[SPEAKER_00]: everyone my name is Damian and this has turned out a punk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sadly we are here today to talk about the passing of well there's another way to put this a music legend but one of the coolest people I've ever gone to speak to on this show the great Jennifer Finch who passed away on July 18th
[SPEAKER_00]: I really want to repost this episode without ad, so people can kind of enjoy it uninterrupted by whatever is being hocked, and also because I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to speak to Jennifer, Jennifer's someone that I was a massive fan of through her work in L7.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unconsciously through her photography work too, not realizing or making that connection too much later that she was also this amazing documentarian of the early LA punk scene and just music in general through photographs over the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jennifer is, without a doubt, someone who touched countless lives throughout her travels, you will hear nothing but glowing things about her as I've certainly have seen in the last few days because she truly is that person you'll hear it in this episode, like it blew me away at the time we had this conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a few people that have been on this show.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that understood
[SPEAKER_00]: what Tristan and I have been trying to do with this show as much as Jennifer and I really regret that we never had a chance to have another conversation or really meeting person after this because yet truly what an amazing human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: My thoughts and deepest condolences go out to anyone who knows
[SPEAKER_00]: But Mike, deep condolences go to the world at large because we have lost a unbelievable presence within it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And rest in peace, Jennifer Finch.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jennifer, it is an honor to have you unturned at a park.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, tell me more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as I told you off air, I find you like I'm a huge fan of your music and a multiple of your bands will talk about not just L7, but we'll talk about a lot of the projects you kind of did post L7 too.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So who does your research?
[SPEAKER_01]: Me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a nerd.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you look
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, right, you're, well, you know, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is sadly when when my wife's like, okay, can you please remember to get these things from the grocery store?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember two of the things that you told me to get from the list of seven, because I'm thinking about your connection to savage republic.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, this is why I'm not focused on the things I should be focused on is because I'm... And you have, you have seen professionals over this and did they try to medicate you when you were a child?
[SPEAKER_01]: I have it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was medicated more as an adult and nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the medication that they put me on really is what set me on this path of fixation and interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now the cannabis just allows me to pontificate on it a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I operate on it a little bit more, but.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, as I say, going to be a huge thrill for me, and I hopefully, bearable for you, but we got to start it all, we all start off, which is Jennifer.
[SPEAKER_03]: One person's having a thrill in me, others just bearing it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I like your, I like your comfort.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that how all these interviews are if, like, for the most part, it's just, you know, I'm real and you're bearing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, believe me.
[SPEAKER_03]: You have the beard to prove that you're kind of in the bare category.
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't about me.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is about your Jennifer.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about us.
[SPEAKER_01]: How'd you get in a post?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're the first time you ever came across it.
[SPEAKER_03]: How did I get turned out, punk?
[SPEAKER_01]: How'd you get turned out, punk?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think that it's like the very typical story as I've heard actually on many of your interviews, it started with a babysitter and then kind of ended at the record store and in between you had a babysitter who brought me remones and devone buzz cox things that are kind of like really for kids and expression of childishness in punk rock and we're we're talking early on we're talking
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I am from age generation, so maybe like 7778.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was still quite little.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was very little this little, no one who's listening can see what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: A small joke but a child.
[SPEAKER_03]: small child and then you know it turned into when punk started to be covered.
[SPEAKER_03]: I grew up in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_03]: First off, I was born in Boyle Heights, California.
[SPEAKER_03]: I grew up on the west side in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was adopted, came through the foster system, and I was adopted, and I was an only child being adopted.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of resources were put into me, I'm gonna say, like that was a benefit of like what was a very kind of traumatic experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: So my father would take me to the bookstore and eventually at some point I wandered into the music section and by the late 70s punk as a cultural expression, not necessarily a music expression.
[SPEAKER_03]: was in, you know, the L.A. Times and our local publications, but it was also landed on the bookshelves in the music section, in the art section, in the fashion section.
[SPEAKER_03]: It became like an obsession, not for the music, but for everything else that punk did culturally.
[SPEAKER_03]: People started writing about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was proving, I think, what a lot of philosophers and thinkers were talking about in the 50s and the 60s about where society was going and like sort of the breakdown of the grand narrative and although it was,
[SPEAKER_03]: you know punk music we know about but it was all of these people jumping into the market to like sell their pop culture books on crazy fashion that was like ripped up and people that died their hair and people that cut their foreheads and you know
[SPEAKER_03]: movies and film and television and Los Angeles started to play around with having the punk extra or the punk environment to show troubled teens.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: So like, there's started to be like a media kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I think about punk, I don't always just think about my first records.
[SPEAKER_03]: Although, yes, they were important, you know.
[SPEAKER_03]: First exposure to music, though, was more about my parents were not music people and I lived in a neighborhood that through the 70s started to be gentified and so people would have garage sales and be selling their records.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the first records that I got were like John Lee Hooker, Funkadelic,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, these records from the people that lived in my neighborhood were my first exposures.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I got a, you know, looking back, I got the music education.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like I got, I, you know, I got to be involved in a conversation with.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the original expressions of punk rock that were not yet in the white communities that were not yet in the mainstream communities that didn't hit England like what rock and roll really was shaped.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, how it was shaped and right away right from what you could consider kind of record collector marginalized, you know, music that wasn't in the mainstream, I immediately jumped into punk rock.
[SPEAKER_03]: But with the punk rock, I was late into it, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we talked about 76, the dams, first record, Ramones, you know, the expressions of, I don't even, people call it the prepunk.
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you call it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably the cost of.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't even think it's a proto punk.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was just rock, then, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you could say that it led up to it, but I don't think it led up to it musically.
[SPEAKER_03]: it led up to it culturally.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: The look of it led up to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But the folks that were doing that music like in New York and even the Ramones, I feel like they were just taste makers.
[SPEAKER_03]: They just wanted to be on major labels and change major labels.
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't interested in counter culture or you know that much different.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love Patty Smith, one of my all-time favorite artists.
[SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, lick the ground she walks on.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been in rooms with her and have never been able to talk to her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like she is, she is, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yoko Ono, same, like they are these original.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not even doing your talk about FEMA.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm talking about punk, you know, to me, these are the original.
[SPEAKER_03]: Originated Anna.
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't out to do punk, you know what?
[SPEAKER_03]: They were out to for being stream recognition and to change the way people fought in mainstream, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I think in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think what you're saying is fascinating, too, because I love that idea of like, it's kind of being pre-fortalled in the idea that this sort of dream of the 60s culturally is going to eventually, oh, hello?
[SPEAKER_01]: Cameo.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to break down and you're going to have
[SPEAKER_01]: something's going to come out of it and you're right like it all it is from fashion from to film to visual art to I'm sure dance and certainly theater you hear about it happening in a lot of New York and theater speaking of Patty Smith, where there's this sort of new need for like a different type of expression and it's it's amazing as it gets kind of like given a name because you're right there is something that happens prior to it that isn't necessarily sonnically linked to it but it's sort of like
[SPEAKER_01]: philosophically linked to it and as this sort of coalesces into the genre and then as it goes on people begin rejecting the traditional trappings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the idea that there is and obviously everyone wants to get people to enjoy their band and to see their band.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you get to a point where by the late 90s there's a complete rejection of any sort of mainstream
[SPEAKER_01]: I was taking a vow of poverty with their band, just to, just as like sort of a culmination, almost of this sort of like philosophical thing that just, anyway, I'm a little bit of a wee bit earlier.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we have that earlier in the squat cultures and I think women talked about it more so and we do have it with,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, a cross.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that was much earlier, you know, in that idea.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, there is with MC5 and the politics.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it all went sideways for them, but some of their original philosophies did kind of express this idea of they wanted something.
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't, they were the first punk band with like a top 100 hit, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: your people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, with with Fugazi, like I think all those other bands you're 100% right, like this thing, this ethic of rejection of mainstream trappings, certainly isn't unique to punk, but I think doing so solely in the name of punk, like why are you doing this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's stop right now for one second.
[SPEAKER_03]: I totally agree, but I want to add in something else to the conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're talking about.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because let's also like, let's throw Breaker Wits into this too and let's throw Fat Mike into this.
[SPEAKER_03]: How fun is it to be able to reject the mainstream when you already have a record label?
[SPEAKER_03]: So don't, I mean, and I like it, but, you know, it's kind of like that paradox that sometimes you call the Cobain paradox, right, it referred to as the code and invent that, but, you know, where you're like MTV sucks and you're on the platform of MTV doing it, right, you're like major label suck by money, you know, and I get it because there's a desire to create commerce outside of the system, but it's still part of a system.
[SPEAKER_03]: and there's still a privilege that comes with being able to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, and I think Mike would push back on this and I think, probably, they probably push back.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, he has, we've been talking about this since 1986.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you're right, they're the people also like, and to go to step back, there's also like a certain level of privilege, even real-to-play music, obviously, to have equipment.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, like, to have
[SPEAKER_01]: to put out a record.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we certainly have had people on this podcast that have come on and said, yeah, the reason you own music from my first ban is because we were broke and we didn't have any friends that had any money to put out records.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it was like survival for a lot of our stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's why certain scenes are better documented than other scenes is because there was a greater means to capital and you're 100% right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I find I think it's also fascinating that you brought up those three people because all of them, maybe not bright.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really know bright at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm punk.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is punk when I'm doing is punk rock, but both Ian and Fat Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: I cannot think of two people that are more diametrically opposed to each other philosophically on almost every other issue other than punk rock being independent and punk rock being a certain sonic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but they're just, I feel, well, I can tell you my perception is that like the things that make them different are really the accessories of their lives, you know, the, the things that kind of identify them is like uniquely human, but at the core, there are two people that run record labels.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they may philosophically think of it a little bit differently, but in a lot of their ideas about inclusion of artists who were not what normally discluded, that's a huge similarity, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's, well, you'll write down the line of all these independent labels.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's white males not to undercut Laura merge and there's certainly other women that were involved in a
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot of white dudes in these positions to pick who the bands are and who got signed and who didn't get signed and I think history's written in the margins in a lot of cases and that's the amazing moment we're at now as we can kind of go back and see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sadly, what was excluded, but also put together a much fuller picture of what it was.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm not saying I'm against it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just saying that I think that there's room, like a lot of in punk rock, there isn't room for the, I don't want to say this fancy word that I learned in fancy college recently, but critique, you know, like it's okay to have conversations about talking about what's missing, along with talking about what got shown.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's just a conversation to have, and it's not an attack on either of those people who I think are amazing human beings and congratulations on your recent fact, Mike episode that just came out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you're airing mine, but no, that was a very that was actually the first time I met Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you go through, they've gotten a little more heated as that's what very glowing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm very like revelatory of Mike at that point, but I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: As it's gone on, I'm like, and I love Mike, and I certainly, I love Ian, I love both these guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think they have done, well, these shaped who I am, ideologically, like they wrote different books of the Bible to me, basically, with the records they put out and the stuff they're involved in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all these various books is a big Bible that I'm reading.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, like you're saying, like, I think the fact that we can critique these people and can critique this stuff is what makes punk
[SPEAKER_01]: special that it is the sort of living organic thing that that is open to reassessment and is open to to, yeah, reasonably restructuring.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And even listening to like, you know, if you just kind of think about the sound biting of Mike and like, I always listen to his interviews and I'm just like, how are we going to compete with the idea of a butt plug going through TLA?
