to something.
[UNKNOWN]: No, it took a vow of poverty to kind of be the editor of that thing and agree that you do this in saying workload on top of another job.
[UNKNOWN]: But I wasn't impressed because I remember going there and like,
[UNKNOWN]: Kimmer who was if it was Jason Trager or something like that, but you know, he showed me their setup and they had like proper computers with like I think he had two monitors now they're going like, you know, it was like pro, you know, I was like man, this is so cool, you know, like you took it really seriously, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's still like they had that house for so long.
[UNKNOWN]: Like I went there after he passed away, but you could feel his presence still looms so large over that planet.
[UNKNOWN]: They had a radio station in there.
[UNKNOWN]: They had a little website, it's still going in some capacity, but it's still, I get their emails for there were like what they're playing on the radio, which I always like to see.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's always, it's still interesting, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: Like I always recognize a couple things, I'm curious about the stuff I don't recognize.
[UNKNOWN]: So it's cool, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: And it's still a discovery place for people and still something to kind of radiate out this sort of stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, like it's such a, I'm fascinated by these people.
[UNKNOWN]: Like you said, these lifers that and I think I feel like at this point in my life, I think I am a lifer in in music and connected this thing, but where you just kind of do this, be not because
[UNKNOWN]: there's a reason to do it in the traditional sense of like this helps my career or this advances me socially or you just do it because you got to do it.
[UNKNOWN]: Like this podcast, like this it takes so much work for very little reward.
[UNKNOWN]: But the sponsorship on you're getting.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like the ads and it's like man, I really do feel like maybe it was the same thing with Max Rocker roll.
[UNKNOWN]: I just underestimated how little revenue was generated by these ads each month.
[UNKNOWN]: Right, and the work that goes into it is the same.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like your your time is still your time.
[UNKNOWN]: And if you care about it, what you always do, you're putting in a lot of time because you want it to be good.
[UNKNOWN]: And, you know, that's the thing, it kind of has to be its own reward.
[UNKNOWN]: Otherwise, that the exterior rewards are just not there.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's that's the thing about punk that makes it so awesome is that there is this sort of like ingrained humbleness, like who the fuck am I to expect something out of this thing other than the reward of just getting to do it because
[UNKNOWN]: You know, Tim, Tim, you know, and it worked as a jane or do in max rock and roll, like there's, there's bands that are some of the greatest bands ever that didn't even get records out, like the screamers, the never even had a record and to be lucky enough to be part of this thing and get to contribute to this thing.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like that's the blessing of being involved in it.
[UNKNOWN]: Like we don't, that's the humbleness that you kind of have to accept.
[UNKNOWN]: Like you shouldn't expect to be.
[UNKNOWN]: Blink 182 because you'd have to be Blink 182.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm sure that comes with its detriment.
[UNKNOWN]: Exactly.
[UNKNOWN]: I like as much as I would want some of the trappings of being Blink 182.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know if I'd want the burden of being Blink 182.
[UNKNOWN]: I really sincerely cannot imagine what that would be like.
[UNKNOWN]: It's just to wake up every day and you look in the mirror and they're like, I'm that guy, I'm the guy, I'm the guy, I'm the guy, I'm the guy.
[UNKNOWN]: But you know, I think one of the things that I really like and one of the reasons that I still feel sort of compelled to participate is just the social element of the connecting people and feeling connected to other people.
[UNKNOWN]: And that to me is always incredibly rewarding, you know, I mean, I just came back from Australia and saw some people there that, you know, I knew here from the States and so it was fun to see them and, you know, so far like halfway across the world.
[UNKNOWN]: And it sort of reinforces these friendships and these sort of sense of like, yeah, and we have something in common, we share this thing together.
[UNKNOWN]: And then similarly, I have a friend who's going over in a couple weeks and,
[UNKNOWN]: He was asking, like, oh, do you know anybody in Sydney?
[UNKNOWN]: And I was able to put him in contact with some friends there?
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's just that constant, you know, able to sort of like thread the needle and keep this, you know, breathe life into it for, I don't know, for myself.
[UNKNOWN]: I guess really, it's breathing life and it may is what it's doing.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, yeah, there's no, I'm, I'm so lucky I found this because it just opened up my world so much.
[UNKNOWN]: And my mom was a flight attendant and my stepfather was a pilot.
[UNKNOWN]: you don't even as a tourist like you could have all the money in the world and you could get to travel to all the places in the world but you wouldn't get a like sort of the the gift of understanding places in the same way I think we do as punk rock people that get to know people in other parts of the world and get to have these you're saying deep relationships I've got friends
[UNKNOWN]: everywhere and I could probably have friends any place I went if I could find who the punk kids were there because we do have this sort of common thing it's like outside of maybe religion which yeah obviously missionary religion carries a lot of problems outside of itself too so like you know like a less problematic version of this sort of like missionary religion sort of world where we can can go all over the world and kind of like meet people
[UNKNOWN]: culture in a way that you wouldn't have it.
[UNKNOWN]: And in the same way, people would come here and they would have the same sort of experience because there is that free interchange.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I imagine like, all at this courthouse, there must be, I don't know, people every day coming to take that for their own approach.
[UNKNOWN]: I kind of think of, I just have to move that house to Vegas and just set it up as a distraction.
[UNKNOWN]: Next to CBC.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But they'll be like, what a long hallway with all that, you know, like the whiskey CDs is going out, you know, but you know, it is a funny thing where I do think that like, you know, this the fact that it can connect people from around the world and you have these, even if they're not shared experiences, like we didn't go to the same shows, but we went to the similar shows and we sort of know the aesthetic and the kind of the
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know, the vocabulary of it all, and it's just sort of like a shared language.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think that's such an amazing thing about it.
[UNKNOWN]: But I will say skateboarding is another one that I think does that.
[UNKNOWN]: And when my son was younger, he no longer is in skating, but he was younger.
[UNKNOWN]: We took a couple trips and thanks to Instagram and skateboarding culture, like we were in Athens, Greece, and he found where the spot was and met some kids there.
[UNKNOWN]: And they were like, oh man, you're from New York, and he's like, you guys are in Athens, you know,
[UNKNOWN]: and they've followed each other on Instagram for a while and would send messages and I was like, you know, this actually kind of reminds me of the same thing with a word hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's a like, you have that thing where you're like, hey, we have this shared curiosity about this thing and it makes you open too.