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, the fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: That story is just so incredible, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But then, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: there's another like very rebellion like that might be his personal rebellion like his expression of like what makes him unique in that extreme but we could also look at Ian who would not have a butt plug going through TSA but is also unique in his extremes of like you know like his
[SPEAKER_03]: bounding of his personality and those stories of like that kind of rebellion.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's if you look at it, it's like not the story, it's like that energy under the story, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like that and it can be and that's kind of the message I think of like punk in the personal life of people is that
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it may not be your story.
[SPEAKER_03]: You may, there may be seven people in a room and two of them only go on to do something interesting that you and I had talked about earlier that maybe we could not elaborate because it's like a conversation from before.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know, those other folks that those people went on to go do interesting things probably in their lives too, they're just not documented.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not gonna be having a talking about it on a podcast, but you know, there's so much like revolution
[SPEAKER_03]: raising your kids and how you work and what you buy and like what you do in this world that that's interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_03]: You are thinking fans of punk rock are way more interesting than the people that are on stage, way more interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think the thing that I loved about punk rock and I think even at that first warp tour, I know being on that warp tour probably felt very different,
[SPEAKER_01]: is that there was this idea that it was a breaking down of who was on stage and who was in the crowd.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was the sex pistols.
[SPEAKER_03]: That started with sex pistols, don't you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it even probably starts before that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I look at like, I don't know, I've never seen footage of the fugs playing, but I imagine bands like the fugs, or I like, I look at the thing I wanted to talk to about, which is, you know, like the thing that I think is the sonic precursor to punk in a lot of ways, or bands like the imperial dogs or Zola Rax,
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of Los Angeles area prior to punk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think that to me is like a direct pre-cut this songically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm fascinated by that stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I think that in the United States, this is
[SPEAKER_03]: This is my kind of first draft on this, so like this, you know, bring your, bring your sociologist to cut me down and argue I'm totally ready, but there's this idea that in the 60s we did start to have garage rock so sonically we're talking about a type of music.
[SPEAKER_03]: trying to come out of both Detroit and Los Angeles and why, because I think the automobile dictated the garage and the garage dictated private space where you could be loud and it more experimental.
[SPEAKER_03]: And bands came out of this as they're like true musical expression.
[SPEAKER_03]: and there's a lot of them, but we can look at maybe, like, compilations, like, nuggets and stuff like that to go look at them.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that what ended up happening was, at least for the U.S., we went into the Vietnam War, and it took a lot of our musicians at that time with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And people came back traumatized, society was traumatized and wanting to be normalized.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of people put down their instruments didn't follow through with their stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: So then that could be picked up later.
[SPEAKER_03]: The UK had a similar experience with the fall of colonialism, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And what they called pub rock.
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't even scare up an example right now, but the string was like a doctor feel good and like, uh, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was like a similar experience, but I think pub rock stayed strong.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there was still people playing all the way up through, let's say, I mean, I consider like maybe the damned to be one of the first singles that would really call itself punk, that with the
[SPEAKER_01]: That's I think that's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen two of the garage rock ID and like the way that It's not geography like it's like architecture or industry dictates this music and it does feel like And it certainly does come at a garage rock and I think Los Angeles in particular like another thing that I think added to the trauma that you kind of talked about with Vietnam was was the Manson thing and how much that comes up on this show
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm just saying post man's in like there's almost like a fear of youth culture for a long time and in a palpable kind of like what are these kids going to do and obviously that tying with the Vietnam war and and the escalation with that and and more kids getting drafted over and losing kids like you're saying and it just feels like there's almost a lost generation particularly in Los Angeles of youth culture so when punk comes in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And once again, in Los Angeles, especially, there's a fear of this sort of thing that where it's like the energy of this thing, that is just rearing its head again, which is, I guess, youthful expression and public, especially because anyone could participate and anyone could be involved in this thing no matter where you came from.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, yeah, for Los Angeles too, I think the little bit, I mean, I wasn't there thankfully, I'm not done.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think that there was the first expressions of punk rock in Los Angeles from we're talking about like Alice Bag and the germs and we're really talking about early early, you know, and how they were really influenced by it really was media that came over and I'm going to say it was fashion media.
[SPEAKER_03]: that came over and, you know, LA was such a unique kind of like expression of it because they weren't about the designer designing punk, they were about thrift storing, they were about like really creating from the environment like Los Angeles was as far west as you could go for the American dream.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it felt like that I think, and I don't, maybe people about time, but they could satirize this idea and do parody around the Manson family.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it became kitschy at a certain point and nostalgia for the sixties to kind of like went to it as an expression of like why it was so messed up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And why like the grand narrative of like, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: Grow up and you know
[SPEAKER_03]: get married and like get educated and move to the suburbs and raise your kids and like you've got two cars and like you get a garage and like you get this stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: These rewards for becoming middle class and how that was just completely broken down and then satirized.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that a lot of the early punks, I'm just going to say I know that there are all these stories about.
[SPEAKER_03]: I ran away from
[SPEAKER_03]: people could talk about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like that thing about we always talk about UK punk rock rock, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone met at art school in 1976.
[SPEAKER_03]: There wasn't one person that didn't meet at art school.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that meant they had to go get into a school.
[SPEAKER_03]: They had to create a portfolio.
[SPEAKER_03]: Dave Vanean's just like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was doing art and then these guys said I needed to be singing a band and I was like, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And like all the classroom, like, yeah, we all met at art school, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: So
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, so either like this kind of thing where I think like it wasn't just an accident of expression, I think people kind of knew what they were doing, pushing out their opinions and their creativity.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was certainly very contrived at certain points in certain scenes, but I think there's other ones where it does almost feel a little weirdly spontaneous or just like where convergence is of things to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of the angels especially, I think
[SPEAKER_01]: Also Los Angeles is the first birthplace of the sort of punk rock kid because you look at, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got like a lot of people meeting college.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a lot of people in, you know, certainly New York or older.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas in LA, it's all kids at these shows and kids making up some of these bands, these first bands.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, and one of my theories on like early punk rock and Los Angeles is that these young people came in in the late 70s.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you can talk about that first wave, the first 100 in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_03]: But then like 1981, everyone complains, all the shows they got.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, all these suburban kids came in and that was my generation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was one of those suburban kids that came in and lit fires and bathrooms.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm and rip back in toilets out of the wall.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to tell you.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yes, but you know, also a lot of it was you know, those kids that were 16 and 76 were now getting older.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they were thinking about career and getting married and leaving the punk scene to go have careers and film and all these other things that they did and yes, they were getting pushed out and you have people were warming it the fleet would or you know whatever the that people talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's amazing because that sets a precedent for where punk goes and how it's always like that like you're always.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I don't, that doesn't mean you have to leave the scene or leave the values or stop going to shows or anything, but just surrender the zeitgeist to another generation and it might not look like what you want punk to look like.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[SPEAKER_01]: written about in books now and storied is that the violence just becomes too much and it just sort of seems like it implodes and I guess there's also the draw of metal that's happening and there's an exodus of the scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't die it just goes underground like there's still your future band mate and chain of strength there's still like people doing hardcore and punk right like there's there's future but just as I guess he was playing and by back then it's just underground it goes back to smaller venues it just.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like you're saying it just reiterates itself because it won't die.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like now that we have now that kids have a name for this thing that we're you were talking about earlier with Patty Smith and Yoko ono being the precursors to now that it's named and we we have it as a defined thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's never going to die.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just going to take change shapes and and find a new hole to live in.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but yeah, I think one of the concerns though is this idea of where we originally like
[SPEAKER_03]: the obsession with documenting self that I think my generation has, I think is really a disservice, not what's going on in punk right now, but definitely 10 years from now.
[SPEAKER_03]: This idea that you could be in trash talk and like Cat Williams is doing shorts in your audience.
[SPEAKER_03]: If that was even real, I just say.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's real.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's 100% real.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was there too.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: The questioning now of what is real and what's not real in the simulation of culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's why this is important because this is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone, like we get hit up sometimes for people to come on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll be like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me research it for a second and you can cut look in to anyone's kind of like pedigree being involved in this music You can hit up friends from a given city.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can be like what's the deal with this band?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the deal with this artist?
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're all connected and that's the thing that I think's amazing is that it's It is like this living organism that keeps growing We are all connected But what about 10 years from now when we start experiencing
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, AI being able to not generate, but being able to, you know, where, you know, like, don't you ever just wake up and you're like, you did a new band, but why can't the algorithm give me that net?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'm frustrated with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, people think, oh, the algorithm's telling me how to like me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, no, I need, you know, it's not good enough yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's not good enough yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's not good enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think you can author.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one thing the algorithm will never be better than us.
[SPEAKER_01]: with is a sweaty show like the the algorithm until that may the virtual body suit will finally like kill DIY hardcore punk rock because until you can and COVID certainly put it on the ropes for a while but until you find a way to get rid of the idea of going to an environment and and feeling this sort of shared expression with a bunch of people that are excited about
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing I think it's magical about this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the thing that will never hopefully die.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you do see it, there's like, there's new bands.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the people that are going to be influenced by this next wave of bands that are hopefully blowing up now are going to be inspired to do this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to, I don't know, but I'm an extremist, obviously, with my views on this.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, I totally think that like that is, you know, the hope of community connection and the feeling of connection.
[SPEAKER_03]: This what he show, there might have to be at some point that might not exist.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not trying to be a fatalist.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you, I don't, and I get it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just saying it might not exist.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what I'm talking about today.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think kids today are on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like this alpha generation, like 14 year olds right now and like what they're, they're amazing.
[SPEAKER_03]: They truly are like, I am not worried.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's more about what is how they are going to be impacted by post capitalism, marketing, like the pressures that they're going to have of their conformity and maybe their kids, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just terrifying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's terrifying, like raising kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very terrifying.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just something that needs to be talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wake up every morning scared.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wake up every morning because you're being informed by algorithm to be scared.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm more scared of the fact that I've got three kids and I pin my hopes and dreams on positive pitch for reviews like this really, I think not a lot to be positive about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, they're going to be so much more, you know, like that's what they are like.
[SPEAKER_01]: I look at them now.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: People can always come up and I'm like, what advice would you give by 14 year old?
[SPEAKER_03]: It wants to be in a band and I'm just like, don't listen to anyone over 23 years old, giving you advice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: We, we're just going to exploit you ultimately, so don't listen to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I think that is the biggest threat to youth culture now is that you don't have things that have time to develop
[SPEAKER_01]: Any sort of traction, it just becomes part of the, or just gets, you know, sucked, assumed into whatever is going to be the woodchipper that hopefully you've made it out of in one piece.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you don't really have the, the fostering and sort of building of communities like you used to is more just like individual artists now, which is never, you know, never going to build anything out of one artist, you need sort of like, you know, leave the,
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole anti-cloth.
[SPEAKER_03]: As long as we're holding the artist as that is our pinpoint, if we're holding that, you know, if we start thinking about community moving forward, maybe that could be different because we're in different like various communities on the internet and in our connections.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm not a huge fan of social media but I'd accept it for what it is to be able to look at it
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that, you know, I don't even know anyone in my life right now, I don't know a 14 year old that even wants to interact with their phone, they're just burnt out on it by 14.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's like an interesting thing to watch.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love my 14 year old to get burnt out on his phone a little bit more, but it has not happened yet, but you're right, they don't wanna put themselves out there in the way that
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really, I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or generation, yeah, our generation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was hoping for a phone, are you kidding?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I was a photographer.
[SPEAKER_03]: I couldn't stop documenting, like, I'm part of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I was a photographer from the second I could get into shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was taking a camera, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: So like, I was really part of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, don't look at me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm here to look at you, you know, kind of like, the reality.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like that's what rolled, rolled about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was trying to look at some of your photos today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, exploited is the most negative way to put it, but I thought, but it made me like brought out to the world or or shown archive of unbelievable music shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy the stuff that you were obviously a part of, but prior to that there for and then just.
[SPEAKER_03]: with the camera snapping these snapshots like I would love to see more of the stuff I've seen is but I get caught up in the conversations that like a lot of those people you know like yeah I have musicians but I also like the stuff that I love is I took photographs of other 14 15 16 year olds at the time and at the time
[SPEAKER_03]: what we were into was not what 14, 15, and 16-year-olds were into.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a lot of thought about permission and storytelling and who gets to tell the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm all about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of the stuff I don't show.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's like, it's still a conversation for me to figure out, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's interesting too because it's, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially with the people that are involved in music that are doing this stuff, it does serve a historical importance or whatever that kind of side of things, but then you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's not as I think continues the romanticism of it, and I think I don't know about yourself and certainly the people around you at the time, but the other people have been on the show talked about Johnny Thunders, and I have friends that were sort of doing heroin because Johnny Thunders did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: oh this is this is bad and we shouldn't do it and we know how the story ends for every single person we worship but there's also the idea that like you want to try it you want to do it
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's, um, yeah, they're just, yeah, that really that it gets complicated in that that sense because we were, you know, we're really talking about some heartbreak and devastating kind of experiences and, you know, it's not just like, you know, the, we were so crazy back then kind of conversations and like, again, I was just on a panel recently with flee who I've known.
[SPEAKER_03]: for ever completely, you know, such a different genre, but started an LA punk rock and and part of a lot of this.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was like, one of those first people when I was super young, I'd people would say, what would he listen to?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, Alice Coltrane, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: They'd be like, no way!
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I listen to.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you, one of those, you know, first people.
[SPEAKER_03]: Got to have some really good no means no stories.
[SPEAKER_03]: Where are they from Toronto?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're from Victoria, but they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, dot, okay, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: My first show was actually going to go see.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why went to a no means no ultra bidet, Al's Donut Show, and so on Spat on the Lee singer of Al's Donut, and he jumped in the crowd and tried to beat her.
[SPEAKER_03]: We were so crazy back then, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So flea and I were on a panel, and it was one of those like tell your punk rock stories.
[SPEAKER_03]: And by the way,
[SPEAKER_03]: awesome genre.
[SPEAKER_03]: So everyone was telling that we were so crazy.
[SPEAKER_03]: We stayed up all night.
[SPEAKER_03]: We did this.
[SPEAKER_03]: We did that today.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, which is Michael, I was like sitting there going, dude, I was 15 doing heroin with adults.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want to hear that story?
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, we're just like, how do you unpack that to an audience that just wants to hear about how great punk rock was?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, how do you
[SPEAKER_03]: What are we going to do?
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're like, let's not, you know, it's not the time of place like right now and we're like, well, let's just tell a story about seeing you the first time you were in fear.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you played in fear, like Keith Morris jumped out of that and he's like, yeah, that's a good one, but we both can't tell it because we're so shaken by the circumstances that really drove those situations, you know, and like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, okay, we're gonna be okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was one thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: What else were we talking about?
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, violence and shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, violence and shows is what singles out people that can't handle the violence and shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's an expression that happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's happening in LA right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: like the shows are hyper violent.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's just like, people are like, I'm not gonna go to that.
[SPEAKER_03]: My knee hurts, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, like, yeah, you're risking it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're risking it because it is like, pro wrestling.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the same thing as pro wrestling.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's where men get to go to express self harm with each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: a place where and it and you see it time and time again with like hardcore and punk where people get to it and people come with some baggage and sadly as positive as a place it is like you're saying it's a place where there's a lot of terrible shit that and so forth and still happens I'm sure like yeah it's terrible shit that's um how do you say it when when groups um
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you may not do that outside of the group, but you're totally okay with doing it in the group.
[SPEAKER_03]: If that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I guess.
[SPEAKER_03]: We have a word for it, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you would.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is, you're right, like there's like sort of a group thing, or a safety, and it's interesting because like in punk, we're all coming here because we're rejecting society, but yet we still
[SPEAKER_01]: re-establish the structures of society within punk where there's a hierarchy and there's sort of this idea of the old kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the not yet.
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's just reflected in violence to say, I mean, the the fittest of them and you know, I love photograph of that experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like I got, you know, I'm in on, um,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, that's one of my favorite male experiences are one of my favorite.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if I could actually tolerate wartime journalism, I would go do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I can't like, I feel too tender to be able to really look at like true pain and suffering.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that like it's mimicking this like, you know, pain and suffering and hyperviolence and who gets to be on top and and then also who cares for the other.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's another like aspect, which I call, I fell down in the pit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or as I like to say, Sepulchera is the safest pit around like you just like I have videos and
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's interesting to know it's just it ends up being cardio if you're over 21 and it shows up and it spreads from LA right there's like the story that Rollins tells in American hardcore is that they went out to LA they saw people dancing like that they brought it back to Washington and then it's sort of like spreads throughout Boston to New York and all this sort of thing where it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something very bizarre and like trying to explain it to someone who has never had involvement in like why do people do it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like why do people tolerate it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love this conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you want some possible explanations?
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, first off.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's always been an expression, as far as we can tell in culture.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, new information is always coming in, but it's always been an expression.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just read this really great book on Wagner, who
[SPEAKER_03]: Classical guy from the late 1800s in the late 1800s, a lot of stuff was changing in society.
[SPEAKER_03]: For instance, we got electricity.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he was this guy that started to realize that instead of like doing shows in the daytime, he wanted to do shows in the nighttime, using electricity to illuminate the stage.
[SPEAKER_03]: This idea that it is a stage, and this idea that you have people in your audience and people would go to Wagner shows,
[SPEAKER_03]: Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think there's like this and you think you're unique.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's in its safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a horror movie or haunted house.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a safe violence where you know it's going to be violent and there's certainly a few people that have been really hurt, but there is.
[SPEAKER_01]: like you're saying this sort of safety that people are going to look out for you and no one's going to take it to a level that they wouldn't want to be inflicted upon them theoretically.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but you know, and then theoretically, I mean with the experience that we started to see in the mid-80s in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_03]: a lot of hyperviolence.
[SPEAKER_03]: A lot of people that would show up that shows with more of the intention of violence and not so much the intention of being a fan, which is exactly what happened to Wagner, you know, people started to show up to be violent.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that mic and I have a very similar story like we were at one of the same shows the music machine in West Los Angeles to see suicidal and both of us had really violent experiences separately and we both were like we're out of here removing the San Francisco.
[SPEAKER_03]: which is considered more of a less, you know, to mean more inclusive kind of scene, different expressions, like outside of that expression.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we both went to San Francisco State.
[SPEAKER_03]: I tried.
[SPEAKER_03]: I dropped out.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was able to get through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, and it feels like that happened to, there's like a fleeing that kind of happens out of that scene at the certain point because it just does get like people are getting, it's almost like separate violence.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't mean to say this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm
[SPEAKER_01]: But to me, it seems like it's separate violence than the punk rock violence that we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're talking about gang involved people in some cases, we're talking about, like you're saying, people that are coming there looking for violence, I'm sure people with mental health issues that are coming there, just a fuck people up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's not necessarily, certainly,
[SPEAKER_01]: far, far from the first one, hundreds like you talked about, but I think it's even far away from just like the idea of the mosh pit violence and going in there and doing the worm or or skank in or doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be strut.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like that's a different kind of violence than to be an ecstabbed and everything is just.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I think it's interesting to think about like a criminal element that's starting to like move through the scene also particularly like shows and laundering drug money and you know other kind of like where I get it is just kind of thing that shows up and like it was the same thing in Austria and Germany in the late what it became Austrian Germany late 1800s and people started leaving to go to France.