[UNKNOWN]: I think it's just a really nice thing.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I mean, the world at large may seem sort of grim, but you have this little, you know, this this whole that you can see it through, this lens that makes it seem a little
[UNKNOWN]: sunny or a little, a little more connected.
[UNKNOWN]: You're right, like I think we're feeding as well.
[UNKNOWN]: Like I think all these subcultures kind of have now gained this sort of interconnectedness.
[UNKNOWN]: But I think if someone had shown up at the banks in New York in the 90s, maybe not with one of had the same sort of reception, so I feel like, but I feel punk and hardcore like we're talking about had this sort of interconnectedness even back then, like, preternet, we had this sort of like built in.
[UNKNOWN]: And I guess not every aspect of punk culture.
[UNKNOWN]: embraced the international aspects of it as much as parts of our core, but it was something that I find so interesting like how things connect, like how you're connected through working with Arturo Lindsay.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh yeah, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Which I, someone I've always been fascinated of with because of their, you know, the work with DNA and his work with, like,
[UNKNOWN]: various other projects over the years, but how do that come about because you you engineered the record he produced his own record, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, well, so I worked on two records with Artau, and it honestly came about, well, I guess you could make the connection back through Rick.
[UNKNOWN]: So Rick was working in a place called Funny Garbage, which was an animation house.
[UNKNOWN]: And so they were doing these web cartoons.
[UNKNOWN]: It was like still dial up modem style.
[UNKNOWN]: So the deal was you had to make these cartoons really as fun as possible, but they had to be pretty low res.
[UNKNOWN]: But it still had to work.
[UNKNOWN]: And they needed somebody to do soundtrack for the cartoons.
[UNKNOWN]: So Rick was like, hey man, would you be up for this?
[UNKNOWN]: And I said absolutely.
[UNKNOWN]: So he set me up with an interview.
[UNKNOWN]: I got a job at this place.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was really fun just doing music for web cartoons.
[UNKNOWN]: And we worked with Carrie Panter on a cartoon.
[UNKNOWN]: And just a bunch of really neat projects.
[UNKNOWN]: But there was a recording studio there.
[UNKNOWN]: And there was a guy named Andres Levine who's this Venezuelan, just like the amazing musician producer guy, and he sort of ran the studio.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was like a proper recording studio, but the deal was he would he would do his sessions at night and during the day I could use it to do the soundtrack stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: And so one day I was there with him and he was like, hey, I don't know what you're doing tonight.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm supposed to do a session.
[UNKNOWN]: I can't make it.
[UNKNOWN]: It's a friend.
[UNKNOWN]: He's really cool.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think it'll be very long.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, all right.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, sure.
[UNKNOWN]: Whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: Sounds good.
[UNKNOWN]: He didn't tell me who it was or what the deal was.
[UNKNOWN]: And so this guy shows up.
[UNKNOWN]: I think that he looks kind of familiar.
[UNKNOWN]: And, uh,
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, hey, you know, I'm so robots up.
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, hey, you know, I'm a trace friend, Ardo, and I was like, it's Ardo, okay.
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, I'm doing the sound for this installation.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's supposed to sound like this giant wings flapping, and I was like, oh my god, I have no idea how to do that.
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, yeah, I don't either, but it's like I brought a couple of pillowcases.
[UNKNOWN]: And so like we just we had the most fun just like being ridiculous trying to make these like giant condo or wing flapping sounds that I've two pillow cases and we just hit it off.
[UNKNOWN]: And at the end of the session, you know, a couple hours later he was like, well, look, you know, we're going to work on a record soon.
[UNKNOWN]: I think Dre might be busy.
[UNKNOWN]: If you're up for it, would you, would you want to do it?
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, oh, yeah, I said, but here's a deal.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not, I'm not an actual engineer.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, I can run Pro Tools, you know, that part I'm good with, but I'm not the guy who like knows which microphone you put on what fret of a violin or whatever, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, that's cool.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't care, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: Like, we get along.
[UNKNOWN]: That's good enough for me.
[UNKNOWN]: And you can, you know, I run Pro Tools.
[UNKNOWN]: So,
[UNKNOWN]: We basically rented a rig and put it in his living room and made an album called Salt.
[UNKNOWN]: And then a year later we did another record.
[UNKNOWN]: And then through that we ended up working on this project with Debbie Harry for the McHale British Nicole dance troupe which was totally bonkers because that is not my world at all.
[UNKNOWN]: So, you know, to be like the guy from kids for cash to be like recording Debbie Harry and then like
[UNKNOWN]: doing a walk-through with Mikhail Burishnikov to make sure the sound is right or whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, this is insane, but it was fun, man.
[UNKNOWN]: It was really fun, and I learned a ton, because Melvin Gibbs, who played bass with Rollins, is Ardo's bass player, and kind of his sort of musical director.
[UNKNOWN]: And so he's a great guy, and learned a ton from him, and all those guys are just such music heads, but it's not...
[UNKNOWN]: like they know about hardcore, but that's not their world.
[UNKNOWN]: But you know, like Ardo is just so deep into the Brazilian thing.
[UNKNOWN]: And so he turned me on to so many great records and like, you know, you would have CDRs that like, Brian, you know, would send them of like, jams.
[UNKNOWN]: And so it was just, I was just getting turned on to this really cool, interesting stuff, and Melvin had his own world of stuff that he was into, that was really, I don't know, it was a pretty, pretty lovely experience.
[UNKNOWN]: Did he tell any DNA stories to you?
[UNKNOWN]: Because it is the no wave stuff like his connection to that.
[UNKNOWN]: I guess also he's from Virginia originally, right?
[UNKNOWN]: self-care line, I think.
[UNKNOWN]: It actually his parents were missionaries.
[UNKNOWN]: So that's why he went to Brazil.
[UNKNOWN]: Was they went over his missionaries?
[UNKNOWN]: And his brother, I think, still lives over there.
[UNKNOWN]: And actually, Otto ended up moving over there.
[UNKNOWN]: He lived in Chelsea when we were making these records.
[UNKNOWN]: But years later, he ended up moving back to Brazil.
[UNKNOWN]: But um,
[UNKNOWN]: He didn't really talk much about the DNA stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: I will say I didn't quiz him about that stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I just don't really feel self-conscious about it, but I also didn't want to be that dude, you know, like taking a break and be like, hey, so, uh, you know, that's why you need to talk like that.