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, they started leaving to go to Switzerland.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's kind of that same migration, that same idea.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in like France, you're like, you know, noisy outsiders of the late 1800s, would have been like Eric Saty, and then like the data, this movement, and all these people that came in, you know, that were like,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, no art is about tearing up newspapers and putting it on canvas, you know, like, or, you know, I mean, like, like, no, it's not about a mainstream salon.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, you know, where people would officially have to go to be artists or schools.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was like, no, you know, that's all, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like it not to say that this is like, it's all worth it, but at the same time, it does inspire and create like you're saying other forms of art or makes people go different directions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here I talked about, I guess, most famously in punk in DC, where you have that revolution somewhere where people have a reaction to how violent the thing the scene got and start taking the music in a different direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you certainly see it in other scenes, kind of play out, ABC, No Rio in New York.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it feels like once again, this is kind of part of that natural life cycle of a scene where you get to an age where like, why am I doing this or this is not what I psyched up for and you got to figure out what's next.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, or you just have to think he's late 80s, sweet hardcore guys that were like, maybe like 19, 2021, you know, like, I don't know, judge and underdog and yet they're coming out and playing shows and excited for
[SPEAKER_03]: uh, excited for these shows and then this barrage of like people show up that they don't know who they are that are just like enacting violence, certain opinions about race and culture, like making sure they exclude other people and these bands are just like, what's happening?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like why is this happening?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like that's once again like you have, well, I think Anita talked about when she was on the show like that's there's that's the rise of sort of LA having this more already punk scene and people at the anti club and taking in a different direction like going to try and to get away from whatever the other shit is that's happening and it is and it does like.
[SPEAKER_03]: It never goes away though, right, and it just sort of gets ready for this next sort of huge flare up that kind of happens in Los Angeles, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, because we can't talk about like simultaneously, we were talking about savage republic, and we were going out to the desert and blowing stuff up, which again, another problem.
[SPEAKER_03]: Please, whatever, you know, but, you know, having these other experiences that aren't that are outside of that that might be slightly more inclusive.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, another art punk scenes and.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you brought up savage publicly.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're seeing coming up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, and that's, and I think like you said earlier, it's not like this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: happens like the media seems to kind of portray it like or or queer people in punk rock like going back to Jane County's like the first ever New York punk rocker and She's like about 74 she's doing these recordings like trouble at the cup and stuff like she's Not trouble with a cup or I went out whatever the records called sorry, but she's like no no no they were tons of women
[SPEAKER_03]: breaking it off in the late 70s in New York or in urban areas.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we're not shy.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not short of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that we look at the lineages of growth, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we're human beings and we need to simplify what's happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's very hard to hold the space that there were multiple scenes happening at the same time that would move forward to be an influence, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, when I went to shows in 80, 81,
[SPEAKER_03]: There was no lack of camaraderie among women.
[SPEAKER_03]: There were plenty of bands, plenty of artists, you know, Joanne and Wendt, one of my favorite artists to talk about of all-time performance artists that would come into the punk clubs and do like hit a tape recorder and do these just extraordinary performances.
[SPEAKER_03]: But one of the things that like to think about in that time, we're talking late 70s or early 80s,
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that the guys were more out to be like, I love this lifestyle and I want to figure out how I can capitalize on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we need to make t-shirts, books, video, and records, where the women were more like, I love this moment and this, when this moment ends at ends.
[SPEAKER_03]: So now we don't have a lot of documentation or representation of tangible stuff that they did.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we only have the memories of what they did.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's no one wants that because how are you going to sell it?
[SPEAKER_03]: you can't sell it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it becomes not as important.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those women's expressions become not as important.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think Yoko, I don't know, face that like when we finally get to see like people are releasing video of her performances from the fucking 70s.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: You're just like, whoa, how is this happening?
[SPEAKER_03]: This is this amazing performance and we're only getting them now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel like, well, I understand like I think well, castration squad.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's another band that I
[SPEAKER_03]: no real idea about till doing this podcast and now researching and finding out one of their they played a lot of shows they were like a played a lot of shows they were really supporters of the scene they were also promoters of the scene they were flyer makers they were artists and in that band was Tracy who is also in red cross Shannon who I don't know how many other
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll spag was in it for a second to read that was not in it for a second.
[SPEAKER_03]: She was in it for a while, you know, and then Patricia Morrison, who Patricia bag, I think, also moved in and now, but she, you know, went into Gun Club who are a great band, I always want to, you know, prompt them up for bands that were like, hey, we're punk rock, but doing something kind of extraordinary no one's going to get it and we're never going to be appreciated.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then she went on, you know, to be in the damned.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a mercy to her journey through punk as a wild, like it's, uh, it's, and Alice, wasn't someone from the Pandora's, also in castration, Scott, too, or something, or that one I went now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have photographed castrations squad.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're one of my favorite bands with Alice, you know, with Patricia, not just been on stage.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, Christian death, you know, they were like a band, but they also had, they were performance.
[SPEAKER_03]: So a lot of people were on stage.
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, who's the audience, who's the, the performer, um, you know, they had a, uh, Eva O from the speed queens and Eva O was very much like a forefront in in the scene with.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: they might be the most important first wave Los Angeles band from what people describe them as and just certainly the stuff that has come out is hugely influential and that's with nothing of these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they were also one of the first bands that really from LA, from the scene.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm still little, but they would talk, they'd be in the media talking about, you know, touring.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, oh, you can tour from that, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: And like this expression and dance and performance.
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, you know, how are we going to capitalize on it?
[SPEAKER_03]: We're really about into the sweaty show.
[SPEAKER_03]: I find like, we're into, but you're into, they were into, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: So then there wasn't always, I think, what is it?
[SPEAKER_03]: What is of the screamers?
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a demo and like maybe target video?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think now, people have taken all the
[SPEAKER_01]: do it like demos that have been circulating.
[SPEAKER_01]: They might be one of the most bootleg punk bands ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I can think of at least five bootlegs I have in my collection, like they've, but I think now it's been officially released.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also, I think a target video of like a TV kind of performance of them playing on a sound stage that was like officially released at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's very under document.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the thing that I've also found fascinating
[SPEAKER_01]: What rights the history were certain bands are talking about history yeah exactly like like I think there's punk is better because there's so many primary primary sources and zines that you can kind of go back to and get a better picture than what records are out there but like years after the fact the records you gravitate to only to find it like now they weren't really part of the scene they were like.
[SPEAKER_01]: a periphery band at best and not it wasn't that it wasn't that it was this band that never recorded anything.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like who gets to write the history we're talking about, you know, living in a society based on capital, being able to raise the money to be able to create the document, right, create the scene, create the recording, create the t-shirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: punk is the place where that stuff became, and I think technology reached that point, but that became accessible to people with not necessarily as much means, because you can make a tape.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could photocopy your scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: You didn't have to publish a magazine anymore, and I think that didn't level the playing field completely, but certainly brought it down to a much more accessible level.
[SPEAKER_01]: And certainly why kids, I guess, produce a lot of the media back then.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was it.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's recordings.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the vibe of that band?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like is it like savage public or like obviously that's later in their academic careers, I imagine.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I had some friends who later, Ethan Port who later went on to be in savagery public and local West LA band who's associated with the rimpests.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there were a couple like deep and
[SPEAKER_03]: demo only.
[SPEAKER_03]: They bands that were associated.
[SPEAKER_03]: We had a record store in West Los Angeles called Rino Records, which was on Westwood Boulevard.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we were kind of like on top of it and later on how to a store called Texas Records.
[SPEAKER_03]: West LA was still considered like a place you could go to live.
[SPEAKER_03]: At the time, it would be able to start a record store, it would be able to start an art gallery.
[SPEAKER_03]: We had a coffee shop, called Radion, that was one of the kind of the first 50s themed kitchen weirdo kind of pro-dope punk coffee shops also.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we had these places to go meet, but we also had UCLA and UCLA art department.
[SPEAKER_03]: So kind of came out of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was 14 or 15 when I was in, but the really the idea was to go into parking structures.
[SPEAKER_03]: a tracked audience just based on whoever was in the parking structure at the time and play music that was unwritten, you know, impromptu sounds, you know, create the sounds of
[SPEAKER_03]: industrial automobile stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, craftworks, one of my all-time favorite bands, really, it was like a very natural, like, you know, the idea that you didn't have to sit down to learn guitar or learn music was an entry point for me into performance.
[SPEAKER_03]: and music.
[SPEAKER_03]: In the fall, the only time I really ever really, really, really had to sit down and learn songs.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was in a band with Courtney Love and Captain Jellon, Courtney Love and went on to whole and then married Kurt Cobain and Captain Jellon, who went on to a band called Babes and Whiteland, all kind of...
[SPEAKER_03]: late 80s, 90s bands, you know, in the discussions of being in a band where, you know, I came from hardcore and love black flag, but I also at the same time, you know, love craftwork, and at the same time loved the idea of like, why would we write a song?
[SPEAKER_03]: everybody write songs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why would we do that?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I look back a little me, little me was a genius, like a genius about that stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it really wasn't until like, I listened to Capitile and songwriting and Courtney's lyrics that I was really like, I guess there is something to it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, there is something between maybe learning it as a craft because both of those
[SPEAKER_03]: two ladies were amazing at the craft of storytelling, the craft of expression, like being able to create lyrical stories that made sense, and music that was under it that like supported those stories, and I say,
[SPEAKER_03]: And they on needed a bass player, bass sucks, it's like a great rock bass.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just like, I play it like I go get ready even to this day and I'll seven, I'm just like bass, I have to go play bait.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, basic, it's in the name.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, bait was so much more interesting and other genres.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does play a role, though, in punk, because it allows the guitar to not have to be, I guess, is rhythmic, too, right, like the bass is such a, I don't know, I think I feel like... Don't defend the bass.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know, I feel bad.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not in punk.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's other places to defend the bass, okay?
[SPEAKER_03]: Not in punk.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because remember what I was talking about about my early influences?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, unless it's just someone playing guitar, you know, we're talking about the rhythm of bass driving that, you know, that sonically that's driving with vocals on top guitars just like a little thing that pops in once in a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I've been like, I've been like, what were you talking about being influenced by black flag?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I grew up on a meters.
[SPEAKER_03]: I grew up on the meters.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, like, those were the songs, like, when I was like, I have to learn songs.
[SPEAKER_03]: I learned meters songs, you know, like, based, they were based driven songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel bad for Deity now and Chuck from black flag.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you've diminished their roles in these things.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, I mean, look, it's like, honestly, like, Deity's great, but he's a vibe.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's Deity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not really about the plot, like, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, let's just have another conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that people forget that like, you know, Kira Rossler in Black Flag brought Black Flag to the next level.
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was in Black Flag very early on.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're the music nerd.
[SPEAKER_03]: When did she join Black Flag?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, two or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: 83, 84.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like a major portion of Black Flag, you know, they were a mixed band.
[SPEAKER_01]: and well we can't the Rossler family in general I feel like her and her brother are both like all those like twisted roots and and tater tots I think was just so much fascinating stuff in that
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, can you listen to scrimmers?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know that, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Paul Rossi.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's scrimmers too, of course.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I have like really great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So like as a musician, I'm trying to be a good musician.
[SPEAKER_03]: I try to believe that if you're good at anything you do, you educate yourself in it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like you always go with an open mind and like revisit and take.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm taking music lessons and you know what I'm going to have Greg Hudson from the circle jerks.
[SPEAKER_03]: Really early on when I was like, why do we need to practice or play or do anything like this?
[SPEAKER_03]: Greg Hudson looked at me and he goes, I take at least 20 music lessons a year, at least.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, I'm doing the math, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing the math.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like,
[SPEAKER_03]: like everything the time the cost like who does he go to.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I've really taken that to heart and I tried to do as many music lessons as I can a year.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Paul Ross is one of my piano teacher.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know talking about boiled, privileged, uh, ah, ah, ah, ah,
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm white man and I'm just like who can give me and you know he's an incredible musician like not just like he was in the screamers, but musicality isn't incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: We brought up sugar baby doll and we got I got to ask you about that band because like the fact that the three of you going on to what you did in music were all in a band together to me is just so awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: Isn't it awesome?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like the once again test.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's further testimony to punk rock being this place, which brings people together that have this drive that wind up doing things later in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, yeah, so what was the, because I've heard the recordings that came later when they became, I think, pagan babies.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of dream-poppy vibe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that was like early on when you were playing with them?
[SPEAKER_03]: So no, I think that it was a little bit more, you know, I think that the dream puppy vibe was where they were going.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in the moment of like 1986, you know, I had gone to do some time in Europe and, you know, that, you know, I stayed in Amsterdam.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's where I met guys that later would be in the obsessed and a lot of like more of like the squatter punk expressions of the late 80s.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_03]: Guy who was in the obsessed and still runs labels to this day was just like, you know, you got to go play harder music like these gals are great like I played him the demo and he's like, no, this is good, but it it's trajectory is commercial and.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I had lots of conversations about wanting to work on the outside.
[SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, I felt like my I was in sugar babble on for as a support role.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I sometimes will end up being the glue in a band or the rudder that keeps the crazy people stable.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I say creepy, I'm just I'm saying like,
[SPEAKER_03]: The people with a lot of ideas that, you know, to like really help with follow through and help with taking like somebody has an idea for a song and like asking them where where does this song going to live in a year if it's on stage, then we need to move in that direction, you know, if it's on recording, we need to move in that direction.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and he was just like, you know, and also there were drug problems in the band and, you know, there was like, so there was personal stuff going on.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, a lot of that, you know, always say with Courtney and with Kat.
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, these were, and myself, because I was using at the same time, but I love the idea that I got to be really out of body with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, there were no words to describe how we were, how we thought about things, how we experienced the world emotionally, or how we experienced like this stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it came out really like the best you can call us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like bitches or difficult, you know, and you know, so a lot of self-medication came in.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Courtney loves writing a book right now and I'm just praying that she covers this stuff because I think it's going to be like so valuable and instead of just the, you know, I mean obvious stuff that the pop culture narrative canon that people want to hear and like create the villain of her that they need to be able to explain what happens, you know, I hope that she can really talk about, you know, that experience of what it's like to maybe.
[SPEAKER_03]: of ADHD or aspirators or like mental challenges like in that era, you know, it comes out in like expression, music and all, but not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so that was what was happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I was just like at the same time, you know, people were telling me there's a band and I'll set them in a way.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're like meat and potatoes, rock band, you know, they're doing, you know, garage, but in like a really interesting way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, that just ended up kind of the and what I wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I came home packed my stuff up from San Francisco and moved back down to LA.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, I'm here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Come on.
[SPEAKER_01]: The, the people like self medicate, and especially ADHD.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think now we're moving into a period.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the positive things from social media that I found.
[SPEAKER_01]: How many people self diagnosed for ADHD, and then went and got an actual diagnosis after realizing they had it because they saw a TikTok video about it or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that is so many people I know that wound it up wound up getting into drugs and fucking up on drugs.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is pretty cool like not having those academic successes and a system that doesn't accommodate you to begin with, you know, I feel like I was very much like when I went to the middle school, which for the US is like you're I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: seventh grade, you're sort of 13 to 16 age range.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was in, you know, very specifically in a school that wanted to make sure that working class people were successful.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you had like choices between like kind of emphasizing
[SPEAKER_03]: Automechanics, hairdressing, and typing, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like those were kind of like these things that they were kind of pushing you to.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you showed any like academic skills you were popped out of the school immediately and put in a different program.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, please let me be in the science program.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, leave me with all of these horrible knuckleheads like the kit, like I've show up at school with red hair and people just throw apples at me from afar.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they all ended up in bands like Bale Wolfe the neighborhood watch.
[SPEAKER_03]: Later having to apologize for throwing apples at me for having red hair, but it was like, you know, physical, you know, going to school was like a physical danger and the schools weren't set up to like figure out how to moderate that and it's really pleased and like I couldn't get into AP scientists because I went dissect a frog.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I've been a doctor buckers.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could have been a doctor right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's the I like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Park podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd be making that 120K year solving ADHD.
[SPEAKER_03]: But no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you wouldn't have made me want to be in a punk band.
[SPEAKER_03]: When I say solving, I mean not solving.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I know you're sad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get treating it better.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I guess I, you know, and then it wouldn't be a generation of people like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: involved in this music if you hadn't done this thing so you can continue to cycle with the world be like I just often important but I feel like you're right there because it is it's amazing how but you know and I I'm jumping all over the place with this I guess in my head but isn't amazing that there was this thing that you could kind of go into and express yourself with photography because school was sound like it was not the place that was accommodating to you and and certainly wasn't
[SPEAKER_01]: serving your creative interest, but then punk is someplace where you could kind of go and kind of create your own world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm idealizing and I think it gets more like this is time kind of goes on at the time you're getting into it.
[SPEAKER_03]: We glorify and glamorize art that has been created out of trauma.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are we going to do with that when we treat the trauma?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we not going to have punk?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we not going to have artistic expression?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we not going to have people that are going
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a mixed bag and it's nuanced and it's, it's troubling and it should be well, I feel like you're right 100% like any time you write a song you're like making money off your trauma.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any time you're like truly opening yourself up and not being a character like you're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's costing a little bit of your soul in a way and there's plenty of examples of people that this thing ate up alive and.
[SPEAKER_03]: we're still listening to songs that they wrote in trauma and celebrating when I goes back to what you're saying like not wanting to glamorize it and uh there's this really good documentary i can't remember it right now but it's really about this idea of the rock star becomes the new sacrificial
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was in the 70s it's like called the Church of Rock or something and it's it's pretty cool It's about this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, so it's not our generation.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like kind of speaking before that the rock star becomes You know the location of trauma for culture and ultimately they need to die at 27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's tackled by this, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not, and I made it up, that it's mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've made it copyrighted.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of, say the other words, there's a verbal copyright.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it is, I think that P. Townsend says it in the history of time-life history of rock and roll music punk episode, where he's like, you realize rock and roll is a fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's really romantic that there's just sort of fire burning there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he realized what's feeling the fire's bodies.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It happens time and time again and then people are worth money and death and it's exploited further and it just, uh, um, as one of the great tragedies I guess is like how much of these music costs people their their their lives and art and art.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I see in the art world right now, in modern and contemporary art, there's a lot of conversation about who gets to own it and it as an asset, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we always make this joke who walk through the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, Longway.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, we're walking through Jay-Z's wallet right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, stock portfolio.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is what the new stock portfolio looks like.
[SPEAKER_03]: But in a way, it's like then being able to create art, not necessarily with that trauma.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then in recent years, like in the lessons COVID, it's really been about Basquiet and artists that did experience the trauma and died.
[SPEAKER_03]: Become the collector, the collectible again.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like,
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's also like the idea of someone who creates something in life, in death, taking on another life.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have no ownership of this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was intensely personal that they made.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess you lose ownership once you sell it out into the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this can be extended to music, but just how many people you look at what they've done and it's like, would they be happy with what they've done with their legacy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would they have wanted it to be used in this way?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's certainly people that are now in, there's a big exhibit that came through here of Keith Herring, a Keith Herring.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, we had that in LA, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my kids went to it and they came home and they were talking about like Keith Herring art and we're how much it sells for now in this idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so much against what Keith Herring kind of talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously he was very commercial and commercialized his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, he was also someone that I think had a lot of populist values in doing so, and the show's called everyone, anyone can do it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think so that must be I didn't get a chance to go and I went to one.
[SPEAKER_01]: the last time they tore Keith Haring way back when, but I think it was a little more, members are a little more adult themes than I think this one is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this one's a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, for anyone who's listening who doesn't know Keith Haring, he came up out of the New York scene in that late 70s period that we talk about all of these protopunk bands coming out of very much a part of the mix between what they call uptown culture and downtown culture, which was like a synchronization between black culture and white culture coming together.
[SPEAKER_03]: for punk and art, which, you know, was immediately slapped out of the culture, like as fast as it could.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, hip hop and later gangster rap, and stuff was kind of born out of out of that, Keith Herring straddled it through an art expression of really early graffiti artists, right, that were like the kind of ones that would exchange more easily exchange culture.
[SPEAKER_03]: But all of these guys were in bands together, and they all played music together Boschia.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they all came out of this like so it wasn't really it was this kind of idea of wanting to bring together these expressions in punk or that it wasn't just about music the way we think of it now that it was about a lot of stuff coming together and reforming to create this movement and then you know hearing was gay a lot of his friends died and he then he was a person living with HIV and then eventually passed away from complications.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, his expressions and a lot of his art are troubling about that, but they've been taken into pop culture and they're like, look at these fun drawings of this guy like crawling across the floor and it's like, okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm not an art historian, so I'm not, I'm just a fan, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So, though that story may not necessarily be like accurate, it's just my observation on information that's coming to me on it.