[UNKNOWN]: You need this podcast because it's the only acceptable place to punish people about this sort of stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: I find that's why I had to do it because you're right, because you're backstage at a show or you're working with someone.
[UNKNOWN]: You can't just like unload on them with questions.
[UNKNOWN]: In torsions, were they really good or what's stealing?
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, he did tell funny stories that, I mean, he was a really funny guy and he would like, he'd tell him about this first time he saw like Patty Smith, the first time she ever played, I think was at Max's Kansas City and he said she was just super young, really nervous and was just like reading poetry and I can't remember somebody was being playing guitar with her and he was just like, it was terrible.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, like he said, if you had told me then that this person would become the Patti Smith that we all know, I would have like laughed you out of the room, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's the prerequisite to be the band that becomes super famous out of the scene is You have to be terrible and people that be like if you had told me because like going back to Blinkway 2 that's certainly the reoccurring thing you hear from people from San Diego Including from Blinkway 2 themselves
[UNKNOWN]: like, like, we were terrible.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, we were like, why us about the people?
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know, Patty would have that same level of humbleness looking back on the early years, but still like, you'd kind of need to be, you need to stand out because you're so bad before you can be so good to stand out, I guess.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I guess just the willingness to stick your neck out, you know, but it wasn't interesting to get Artis take on like 77 punk and stuff like that.
[UNKNOWN]: Like he was not a fan.
[UNKNOWN]: Like he thought the clash were kind of bogus.
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, it was he definitely he had he had some really interesting takes on stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: I didn't, you know, like we disagreed on some stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: Like he was not a wire fan.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, well, you're wrong about that one buddy.
[UNKNOWN]: I find you can think of pleasure, bro, because that's on you, but don't worry.
[UNKNOWN]: No, you're wrong.
[UNKNOWN]: You're right though, I do find that with the no way people, like it's, it's almost like the same inputs going into 77 and then 77 punk kind of happens and they're just like, nope, we're doing something.
[UNKNOWN]: I think it's too late for them.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, you know, I think I think there's too much rock and roll, too much blues in the 77 stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: I think for them, I was like, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: verbal take I guess, but like there's like this double helix of art school art not our school but like art pretension and then sort of like street rock and roll and the two are going and kind of intersecting and that's what punk rock is at the intersection point, but then, you know, no wave is sort of that helix of the art pretension kind of going one way and yeah, the clash or the
[UNKNOWN]: the he looks going the other way like they had some like it's very traditional and in there.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, they're like, they're like, they're literally basically, you know, it's like Bo didly jacked up or yeah, yeah, which I love, but, you know, I can't get it.
[UNKNOWN]: It's not for everybody, but it's funny because that world of no way, people than that later, they got super like musical, you know what I mean?
[UNKNOWN]: Like they got really into either like,
[UNKNOWN]: Electronics stuff which involved a lot of heavy composition and a lot of sort of academic kind of familiarity with gear Or like afterwards, Arda was in ambitious lovers and that's a really pretty slick band with like, you know, in fact the guy Peter share I think is the same who's as partner in ambitious lovers
[UNKNOWN]: played on one of the auto records and that was actually really funny because he came over with this keyboard and art is like all right it's going to be the same DX7 sounds that he always uses and I was like well can we just get like a like a midi out and like make the sounds better and he's like nope that's Peter's thing I was like okay you know and sure enough man I was like wow it's guys great but those sounds are like so from a time period you know and art is like
[UNKNOWN]: But you know, it's like that ambitious lovers is a very slick musical band and those records that they made are really like very high-end records, you know, I mean, I think they did with the dude from Sheek.
[UNKNOWN]: I think he, I think he produced one of those records.
[UNKNOWN]: And they're on celluloid, aren't they?
[UNKNOWN]: I think the... That means...
[UNKNOWN]: I know those really lounge lizards ones are.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: I think they weren't too long since those were just stories that were good, but it probably not, not, not on Mike.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I feel like that's also part of the, the no way thing is it's, it's, it's, it got pretty raw.
[UNKNOWN]: pretty quickly with the likes of those people.
[UNKNOWN]: And I guess some of the stuff got poppy, like I think the lounge lizard's got really popular.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I think that brought a whole level of attention that those people were not used to, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: All the weird stuff, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And then what I guess also like you look at, even the cinema of transgression stuff and the people that kind of got into that and just some of those movies are not safe for the internet.
[UNKNOWN]: No, no, definitely not.
[UNKNOWN]: And honestly, by today's standards, pretty questionable.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: But again, I think a lot of that transgressive stuff, it's hard to say, there was a time in a place where that kind of transgression, it carried a different set of values.
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't know that you can say it's right or wrong.
[UNKNOWN]: It's, I think it's hard sometimes to contextualize things in the modern framework because
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's, I don't know, I mean, I'm not to make excuses for anybody because like bad behavior is bad behavior, but I think there's just also some stuff where like, you know, if you don't have the vocabulary or you're sort of fighting a different fight sometimes, it's a, it's not always as clean cut is, I think, we like to make it seem so, you know, in the modern dressing a lot of it, I think looking back where people kind of playing,
[UNKNOWN]: And whether or not they were even aware of this at times with doing like kind of pro wrestling heel work, where it was like, we all knew, oh, this person knows better or you hoped that they knew better or you thought they knew better at that time.
[UNKNOWN]: And in some cases, yeah, they proved they did actually know better and they were just being a heel like,
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I think Steve Elbini is very open about his sort of journey in this and looking back on it, like I think a lot of times he was just saying things to get that reaction from people because it's what got him attention and feedback and you know that's what you're doing it for those endorphins, I guess.
[UNKNOWN]: But also the crazy thing to think about is like at that time,
[UNKNOWN]: whether it's Steve Albini or like, you know, even like, your hard cause lawyer, like, with conflict or whatever, like those guys, you know, like they were, they took on really harsh positions, but that wasn't mass culture.
[UNKNOWN]: That was like this little tiny little thing that they were working with him.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I think that's that's the hard parts sometimes to that.
[UNKNOWN]: I think put into context is like,
[UNKNOWN]: Now, everything can be everywhere, you know, there's no circulation as infinite, you know, but when you're printing, I don't know, 2,000 copies of Conflict Magazine or whatever, that's a small audience.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, so when you're taking on those positions, you sort of, you know the community that you're doing it with them.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't want to explain yourself to like the larger world.
[UNKNOWN]: The larger world doesn't exist, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean, it's, you thought it's like you have to know somebody to get possession of this thing.
[UNKNOWN]: And so it's not like this is necessarily falling into the hands of someone that wouldn't 100% understand it.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[UNKNOWN]: So the, but then you look at someone like Gavin McGinnis that very much I think would have been at the time, like, you know, self described is politically left and was in an anarchist band back then.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, was he really?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, with an ocean look with the guy from one speed bike in God's beach, a black emperor really.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and someone from Melissa Optimars first band was also in it, too, and they were part of that five Arlington kind of music scene and would play shows there with like all the Ottawa bands of the era, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like all like the the greats the audit like there's such an amazing scene out of that Ottawa punk scene in the sort of the late 90s early 90s late 80s and
[UNKNOWN]: he got all this information and then just took it and started talking about screw driver to a group of people that took it and ran with it and nearly overthrew and looked like they still might overthrow the American government.
[UNKNOWN]: right yeah yeah the like the proud boys yeah it's pretty crazy yeah it is strange I guess you never know where people are going to go and sometimes those yeah you like you push the barrier just enough and then you pop out somewhere unexpected yeah it was such a weird time because you look back on it now like the culture of transgression was such a big part of where
[UNKNOWN]: sort of like mainstream punk when I guess it was post-nirvana too like a reaction to nirvana where it's like okay we got to make sure we're not this version of what this thing is that what mainstream yeah we're even like if you go before that like the use of swastikas and like 77 punk and stuff I mean you know it's a pretty pretty bold thing I mean by today's dance because that's just not to whatever do that but it
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's interesting when, and I maybe they've changed it out, but when you went into the punk museum in Las Vegas, like one of the first things you see is of photo-stivators wearing a swastika t-shirt.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's something that needs a lot of contextualizing because like you're saying, there's a whole wave of people that, and not that it's ever understandable.
[UNKNOWN]: I think maybe people's reaction to it is completely justified.
[UNKNOWN]: But at the time, like you're saying,
[UNKNOWN]: It's not accepted, but it was just part of the culture in the way that it was like all these people experimenting with iconography and things that maybe they should have been experimenting with, which is another I think reoccurring theme in punk rock throughout it is people like testing the limits of music and also testing the limits of ideology and just sort of testing.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think of, I think we talked about this before, but you know, one of the things that first attracted me to when I first heard certain hardcore things like whether it was the meatmen or whatever it was like, I just never heard lyrics like that put to meet, you know lyrics, I never heard words like that put to music and it kind of just blew me away because I thought, wow.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, not that, you know, I was so young.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it's, that's, there's me, man, so I'm seeing funnily to me that now they seem, you know, incredibly homophobic and stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: But it, it was, it was shocking, but in a really positive way to me, like it just meant like, oh, you could do anything.
[UNKNOWN]: Anything that like all,
[UNKNOWN]: All avenues are available, and that to me was really compared that with mainstream rock and roll, which is what's around you.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, this is cool.
[UNKNOWN]: This is a thing.
[UNKNOWN]: You can be whoever you want to be, and you can pretend to be somebody.
[UNKNOWN]: You can take on a character.
[UNKNOWN]: And that's the thing, too, is I think a lot of those outrageous stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like a person playing a character.
[UNKNOWN]: And so that's part of it.
[UNKNOWN]: There's a
[UNKNOWN]: a theatrical element to it, and I don't know what's interesting, and it makes people an outside uncomfortable, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Because they don't get that.
[UNKNOWN]: Is this person playing a character?
[UNKNOWN]: Because I'm not familiar with this.
[UNKNOWN]: It's just like they hear, you know, let's lint the landlord, you know, and they're like, what is that?
[UNKNOWN]: You know, or I kill children?
[UNKNOWN]: And they're just like, what is wrong with this person?
[UNKNOWN]: No, it's not.
[UNKNOWN]: He doesn't kill children, you
[UNKNOWN]: It's funny to think of the guys from minor threat winding up in the meatmen as being just sort of like setting the the I guess the the archetype for the reactionary band after the hardcore band kind of thing where these the band that it was minor threat winding up becoming.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you're just going in and lie all right, both I think.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't think that's favored periods of their careers to talk about now in retrospect.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm sure it must have been fun.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, because the thing is, I think there was a really strong connection.
[UNKNOWN]: Excuse me, Detroit DC connection.
[UNKNOWN]: And the guy who actually started touching go fancy and was a Detroit guy who ended up
[UNKNOWN]: working, I think I mentioned last time that record story yesterday and today, so he worked there, and so yeah, that guy Dave and Tesco, I guess were old buddies, and so they knew the early DC dudes, and so I think I don't know, I imagine when Brian and Miles joined the meatman, it was just like, you know, a fun ridiculous, you know, or the Superbikes or whatever it was, you know,
[UNKNOWN]: But I can't wait to see his reaction.
[UNKNOWN]: I have to say speaking of life for his, I have to say when you have people like Ian as the sort of the helm of the life or his, you know, it makes it attractive to be a life or because you like that guy still has his head screwed on his shoulders pretty darn well, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, he's definitely like what like there's are these sort of life or people now that we can look at like jello by after being another person and like.
[UNKNOWN]: the idea of like what does it look like to grow old as a punk and to be still involved with this thing that is so tied to youth and youthful idealism and it's amazing that these people kind of did these records in their early 20s that maybe not every single song but there's like a large
[UNKNOWN]: It speaks a lot to the path that these kind of people set for themselves and we're able to follow.
[UNKNOWN]: It's also interesting to have the idea that it has a late teenager in our really 20s person that you would have sort of a vision of the world that you can stand with, you know, so many years later, because I know for myself, I have changed so much since I was a teenager and, you know, there's still many things that I feel similarly about, but I've also evolved in certain ways.
[UNKNOWN]: And,
[UNKNOWN]: I can't imagine what it'd be like to sort of for people to still hold you like to tether you to, you know, a version of yourself from your from the past, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like it must be like, you know, because I don't experience this in my life playing in a band, but like,
[UNKNOWN]: It must be like nerve racking to think every single night fuck I'm going to play this show and then someone's going to ask me about straight edge when I have to talk to like some dude about straight It's still his stuff about in some way or yeah, you know, like I'm I'm not a Krishna person, but I like you know thinking about Ray Capo every single night still having a debate, so in about hairy Krishna stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: after years of being involved in this thing.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's just sort of this albatross that you have to carry because these songs that you wrote as a teenager somehow remain so important to the people that listen to them.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, they're like foundational.