[SPEAKER_03]: have your kids going to the show and looking at people collecting it and selling it really high volume.
[SPEAKER_03]: The interesting thing about his show is it's curated by a friend of his and the interesting thing about the basketball show is it's being curated by his family.
[SPEAKER_03]: They his father, basketball's father was very protective of his son's work and was a businessman.
[SPEAKER_03]: and would only allow his work to be shown if it was shown in the most possible light.
[SPEAKER_03]: And now his family has gotten the rights to it, the father's past away.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they're showing Basque yachts work only in a renaissance that they can control in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was in a bank lobby.
[SPEAKER_03]: So irony.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, they don't want to talk a lot about his sexual preferences, they don't want to talk about his gender preferences, and they certainly don't want to talk about his drug use.
[SPEAKER_03]: But they forefront the art itself, but they don't really forefront him.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think that's a thing in music that we are starting to going to be look at too, where the family of Michael Jackson controlling Michael Jackson's work as opposed to the corporation that currently holds it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Music is going to the corporations, but art is kind of going to the families.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also interesting when you kind of...
[SPEAKER_01]: In thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think when you see that happen in music, you know, and you see this, you know, like Kirk O'Baine showing up as a playable character in guitar hero.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd never met him, but I cannot imagine he would have been stoked.
[SPEAKER_01]: about becoming a playable character in a video.
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he wasn't outside of an exploitation.
[SPEAKER_03]: He signed to his record label.
[SPEAKER_03]: He knew what he was doing.
[SPEAKER_03]: He brought that along.
[SPEAKER_03]: He wanted mainstream success.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what he wanted.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, and I once again, I was not there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I certainly didn't see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it feels like it was on a lot of it was a.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this it?
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of environment too, where this is like you get this thing that you wanted, and especially with punk rock, it feels like this is this thing that we have this heel that's like artificial, and that's the thing that like I find fascinating as a group, we go back to the very beginning of the conversation when I'm talking about these people that have this adherence to these four letters that at the end of the day everyone's got a different definition of,
[SPEAKER_01]: But yet they have so much power over us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's certainly power over me that I'm wasted most of my life talking to people about it, but it's still this like weird thing and it's it's all it's like a religion because it's arbitrary in the same way where it's seemingly arbitrary.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't mean to diminish people's faiths, but
[SPEAKER_01]: like you could believe in any number of things and we just happen to believe in punk, which is what you did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's so much like that Protestant rebellion, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we don't know necessarily what it means to be, and I'm not a Christian, but I'm just an observer of humans, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And how humans organize themselves.
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's all these ways that you express Protestantism, especially in the United States, like all these different ways, but the one thing we know is we're not Catholic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm for defying right and I guess that's what I say we I'm not including my No, I definitely and I right like that's a hundred percent and that's I think that's the thing with Canadian like what what defines being Canadian It's like DOA Drake and Degrassi the three D's and not being American like those are the little sort of what we can claim to is Canadian identity
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, yeah, I mean British identity was I mean US identity was started on we're not British right and like how to make that extra over the top to show that's what's happening.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're puredance.
[SPEAKER_03]: We left England like our part like a very small trickle left England because they weren't religious enough.
[SPEAKER_03]: We needed more rules about how to behave.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's probably better now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder, I don't know, maybe it's better now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's a certain point where people aren't direct conflict with each other, much like religion, because their definition of this little thing is different than someone else's definition of this little thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though we're, you know, the award on the back of an ant, culturally, we still find divisions within this community to kind of like put around ourselves and to say, we're not like this person, we're not like that person.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a real interesting thing to kind of like study.
[SPEAKER_01]: I find it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's your in the conversation in the influence of punk and just being able to set back or like just have a little bit of age or wisdom around it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You start to look at it and go like.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, are we just enacting a cultural expression at large?
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we just players in something that was going to happen?
[SPEAKER_03]: And what's called post-modernity and anti-structuralism are the fancy fancy fancy pants words for it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like where we're just breaking down everything that we knew about.
[SPEAKER_03]: They call it grand narrative.
[SPEAKER_03]: and we're breaking it all down and then where is our identity in it and then all of a suddenly we're thugs storming the capital, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because all of a sudden our identities are so broken down, we're clinging to like identity culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and it's, you know, not to not to not to pin January 6 on punk rock because I don't think anyone wants that to happen, but you look at the roots of
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a kid in a basement in Ottawa playing punk rock shows at one point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was his entry point, this whole thing, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the negative side of do it yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, every level.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, right, right, right, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, right, I mean, yeah, but it's like, it's not only just like, I think that like the one thing gets so nerd on this, this might be the part where you need to add it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I feel I entered punk rock under the guys of I wanted to be in a community that cared and I want to live in a society that cares about each other like that's my thinking and my thinking is like how could we not live in a society that cares about anyone who shows up you know anyone that says I'm hungry I need help.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sick.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do we not live you know and I'm
[SPEAKER_03]: It's interesting how other punk expressions are not about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're about this very like, how am I going to get ahead.
[SPEAKER_03]: How am I going to sell.
[SPEAKER_03]: How am I going to group these people around me, so that they work for me to go do this thing or do you know what I mean, and all of these other ways.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like,
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what we're interested in.
[SPEAKER_03]: But look at these movements in America based on kind of like conspiracy belief identity, they're getting one on us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We need to break down the system because we want to break down the system in punk rock because they didn't care enough.
[SPEAKER_03]: They want to break down the system because it's something they're perceiving it as something draconian and different.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, maybe punk rock did.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, God saved the queen was kind of part of that breaking down the colonial system.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think punk rock is like you're looking at the world and you can neither be Joe or Johnny.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can be one side of this thing or the other side of this thing and and believe that it's a wonderful world or and I actually had a really good experience Johnny.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't mean to cut them down or I believe it's certainly the stories that you hear about Johnny.
[SPEAKER_01]: He wasn't always the nicest person and certainly politically, didn't always align with the nicest people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's baked in a punk too.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is that side of this thing where... Where's the DD side?
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess that's the other side of this thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a DD and there's also a Tommy side.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's someone who likes it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a marquee side too.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a marquee side, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when that gets into it after a little bit, but...
[SPEAKER_01]: bring something to it and you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can just keep going on this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole thing is remains.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, it's clearly I'm either suffering from early stage dementia or late stage syphilis or you're in contact with.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have the guy in the gimme give me his.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's so sweet.
[SPEAKER_03]: CJ.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a CJ side too.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: A hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_01]: I interviewed CJ and unfortunate that episode got lost at the recorder fucked up and it was gone to cry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did because the amount of insight he gave me into the Ramones and the way that band work was fascinating because it is obviously it's a foundation of so much of this stuff, but it's also just how it functioned as a unit is, oh my gosh, like I can watch many documentaries about that because it is a band where the band
[SPEAKER_01]: became bigger than the relationships between the individuals involved in it very early on it seems like they just there's a real animosity or not even an animosity just like a real lack of caring for certain people in between certain people in that band it seems interesting right I got asked I got there's like I've like sheets a questions that I meant to ask you I don't know okay I would see this story I would see this story I would go
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of personal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I see.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, he came up to me recently.
[SPEAKER_03]: We played the festival at the Gimmie Gimmies and CJ.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've never really met him before and it's a really cute photo of some of my social of us together because he's very handsome.
[SPEAKER_03]: And he said, you know, I want to tell you I have a daughter and my relationship with her has been like difficult, but she has come out
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, to be who she is and I'm so proud of her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if it wasn't for bands like L7, I don't know if that would be possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, and that's what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: The impact you've had is like any cried.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's immeasurable, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the impact on on that like to have that kind of impact on and there's countless people that you've had that impact on and it's
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but I think God, you're not a doctor curing ADHD or whatever because I don't know, but check it out because my first thinking on it is, oh, did she become the doctor?
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like that's that's my first thinking, like really, I mean, it's it's nuanced because I have a lot of
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, my concern would be more influence, not so much people's like music or art expression, but in their ability.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't hear a lot of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone's in a while.
[SPEAKER_03]: Every once in a while, people will say, like, yeah, this happened.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm a, you know, I run the council at my, you know, housing development, because I listened to L7.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to be honest, I want to let you in on a little secret.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I was ever going to be a doctor at the end of the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jennifer, I think what you did is give me somewhere to steer the ship that was kind of directionless in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of us that wind up making this music, it's because on a certain level we have to, there's...
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I certainly meet people on this podcast and I talk to people and I'm like, wow, you could have been doing anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what made you be involved in punk?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just, because I look at you and you're very, you know, they're high functioning people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's other people myself where if it wasn't a punk, I would not be doing, I don't know what I'd be doing, but I certainly wouldn't be making any sort of music.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I probably wouldn't be too in much of anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got that like you, I mean.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, because you know that there are weight, like yes, you're doing great stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're doing great work in the world.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is great work.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you can...
[SPEAKER_03]: There's other things that like maybe dreams that you've had to let go of at a time, like yes punk rock brings joy and it's fulfilling and you're like able, but maybe there were dreams like when you were 14, like I want to be a veterinarian or a therapist or a firefighter, some of those things could be on us, but there are ways that like, we're all living long lives, my friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're living long lives.
[SPEAKER_03]: In our generations,
[SPEAKER_01]: I like I wanted to collect comic books and I enjoy drawing comic books and then I probably would have wanted to be a professional acid taker for a short period of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then once I saw 1991, the year punk broke, I realized like, no, I just want to be, I would love nothing more than to be in a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe I should have said my impressions a little higher like being a veterinarian.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the fact that I'm found a way to kind of do it is testament to this kind of world and the power this world kind of had.
[SPEAKER_03]: Would you ever consider that taking acid, you were doing that for a way for self-realization, for being it or not self-realization, some weird word, sorry, I didn't mean it, like self-reflection, being able to move yourself forward.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's like a really big deal and that's something that like,
[SPEAKER_03]: Going into social work or therapy, maybe a couple of years from now might be of interest to support people in that field.