[UNKNOWN]: But I guess the thing about, well, yeah, I don't know, Ray, but then the thing that I like about is that he's willing to listen and engage.
[UNKNOWN]: I think if somebody comes up to him, you know, I imagine there's some part of him in his head.
[UNKNOWN]: I have no idea, but I imagine it's being human.
[UNKNOWN]: There's some part of him that's like, oh, God, this again.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But he takes people seriously and he takes his face value and it's like, okay, even that whatever that part of you is that's like, you're like, all right, man, you know, like, this is your, you've had now of a chance to ask me this question, let me answer it.
[UNKNOWN]: And that's a level of patience that I think is, is a model to follow if you can.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, you know, he is definitely, I had, there's a,
[UNKNOWN]: five hour podcast that never got recorded between him and myself and Chris or tool, my co-host on foot notes that we went over to the discord house and Jason Hammocker got us into the warehouse and we're hanging on the warehouse and the knee and came over and yeah, like just debated with me about punk stuff and then brought us over to the house and we did like a major hangout and just got
[UNKNOWN]: years and then took the tourist photo on the steps with them at the end.
[UNKNOWN]: But it's so great.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, it was amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: And just he loves it.
[UNKNOWN]: I think he really loves it.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, like, he loves giving that tour of the discord house.
[UNKNOWN]: He loved, you know, like he loves showing the that Minecraft skateboard, you know, and it's cool.
[UNKNOWN]: Like it's his life.
[UNKNOWN]: It's awesome.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, any appreciates.
[UNKNOWN]: People that want to go deep on on this stuff, which is of course, like my favorite thing to get to do.
[UNKNOWN]: So it was, yeah, really fun to talk to someone that like has dedicated their life to the pursuit of what this is and like to have that self awareness to.
[UNKNOWN]: know to archive everything you do from an early stage because this will be important at some point.
[UNKNOWN]: That's an impressive thing.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, in the fact that he's got all his letters digitized and stuff, you know, he can look up.
[UNKNOWN]: I do a lot of work for a kosher books and who put up the Rick book and for the Fugazi book with Glenn Friedman, for the second edition, I did an interview with Ian and Glenn.
[UNKNOWN]: And they were trying to figure out when they first met.
[UNKNOWN]: And Glenn was like, oh, I think it was, you know, I wrote you a letter and he answered, hold on.
[UNKNOWN]: And he like opened up his laptop and like did a little search.
[UNKNOWN]: He was like, actually, and like he pulled up the letter that Glenn had written and we're like, I don't know, 1980, one or whatever it was.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, this is insane, but how great.
[UNKNOWN]: You know?
[UNKNOWN]: Well, yeah, to know that, like, it's how many people, especially,
[UNKNOWN]: that young age think this matters like what I'm doing and I've heard it's funny because Ian at various times kind of downplays it and says I was never a big deal to me.
[UNKNOWN]: It was just like about my own personal experiences.
[UNKNOWN]: But straight edge I've read in interviews that he said that he wrote it when he did T-nitals but was like I'm not going to waste this song on T-nitals and
[UNKNOWN]: when it's going to mean something a little bit more.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I got to find this interview.
[UNKNOWN]: This might just be so clear at this point.
[UNKNOWN]: No, no, I like it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, but like to have that awareness that like, yeah, I'm going to save this for this thing and to have that intention with everything you do, knowing like, this is going to matter, like, you're from now.
[UNKNOWN]: There's going to be some kid looking at this.
[UNKNOWN]: And then the fact that it was minor threat was that next ban.
[UNKNOWN]: And you know, I mean, minor threat, they, I mean, these, those records still sound incredible, you know, and so my captain who was guitar player in SOA and the faith and stuff, he's a good friend.
[UNKNOWN]: And he told me he was like, you know, it's like, didn't matter what the lineup was.
[UNKNOWN]: When minor threat came on, they just sounded better than everybody else.
[UNKNOWN]: You know what I mean it was like that was just he's like they could play better.
[UNKNOWN]: They had better equipment They rehearsed all the time He said they were just better than everybody else and you know those records prove it You just put you put the needle down and they just they come charging out of speakers You're like man.
[UNKNOWN]: This is a this is a great band with like a point of view
[UNKNOWN]: It's interesting because you talk to like Lou Barlow and James Ascus about the first minor threat seven inch and they're like, it's perfect, but it also kind of ruined hardcore because everyone wanted to sound like it afterwards.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And that was where it got really formalized into like this genre of what is kind of hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's true like you talk to like Al from SSD,
[UNKNOWN]: The first to say that that minor threat record was like everything like black flag was what really started it, but like that minor threat record was just when it got solidified and after that everything kind of changes.
[UNKNOWN]: It's true.
[UNKNOWN]: I think there was less musical diversity in hardcore, or at least, that's not necessarily true, because there was so much those SST records are pretty crazy, but it seems like that blueprint for that style of like that dinner, like what ended up sounding like Dagnastia or whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like that kind of thing ended up being
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, such a blueprint for so much of it, whether it was a uniform choice or, you know, all those in the bands that followed, don't act, but didn't, you know, blast was like what blast flag, like I think, they seem like there were a couple of totem poles.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, I saw a flyer the other day for a show that's like sound garden and skin yard.
[UNKNOWN]: And then I can't remember who it's the opening bands were more traditional standing hardcore bands as the opening bands, but calling it a hardcore show in Seattle like 87 this whoa, so I feel like it's it and also you talk that's the thing about hardcore too, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like that I think the minor threat thing is like what establishes like this is hardcore and anyone who's kind of like coming off of that
[UNKNOWN]: is calling what they're doing hardcore, but like, yeah, the guys in no effects called what they were doing hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: And obviously, that does not sound anything like what the guys in New York were calling hardcore at the same time.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, but it is funny.
[UNKNOWN]: But I think it all of the New York hardcore thing was also its own, you know, like that.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm going to say that stuff didn't sound like, you know, like agnostic front or chroma eggs, whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: That didn't sound like DC hardcore.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, it's interesting going back and
[UNKNOWN]: those 90s records too where a lot of them had a huge influence of hip hop coming in a lot more sort of groove to the stuff and then you go back and watch these videos.
[UNKNOWN]: It's like a lot of Puerto Rican New York kids that were in these bands and it's a lot more
[UNKNOWN]: diverse makeup of the kids of these shows and in some of the other scenes that were kind of like following this sort of more minor threat path at that time too.