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely feel like I when I say it was a big asset fan, I only did a few times like I really was not as as much of a head as I make it sound there, but I feel like there was, yeah, I'm sure that's part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of it was also trying to find a place where I felt like I belong.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I felt like this, it was a group of friends of mine that were really into drugs at that point, but it wasn't necessarily the drugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: It, I feel like my enjoyment of it and all that stuff came by being part of a community.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's really what I found in punk is that you can be part of a community and like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we said, there's barriers of entry and things like that, but it didn't matter how you dressed when you went to a punk and hardcore show.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people will talk about fashion.
[SPEAKER_03]: Not matter how you dressed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not by the time I was there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like post, crunch, post, hardcore.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of that stuff kind of went by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were still kids that charged their hair and you would call you a poser if you didn't have a leather jacket or things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was also a side of it that was be like, no, you're a poser if you wear a leather jacket because you're supposed to be vegetarian or vegan
[SPEAKER_01]: It just felt like a place you could just be yourself and do your things and it was again, I'm I tend to idealize it, but I want you to know that right now I'm wearing sweatshirts sweatpants and a sweatshirt, but I rolled into a book show I don't know if people would be into that are you kidding you would be the height of fashion you got on this podcast, gentlemen, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're like dressed in 91 okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not talking about law.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, now, yeah, no back then it'd be different back then it was very different, but back then it's like, like you're talking about earlier on with that first wave having to shed that kind of rock star baggage of punk rock, and then it was like the next wave where it changed, I think, I think this was ironic that the person that forefronted like letting go of the rock star baggage was also the one that had to be sacrificed at the altar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I don't know, and I once again, I never met him, but I do wonder how much of certainly drugs and everything he was dealing with, but I think I would wonder how much punk rock kind of like hung heavy on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Certainly from all the books I read as a kid, like that was a lot of my early understanding of this thing is not being like one style of music was
[SPEAKER_01]: hearing him talk about the vasolines or researching this kind of world where like the music doesn't have to be one sound, doesn't have to be one type of thing, but it's more like an ideology and sort of a mentality.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the sad thing is there's Nirvana, even though Nirvana was commercially the most successful punk band, there wasn't successful in the end, because it cost some of their life before the whole story was told.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think like you're saying,
[SPEAKER_01]: reality of that music to this day when you listen to it in the car and my kids are obsessed with their vana, like obsessed and so we'll listen to it in the car and having to kind of broach that subject with them and kind of talk about it and sort of, it led to some really good conversations with them about drug use and safety and mental health and all sorts of things, but it is it is tragic music at the end of the day.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, is funny that Kathy Wilcox interview you did where she was saying like we go to these, you know, rock school for girls are sinking our song and they weren't meant for children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's you're saying about the basketball art or the Keith Herring art where you have this art that existed in one space, then you take it out of its context and give it a completely new thing where it's it's just a commercial artifact and no longer has any of the meaning that it kind of came out of.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, you know, there's a word for it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, what is it?
[SPEAKER_03]: Of the artist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Does the artist, okay?
[SPEAKER_03]: Of the artist is a concept by, um, God, right, or Roland Barth's, who said that when you create,
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and there's also a media guy named Stuart Hall that like any object is not just the creators, it's who's receiving it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like what it's in, you know, the purpose of its receivers, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And death of the artist is about like how you, you have to sometimes separate the artist from the art that you let something go and it's going to be interpreted and become something different because the audience is going to no matter whether it's commercial or not, the audience is going to hold an interpretation for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, absolutely, I mean, yeah, I've definitely heard of, you know, separating the art from the artist, but I think as an artist, there's a, I'm probably speaking at me as an artist, but there's a, you have to surrender your thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it will take on a completely different life with the person who receives it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much of the point that it will affect how they interact with everything you make after that, where you're now competing with an nostalgia.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it works, like if you have a song,
[SPEAKER_01]: they're going to be stuck with that song ever whenever they listen to anything you make for the rest of your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's just one brief moment of expression for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, um, yeah, I'm fascinated by that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that is such an interesting part of this whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, becoming your own cartoon in a way that's like a like you're saying about corny love writing this book where there's just so much character put on to a
[SPEAKER_01]: at a certain point, especially the bigger you are, where you eventually have a choice, you either reject it or you have to play to it, but it's never really you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's like, it's like pro wrestling.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very much a pro wrestling character, but none of you're choosing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chetra, this has been one of my favorite conversations I've ever gone to have.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to say any time you want to come on this show if you want to be my regular co-hosts you're always welcome on this thing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay, well, then okay, I have what about like, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you're like, you know, you're going up the coast and you're playing the Gilman and all these types of shows.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I find it's in the documentary.
[SPEAKER_01]: You talk about when you go and play that Fugazie show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a rock for choice benefit in DC and McKinney kills on the show and how you don't fit in there.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the woman's march.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was a little bit.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, rock for choices a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_03]: Rock for choice like went to specifically help protect women's health.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it was very specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the sort of the women's march show that you play there, you're always in kind of disparate scenes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a band that doesn't really fit into any one scene as much as you fit into like just the history of punk rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what was it like?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what'd you find like your playing?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not just the history of punk rock.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like really the history of culture of the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like even spans.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we are embraced at punk shows, but we're also embraced at metal shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like we have a whole,
[SPEAKER_01]: other side, there's mostly more maybe Europe and South America, but where we, you know, play, bevel shows with kiss, you know, I mean, I was kiss that lining and but I mean, like, as a band that kind of came out of punk, you know, now interacting with all the manifestations of this thing, was there one place that you felt, kind of more at home playing a show, like you're playing a show with Green Day, and the offspring, and obviously there's a difference in years, but then you're also playing
[SPEAKER_03]: a gulf between it and no effects to like there's all these different sort of scenes that you're interacting with like where'd you feel most at home playing shows in front of eight million people in Brazil and I'm not even clear who else was on the show no I mean I like that you're talking about feelings because they're kind of my specialty where do we feel at home I mean the answer is that we felt at home in multiple play we felt at home touring with that religion in
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, we felt at home, you know, playing with mud honey, we felt at home touring with Melvin's, you know, we, you know, felt at home every time we go, like for some reason I don't know if you've noticed this lately, but for some reason we're paired with suicidal tendencies, which we love them, but I grew up with them were friends with them.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not necessarily.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, as I talked earlier, it's not necessarily an aesthetic voice.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: But we get hooked with them a lot, and there's certainly no crossover in the audience.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like, but maybe there is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it might be the only band that you and do need to do need to both brought up is suicidal tendencies.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was named her and she's a little bit of that band as, uh,
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the meeting point.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there were a lot of meeting points like aesthetically and musically that we have that wouldn't be expected.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we love black flag as much as we love black Sabbath.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you know, you know, I think that there were also like definite expressions where we would maybe start writing music and people would, you know, would ask us, oh, your fans of the runaways, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And like we would all be like, I
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know who that is.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know Joan Jet produced the germs, but I don't know who the runaways are.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was almost like proclutching, but all the members of L. 7 had the same experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not like we're being mean.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just saying it got skipped or missed, or like, oh, that's what we're supposed to be into.
[SPEAKER_03]: or something, you know, and as you know, from my history, and I also, you know, you look into DeNita and Susie's who are also amazing storytellers and have experiences of well, El Seven is for really distinct unique voices, for distinct unique experiences.
[SPEAKER_03]: in of itself to come together and to play music.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not sickle fans of each other or you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a very unique situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: So therefore I think they probably reflects in a subconscious way of how people view us.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, did you see the Barbie movie?
[SPEAKER_01]: I did.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, one thing about the Barbie movie that I think was great storytelling is you could have 10 people go see it and 10 people will walk away with different impressions of what that movie was about and because it it's so well crafted in that sense like someone could just love the costumes or someone could just love the music, you know, and I didn't hate the costumes nor did I hate the music so it's just interesting about
[SPEAKER_03]: It is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think L7 is, I'm not comparing us to that movie.
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe we need to net it here.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I'm saying that I think we're part of movement in culture that really can you know, embrace different expressions and still be 100% authentic.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that authenticity, that voice is what really speaks in L7.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're not, you know, and I love music now.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love nozzle X. I love does she cat.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love all of these YouTubers out there showing, you know, doing all their shit, but I know their cartoons.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're not that's not the authentic person, but I know that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they switch out their costumes and their characters very quickly.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like,
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I love about this music though is because there wasn't characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't kiss.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was here's who I am and here's what I deal with and it's it's not pretty and it's might not be romantic or sellable to mass audiences but it's real and authentic and I think I think that's the
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the thing I also love about L7 is that it was always like a real band.
[SPEAKER_01]: It never felt like it was from a genre or playing to a genre.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then now talking to you, we'll two of you and watching the documentary and getting to know a little bit more about the band growing up and kind of loving the band.
[SPEAKER_01]: You realize like, oh yeah, it's four different people that are coming from four different places and making this band.
[SPEAKER_01]: So of course, it doesn't sound like any one thing or anyone else, because
[SPEAKER_01]: it's for perspectives and becoming one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, and I love that, but it also, it's not always like necessarily that, even that simple, because the need to came to hardcore shows, the need to, and I went and saw a plant, rage in us,
[SPEAKER_03]: hard core shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: There was no no question.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, if late 80s LA big fenders ballroom style hard core shows, you know, we also went, you know, we all went to black flag shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: We all went to suicidal shows.
[SPEAKER_03]: We also all went to, you know, queer dance clubs.
[SPEAKER_03]: We all went to, you know, see expressions of
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, crazy art and drag queens and all kinds of stuff, you know, it's like, it's, I guess it's just you can say like maybe we front certain things a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would definitely explain the 90s to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, because I think when, well, just back to the need of Kevin, she was on talked about how terrible hardcore was and how it did ruin the scene and how it made her and Susie kind of run away from it and very different than.
[SPEAKER_01]: your interactions with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So even though you guys are going to the same things.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, from when you've said earlier on in the show, right, right, right, right, right, just for sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like different take-off ended up at roggies, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, basically we all ended up at roggies, which was a very post what they call LA post hardcore venue, right, where.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you get close bands trash can school black angels does song the muffs, you know, all these bands kind of came out of that scene and there's more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that pre-driver jog?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, because yeah, I was kind of like that, too, a little bit later, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Just by a couple years, I mean, the LA timeline is like very quick.