[UNKNOWN]: And so I mean DC was white, white, white, white, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I mean sad said I mean there were still some black people on the scene, but I mean pretty white, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And so it's interesting when you get how it spreads and like adapts to local culture, I guess you see it with jazz music you see with all kinds of music we're like local
[UNKNOWN]: influences kind of coming to what this thing is and change it and help shape it, which I guess while that California stuff sounds the way it does, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Because it's so much more sun-baked and right.
[UNKNOWN]: Let's say I think of like the the Phoenix stuff like meat puppets and things like that like or JFA, Sun City girls like that stuff that also had such a crazy I remember hearing that stuff for the first time and is
[UNKNOWN]: Like that first meet-puppet 7 inch.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, what is this?
[UNKNOWN]: This is crazy.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, same with the same with the Texas stuff like if you think like what's the universal thing in Texas?
[UNKNOWN]: It's like, oh, but all surfers big boys really red eggs.
[UNKNOWN]: Yes, yes, some of the great bands, but they're all like wild like true true like if you're going to be out there in Texas, be a true freak because it's going to be a hard path to home no matter what.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, it's like front from tier music.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[UNKNOWN]: These people are like, I'm going to get fucked with, sort of, no matter what I look like.
[UNKNOWN]: So I'm going to just be completely out there with what we have.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: There was actually a heart of great story, which was that I guess the first big boys practice,
[UNKNOWN]: They weren't sure who was going to play guitar.
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't remember if it was a coin toss or something, but it ended up being Tim.
[UNKNOWN]: And he's like, you know, if I had an applying base in that guitar, it would have been a different sounding band.
[UNKNOWN]: I was like, whoa, that's a crazy thought.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was literally like, I think it was a coin to have something, you know, something truly random.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, what a wild thing to think.
[UNKNOWN]: The big was could have been a completely different band.
[UNKNOWN]: If you had been bass players in the guitar player,
[UNKNOWN]: I love to also think about the influence the big boys had on post-revolution summer era of DC stuff and sort of like that's I don't know maybe that I've been harassed in about this directly but maybe that's Ian's reaction and the same way the meetman were the reactionary band to minor threat.
[UNKNOWN]: Ian's like okay my reactionary thing to what I was doing before is to
[UNKNOWN]: completely out there, completely funky, and just doing something so different.
[UNKNOWN]: And you really see that in Fugazi.
[UNKNOWN]: You speak boys in Fugazi to me are very connected.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I think there's something, I think it was also just their fugazes embracing of like dub music and you know, bringing in all these sort of rhythmic elements that in hardcore were just stripped away, you know, I mean, you just can't play that fast and be that funky.
[UNKNOWN]: But it's, yeah, I think I think there's something and honestly, those that early fugazy period was such an incredible time to be in DC because
[UNKNOWN]: To have that be your local band that you could go see any given day was pretty amazing and those shows were you know They were small and fun and truly joyous.
[UNKNOWN]: You know like it was like people were dancing like just going off.
[UNKNOWN]: It was a really good time Yeah, and part of it was that they were pretty brought in like all these other musical pieces that had been there before and I think that really opened people up like oh man right on now
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, like it's a period of it's like such a shift in underground music after Fugazi and it's it's so it's so we're to think of these things happening without any sort of like mass dissemination like Fugazi happens and then the reverberations are almost instantaneous like where there's like many Fugazis in every scene fuel Ghazi
[UNKNOWN]: Was that the thing?
[UNKNOWN]: I think that's what they were in.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, I feel that I'm sure those guys are cool that that was like this disparaging thing that they got like it was.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, that's so funny because like I can remember getting into super into hot water music and so when saying like hot water fuel to me as like the way of disparaging what I got into, but I guess that's
[UNKNOWN]: That's the way it goes, right?
[UNKNOWN]: Like, I mean, yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: And also, I think it's also funny because we're still talking about such a micro thing.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, it's not filtering out in the greater world.
[UNKNOWN]: This is still like some small band being influenced by like a slightly bigger band.
[UNKNOWN]: And it's happening, I guess through Max and Rock and Roll and through these sort of international scenes
[UNKNOWN]: people that are traveling around at this time in bands or spreading the word but it's it's so organic like it's not like seeing people demos being like oh and you know and Ian was a huge proponent of that like if you sent him a tape he'd put like the right to spring record on there and like the demo that had become this seven inch you know like
[UNKNOWN]: He would happily make a tape for you of whatever the current stuff was happening in DC, which is really awesome, you know, like so people and so many people are so protective of that stuff, you know, and he was just like, yeah, man, send me a tape, I'll put you know, whatever you should hear it, it's great.
[UNKNOWN]: meeting him at different stages in my life, it's like that thing of never meeting your heroes.
[UNKNOWN]: And it hasn't always gone well, minor acts with the end of the years, but not no fault of his own all the time either, but like it has always lived up to the epicness that it should have because I think he, like you're saying, he would make the people of these tapes, like he
[UNKNOWN]: taking this as an opportunity to sort of advance his life or go for the personal gratification.
[UNKNOWN]: Nice sharing the thing that he's into.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, as big as Fugazi got, it never seems like it was a fun band to be in.
[UNKNOWN]: Really?
[UNKNOWN]: Well, like the shows are fun and the performance are cathartic.
[UNKNOWN]: but it probably is a lot of practice and like they're eating like beans and that's kind of funny.
[UNKNOWN]: I guess they're very funny.
[UNKNOWN]: Actually, I believe in a few laughs.
[UNKNOWN]: I bet there's a lot of laughs.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I'm sure there's laughs, but it just doesn't seem like there's like,
[UNKNOWN]: the release valves of and maybe because I've sold out of straightage, this is my only my myopic way of looking at it, but I'm like, no one's smoking weed, no one's just like kicking back and like just letting it's like it's just very intense, like people are washing of the shows, you're like, do you have the currency to give this person back?
[UNKNOWN]: They're $5 in the correct currency at this show, like you need to be prepared for these situations.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm sure we're out of Lyra currently, um, do you accept as
[UNKNOWN]: My favorite conspiracy theory is that they brought the asshole that started the mosh pit on tour with them.
[UNKNOWN]: Like it was like a roadie, and it's like, okay, you know, to do There's that one and then there's also the one that seems to exist.
[UNKNOWN]: There's like a guy in Guelph that had this story that ran a record store that oh, yeah, like I smoked weed with the in one time.
[UNKNOWN]: There's always like the one guy in the town that claims they loved the one you did.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, he's been more into, like, since melee than he is, he's really, he's not going to smoke the team, man.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, it's not that kind of dude, but he is definitely, yeah, he's never coming on this show, unfortunately, but that's, that's fine.
[UNKNOWN]: Why not?
[UNKNOWN]: He turned out a pump.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I know, I definitely, and I wrote him a letter, I got told to write him a letter to do it, like, not a letter an email, but I think it's because I'm not the biggest fugazi fan.
[UNKNOWN]: He doesn't care about that.
[UNKNOWN]: I think I think it may be the way I've said it.
[UNKNOWN]: He in terms of being disrespectful.
[UNKNOWN]: I also have some friends that recently run a foul front with him on Zena, Zena and podcast appearances that he's made.
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah, like I feel like he's probably looking at my podcast.
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, I don't need that bullshit.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know.
[UNKNOWN]: He's like, I, I, I get in my house for four fucking hours.
[UNKNOWN]: You're selling yourself short.
[UNKNOWN]: I think it'd be great.
[UNKNOWN]: I actually, I think it would be a really awesome.
[UNKNOWN]: You should totally do it.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, if he, he believed me.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm not the holdout.
[UNKNOWN]: I think there's another person involved in the equations, sadly, but I, I, I want to, I've talked to you forever, and I, but I do want to talk to you about this unbelievable book that you've put out, or I've been
[UNKNOWN]: And it's plenty for all the Art of Rick Froberg, and it is truly an unbelievable book, documenting a unbelievable artist.
[UNKNOWN]: I guess outside of the fact that his work had to be documented, where did the idea of first come about to do it?
[UNKNOWN]: Well, it was actually sadly at a memorial for him in New York, so he died coming up in June.
[UNKNOWN]: It will be a couple years.
[UNKNOWN]: But it was at his memorial here in Rich Jacobs, who also sadly has since died, came up to me and I was like, you know, we should do a book of Rick's Art.
[UNKNOWN]: And I was like, absolutely, that sounds great.
[UNKNOWN]: And Johnny Temple, who plays and grows kinds of boys and who runs a Cossack books, was also a friend of Rick's.
[UNKNOWN]: He was the memorial, and we just kind of went up to Johnny and while like Johnny Man, what do you think?
[UNKNOWN]: We should, you know, would you be up for doing a book of, of Rick's art?
[UNKNOWN]: And he was like, I'm in.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, then it was a matter of just figuring out how we could get all the material, because we just didn't know what was out there.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, Rick was like,
[UNKNOWN]: not good about documenting stuff and keeping track of, you know, what commissions he had done or, you know, he just was not that guy.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we just sort of put a word out through friends and ask, you know, do you have original pieces of ricks?
[UNKNOWN]: Is there anything of his that you've seen or know somebody that might have that can, would be willing to contribute, you know, take a photograph or scan it or whatever.
[UNKNOWN]: And so we just started to do a mass.
[UNKNOWN]: a remarkable amount of work like way more than I realized.
[UNKNOWN]: I was in a band with like I for 10 years.
[UNKNOWN]: We were friends for a long time and I had no idea how much work he had made.
[UNKNOWN]: It was stunning.
[UNKNOWN]: And then not only just how much work but how many different kinds of you know, mediums that he was working with and experimenting with.
[UNKNOWN]: And so then we just basically had like
[UNKNOWN]: stacks of stuff and we printed a bunch of it out and rich would come over to my apartment and we'd like make stacks of my dining room table of like all right here ink drawings here paintings here, you know and which we want to make sure we represented everything fairly we didn't want to be too heavy on one thing or another and
[UNKNOWN]: You know, he's I think fairly known for a lot of the stuff that he's done for his own bands or for other bands and we want to make sure that stuff was in their obviously, but we didn't want it to be just like his rock and roll art because he truly is, you know, was a fine artist.
[UNKNOWN]: Even though he never went to art school, you know, he's largely self taught, and so we basically just try to figure out how to, you know, how to how to organize it and you know, how we're going to try to present it and at one point we thought we'll do it chronologically.
[UNKNOWN]: But then that seemed kind of weird because it seemed like it would just, it would be like clusters of work, you know, and instead, I thought, well, be cool if also want to make sure that everything got represented, you know, if we do his ink drawings, we do his paintings, if we do etchings, you know, watercolors and like all the, you know, he blew glass, he did all kinds of stuff.
[UNKNOWN]: And so, we just tried to organize it that way and just kind of little through everything.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think there's like 400 and something images in the book.
[UNKNOWN]: And that was called for an easily three times that amount.
[UNKNOWN]: Wow.
[UNKNOWN]: So yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: It's, I knew he was obviously an incredible artist from seeing his artwork show up on different bands records and just different places over the years.
[UNKNOWN]: I feel like he never really branded himself the the artist in that way that like some punk artists have and sort of like built up the sort of like brand as being this being a fine artist in the way that way right no he didn't know he I think I think he was.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, like he liked Pusset or whatever, but I don't think he didn't, he, I don't think he wanted to, he was such an unpretentious guy that I think he was kind of loath to refer to himself as a fine artist.
[UNKNOWN]: I think he also he was really like Ian, like some of these people were talking about.
[UNKNOWN]: He was very much about the work.
[UNKNOWN]: And so he liked to think of himself as an illustrator, you know, as sort of a available for hire.
[UNKNOWN]: So,
[UNKNOWN]: anybody could hire him, you know, and he would do the work, and he was committed to it.
[UNKNOWN]: He wouldn't do it.
[UNKNOWN]: He wouldn't turn in crappy work, you know, it didn't matter if he was into your thing or not, if you hired him, he'd do it, you know, and so I think he thought of himself more in that regard, like sort of more workmen like and less of kind of, you know, the austere fine artist.
[UNKNOWN]: It's almost more like an albini approach than in McCy approach, but I think
[UNKNOWN]: it's always very consistent and contributing to the brand in that way, not that he would ever want.
[UNKNOWN]: This is probably why I couldn't come on the show because I said, like that.
[UNKNOWN]: Ian, I'd like to talk to you about your brand.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But I think like you're saying, he would do it like Albini does where it's like, I'm going to do the best work I can for whatever project requires.
[UNKNOWN]: If he had overalls, he would have put him on.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, yeah, you know, and really in, you know, there were stuff that for example,
[UNKNOWN]: a couple of things I don't think are in the book, but there was like a band that I know he was doing work for that he liked the people on the band, but it was a bigger band and they had manage band and he's so he ended up just having to deal with the management and you know it would meet up for beer and stuff and he's like oh my gosh I can't believe this is so stupid you know it's like the management wants this change and that change and he's like if I just email the guys in the band it would be done in five minutes.
[UNKNOWN]: But again, he was being paid.
[UNKNOWN]: He took it seriously and the quality of the work was good.
[UNKNOWN]: It didn't matter that he was frustrated and the process was not what he wanted it to be.
[UNKNOWN]: He was just like, this is what you hired me to do.
[UNKNOWN]: I'm doing it.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, there's something like...
[UNKNOWN]: Like it's weird when you get into that level of things and you're still coming from the punk world and you have this connection to the person through the punk world and you're like, why can't I just write to them like why do they have to be so many levels of bureaucracy between us, but that's kind of I guess the reality went to get outside of this bubble were from.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, I think it's a weird thing, particularly in, you know, in the music biz, there's so much of it, right, and I think in the art world too, which is I think why he also didn't really want to participate in the quote unquote art world, you know, he'd rather have friends put together group shows in, you know, like a small gallery or
[UNKNOWN]: You know, whatever there was a really cool bar in Barcelona where you had a great exhibit of a bunch of his drawings, and that was way more his speed, you know, like, yeah, come and come and look at my work and we'll all drink a bunch of beers and chitchat, you know.
[UNKNOWN]: And he also and like I met him a handful of times, so I'm not going to pretend like I really knew him, but he just seems too punk to have ever been that fine artist because.
[UNKNOWN]: And I don't mean to throw disparaging remarks towards any of the artists that we've talked about on this episode, but there is this sort of like level of arrogance armor that you have to wear as a fine artist to believe that you are.
[UNKNOWN]: your doodles or somehow worth millions and billions of dollars and that you're somehow above anyone else who could do this kind of work and that's why.
[UNKNOWN]: Like, I don't know, like, this is just my interactions with some of these people, whereas I don't know, Rick always just came off as like the most down to earth normal human being imagine.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: He was, he was an incredibly, incredibly down to earth insightful, thoughtful, generous person.
[UNKNOWN]: I think he knew that his work was good, but I don't think he was the kind of person to put a value on that that's somehow made it worth more than somebody else's work and so, you know, I said in a one point man, you should get get somebody to represent you to like, you know, you should be making a living off your art and he was like, I don't want to deal with those people.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and in which states, you know, because it meant that he was there were times where he's struggling financially when I was like, you don't have to be, you know, like your work people will pay for it, you know, but it's also not to get to sad right now, but Rick.
[UNKNOWN]: rich, oh, and Dave Sweet Apple all passed away at the same time.
[UNKNOWN]: It was these, all these giants amongst people that were great human beings.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was so sad, but it just seemed to happen all the way.
[UNKNOWN]: And the real connector is real people who, you know, again, were like had very long arms, you know, and they were in contact with lots of different people around the world.
[UNKNOWN]: And the kind of people that if you met them and that was the connection,
[UNKNOWN]: you were in, you know, and they were good people, you knew that.
[UNKNOWN]: And yeah, those are, those are real losses, real real losses.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: But I think it's on us to continue.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, that's thing.
[UNKNOWN]: That's the one thing I do think that it's, it's, it's our responsibility to, to carry that forward.
[UNKNOWN]: And, and also the legacies, these people of left behind, and the, the world's
[UNKNOWN]: That's like the I guess that's the true gift of being involved in this thing is if you can leave it better than you came to it and connect it more than it was connected before you got involved it like that's absolutely that's why we're doing it.
[UNKNOWN]: And I think from rich, like a sense of kindness, you know, to bring kindness in the world.
[UNKNOWN]: And from rich, like a free spirit in this, you know, just to sort of like, linking in the eye of the abyss, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah, and I feel like, oh, there's a humbleness that in sweet apple, there's a wonderful insanity that and I think you'd be very happy if I said that, but yeah, you're right, like there's lessons I took from all these people and I'm very lucky to have gotten to meet them.
[UNKNOWN]: at different stages and, yeah, carry it like you're saying, carry them with them all the time.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, I think that's what, you know, for those of us who are left, that's what that's what we do, right?
[UNKNOWN]: That's what you got to take the good parts and push those forward because, you know, that's how they live on and as well, they deserve to be remembered, you know?
[UNKNOWN]: Well, this book is truly an amazing tribute to Reckon O'Rourke.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you, it was a really fun to put together.
[UNKNOWN]: It was great to work with Reckon O'Rourke.
[UNKNOWN]: We got really close, working on that, both together.
[UNKNOWN]: And it was also for me, it was really cathartic, you know, because
[UNKNOWN]: And while I was working on it, I was having like a little mini conversations with Rick in my head.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, because like, I don't think, would he want these two images across from each other on the page?
[UNKNOWN]: Or would he just be like, you're, this is a dumbest.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, I was just trying to imagine like, what would Rick think?
[UNKNOWN]: That'll be like, that does matter what Rick thinks he's not here.
[UNKNOWN]: You know, and knowing that he would also laugh at that, you know, and so yeah, I mean, I wish I was she were here to see that book and to see how many people, how amazing people responded to it, but yeah, I'm glad it's out there and honestly, maybe it's the first of many.
[UNKNOWN]: I don't know, he has so much, so much work.
[UNKNOWN]: I mean, there could be a whole book just on like T-shirts that he designed for bands.
[UNKNOWN]: It would be amazing that there was like a rich and rich show, the tour, because that's a good idea.
[UNKNOWN]: They're both impactful artists and very different kind of worlds, but like very obviously connected through friendship and through punk.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, and Rich actually had Rick in a bunch of his group shows.
[UNKNOWN]: I would say the majority of Rick's exhibitions were in Rich's group shows.
[UNKNOWN]: Well, hopefully it shows up here at the AGO in Toronto, so I can just a chance to see it when it happens.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh, be great.
[UNKNOWN]: This has been amazing.
[UNKNOWN]: And anytime you want to come back on this show and talk about anything, you're always welcome.
[UNKNOWN]: Right on.
[UNKNOWN]: Next time we'll be on with Ian, I hope you're.
[UNKNOWN]: You text the deal right now, if you like, hey man.