[SPEAKER_03]: Very quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you went to Europe, what were some of the bands you were kind of seeing that were like European bands were there any European bands you kind of were.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh no, I didn't see any bands.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I was in, you know, squads.
[SPEAKER_03]: That didn't happen.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Super good question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I did see bands later on.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it came back to LA after 1986.
[SPEAKER_03]: I joined L7.
[SPEAKER_03]: I started working for a guy named I don't want to say a name, but he came in.
[SPEAKER_03]: He was a booker from the East Coast that came to Los Angeles to book at Triple X Records and I was his assistant and he his idea and this is like
[SPEAKER_03]: I really need to get a year on it, 88, 89.
[SPEAKER_03]: His idea was to do legacy punk, because at that point, punk was legacy.
[SPEAKER_03]: So bringing over bands like Scready, Politi, the damned,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, all probably are.
[SPEAKER_03]: GPH, yeah, he brought over these shows and put them into Godzilla's, which was kind of going at the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, that's where the country club in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we did like this version of
[SPEAKER_03]: Sam Hane or something like that, bad religion was on the bill and this screen came out.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I kind of have this like late 80s sort of conversational relationship with bands that also outstate screen because then screen went on to do squat to earth and you're up like a second time, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they became wool, they've what enjoyed Nirvana,
[SPEAKER_01]: Stream is a fascinating band, like obviously the Nirvana stuff, but like the stall brothers and we were not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just, it's funny because like they used to go to England and they'd stay with my friend Robby Brookside who's now the head trainer for the WWE in Florida.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's just like they're one of those bands that connects so many, because they toured and they got out there and they weren't just committed to their scene, like a lot of the DC bands seem to have been kind of trapped a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, there's one of the things that I think that's like, you know, when you're starting out the importance of it's not just the show, but it's kind of staying at people's houses, which is always like a spin of the roulette wheel, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: up until recently that screen re-release record, like Pete Stahl was a, you know, managing L7 in part, you know, our production manager.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so it's still working with everyone, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: So like you go out with Joey P and between all of us, we know everybody in every city.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there's always someone's house to go to.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's always a dinner to go to.
[SPEAKER_03]: In 2020,
[SPEAKER_03]: 23, you know, like right in like we were in South America and it was just like, oh, yeah, you know, come meet Blanca, her family owns this restaurant and, you know, Bella horizontal.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's where Fugazzi stayed in London, some 90s date, you know, and or, oh, hey, the L7 came in 93 and we stayed at this person's house and, you know, Well, that's the, and that's the thing when it gets really interesting is once it starts breaking out of,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Canadian American borders like DIY culture and it's obviously in Europe through the squad system and it spreads all over the world and there's this idea that we can go theoretically to this day.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can go to a place that I've never been, call up some friends, ask if you've ever been this city, do you know anyone I could meet up with and probably find a place to stay just because we're all dead into this network that's still thriving and surviving.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know what super crazy is, you know, I know bands like on like way higher level like Devo and Blondy who are still touring to this day.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they have those same experiences because I'll call up like they're T. I'm like, are you guys staying all weird staying at a friend's house in Brisbane?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, what, you're not in town?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we're in a friend's house.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know, you start, you start to see where there's different levels of houses now.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the house, the best day in England?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not the same spot house in, like, northern Toronto that, like, these data.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like also there's few places that can be lonely or than a hotel room.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel the same way.
[SPEAKER_03]: I told Evan that a lot, like, we, you know, the cows really like to have their own room as an, I'm still the one that's like, I'm scared.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is where people go to die.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, look, we're in here.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't go to the biographies.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, this is where it all happens.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm a chokes on a sandwich.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then they get blamed for being a drunk, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, it is, it is, it is like, I wrote like, or something, because there's, like, Tuesday stay with me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, Susie, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get dinner.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get dinner.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get dinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's like, it's like a one bedroom apartment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're in a different one every night, so it's never homely.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're never truly there.
[SPEAKER_01]: As much as I do love when we get our solo rooms, there's a comfort that comes when you have to stay with someone in your band because, like you're saying,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is off for their air or so maybe I should have, but like there's a post tour to pressure, but there's also just like a post show to pressure, but I think we all have to deal with every night where you have to get off stage and come down from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how do you come down when you get off stage?
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my god, I love that come down.
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna ask you about working with He Day from X.
[SPEAKER_03]: He day, yeah, whoa, that was gnarly.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was a gnarly experience.
[SPEAKER_03]: What a great artist.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, didn't really know who he day was, but it, you know, the story of their ex, Japan or exo came to Los Angeles at one point in the early 90s because they wanted to record and they wanted to break it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, we are just will not let a band.
[SPEAKER_03]: break America like you just you just don't get it and so they came to LA and they had like kind of this cultural LA club experience and I think that they kind of were observers of both punk and like the hair metal scene and the metal scene and you know they went to they did all this stuff and they went back to Japan and broke in their own country surprise surprise but not like
[SPEAKER_03]: mega break like not able to walk on the streets not able to have lives not like mega mega mega break and they each member of the band went to do their own separate sort of experience that they wanted to have independently and he day was like
[SPEAKER_03]: I want members of L7 to play in my band.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I want to do with my money and my fame and my control.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want women.
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to forefront women to be in my band and in my artistic expression.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, we're doing it in early 90s, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: 94th thing came out, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Anna.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you and I are okay?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, we do not are so dumb.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like, oh, hi, we'll go do that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was insane.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the first thing that we wanted to do was to show them what Americans can do is I wore a fake pregnancy suit.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it looked like that I was like eight months pregnant the entire rest that we did there.
[SPEAKER_03]: And D dressed in like, you know, sailor moon.
[SPEAKER_03]: stuff, but beat up.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're talking her look was proto, like it was not dark.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: And not in mainstream Japanese culture.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the first thing that happened is we got off the plane and the manager sat us down and was like, we, we cannot have this.
[SPEAKER_03]: We cannot do this.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we were like, well, we could lead, like we didn't care.
[SPEAKER_03]: We were like, we can leave, like,
[SPEAKER_03]: and they brought E.D.
[SPEAKER_03]: and and he was like, no, this is what I want.
[SPEAKER_03]: So you'll see these videos and these promo clips.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, it was the 90s.
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was like controlled and tape, but we did tons of interviews, tons of photo sessions, and they're kind of just coming out now with with all of that.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, E.D.
[SPEAKER_03]: committed suicide.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, you know, and like, you know, and like
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my God, it was he killed, like I just would like think that, you know, I mean, I know that's a weird thought, you know, but we're like, he was so out there and so at, you know, such a rebel, such a rebel, like within a culture that, you know, and we saw that firsthand, like his interactions, his not able to, you know, do what he wanted to go where he wanted.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it was
[SPEAKER_03]: 100% like all the things you hear about like K-pop now right like that stuff that comes out like the camping and the pressure and you know you got to look a certain way if you like your body has to stay a certain age you know all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well because you're like I guess we'll talk about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the 90s so can you explain it to me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah well I just saw it I was just taking it in as it was being projected from the end and we got to see it from the inside but it does feel like
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's probably the same way now too.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like the idea that you become a commodity to someone and your value to someone is staying on the road and continuing to do what you do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're willing to look past, cries of help, they're willing to look past terrible behaviors in some cases.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, they wouldn't allow us, you know, I'm a,
[SPEAKER_03]: All bring a video camera and you know I'll bring a camera I'll bring all that stuff and they did they were like we you need to put that we were locking it we're going to take it and I'm like no you know it's like every step was an argument every step.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, but I guess that's a level of well, like you're saying there they're so huge how much money are they worth.
[SPEAKER_01]: To some one at this point, like if no longer about son writing it's about units shifted.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you see how as someone who's a creative person, that could become incredibly dehumanizing and incredibly demoralizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously once again, there's larger factors group that go into people's mental health, but this can't be good for someone's mental health.
[SPEAKER_01]: And no one's stopping.
[SPEAKER_03]: Can we call it exactly what it is?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's that?
[SPEAKER_03]: Late-stage capitalism.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is exactly what it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: the commodified, the cost of human life, labor, it's all in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it is lay sage capitalism.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also, well, it's so, I guess, illustrative of that, the fact that they've taken these things that were rejections and rebellions to culture and society and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they've turned them into commodities for culture and society.
[SPEAKER_01]: like graffiti art and co-opting graffiti art.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was amazing when the gaps start, well, not amazing, terrible and it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when the gaps started making the sideage look like spray paint on their windows, you go to jail.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we're done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're done.
[SPEAKER_03]: Drop your mic, drop the spray, pick him, walk away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, back to where you're saying about basketball and sort of the scene that gave birth to Keith Herring.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also the scene that gives birth to punk rock in a hard court in a lot of ways, especially for graffiti, in particular.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, yeah, it's fascinating how it's another visual meaning that kind of is born, I guess, out of the crumbling of society.
[SPEAKER_03]: Have you had any one from sick of it all on the show yet?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a good story because they were youngsters.
[SPEAKER_03]: And they were in the city.
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't in the suburbs.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love to talk to Pete and Lou because I think, yeah, like is a hugely fascinating story hugely important piece of Yeah, I did on punk rock museum tours with Pete and we were alternating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: But a great book at audience, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: Like just looking who would go on his tours and who would go on my tours.
[SPEAKER_03]: I have these nerdy, weirdo, like 14-year-old kids that have just consumed everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, wait, not 14, 17, 18, like a little folder, 18 to 20, probably.
[SPEAKER_03]: That would consume everything would be on my tours.
[SPEAKER_03]: dudes that were just like dude and pizza like smart, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so he's like talking about all this stuff and they're like, yeah, but did you were, did you smoke weed with DD?
[SPEAKER_03]: I had a pretty good tolerated.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would not tolerate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would be like, I went opposite Fred Armison with mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we had a big juxtaposition of him having a trillion people and
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: As I said before, Jennifer, I got a trillion more questions for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anytime you want to come on this podcast, in any way, shape or form, you're always welcome.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's excellent.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is your audience think about that since we're including the audience in the Wii?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as we know, the audience is meaningless, you know, I'm going to say, we have me trusting in me.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what this podcast is ultimately for.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I appreciate being on so much and as you know, I'm a big fan.
[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you so much for having me on and I'm so excited to kind of talk about some of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: We got really nuanced.
[SPEAKER_03]: It might board people, but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome.