Mike Spent -spent Idols

Revisiting an episode from the Union and Metro podcast.

#punkrock #punkrocker #sandiego #jermaddams #thewasteaways #musichistory #punrockscene #punkrockhistory #podcast #podcaster #Diy #jermwarfareproductions #skateboards #artist #redrumskates #halloween #mars #museum #haunted #oddities #bassguitar #bassplayer #unionandmetropodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_10 0:04

You've reached the Union of Metro Street podcast where we discuss the San Diego music scene of the late 80s and all of the nineties, from the shows we worked to the shows we played. Here we go.

SPEAKER_09 3:09

Okay. And when when is that coming out?

SPEAKER_04 3:12

Oh, when is that coming out? Well, we're in the middle of finishing a recording for the B side. So once we get that and ship it off and they press it. Should be in the next six months, I hope.

SPEAKER_09 3:26

Okay, cool. Yeah. Cool. So like I was saying, we're trying to do this live thing. That's right. And um it's just doing shortcuts.

SPEAKER_04 3:32

Wait a minute. Wait, are we actually live right now?

SPEAKER_09 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

Oh my god. Am I am I ready?

SPEAKER_09 3:37

I don't I don't we're not really. Oh, okay. I mean, this this is a bee ready.

SPEAKER_04 3:42

No, no, fuck no.

SPEAKER_09 3:44

But um there's Mike. Here I am. There's Jerry. So we're trying to do this and and I'm too old to figure out how to stay on live, so this will be a little bit for people out there. And then um you just gotta get the podcast to listen to the full the full story and all the music. And in the meantime, Mike. Yes. Dude, how long have we known each other now?

SPEAKER_04 4:10

Oh god. Thirty years. Yeah. Yeah, maybe longer. Probably longer. Probably longer, yeah. Yeah. Feels like I mean, you feel like an old bro, so it's been a while, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 4:22

Definitely. And he was did we meet at at Union? I don't know. I don't remember.

SPEAKER_04 4:26

I think we met before that, dude. I I seem to remember you before that, you know. I remember like a barber girlfriend or something.

SPEAKER_09 4:35

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 4:36

Like it seems like I mean that feels like the eighties to me, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 4:40

That would probably be early nineties. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:44

That's when we met, you know, we were we ran wild one night, and then uh we were just go cruising around with you just going to ape shit.

SPEAKER_09 4:52

So Yeah. That's funny. I I barely remember that, but I know there's plenty of antics that we'll get into later, like um playing at the Velvet.

SPEAKER_05 5:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 5:03

And um Gabby would kind of uh be a little a little hot.

SPEAKER_04 5:09

Gabriel. Yeah, Gabri Gabriel. Yeah, he's hasn't changed. Exactly the same, yeah. I think you just gotta rehab. Yeah. Oh really? I think so, yeah. Okay. And I hope so, and more power to him if it's true. So I hope it I hope it works this time.

SPEAKER_09 5:24

Well, let's let's dive all the way down into the roots of uh Spen Idols and just kind of brush over your roots and music. And I mean, we've talked about it before, but you know, share with the people how you got into music and well, I mean, when I was a little kid, I was babysitter by hit by hippies.

SPEAKER_04 5:43

I grew up by the pier in Oceanside in my first ten years. And my family's from Carlson, my mom and dad lived in Oceanside. And um and when the hippie girlfriends they'd move on, they'd leave the records. So I got a bunch of cool 60s records. And to me, that was like punk rock because there was that wasn't being played on the radio. You know, like the original Grateful Dead and all kinds of Donovan, just all kinds of cool stuff. It was a kind of prototypical punk kind of counterculture stuff. And these guys were like selling a Pacific Holidayland, which is down the street from where I lived, they'd sell like psychedelic art and stuff like that, and they're smoking weed with strawberry flavored papers, and it was that wasn't normal, man. I mean, it was like dragnet years back then. Right, right. Crew cuts and uh flat tops and shit, and then you had these guys, and I just thought they were cool, and they'd like watch me, you know, they'd babysit me, so it's like they were cool. Right and uh and then the biker gangs would come up at the pier and all this kind of stuff. So that's how I got exposed to like rock and roll. Okay, like good fucking 60s music, right? Underground 60s music, no FM radio, am only. If you want to listen to like 60s music on the radio, you're listening to like the Archies and the Hollies and you know, stuff like that. You're not hearing these bands, Steppenwolf and stuff. It's not being played yet. It didn't get played until you know the late 60s, early 70s. I think FM came out in 71 or 72. Then it got exposure, but you had to be in the know. Kind of like how punk rock was. When I got into punk rock, I was going up to Hollywood in the mid-60s with my cousin and my friends. We were surfer skaters, but we'd you know, we hear about the what was going on in England. You know, before that was like following like the runaways and got exposed to the Stooges, and whenever a new record came out, our me and my friends would get it and we'd listen to it like we heard the New York dolls. We're like, what the fuck is this? They're saying about heroin and stuff. We was just like, you know, it's not being played on the radio even then, you know. So then like I think the first New Wave thing I went to was some LA thing up in Hollywood somewhere, and it was like people were like in black trench coats and skinny ties and bushy hair and girls in army clothes, and so it was like that. They're just being weird, yeah, you know, and that was kind of like punk rock, you know. Like a couple a year later, it's punk rock or whatever. And um so I started going to things like that, and we come back down and we try to find the music. We'd have to you'd have to order it. You go to like Licorice Pizza and have it ordered. Somebody tell you a cool band, you get it ordered. Right. You know, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_09 8:15

Because it's not really I mean, back then.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

It's not available. Unless there's no lose records, there's no none of that. There's Licorice Pizza. And Licorice Pizza get whatever you want if you can if it's out there, they'll find it for you. Right. You know, they'll order it for you. So that's how I got my first punk rock.

SPEAKER_09 8:30

And that's all was this pre-tape swap or what do you mean pre-like? Remember back in the day, I mean you would have a cassette that I probably still have some in the archives.

SPEAKER_04 8:40

Yeah, yeah, no, we'd burn cassettes and we turn people onto music.

SPEAKER_09 8:42

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

And then so the Dills, I don't know, people don't know this, but like punk rock was kind of born in the city of Carlsbad. Okay. So there was a band called the Dills and the Zeros. Well, according to the media, they're like San Francisco bands, but I'm like, the guys, the Dills live down the street from me in Carlsbad.

SPEAKER_07 8:58

Right.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

So I see these guys walking around dressed like weirdos and shit. I'm like, who the I'm a skater surfer kid, like looking for identity. I see these guys, and one time I finally got the courage to talk to them and they told us about the dills. You know, this is I'm thinking it's like 76 still, you know, 77. I don't know, it was early on. But it left uh it burned an impression in me. And I was like, this is fucking cool. Like I want to know more about this, right? You know, so then um I'm just but I, you know, I'm a regular dude. I'm just skating, surfing, getting weed and smoking weed, and you know, you know, staying up all night, sneaking out, skateboarding around our bikes, you know, being a kid.

unknown 9:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:35

So I'm not really it. Isn't like there's a uniform of punk rock and there's a punk rock hangout anywhere. Right. But I'm like a weirdo, like these Dills guys. I'm like, I can relate to these. So these guys. So um I'm seeking that stuff out. So I have to jump ahead a little bit. I'm going to Hollywood through the seven 77s, you know, 78 and stuff. I August, I got in a big fight with my dad. A big fight. Like so bad they had to separate us. So they sent me to my uncle's house in Long Beach. It's August of 78. Down the street from my uncle in Long Beach was this place called Zed Records. It was a little red house in the middle of this city, and it had a British flag on the outside of it. It was a record shop. And I think I saw Ultravox playing there. You know, I mean, it's like it was fucking I'd never seen anything like that. So my uncle gets me a job, all my money's going to Zed. So Zed's getting all my money.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:26

I'm buying records. So at 78, I got the crass record. It's like, it's not this gatefold poster thing, it's like a record. The first song is uh called the Song of Silence or something, and it's just static. They because they got banned. They wouldn't let them put their lead song on the record. So but they pressed it anyway, and I was like, this is fucking cool. And they're talking about anarchy and stuff, like real anarchy.

SPEAKER_07 10:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

You know, and you know, the pistols are out of course and stuff. And you know, I got the glitter best record because it was hard to find the original records because they were being banned. Right. So I got like this bootleg glitter best thing that they self-funded from Zed. I'm getting like demo tapes from all these cool bands, Flyboys, like alcoholics, like these obscure bands. Oh, uh one of my favorite bands. Oh, Cutler's band. Paul Cutler's band. Oh, because he was in 45 grave as well.

SPEAKER_10 11:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:18

That that guy was I used I used to work with him at uh Golden Voice. That guy's a musical genius. Yeah. That guy, that was punk rock.

SPEAKER_10 11:25

Because he would say punk rock started in Arizona.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

They came from Arizona, he's from Phoenix, yeah. Came out here. And and so I'm living up in LA and I see this painted car and it's UXA with D Detroit and the original the her boyfriend at the time, the guitar player who later who died. Um, and I meet him, you know, we pull them over and we're they're like invited to a show, you know. So we see UXA. It's like 78, you know. So and then um my uncle owned an ad agency in Palace Verde on Malagua Cove, and he's like, Hey, you like this music, right? Angie Bowie was in here, and I'm gonna do the cover of this 12-inch for her boyfriend's uh band uh called The Front. And uh he's like, Here's a record, you know? It's like would you like to meet her? I'm like, Yeah, I'd love to meet her. You know, so I got to meet her and stuff, it thing. And then so the front's like this British band, and I guess she came out here thinking that she was in the middle of divorce with David, and um she was gonna get a buttload of money and she's gonna finance this guy's rock career like she did David. Right, and uh, but David got the best of her in the divorce settlement. So we go to the Roxy where it's just like I mean, there's rock stars in there. I'm backstage upstairs at the Roxy, I'm like 17, 18 years old, like and these bands are playing, you know. There's like people there, dude, you know, like famous people.

SPEAKER_07 12:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

And it was just like I'm backstage as a kid with these rock stars. And I'm like, what the fuck? You know, I'm like, I've never seen anything like that. I'm from Carlsbad.

SPEAKER_09 12:51

Did it register at all?

SPEAKER_04 12:52

Like I'm amongst all these people, or is it just like I was just like, I recognize these people and stuff, you know, like 60s rock stars and shit there. You know, it's like everybody was there, the place was packed, and I'm backstage VIP. Yeah, you know, not even giving a shit. I still don't give a shit. But it was a bitching experience, you know. Right. Like I just was there, you know.

SPEAKER_09 13:11

The most coveted part of any venue is about it. It got wasted.

SPEAKER_04 13:14

There were just drugs flowing, you know, they're just handing out drugs. Right. It was just like the 70s, too.

SPEAKER_10 13:19

Every everybody wants to go backstage. Yeah. I want to get backstage. I want to get back to who do you know backstage? I'm not that dude. You know, there's all these fans that I want to go back. But do you know anybody?

unknown 13:29

Right.

SPEAKER_10 13:29

It's like what do you want to stare at? Yeah, that's all you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_04 13:31

And then unless you're a girl, you don't want to be backstage. You're gonna always have fun backstage.

SPEAKER_10 13:34

You're gonna feel awkward because they're gonna stare back at you on who the hell are you?

SPEAKER_09 13:38

Usually you end up getting in the way of of the production because the backstage is is not the pretty area. If you get in backstage, you get in on the bus or the green room. But backstage is that's where all the happenings go. That's where someone like me is running around yelling at people, Jerry's coming through.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

If the guy's facilitating this thing, then the rock stars might be on the bus or might be eating something, and you can't bother them. You know, but back then, like punk rocket, they were accessible. It isn't like it is now where they have handlers and you gotta make an appointment and time is money. It was like you could actually hang out. The beauty of punk rock is you could hang out, right? You know, like I hung out with Richard Butler from the psychedelic for you'd hang out. I I saw the cure in Irvine at a somewhere in Orange County on a fucking basketball, you know, where they rolled the bleachers back, and there's hand hand silk screen shirts and stuff, and they're there. Like I'm 20 feet from them, and you're talking to them.

SPEAKER_10 14:30

Yeah, was that a high school gymnasium?

SPEAKER_04 14:32

It was a high school gymnasium, you know, and the cure's there. And I bought a shirt that they probably made themselves, you know. And um, and then they're like these megastars as big as the Beatles in a couple years, you know. So I I was I lucked out, you know. I saw Punk head on before the uniform, before Wadi and the exploited, all that stuff. I saw it being birthed in California. I did see it, you know. Vox pop, I saw Vox Pop early on, uh Jeff Dahl's band. I saw a bunch of bands. I can't remember. I was at the Dead Boys, I don't remember it. But I have ticket stub, my cousin sores, I was there, you know, but I don't remember it, you know.

SPEAKER_07 15:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:05

Uh and he's like, you know, how could you forget that? Stiv choked himself out with the mic cord. How could you forget that? You know, how dare you, Mike? How dare you? Right. You know, I'm thinking, like, well, if they can do it, I can do it. You know, thinking that.

SPEAKER_09 15:16

Is it is this when it started to click on the biggest thing?

SPEAKER_04 15:18

This is when it's like, I know I want to do a band. And I'd already been talking to my friend JP in Carlsbad. He lived down the street from me a little further than where the guy Chip lived. And um, and we'd he'd do his guitar, and me and him would we're pogoing before this pogoeing and stuff. We're listening to Roxy music and David Bowie and the Stooges and stuff like that. And we're gonna do this band, Sacred Idols. But this dude, Max, moves into Anthony's Acadia from LA, and um JP Max is from the city, you know. I'm we're like bumpkins in Carlsbad, you know. JP's from Escondido originally. So Max comes in and and JP goes with Max and they start their band uh Sacred Lies. My band's gonna be Sacred. We were me and Max, me and uh Jimmy were figuring out names, and I was gonna do this band called Sacred Idol, but all of a sudden Jimmy's playing live in clubs and stuff. Like me, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to play like back backyard parties and stuff like that, you know. So um I had to come up with a new name, and then I saw a picture of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat, and I thought, Spent Idol. I'm gonna call the band Spent Idol. That's right. That's how it started.

SPEAKER_09 16:21

That's cool. Yeah. The origin of a name, and it actually seems a lot simpler than even to this day. I I have over here behind me somewhere is a list of about 10 to 12 different names. I have I write them, figured out how to use notes.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

I used to used to do the same thing.

SPEAKER_09 16:35

Then draw it out, see if it looks good. Yeah. You know, trying to figure out the right font.

SPEAKER_04 16:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 16:41

So coming up to that, I mean, you've got the traditional old school, you know, just our flyer. I still do that. Yeah. Is that nothing's just out of necessity, like when we were kids? I mean, I just kind of one-trick pony.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

Yeah, just like that's how you do it. You know, I do it, but I do it dizzily on social media now, and nobody gets it. Like they didn't get it back then. Right. To me, it's 1978, even though it's 2023. I do things the same way I did back then. I'm an outsider, punk rock is outside, it's not this mainstream thing that Soma turned it into in San Diego, and it's like people stepping on their best friend to get become somebody. It's just I'm I don't really care about any of that. I didn't care about then. I didn't care about when I was in the Roxy with Angie Bowie. I didn't give a shit. Yeah. I thought it was cool to be with her and stuff, but you know, I I don't have anything in common with this woman. Right. It's just like, and I I feel like that with these bands. Like I've been invited. I knew Mike Nest. You know, we had we had a party and we lived in uh Belboa Island in Newport Beach in 79. We had this party. Mike Nest shows up. He's like telling us about his band, social distortion, the kids of the black hole. He's telling us all about and stuff. And you know, that's how where I met him. And then years later, I met him through my business. You know, I ran in through my business, so he's like, hey, we're I'm playing over here. You want to go backstage? And I'm like, ah, not really, you know. It's just like people kill for that, right? I'm just right. He must have invited me five, six times. I didn't do it. I'd say, like, well, you know, my best friend's like a good, a big huge fan of you, dude. If you would let him backstage, he'd he'd fucking die. You know, like he went die and went to heaven. So he did that, you know, and then this girl I knew liked him, and you know, I I you know, I'd let them go backstage. I didn't I'm just not that dude. Yeah, I don't I could give a shit. I don't feel comfortable backstage. I don't think I'm better than the people in the audience. I just I I'm not into it. I'm not into elitism, I'm not into corporatism. I'm just I'm the same way I was when I was 16 years old, except I'm an old man now. Yeah, you know, I live the same lifestyle.

SPEAKER_10 18:31

We don't we don't want to be backstage, we just want to be on stage.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

I want to be on stage. Yeah. It's like I don't care what bands other bands are doing, I care what this band's doing, and I like being on stage because it's therapeutic for me.

SPEAKER_09 18:42

Oh yeah. You know? Yeah. So speaking of when did you first play your first gig? Well, like a party or a Yeah, party.

SPEAKER_04 18:53

It was like um we'd we'd you'd put your own thing on the it was in the you know late 70s.

SPEAKER_07 18:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

Um I think I played until around eighty-one. Not ver not a lot, just like we don't play a lot now.

SPEAKER_07 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:05

And um, but I played parties and stuff, and the police would, you know, we'd try to be one step ahead of the police because they wanted to confiscate my equipment, and they did a couple of times. Oh, really? You did get that. Yeah, people like move out an apartment and we'd destroy the apartment kind of thing. You know, right? We did stuff like that up and down the beach and stuff, playing. You know, that's how we played.

SPEAKER_08 19:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

You know, it was a riot, it wasn't a concert. And like, you know, I I go to a club and I'm about I'm not thinking like, oh, we need this club for the bands to play. I'm thinking like, fuck this place, let's destroy it. That's what I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_09 19:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

You know, that's that's I'm still kind of like that, but I can't do it anymore.

SPEAKER_09 19:38

Right. Well, this is one of the things that I talk about is the excitement on stage. Part of the punk rock scene was you never know what's gonna happen. Yeah. So when it became such a product to where you knew, okay, so and so's gonna swing a guitar around, he's gonna go and stomp, it's almost so I don't know, it produced that it doesn't have that live element anymore. And part of that became because as you know, with my old projects, I would get a little kind of loopy and a little crazy.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

I love playing with poor and cockroach, right? Yeah, cockroach. Yeah, cockroach. And um I like I like that stuff. I you know we're not in the video.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, I know. Oh.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

Is it just me? It's all me, baby. This is my moment to shine.

SPEAKER_09 20:23

I'm here, but uh it's it's he's right here.

SPEAKER_04 20:26

He's got a beard, he's got a headset on, he's wrong a beanie, it's got a hand sewn patch on it. He's pretty punk rock.

SPEAKER_09 20:31

Yeah. The same shit I was wearing back then. Yeah, it hasn't changed necessity.

SPEAKER_04 20:35

We just got older.

SPEAKER_09 20:36

I I changed my pants, my socks a couple times. But um, so getting back to the the early days of uh playing parties and all that, I I love the things about the early scene, how it was such a small scene, so you would have to put out flyers and then word of mouth. Yeah. When when did you graduate from doing parties and then just basically what would you call it? Bombing a place and getting in and setting up and then playing and getting away.

SPEAKER_04 21:04

Yeah, that's what that's what that's that's how we played for the year.

SPEAKER_09 21:06

When's the first uh well the nineties?

SPEAKER_04 21:08

The nineties. So I I I the band Answer Me, I start working life in around 82. I started being I got pretty burned out of the violence, the gang, the punk gangs. I just wasn't me. You know, I was around for the beginning. I didn't like it, it was morphing into was like these crappy speed metal bands. It was just like it wasn't, you know, just I'd rather listen to pop punk or or pop punk or like uh ABC or fucking depeche mode or something, you know. So I just kind of like got tired of it. I had to work, you know.

SPEAKER_10 21:35

You got into the new wave.

SPEAKER_04 21:37

I got into the new wave stuff, the girls liked it, you know. It's just like I wasn't a jock, it's like I don't need to hang around with my boys and you know prove I'm tough or whatever. It's just like I'd rather get laid than do that. So I'm like listening to the music the girls like that's what I was doing. Right. And then I start working, and I'm just a working stiff. So by 82 through the 80s, I listened. I buy all the Ramones records when they come out, and I still bought rec bought records and collected them. Stuff, but I'm I'm a working guy and I'm working a lot. And by the 90s, I'm pretty sick of the middle class. I'm like, this middle class stuff doesn't work. I I'm I want to put my a band back together. I don't know it's gonna be spent idols. I'm just like I want to do a band. So I'm like my girlfriend at the time with this girl Laura, and she's like a big music chick. And so we're going to Soma and we're going to all the clubs around San Diego and stuff, and we're seeing things on the weekend, and and I know I'm gonna do a band, I just don't know what what type of band or whatever.

SPEAKER_07 22:30

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:30

So I'm at the Spirit Club, and back then it was a grunge. And like I'd go to the Soma, and I saw we me and Durham were talking recently about Daisy Chainsaw.

SPEAKER_08 22:38

Oh, oh.

SPEAKER_04 22:39

I saw Daisy Chainsaw with Shutter to Think or something, and Shudder to Think was like the shoegazer's, you know, junky. It started out great, and they would just drone on to this like acid fucking heroine. I'm passed out on stage kind of stuff. And I was just like not having that. But the Daisy Chainsaw played, and this chick comes out like a fucking, she's like, I think she's schizophrenic or something. Something wrong with her, right? But she's fucking badass. Oh and the guitar player looks like David Bowie. He's all glittered out. I was like, this is a fucking punk band. You know, this is like this is cool, man. Right. And um, and I was like, wow, Daisy Chainsaw. Exciting. That got me thinking I'm gonna rack punk. Yeah, it was like punk. It was like you see these mainstream, like hip like these guys are kind of punky, but they're kind of a hippie, you know, 60s House of the Rising Sun kind of vibe. And um, and and then you see Daisy Chainsaw, I'm like, I want to do a punk band. This is that's fuck fucking punk rock. That chick doing punk rock. She whipped off her wig and she had a bandage on her head and bloody bandage, and she's bald, and she's like, I you know, we're hanging out with her. She's telling she's like the squatter and from London and stuff, and the guitar players are boyfriend and stuff. It's just like it was you know, she smelled like she'd been on the road for three weeks, you know. Yeah, it was just like it was fucking cool. She was rock and roll, man. That chick was rock. That chick was real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, god. That's one of the best experiences we had in the 90s, dude.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Jerry knows, he's looking at me like, yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

Were you there, Jerry? Were you at that?

SPEAKER_10 24:04

Uh no. But oh man, that's the band that's like that's the band that Jim brings up every podcast. They're fucking great, man. And every time I get the flip. Love your money.

SPEAKER_04 24:17

And it's kind of campy.

SPEAKER_10 24:18

It's I'm gonna have to look them up because I've never seen them.

SPEAKER_04 24:22

It's like, love your money. She's a squatter, like an anarchist squatter, like crass kind of chick.

SPEAKER_10 24:30

You know, were they were they kind of like lunatics?

SPEAKER_04 24:32

No, I don't think so. No, it was uh she wasn't right, girl. This girl was like an anarchistic squatter from London who played music.

SPEAKER_09 24:40

Think of um and the musicians were were really good. So and but the the dynamics, because if I remember correctly, because I'm just thinking of Katie, but the guitarist and the bass player were pretty tall.

SPEAKER_06 24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 24:54

And I'm trying to think if they had two basses, if there was a fifth member, but the wall of sound that came from them was it was just so right. Think of like Motorhead with a five foot five full of piss and vinegar, like I'm going to make you like I'm getting you know, giving you your money's worth.

unknown 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 25:14

And it was the excitement, it was kind of one of those where being on the side stage, you never really know what's gonna happen. Like when El Duce plays. Yeah. And you're like, what the hell is he gonna do now? But the minus Katie being in the front, the the bass player and the and the guitar player were just so monstrous in the in the wall of sound. It was it was intimidating. It wasn't manufactured, I would say motorhead sort of excitement and craziness with female vocals and very simple songs.

SPEAKER_04 25:45

Yeah very just the dude was like a glitter rock guy. I mean, he looked he had glitter on and stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_09 25:52

Like he looked like Bowie, like you know Billy Zoom.

SPEAKER_04 25:55

Not like Billy Zoom, like the guy from Pulp or whatever, you know, like that's kind of the closest Bowie-esque kind of thing. You know, he just had a cool look. I mean, he's all coiffed. She's like in this dirty dress, like she looked like she'd be in a garden in a tea garden in England on acid or something. You know, she just looked like somebody escaped from the psycho ward, you know.

SPEAKER_09 26:15

Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to explain it.

SPEAKER_04 26:17

But she was she was cool as fuck. I think she had like this fluorescent orange fake wig or something she was wearing, and this like frilly dress, and almost super sweet. It was punk rock. That dude, that's I'd seen punk rock more. That it she was that band was truly punk rock. It's like you can't pigeonhole it, it's it's its own beast.

SPEAKER_09 26:36

And I think at that time was early because I remember I still had the big poster somewhere, but I think they had just got picked up. There was an EP and an LP.

SPEAKER_04 26:45

Yeah, they got picked up right after that.

SPEAKER_09 26:47

They were sure you know, pushed hard. But other bands, like when GBH would play, that just they were seasoned. Yeah, yeah. And mind you, that was an amazing show as well, but there's a little bit of you're not quite sure what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

Yeah, GBH had been playing 15 years, by the way. You know, this this was like a band. I mean, it was just its own beast, and I you should look it up. It's called Daisy Chainsaw. Yeah, and it's campy, British, rock and roll punk. It's like this glitter rock, David Bois, guitar player, and this crazy chick who's just insane.

SPEAKER_09 27:19

So this truly inspired you. So what that made me want to do a punk band.

SPEAKER_04 27:22

I'm like, I want to do this.

SPEAKER_09 27:23

You start going home and writing notes.

SPEAKER_04 27:25

Yeah, I'm just like figuring stuff out. So the next up I'm at the Spirit Club, Jerry Herrera Spirit Club, and um and we're watching this grunge thing again, and I I think it was Unwritten Law was there or something. I forget. It was like I think it was Unwritten Law before they were famous or anything. There was a bunch of bands, like a Battle of the Bands, and I'm ready to leave. It's like, you know, it's getting closing time, and all of a sudden we're just kind of standing around with my girlfriend because she's like, you know, she's really into these bands and stuff. And I hear next up, the exploding fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck dolls. And I'm like, we're staying. We're not going anywhere. I gotta see this fucking band.

SPEAKER_08 27:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

So all of a sudden, these guys come out. It's like a couple of rockabilly guys with some hollow body SGs, and then two look like strip rocker, like the guys you see at the Coconut Tees or um downstairs, like in the black on black, look like gothy kind of you know, like there's a uniform for that kind of um LA rock, you know, where they're wearing black, black, stretchy pants and black t-shirts, and they have long black hair. And it was a cool juxtaposition just like Jay-Z Chainsaw, and I'm watching it, and it's a Gadoy brothers, these skateboarder dudes, and and uh this these two guys, and I'm like, these guys are fucking great, and they're like doing, I think they did a Johnny Thunders cover and a they're kind of like seeing the you know sex pistols meet um, you know. Um, it was just a cool juxtaposition of music. It was just pure punk, it was just like Daisy Chang's album, completely different music, this you know, dual guitar focus stuff, but it was punk rock, and and so I want to meet them after the thing and talk to them and stuff. I don't know who they were. I knew I I realized who they were once we started talking to them, and they were like tattooing people in Cneus. And the roadies, this is I turn around, I see this roadie, and he's got this white Levi's jacket on that says fuck off written on the back and felt pen. Turns around, it's Dwayne Peters. Okay. Me and Dwayne Peters go way back. Yeah, I met Dwayne skateboarding when he was 16 and had long hair at the Fruit Bowl in Santa Ana. And um, I know Dwayne very well. I mean, he grew up in the Balboa Bay Club, you know, like in this marble shoebox, cigar box house, and you look through the garage, and there's a yacht, you know, in the front yard, you know, the ocean. It's his dad's yacht and stuff. Like I'm I I know him, you know. Yeah, and um this is way before he's a famous skateboarder, way before he's a punk rocker. Um so I meet him skateboarding and stuff, and we become friends because he's just a character. He's just a wild, uh wild, loose cannon man, just yeah, cool fucking dude, you know, and it's a couple years younger than me. He's just wild man. Yeah, there was a guy in Carlsweck called Joey Brand, who is a pro surfer at one of the pipeline masters. He was like, he reminded me of Joey Brand because Joey Brand was just like his own guy. It's like this little blonde-haired dude. It's just like there's no stopping him and he'll fight anybody, right? You know, and he's like a world-class surfer. Dwayne's just a kick-ass skateboarder. Yeah, you know, it's just like they remind me of each other.

SPEAKER_07 30:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:13

And um, so we meet Dwayne and stuff, and then uh in 78, when I got went to live with my uncle, my dad cut all my surfer hair off, right? I had like curly locks and stuff, kind of like I do now, my golden locks.

SPEAKER_09 30:26

I did the same thing for a while.

SPEAKER_04 30:27

And so it had grown out. When I was at the um, I think I mentioned this at the uh boarding, oh, before the before the podcast, we were talking about the boarding house where the where the go-go's lived in Long Beach, Dave Dacron from set from uh run 39. Dwayne cut my hair for the second time because I knew Dwayne, right? So we were at the Kookies that together. We went over, he took me over to meet Dave Dacron. He's like, Dave's a super cool guy. He's like giving me shit about my hair, so I let Dwayne cut my hair that night, right? So I had my second punk cut, and that was probably like you know, push in 1980 or whatever, I forget when it was, but um so so Dwayne. I knew Dwayne as a punk rocker, like we skateboarded, we didn't see each other. I'm I'm up here in San Diego. Um, and and then he, you know, I was at the Delmar skate ranch when he won his thing, became a kind of a skate rocker. Oh, yeah, you know, yeah. I was there and stuff, and I knew him at that, but he's like he went off and did that skateboard thing, you know, like professional skateboarding stuff. Yeah, and um, and I was just a I'm a str I'm a skater, I'm an early skater too, but I'm not into the contests and all that stuff. Yeah, but um, so I know Dwayne and and there he is, man. I'm thinking he's gotta be dead by now because he's a madman, right? And he's like he goes, full circle, Mike, it's our turn. And he goes, he goes, Yeah, this band's great. And I go, Hey Duane, I'm putting the band together. And he goes, Come over to my house, and it's niece and meet the Gadoy bros and all this stuff. So I start hanging out with the Gadoys and Dwayne's stuff, and I'm like, I'm gonna do I'm gonna do my band again. I'm gonna do Spin Idol. Yeah, put together and like so I meet him and we put a show together and we play in Carl's Bett at Ralph and Eddie's, you know, and that's like the first the first thing, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 31:59

Nice. Who d who'd you bring in?

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Did Dwayne even Dwayne was there, it was me. I got the flyer somewhere. I'll send you a copy of the flyer and a couple of local bands or something like that.

SPEAKER_09 32:08

Because Dwayne doesn't play an instrument, does he? He's a drummer.

SPEAKER_04 32:12

He actually drummed in the gun club before. Oh, okay. Yeah, he's a drummer. Yeah, I would have loved to have him in my band as a drummer. But he's a front man, you know.

SPEAKER_09 32:19

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like it's skating. I mean, he's known for the acid drop.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

Yeah, he's boarding in boots, and he's the first guy to go 360 upside down, and you know, he's just incredible skateboard.

SPEAKER_09 32:31

The loop and his legacy is you know, if you dive into it and not look at his politics and his crazy, yeah. But um no, he's he's absolutely a legend. He's a legend. I think he's a legend.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

He's pretty much burned his bridges, you know, with his mouth, like we all do. But um, you know, it's kind of I mean, that's like knowing people like Dwayne and going to school with people that are like uh had movie star friends stuff. I didn't want that because I see it just ruins you. You become like a cartoon of yourself because you're trying to try to stay relevant and do all this stuff. I just wasn't into that. You know, I'm not into being an icon and all that stuff. These guys are into it. I I don't need that. I feel very confident. I'd rather collect aluminum than sell my soul to society. I'd just rather pick aluminum up, you know, and scrap aluminum. I'm just I'd rather be a homeless guy than some rich guy in an ivy tower somewhere. You know, it's just that's just me. I'm comfortable in squalor, I'm comfortable. You know, I've had nice places, I'm comfortable in that too. But I'm I I have no problem without that stuff.

SPEAKER_09 33:31

Right. You know, it doesn't define you.

SPEAKER_04 33:33

Does not define me at all. No.

SPEAKER_09 33:35

Okay. So is that um lyrically? So you got a band.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 33:38

You're gonna start playing.

SPEAKER_04 33:40

We start playing a spent idol, but it's really not spent idol. I don't even remember spent idol songs, like the original spent idol songs. You know, I know the title one was 502, Pause and Ponder. Um I know Howard was the first uh drum player, Danny, my roommate, was the bass player, and that's about all I can remember is members, you know, because we're dropping acid, we're drinking beer, you know, it's just like we're we're just playing these parties trying to stay ahead of the law, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_08 34:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:09

Because you would get blessed if you even damage being done. $30,000 back then is like a million dollars now, and you like there's people who want restitution for the destruction of their property and stuff. So, you know, they want to catch us, they know who we are. Because they the police just take from LA to San Diego, they take Polaroids of you and they put you in a little book and they grab you if they see you on the street. Because you're like a threat to the society as a punk rocker. This is like in the 80s. So they know who we are, they just can't they never pinned anything on us. Right. So, but they'll confiscate your stuff and not give it back. Oh, yeah. You know, back then.

SPEAKER_09 34:41

So I've actually been threatened up at the house that I used to live at. Um it's legendary at this point. Um what's his face? Um, oh my god, I can't remember. I freaking Tony, who jams with Ryan Fox and and Matt, they've they have their project there from Fishwife. Okay. But I used to live up there and there was two times now that we were playing there and the cops came and told us you know, the first time, cut it out, period. And the second time, we're gonna take your stuff. So I had to I remember telling Matt Olin from Fishwife, I said, I go, dude, because they still practice down there and they've been practicing down there for years. I said, Yeah, I blew it. No one can practice here anymore. I guess the cops just have it out to me, you know. Granted, my sound is um just the bass alone, the little uh it can make milk curdle. It can make it's got a distinct sound. And granted we were playing loud, but you know, that was one of the things that they would do if they had enough force, especially in the early days. I mean, granted, the you know, getting Polaroids taken of you, and especially if you change your hair color, yeah. Or do something different.

SPEAKER_04 35:53

They take multiple Polaroids of you.

SPEAKER_09 35:54

Yeah. And then, you know, your file might be they're trying to figure out if you're the same guy or not.

SPEAKER_04 35:59

Exactly. And we don't have ID. Back in age, you didn't need to have ID. We didn't live in the police state we live in now.

SPEAKER_09 36:05

How about did that ever happen with you? With the cops at all? Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 36:09

Getting stuck in harassed. Well, I used to jam too in a garage in Mare Mesa and Yeah. And uh yeah, we were told to shut it off, and if it happened again, they would confiscate our stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:22

Yeah. Well, I'm sorry you guys, we're the guys that birthed all that. So you had to pay for our sins. They didn't catch us. They tried.

SPEAKER_09 36:31

But that's part of the whole, you know, mystique of it, and that kind of helped build everyone as you're growing up. I mean, everything you do, ride in a skateboard down the street. You had to worry about the jocks. I mean, I've been, you know, have a car pull up, stop, eggs thrown. Um around graduation, there would always be uh whatchamacallit, shaving cream. So if you got caught, I mean that was kind of innocent, but if you were a skateboarder and a punk rocker, you had a huge target on you from from the uh the old jocko's. But at this point, so you're doing spent idle. When does that start to to morph?

SPEAKER_04 37:07

Like after the second show. Yeah. Because it's not the same band. Okay. You know? So um we just added an S to kind of make it um different, but the same. Because people knew the band. I mean, yeah. People, there's flyers, you know, I have a couple of flyers and so um who's in the band at this point? Um, the first band was a guy named Jose on Drums from Oceanside that I used to work with. And um a guitar player was John Pankoff. I call him Johnny Fire, he's a big, big tall guy. And um and on bass was Henry, Henry Trevor, who is my cousin, and me on vocals.

SPEAKER_09 37:50

See, I didn't even know Henry was your cousin.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

A lot of people don't. A lot of people don't, but yes, Henry was my cousin. Yeah, he still is. We still claim each other. We're we're two of the family members that still claim each other.

SPEAKER_09 38:02

Yeah, I know I I understand that dynamic. Yeah, yeah. So is this when it started to get a little bit more serious?

SPEAKER_04 38:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, so I'm I'm dating Laura. Her sister is this gorgeous, Laura's six foot, her sister's six foot one. She's just, you know, she's a couple years younger than Laura. They're from Flagstaff. Uh Dawn wants to be a model. She's gorgeous. I go to her high school graduation, she stood, you know, foot taller than everybody in her graduation. She's it was a Santa Ana desert day, and it was just like she's in this gown. She looked like a fucking angel. I mean, she's this gorgeous chick. So right out of high school, she goes to New York and uh Eileen Ford picks her up and she becomes a model overnight. And she, you know, she's over in Europe and stuff. So she's exposing us to you know, her model life and saying, like, you guys should be be a little more focused on this. She's making like a quarter of a million dollars part-time in 1989 doing this, you know. Right. And um so she's like, you know, and she has money and she's like, you know, she's a photographer and she's taking super good shots of us and stuff, and she's like kind of saying, like, why don't you do it differently? She um starred a magazine and she's trying to sell it to trans world. And I'm helping her with the magazine. I was doing the music editing and writing and interviewing for the magazine. It was called Wig, Women in General. But it was a little ahead of its time. The Trans World didn't buy it. Um, Trans World skateboarding is is also a magazine, they own a bunch of magazines. So the dream is you come up with the magazine, they buy you out, and you know, you get to work uh work for them with their resources and stuff. But they didn't buy it. So it you know, they probably got about 10 issues out. I think it's still online. You can find it, but uh, you know, I was involved with that. So it kind of, you know, it like I met people from Vans and stuff like that. So Vans was pursuing the van, the band. And they they were so this guy Mark Sisyphus, who was like, I think he was in charge of the skateboarding, you know, he's like the head of it or something. Now I hear he's like in charge of all the surf videos and he lives in Hawaii. He's probably I'm sure he's a multimillionaire, he probably was a multimillionaire then. He gets to know me, he's like, I really like your band. We're gonna come up with this um a festival thing. We want you to be the face of it. Um, you know, he's sending me shoes, he's sponsoring the band, and you know, we did this Wig magazine um event in Lake Tahoe, which is like the biggest event we ever did. It was like we were the opening band, there's like 5,000 people, like 20,000 people were there. Beastie Boys played as Xenon, their punk band off label. They played there. The Chrome Mags were roading for them. The guy on the Chrome Mags was the roadie. So we're hanging out with these kind of people and stuff, but I just wasn't having the vans thing, you know. So Scott's like, hey, Mike, we're gonna do this festival thing. I want you to be the face of it. It ended up being the warp tour.

SPEAKER_07 40:47

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 40:47

I could have been the face of the warp tour. I'm like, you know, we're not that kind of band. Right. I just like I'm just you know, and he's just really saying, he's like, he's like, well, what if we do a shoe, a Mike Spence shoe, and I'm just like, uh, you know, I I finally I said, okay, could you use this relentless? I said, okay, how about pink zebra fur? Um he's like, Mike, they can they won't do that. There's no way they're gonna do that. They can't sell that, you know. This is before that kind of stuff was cool, right? He goes, let me design the shoe. We'll do red and black, put your name on it. Just let me do it. I can handle all this stuff for you. Just let me help you. And I was like, I don't know if I want to do that, you know. Yeah, like, you know, and I just wasn't having it, you know. Right. I just was not having it. But it's a dream come true. Now I don't regret it that I didn't do it, but I wish I did it because then people would pay more attention to me. I doubt, you know, because everybody's a sele like celebrity and labels and things like that. So I wish I'd done that because I think people take my music more seriously, take me more serious. I'd have a voice and things. Yeah. You know, where they're just I just sound like an old man lying. You know. But that's true.

SPEAKER_09 41:49

This is But then you have all the obligations.

SPEAKER_04 41:50

I mean, you're basically I didn't want to sell my soul to these guys.

SPEAKER_09 41:53

That's you know, basically I I can relate to that totally and completely because that's kind of the premise of everything that I do.

SPEAKER_04 42:00

Yeah, I know it is. That's why I mean you get along well.

SPEAKER_09 42:03

And so basically, you know, I would love to have should Vans call me up right now and be like, oh, you're I'd be all over it right now. That's all the whole family wears. Yeah. Knock knock vans. Um Jerry here too. Mike, we could all use some shoes. Yeah, union of metric.

SPEAKER_04 42:19

Oh my gosh. Crates of archive sheets.

SPEAKER_09 42:21

See, that's another chill up and down the spine. Because when I was a kid, I couldn't afford Vans, so that was always that level. Yes. But just like you, if they would have approached me and said something, you know, because I was sponsored in eighty six, I don't know. I dropped my sponsors because I could see where it was starting to go. That's when I've told this, you know, so many damn times, but supposed to ride at SeaWorld. Went there, looked at the arena, and you know, Primo and his wife, Desi or whatever. Um and I just I didn't number one, I was one of the sponsors was gonna be Monarch Helmets. I was gonna be riding at SeaWorld. They were gonna tell me when to ride, when to ride my skateboard. And at this point, I was already falling away from everything of being a productive part of society.

SPEAKER_06 43:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 43:07

And I thought to myself, I don't I can't do this. I can't be a product. In hindsight, it's like I should have at least tried it and see where it would go. But but you know, I was 17, 18 years old, so I just dropped everything and I basically dropped out, and luckily a couple years later I ended up, you know, at Soma and booking shows. But that's that's kind of a hard pill to swallow. Well and especially when, you know, I could just imagine so your music and your persona.

SPEAKER_04 43:36

They want to change everything right. But but I so at this time when Vans was going out, I was in the middle of a huge lawsuit against my employer, which was at the time the biggest construction company in the world, Bechtel Construction George Schultz ran it, who was like uh Ronald Reagan's right hand man, his Secretary of State. So I got injured there. So I'm in the middle of this lawsuit. I have like high powered attorneys through my unit. Because my dad was a union official. I had access to these high-powered attorneys. So I'm like, I could have them drop a a you know, they would have drawn me up a contract and stuff. I know about corporatism. I know all about it. I don't like it. I still don't like it. That's why I didn't do it. I just didn't want to be a part of it uh personally, because I have beliefs, you know. Those beliefs stop you from the modern success of the world, you know. So but I'm like I said, I don't need all that to be happy. I'm right, I'm comfortable in my own skin. I don't need money to make me comfortable. I don't. And I've always been pretty capable of making money. You know, but anyway, the level, you know, you look at Billy Joel from the Green Day and these guys, they got a lot of money. You look at, you know, the blank 182 guys, guys, you know, got a hundred million dollars in the bank. Yeah. It's like that would be nice now, you know.

SPEAKER_09 44:45

But it's also I as I mentioned before, we've tried to get through Chris Arms. Yeah. Tried to get to you, right? Yeah. Well, Chris said he had to send an email to his publicist. I know, and you'd like made that band. Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:58

But they should be like, hey, Jerry, but but it's a corporatist world with lawyers, insurance, all this bullshit blocking you from the common person. I'm into the common person.

SPEAKER_08 45:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

You know, I'm not into the lawyers. Fuck the lawyers. I'll use them. You know, I s I had the lawsuit. I've been involved in I I we won a $52 million lawsuit that I initiated against my homeowners association because I recognize some injustice. You know?

SPEAKER_08 45:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:21

I I do stuff like that. It's not popular. You know, it's not they don't like that.

SPEAKER_09 45:25

It's putting a giant target and it's a lot of work. Yeah. I mean, they're they're a necessary evil when you actually need them, but that's just because shit happens and sometimes you need to be protected for yourself or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 45:37

People don't know. And if you recognize something and you can help, like I I hired congressional witnesses in that $52 million lawsuit. You you're not gonna beat a congressional witness. Those people go before Congress and they're experts. So if you get I had I got them involved in the lawsuit against our home home, our builder of our homeowner association. I was on the board of directors. So you do people see me as this punk rocker guy with weird hair, but I've I've done this stuff. Right. You know what I mean? Like I know how the world works.

SPEAKER_08 46:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:04

I've been around. I'm not poor. I might not look like I have money, but I I've been around. You know, I have a high lifestyle or whatever, you know, I had. And um when when they're telling me I don't understand, like Lynn, like these guys tell me I don't understand what they're offering me. Right. It's like I've I understand what you're offering me, and I'm saying no.

SPEAKER_09 46:22

So let's dive into that because we're gonna back up. You got um the beginning of the warp tour and vans and all that, and then later Lynn had approached you about trying to help develop your band as well. Well, you've got this play in there.

SPEAKER_04 46:35

Yeah. Okay, and we worked our way up. Like we humbly did that. Like I didn't care about Soma. I could care less about I'm not knocking Pennywise, I'm not knocking on law, but I'm not those bands. I don't want to be those bands. I don't I'm not into what they do, you know, and I don't want I don't need the fame that they have, right? I don't need that. I like being infamous. I don't like being famous. I like being infamy, you know. I want to be the guy, the Billy Kid, you know, Billy the kid. I want that be that guy. I don't want to be the fucking Donald Trump, you know. I don't want to be that, you know. Yeah, I don't need to be the boss, you know. I'd just rather be the oh wow, that fucking guy did a lot of cool shit, you know, and I didn't give a fuck. That's me. I still like that.

SPEAKER_08 47:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:12

But, you know, so we worked our way in. We did a couple of shows, and then finally, you know, because we're good at what we do, even though it's a mess. We're good, you know, it's a confined mess, it's a controlled mess. Uh, we got to the main states pretty quickly, and then um, you know, and the Blink 182 guys are there in the audience and stuff, and you know, I know their friends, Swindle, I know you, I know people at No, but you know, I never even said hi to those guys, you know what I mean? They're just like to me, they're like 15, 20 years younger than me. You know, it's like I'm it's like I got nothing in common with these dudes. I didn't grow up in Powway, I grew up in Carlsbad running wild. You know, I'm not I'm not I don't know about making it to school, you know. I didn't I didn't cooperate with school and stuff like that. I wasn't cooperating with my parents, you know.

SPEAKER_08 47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

But um, but yeah, so Lynn Lynn after that gig, right? I didn't I didn't tell anybody, I think I told you later. I don't know if you knew about it, but Lynn pulled me in the office and he sat me down. He goes, I'm not gonna mention the name of this band, but he goes, I will drop them right now. You know who I'm talking about, and I will get behind you 100%. And I said, Ah man, we're really not that kind of band. We're not like these dudes, you know, we're really not like these kids, you know. These are like innocent kids that you're raping or whatever, you know what I mean. Not not you know, sexually, but like, you know, you're making some money. And I I think from you, I saw the breakdown of the pay schedule for these bands for Blink, for instance, for Blink. I saw like what they were making compared to like Lynn, the lawyers and stuff. So I knew they were getting like a tenth of what everybody else is making. Right. So I was like, I don't want to do that. You know, I want to, I'm thinking I can do it myself, DIY. I don't need Vans. I don't need Lynn, I can do this myself. That's what I'm thinking. Like, I'm I'll be Lynn, I'll be Vans, I'll be my own brand. Right. I don't need their help. I think I can do this because there's a DIY movement at the time, right? But I was wrong. You know, I was way wrong. But um, so Lynn's in there telling me, and then finally I said, Okay, Lynn, what what would you want me to do? He goes, Well, we gotta get you some lessons, we gotta rewrite these songs, we gotta blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, uh uh-uh. You know, it's like I don't want my music to be on the radio. I when I write a song back then when I wrote a song, now I think differently. I didn't want to be on the radio.

SPEAKER_07 49:26

Right.

SPEAKER_04 49:26

I wanted it to make your ears bleed. I want it to be like poor and cockroach. Like it's not something you can play on the radio, you know, it's like it's crass, you know.

SPEAKER_09 49:34

Yeah, it's also a visual thing. Because we'll we'll get into it because minus um Jesse on the drums, but even seeing him behind those drums, it's like that was a big boy. But there was an element of danger, which made it. That's what they didn't understand.

SPEAKER_04 49:50

And that it was real danger. Yeah. We were we had Gabriel, a fucking insane person in the band. Like, you know, it was dangerous. I was hard to keep everybody corralled, you know. So I was getting a bad rap because people I was like running it like how the Ramones ran the band. You know, I read the Ramones book, I read I read Johnny's book, and he didn't let anyone fuck around. And if you made a mistake, you got penalized. So I was raised by a World War II paratrooper, so I thought like I'm like a soldier, but I live like a a wild man. Yeah, you know, but I have I have direction in my life, even though you can't see it, and I know what I'm doing, even though it looks like I don't.

SPEAKER_09 50:24

It's controlled chaos.

SPEAKER_04 50:25

Yeah, it's control chaos. I'm controlling this chaos, it's not fucking easy. Right. And by the time the band breaks up in 97, it's like it was just too much work to keep going. And we were at the height of things, you know. It's like we're building up this stuff. But going back to Lynn, he's like, Well, you know, blah, blah, blah, we're gonna do all this. And I said, We're really we're not that we're not I I don't think so. And he's like, Do you understand what I'm telling you? I'm like, Yeah. And he's like, he gets pissed at me, right? And he's like, you know, I'm fucking offering you the world here, kind of thing. Right. And I'm like, hey, Lynn, I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like you, motherfucker. And he's like, get the fuck out of my office. I've never met anyone with such a bad attitude, you know, and I'm like, fine. So we never played there again. I think we played there two or three times, you know.

SPEAKER_09 51:08

Yeah, back then it would be I could kind of slide it in, but he also, as we talk about at Metro, he started slipping away more and more where he realistically didn't need to be there.

SPEAKER_05 51:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 51:20

So I think it was kind of strategically like, oh, I'm they've got it, you know, and at this time Jerry's coming in as well. I mean, it was a well-oiled machine, everyone had their place. We didn't need him around. And I don't remember, you know, I I probably did get shit from him because of the fact that I was kind of the same way. Yeah. He tried to mold me, and molding me is like, uh oh no, I'm I'm so fucking way insecure. He only wanted to mold people to control them.

SPEAKER_10 51:50

Yeah, yeah. Wasn't it wasn't uh to help, it was just to control and keep them keep them under him.

SPEAKER_09 51:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 51:57

Um what so did I don't remember, did Lynn ever manage any bands?

SPEAKER_09 52:02

He would try to, but I don't he this is a really good question. I would have to really do a deep dive on it, but I'm pretty sure that he did have his hand in hand basically handing over to Rick DeVaux.

SPEAKER_04 52:20

Yeah, I think he was I think he's marketing. He's kind of like how he sold his his name. He knows we're together. Yeah, he's connected. He's not the only guy to offer me that, but like here, you know, I've I've had that offered to me a couple of times.

SPEAKER_09 52:32

Yeah, so and that was the whole kind of thing of you work with me, and I remember him saying distinctly, oh no, you've you've done your part, they're not working for you anymore. They don't play for you, they're playing for me. Yeah. And I looked at him like, you're a fucking asshole. Yeah. I do all the work, so that you're dumbass can oh fuck and you. But you know, that by as Jerry knows this, at the at the end of my term there when we started doing all the raves and all that, it became so much different. It just it just it wasn't comfortable. I my exit was inevitable because of the fact that I was like you, and I just I I needed to be away from it.

SPEAKER_10 53:13

You got burned out as well. Yeah, you gotta get away from it. I was burned out too. I was getting burned out too.

SPEAKER_09 53:17

You can only be be controlled so much.

SPEAKER_10 53:19

And then when I left, I was burned out and I didn't need the uh constant uh put down and stressing me out, and I'm doing this long ass drive every weekend, it's like, come on, and I'm I'm the one that brought up the whole damn thing to even get the damn club back.

SPEAKER_09 53:37

Yeah, yeah. Not only that, if Jerry wasn't able to pick up some pieces when I had left, then it would have fallen apart then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:46

Because I mean all the heavy lifting, you guys are keeping it together. People are playing. I played for you, I didn't know Jerry, but it's like I'm you're the reason they're there. They're not there because of Lynn because Lynn's a dick. Everybody knows Lynn's a dick.

SPEAKER_08 53:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:58

You know, no, it's like they're just kissing his ass because they want to be Lynn or whatever. They want to be liked by Lynn. I'm I I didn't want to be like I didn't need to be liked by Lynn, you know.

SPEAKER_07 54:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 54:07

Hindsight, musically, yeah, I did, you know, because I burned a lot of bridges with a lot of people, promoters. I did not realize that these promoters are friends with all these places all across the country till I went on my first national tour because I had West Coast representation, I had New York representation, and I was getting shows yanked out from under me because of my antics in Texas. I was like, What the fuck? How does he know? Uh I got a call from Tim Mays, like, hey Mike, did you break some bottles at the club? Because we played some exclusive club in Austin, and I'm like, Yeah, I did, I did, but it was like behind me, he goes, Yeah, but glass flew into the audience, and I'm like, Yeah, a little bit, but it mostly flew on us, you know.

SPEAKER_10 54:47

Oh, yeah, that the whole thing with promoters and stuff, because when I tour managed, um, there would be stories about different bands, and it would get around to every venue. Yeah, and they'd be like, uh, let's X this band out.

SPEAKER_04 54:58

Tim got us in that venue. I didn't know Tim helped get us in that venue. And he's like, Mike, you can't be doing that. This is like where all the big reggae bands play, and all this. It was an open air club there with the you know, ceiling.

SPEAKER_10 55:09

It's a small world, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

It was a small world. I started to realize so I got we had all this stuff set up for Georgia with the like we were doing college radio things, like we played MIT, we played the colleges, right? And um when I get to Georgia, our every show we had was yanked. The promoter who booked it was this chick from Georgia who was connected to the FM radio and the college radio system, and we didn't get to play at all in Georgia. So we're sitting in Georgia for a week. Our next show's down in Miami, and then the second day of it, I'm like, why are we sitting in fucking Georgia in a parking lot? You know, let's drive to Miami, you know, like Miami's happening. We can spend a few days down there, you know. So we we drove down there. But yeah, it's like we were losing gigs. You know, that that breaking the glass got back to Tim in San Diego, because I guess he gave us the okay to play this place. Right. Because people are kind of scared of us, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_09 56:00

It's again adds to that yeah, it adds to the element. But at that point, it was basically I don't know if it would be more of a homogenized sort of easier run, because the bands that I had a hard time with, um, it seemed like no one else had that problem. But my problems with certain bands weren't the same issues that Lyn had to deal with, because the minute they show up, I'm on babysitting call. Yeah. And I don't have to just deal with the band, but I have to deal with Len. So if I rub someone wrong, it would come back on me. But his reputation kind of exceeded the club as well. So I would have people come in and they would they would be cool with dealing with me, but some people just hated dealing with me. And now in hindsight, that's probably why so many people gave me so much shit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:56

And I might call him out. Lynn told some of them to do it.

SPEAKER_10 57:00

And then yeah, there was a bunch of bands that just wouldn't play so. Yeah. Yeah. That that goes back in.

SPEAKER_04 57:05

Why was that? Why was that? Because Lynn. Yeah. Because they didn't like him, right? Like he's got a reputation. Yeah, it's a reputation. And then stains the whole thing. He was nice to me. It stains the whole venue. He was nice to me. He spoke, I spoke to him one time.

SPEAKER_10 57:16

And the funny thing is I was friends with a lot of people that were in some of these bands that wouldn't play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 57:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 57:23

At the venue. And here I'm like, I dude, you want to play, come play. I I'll get you in. Oh, no, no, we don't want to play there. Yeah. It was a the there was like a whole anti-somo movement, you know. Yeah. That's why all those bands would be Casball bands.

SPEAKER_04 57:36

Yeah. Well, and I was cool with Tim because Tim used to Kim's one of the fathers of the punk rock scene.

SPEAKER_10 57:40

Yeah, and I was always cool with Tim. Tim was never high strung. That's why I like Tim. Tim he was chill. I love Tim. He's totally chill.

SPEAKER_04 57:46

I I love him, but you know, I burned my bridge with him. You know, it's just like I haven't spoken to him in a long time. I was surprised we played there last September. I was surprised we got on because I've hit him up. I mean, I knew I knew Tim very well.

SPEAKER_08 57:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:57

You know, and I I I I loved him. He's a great dude. I mean, he's a really cool dude. And he gave us a lot of good shows over there and stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 58:05

It's funny because a lot of San Diego promoters were actually really chill.

SPEAKER_04 58:08

Yeah. San Diego's chill compared to other places. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 58:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:12

There wasn't pay to play like there was up in L. Like we'd have to do pay to play it in the beginning, and I'd be like, I don't want to do this, you guys. So I'm like, uh talk to him and say, how do we get around this? You know, and he goes, We did it like once with Coconut Easter, but I figured out how to sell all my tickets, right? And uh so our the first time we played with them, they're like, you can just play. You sold all those tickets?

SPEAKER_10 58:30

Yeah, because LA was always pay to play, where San Diego wasn't. No, it wasn't always not.

SPEAKER_04 58:35

It was not. But like what I did is I got um my band members' girlfriends who wear bikinis and there's tourists up there, and we sold the tickets for face value. So we sold all our tickets.

SPEAKER_09 58:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:44

You know, so we did it one time.

SPEAKER_09 58:46

You're not making any money, but you're getting a gig and it's exactly what we're doing.

SPEAKER_04 58:48

And I know once we get I know that once they see us play, like Lynn sees us play, because yeah, like you gotta watch out for these guys who are dangerous or whatever. Yeah, even Agent 51 is like, is that a true story about the blah blah blah? You know, people we have a reputation as being loaded, you know, dangerous or whatever. So so once we get in there, I know they're gonna like us because I'm professional at what I do. I know how to put a show on, right, you know, and it is controlled chaos and all that, but it's like I I I'm purposely doing this because this is what I want, you know. Yeah, but um so I knew once we got in there, and then that opened the door, like we headlined the whiskey before we got under the Roxy, you know, once because the the coconut cheeser guy, by then I'm knowing they know each other. It's like we did the pay-to-play once and then it was done because we're a good band, you know. So they figured we'll get some we'll put these guys in. So we'd play at Halloween time and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_10 59:39

Yeah, it's funny because when I, you know, I've mentioned this in the past, but uh when Metro closed, everything became pay-to-play. Yeah, well, that was the model, definitely. Even when we reopened the new Soma, it it kids wanted to sell tickets.

SPEAKER_04 59:52

Yeah, yeah. That was like the model at the time, but I'm not into that, you know. I don't want to do that. I'm like, I think my band's better than that. That's what I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_10 59:59

Well, not only that, it's uh some of these headliners, they don't do that and all the opening bands and yeah, it's a force of representation. Yeah, they're forced to actually sell the show out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:09

The thing with us is like they people wanted to represent us, we just didn't go with it. You know, we I wanted to do it myself, you know. But um, you know, I should have cooperated a little bit more, you know, because now it's hard. I can't just pick up the phone and talk to these guys like I could before.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:25

That's the same thing for me.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:26

Yeah, I know it is.

SPEAKER_10 1:00:27

That's you know, they know and now it's it's a monopoly.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:30

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a whole different ballgame now. It's nothing about money, it's not about music. It's the correct corporation. It's corporate back then it was still about the music. It's not anymore. There is no real music scene anymore.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:42

You know, to the kids are, and I brought this up before, but the Magnol kids are really doing their part, but that's the you know, teenager in the twenties crowd, but they are running into the same monopolization that you know has been going on for a really long time.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:00

So they're finding ways to get around it. But if you can ask the common lay person that goes to shows all the time, it's still really clicky. It's like, okay, yeah, we play these certain bars all the time. There's no real heavy emphasis just on local stuff as what made Soma what it is today. And it's because people, you know, back then we a few of us would hold on to artistic impression and and we we base it expression, I should say. Yeah, I don't know But you know, now it's people really that's what they want to do. They want to be in a band, they want to tour.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:35

It's like McDonald's, dude. It's like everything's boxed on a shelf and they're they're willing to be a product. I mean, social look at social media. They're acting everybody's acting like fools, you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:43

Everybody's same thing as in skateboarding. Everything's you can make money off of YouTube and off of reels and all that.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:56

Yeah. I'm not into that.

SPEAKER_10 1:01:58

Everybody's a parrot.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:59

Everybody's parroting. Yeah. And that's the beginning of it, you know, back when we were playing. That's the beginning. It's what you were doing. That's the beginning of this world we live in now. It's like Andy Warhol's everybody have their five minutes of fame kind of thing. It's real now with the social media. And to me, social media is like a disease. You know, it's like I don't like it, you know, and they're gonna start doing social credits. And if you're not a good citizen, so you know, it's just this weird world where communism creeps. Yeah, yeah. It's just it it's complete control, dude.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:28

You know, the funny thing is like even today, trying to get I mean, my V and I were talking last night about she's all it's about time to upgrade your phone. I'm like, I've barely even figured out this one. Yeah. And I just figured out today how to do the reels, which I thought was live for Facebook.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:44

Oh, yeah, reels are cool.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:46

And every time they change reels. Yeah, that's it's crazy. And they every time that they change something, I look at it and I think, oh, did I get hacked again?

SPEAKER_05 1:02:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:02:54

And then I get, you know, weird messages and like, oh, I'm hacked. It's just everything because you live so much on the phone. Yeah. That I can see how it can be a benefit for these kids who pick it up, you know, just like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:05

They can work way better than an old guy like us.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:08

And they're making it work for themselves. But you know, the the back in the day, doing a band, you know, you you still do different art and everything. Let's let's talk about some of the art that you do for spend idols, because now I do all my own. It's not cut and paste anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:24

Not actual scissors and paper, it's digitally cut paste.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:27

Because I still do That's awesome. The the cut because I can't figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:31

Well, you will just just mess around. It's not that hard.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:34

I'd just hire someone else.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:35

Yeah, if you got the money, if I had the money, I'd just hire somebody too, but I gotta do it myself. There's no money in what I do.

SPEAKER_09 1:03:40

And so the imagery, when when exactly did you come up with the logo? Because it's you know it's the traditional cutout style logo.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:48

This guy Kenny um Kenny did it. His his online presence called Slug. I think it's S-A-L-H-L-U-G-G Kenny Garrett, and he does all the artwork primarily for this Orange County label now. I forget the name of him, but um he's he came up with a lot of that artwork, like the sex pistols logo thing. He did that. Oh, okay. Because he he wanted to make a t-shirt said never mind the sex pistols, meet the spin idols, or whatever. Here's the spin idols. So, but I just took the spin idols part because it looked cool and I like loved the spin. I I love the sex pistol, so I kept the sex pistols part for the spin idols because it's been homage to the sex pistols. Oh, yeah. It's one of my favorite bands, you know. So um you know, that's we got a lot of it from him. The safety pin, Kenny drew that up. Kenny do most of my he did my last, my German seven inch that came out last year. He did the artwork for that and the safety pin and stuff. And um he's always done my artwork, you know. But um so he would give it, he does cut and paste, he gets the gels and cuts the things out, does the old school silk screen stuff.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:55

You should look him up, Kenny Gary, he's a super cool dude. Yeah, he's an old punk rocker like me. We're at the same shows back in the seven. I'll give you his info. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go look him up. Um I forget the name of the Orange County label he's with, but it's like if you're in Orange County, all the Orange County bands are on the label.

SPEAKER_09 1:05:09

Okay. But like like you recognize that at all?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:11

Orange County label with I was around the Orange County scene in the beginning. You know what I mean? Like I ran from Santa Barbara to Mexico, you know. It's like I am part of the Orange County punk scene. I was like, you know, um shattered faith and stuff played in my cousin's living room and stuff. Um I brought political crap, which was Dwayne's first band, to Encinitas. You know, it's like we did a lot of stuff, you know. I mean, my dad was born in Buena Park in 1925, you know. I have family from there. I have family in Santa Ana to this day, Tustin, all over, Yor Belinda, all over the place. So it's like it's hard for me to see these orange county scenes and these locals and stuff. Like you were I was born here. My family third third generation Californian, you know, be you know, right when the statehood came, you know, so fourth generation. So It's like I feel like a local, you know what I mean? Like I was born in Oceanside Hospital, it doesn't even exist anymore. You know, it's just like it's hard for me to see all these new locals and these 90s punk rocker guys, you know. Like to me, they're tribute bands, you know. Right. It's not, I was like there, you know what I mean? I was playing and stuff, right? I was at the shows. I it's not, I'm not mimicking, I'm not parroting anything. This is like you see the spin outs, it's like seeing a band from the 70s. People don't understand it. They just think because we had the higher popularity in the 90s that we're from the 90s. It's that's not so, you know. So I gotta put up with that. So had I done shoes and people had got my knew my story or whatever, it'd make my I'd feel better because I just feel like I got these crazy stories nobody believes. You know what I mean? They're like, Well, who are you? And I'm not gonna I'm not gonna waste my time explaining who I am to anybody, you know what I mean? Like, so it's kind of a bitter pill, right now.

SPEAKER_10 1:06:53

But you're but you are now.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:54

Well, I am now. I mean, you guys are hearing it first.

SPEAKER_09 1:06:57

Well, that's the whole thing is that's the story.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:59

Yeah, I was like, This has been you know quiet for a number of years, you know. I've dabbled around it, but you guys are pretty much getting the clear picture here, right? And then there's this guy, Boris, who wants to do this film on San Diego punk rock, and I'll put you guys in contact with him. You know, so I was telling him a bunch of stuff. Like, people don't know Chip Kinman's from Carlsbad, not widely. Right, you know, like it came from Carlsbad, dude. That fucking band, the Dills came from Carlsbad. Yeah, you know, that's fucking cool. People need to know that. Yeah. Carlsbad locals don't know that, you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:29

Yeah. And Carlsbad's kind of now there's a huge music scene. It's it's a young thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:34

Yeah, there's a cool music scene there, but it's kind of like a hippie surf culture.

SPEAKER_09 1:07:38

Yeah, they when I talk to the kids, I ask them about um My cousins put on shows there in Carlsbad every weekend. And um, I'd ask them, is is punk rock nowadays just basically a hashtag? Because they don't like the hashtag, dude. They don't want to be better. They don't want to be pigeonholed into trying to relive something that because RNA didn't have to be a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:58

They're not inventing anything new. They are not, yes, Jerry, they are. They're not creating anything new. They're rehatching stuff they don't know existed before them. There's popular music. They the labels resell these songs generation after generation to new audiences. There's people hearing 50 songs today thinking they're new. There's this 80 sounds, 80 sound and pop.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:20

Well, there's a couple producers that write the majority of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:24

They hire song multiple songwriters, all this stuff. It's a country, the same thing. It's like disco. Disco was doing this in the 70s. That's always punks in like disco because it wasn't true music. The music today is like disco's model. It's all put together. You buy beats, you add your lyric content, you know, they're all the same. It's all fake. It's all fake.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:42

It's kind of like if Bert Baccarat was here right now, he'd be like, Yeah, I sold a lot of I mean, we went looked at it yesterday.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:48

You know, all the different artists he wrote songs for.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:51

He's been ranked since 46.

SPEAKER_09 1:08:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:53

He wrote a lot of songs rock songs, country songs, pop songs. I met him twice. I saw Oh, really? Yeah, I met him. He used to live in Del Mar when he was married to Angie Dickinson.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:02

And there were movie stars around uh Rancho Santa Fe, Del Mar area, and I used to run wild there. Like I there were some girls I knew that lived over there, and like Victor Mature was their neighbor. And this is in the punk era in the 80s, early 80s. I had girlfriends over there, you know, friends that were girls and their parents were wealthy. So you'd see these guys. So I I met him through that. I met Victor Mature. I met I think some silent actress, I forget her, I think Moorhead or something. I forget what her name is. Agnes. I think so. I think so. Some writers and stuff. Bewitched. Yes, I'm pretty sure she had a place over there. We met people like that.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:35

Yeah, you got her name, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:36

Yeah, Agnes Moorhead. Yeah. I'm pretty sure she was out there. Uh Victor Mature for sure. Burt Backrack was out there, Solana Beach, Del Mar, a rancho. Um and they were back then they were approachable. And they'd love to tell the stories of the old days, and you could talk to them. Desi Arnez had a beach house in Del Mar, you know, and Boris, the guy Boris is wants to do this documentary. He would Desi used to babysit him in Del Mar, you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:10:01

And then they would go from up in that area, you know, everywhere from basically Carlsbad Rancho Santa Fe up in Hollywood. And they would go to Palm Springs.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:11

Palm Springs, Delmar, and Hollywood.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:12

They have a hotel in Indian Wells.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:10:15

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:16

They had their reserve sp parking spaces in Del Mar when I was a kid. You could go look at the celebrity Desi Arnaz, Erwin Allen, all these.

SPEAKER_09 1:10:24

Mike Spent.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:25

Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah. I might be able to do that. We're sneaking in, we're climbing the fence. We didn't need a parking lot, we just climbed the fence. You know, I never paid to get in anywhere. Well, this is anywhere.

SPEAKER_09 1:10:35

Let's take a complete offset here. Did you ever do a Burt Baccarat song?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:40

No, but Burt Baccarac is an influence in me.

SPEAKER_09 1:10:43

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:44

Yes. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's an influence on a lot of bands, dude. Yeah. Because especially the artists and the English pop bands or were like, you know, Elvis Costello, you can hear Bert Baccarak. Yeah. A lot of those pop bands, you know, there's Burt Baccarack melodies there.

SPEAKER_09 1:11:00

Yeah. You know. Yeah, it's funny because, you know, so if you look at 74, well, let's let's dive all the way down to like 72, 73, 74. And then especially, you know, the punk rock in in in um uh Europe in 77 when that just blew up, everyone has their influences. There wasn't a punk band then. So your style is based off of you know the 60s and all the music that you heard.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:28

All that yeah, the Stooges, the MC5, the Dead Boys a little later, you know, they're all there's all those elements. Um Burt Backerak, uh Daisy Chainsaw's there. I mean, because she's writing Burt Backerick. Some of her songs have Burt Backerick melodies in there.

SPEAKER_09 1:11:42

And it's just it's basically the song structure. Yeah. And it's all about how you present it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:47

Burt wrote the hook in these popular songs. He didn't write the lyrics. He I mean he worked on that with his partner, I forget the guy, Hal Jepson or something. I forget the guy's name, but he was the melody maker. So hook's important, melody and hook are important. And that's like Spen Idol's or retarded little excuse my language, backwards little songs, you know, dumbed down little songs, but there's hook and melody in them. Yeah. There is definitely hook and melody in them. So that type.

SPEAKER_09 1:12:12

That also lends it to be more exciting.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:15

Well, you know when I was a kid, the number one selling song was a song called Afternoon Delight.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:21

Oh, yeah. Yep. That's funny. You was thinking that exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:25

I use that model in all my songwriting. Yeah. It's very simple. It's like a nurse, it's like Mary Had a Little Lamb.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:30

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:31

You know, yeah. I use that model. Music's that simple and a much to me. I I wasn't I'm more into like English pop versus like metal. I'm you know, it metal doesn't appeal to me.

SPEAKER_09 1:12:41

Like I'd rather Venom?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:44

I'm not a big fan of any of those bands. I I respect them. I love them. And like they have some sex pistols and shit going on in the city. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:12:51

That's the thing about Venom, the early Venom. And even to this day, it's the same formula, but it just has raspberry vocals.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:59

Yeah, just a linear content. Yes, a harder edge. But no, it's not I'm just not that guy. You know, I'm just I I like my friends were into Kiss and stuff. I wasn't into that.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:08

Yeah, I'm not either.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:09

I but I love the body of Kiss songs. There's some beautiful fucking structure there. But it it didn't appeal to me. I have friends who wear the face paint and stuff. I just wasn't into it.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:17

What about you, Jerry? Are you a big KISS fan or at all? I don't own a single KISS album.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:24

So do you want to do in the face makeup and they got some great songs as a kid? As a kid, I like the look. Yeah. And I had maybe a couple posters I won at the fair. Yeah. But other than that, no, I never got to kiss.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:35

Yeah, either wasn't I. I always thought it was to be honest, I always thought it was kind of kooky. It it's kind of commercial.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:40

It's a money machine. You know, you look at that stuff from the 70s, it's kind of funky. It is totally funky now if you look at that. When they made that movie, it was Kiss versus the Phantom or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:50

The Phantom of the Phantom of Paradise or whatever. I don't know.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:53

I can't remember. Well, there was that movie, The Phantom of Paradise. That wasn't it? No, no.

SPEAKER_09 1:13:57

Okay, yeah, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, I never really but if you look at it now, they influence so many people, like even King Diamond. Yeah. And then you get into the death metal with it. Even but even Pantera.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:09

Yeah. Diamonds. Kiss is a very influential band. But they were up, they're taking Slade. They're like uh making Slade popular music, you know. Like I was into Slade and stuff like that. This proto-typical stuff wind.

SPEAKER_10 1:14:23

And when you talk about corporations, KISS is a corporation. It is a business. Oh, yeah. It's a business.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:27

And I recognize that as a 16-year-old, and I wasn't into it. When I was 19, I wrote a story about plastic people, and I didn't want to be one of them. Because I grew up and I could tell their marketing hippie, they're the mainstreaming hippie and stuff in the 70s. Right. And natural food culture and all this stuff. And you know, and I was into the natural food stuff. But it's like I I don't like the ball of the society, the way it kind of consumes and reinvents and re-markets. I'm not into it. I like being my own person outside of that.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:55

You know. So I've always been like that. But I I I use their principles at work like afternoon delights and influence on my punk rock songwriter. Yeah, you know, people don't know that. They don't know Bert, they wouldn't know that I love Bert Bacarak. I don't tell people that. It's just my personal preference. But I've seen him a few times, I've got met him a couple of times, and I love I respect the man. He's a hell of a fucking songwriter.

SPEAKER_09 1:15:18

Well, that goes into the whole thing if you have influences before punk rock. Howard, you know, when people try to pigeonhole you, okay, so you're not punk rock because you listen to blah blah blah. Yeah, yeah. I don't engage in any.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:34

I saw punk rock before it had a name. Yeah. Okay. So I don't get into that argument. I I get like people are coming out of the 80s and 90s, and that's punk rock. I get that. I was there too. You know, I was around that. I participated in that. But that's that's just kind of the version that's stuck, you know. Yeah, but like the stooges are punk rock, they don't look like punk rockers, you know what I mean? But they're punk rock. Oh, Iggies. Well, I heard demo like my ex was friends with all these rock stars. She's a really good, she had a a degree in music, and and she was she had these blues bands with like ex-rock stars, like drum from Big Brother, you know, the guy that wrote 96 teardrop. She's playing live with these guys around here because they'd retired here and stuff. And um the drummer of uh Big Brother and the Holding Company gave me a or played me. He goes, Mike, you like you I think you'll like this. You should live. It was like them with Janet Joplin. It was fucking punk rock, dude. The demo tape was fucking punk from like 1971, dude. It was like didn't sound it wasn't bluesy stuff she was doing. It was like she's belting it out, and it's like these little punk songs, dude. Right. It was fun. I wish I could get that. I wish I wouldn't burn that demo tape, dude.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:38

And then she and then she left them.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:41

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:42

It was actually uh born in the same hospital. Really? Delivered by the same thing. She's a great center.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:48

Janice Chopin was. She was great.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:24

And she was doing punk rock style.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:26

Her fucking demo shit's punk, dude. It's like the stooges with the girl singing. You know, it's just like she was hardcore. She was hardcore, dude. She's drinking fucking Southern Comfort and shit and blacking out on fucking black, you know, those fucking um, well, what black beauty was pure pure hero heroin. Yeah. Well, she would take barbiturates, you know, like what are those things like that? Black Beauties, right? No, that was speed. There was like Playlude. Oh, yeah. No, it was black. There was a name for it. I can't remember it, dude, but it was like barbiturates, dude.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:55

Yeah, I can't. I that's I'm trying to think of the 80s because it slows your slows your brain down. They started to make, you know, the Valium and the Xanax, but there was a more generic that I remember in the eighties. Yeah. That was coming around. But um, you know, coming out of the hippie culture, and it was kind of really glorified, you know, doing an acid and dropping in and and and all that. But that music back then again, because you know, you got the the disco came in the 70s, and that's when people tried to rehash. But if you look at even the early Beatles stuff, it's pretty much pretty punk rock three co- yeah, yeah, it's punk rock.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:31

Black leather pants and black Yeah, the Silver Beatles. They were called the Silver Beatles playing in Germany and stuff. Yeah, I was just talking to them with Richard about them with Richard. Yeah, their songs are like there's like Peter Bast and stuff, they're early the early band before they had Ringo and you know who they idolized though.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:46

Who? Like Buddy Holly, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:49

What which is an archetype of all the rock and roll. Yeah, uh Bill Haley also, you know, those guys the Indian surf guitar.

SPEAKER_09 1:18:57

Um I'm I'm drawing a serious blank. If we are alive right now and I'm sure someone's gonna Sankar? Um, um he's an Indian guy who hardly ever gets I know someone's probably putting it up on the live stream here, but um he's uh oh god, I can't even remember the freaking song. But he's still he's one of those that is considered for what he was doing as punk rock. Because basically, if you if you break down punk rock, it's just a simple three-chord form of music and it's not overproduced, and it's you know, it's it's easy, it's how garage bands really kind of are. Yeah. Which is a style that you still carry to this day. Which speaking of, so how many albums? I'm gonna jump way ahead. How many albums have you put out right now? And then they're mostly seven inch, right? Do you do full length or no?

SPEAKER_04 1:19:45

I have like um, I think two CDs, three full lengths, a ten inch, bunch of seven inches. I don't know, I don't I couldn't tell you, but a bunch, a lot. And it's I've published in many countries. Yeah. Um, the last thing I did was uh it was gonna be a vinyl record out of uh Venezuela right before they collapsed, but it became a CD. But uh my music's in the Library of Congress in Venezuela, you know, it's just like people were saying you're anti-American, that's an enemy of the state, and all this. It was weird, you know. People were like getting on me about this, but um, you know, and then I just did this German thing, but I'm registered in a lot of a lot in a bunch of international country compan countries with through BMI, and I'm in the Library of Congress in USA. You know, I'm a registered songwriter. People don't realize that it's registered, you know. I have a song book there.

SPEAKER_09 1:20:30

That is insane.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:31

Yeah. UC system. So my I was telling you about Diana, she was she did her capstone at UC San Marcos, and they had just finished building the campus there, and they built a recording studio. And um a kid who was a fan of the Span Idols who played with Gabriel and American New American Mob was running the newspaper there, so you know they did this whole thing. We recorded the first CD in the UC San Marcos new brand new sound, you know, uh recording um class, and that was her capstone. Well, if you took that class, I don't know how long they did this, you had to learn the Spen Idols songbook.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:05

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_04 1:21:06

Yeah, yeah. If you took that UC San Marcos recording class, you you learn Spen Idol songs. People don't know this. You know, we're so crazy. We played for San Diego Marathon on a regular basis through it, but we played a Carlsbad Marathon. Yeah. But you know, like I've got you know, we played supermarket openings, they did all kinds of stuff because she was involved in the college stuff. She was playing in my band the in the early 2000s, and she just opened us up to this academia stuff. So she's like, hey, we can go play this stuff. So it's it for fun, just for the experience of doing it.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:35

But you know, I got thank you letters from cities, and it was different from the 90s when they're fucking suing me and shit for causing damage and stuff. Right. You know, like I they sued me at Bringle Terrace because Bringle Terrace would do these summer concerts for kids, and when we finally played the a fucking riot broke out. So they tried to charge me with inciting a riot, and and uh, but I had these high-powered union attorneys, and I just paid five hundred dollars for the deductible from the insured it was insured, so I just paid the deductible and it went away. But they were trying to prosecute me on that, you know. Wow, yeah, and then there I am in you know, you gotta learn a spin out song in the UC system, San Marcos. You know, it's pretty ironic, right? Yeah, nobody knows that.

SPEAKER_10 1:22:17

You know, well who we do now?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:18

Yeah, you didn't know that was 2002, so I don't know how long it lasted, maybe just one semester. I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:23

Well, that's that's they're definitely not playing a cockroach song. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like here, you have to learn this song. It's called Fuck You. Yeah, yeah. There's two chords.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:33

Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_09 1:22:33

And just sing whenever you want and then have someone else scream off mic.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:37

Yeah, yeah. Well, in the 80s, I didn't, you know, it was loose. I don't even remember the songs, but in the 90s, um, I did have direction. You couldn't see it in our presentation, but I was like documenting the songs, licensing them just in case, you know, because I wanted to do a legitimate, make it a legitimate band, and it is, you know. Unlike uh Chris. Chris. Oh, Chris, yeah. Chris from agent. He sold the soul for 30 grand. Chris, I'm so sorry, bro. That was a great interview, you guys. That was a great interview with Chris. That was I I just wanted to listen. I mean, what a I mean, what a story. I mean, he really is accomplished. Yeah, you know, yeah, he is. If I was sitting here like he comes from a whole different place, he's at 15, wants to be a rock star. Like he wants to be a baseball player, like he wants to be a soldier. I'm I at 15, I didn't care about any of that. I wanted to get high and go surfing and you know, figure out a way that I don't have to work. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, but not like I want to be a rock star or I want to be, yeah, it just wasn't like that. This kid knew what he wanted, made it happen, but he got eaten by the machine, you know. I I didn't want to do that, but I thought I could do all this stuff that Lynn was doing, that Tim is doing, that Vance is doing myself. I I learned silk screening, I printed my own stickers, I printed my own t-shirts, I did everything in-house to save money because I had resources. I it wasn't like I was poor, you know. I had a like at the time, I think I had an $80,000 a year job I had come out of, you know. So I was like, I could do stuff, you know, I own property and stuff, you know. So people didn't know that. I remember like we played Showcase Showdown, and I forget the guy's name, but he was like, we played there quite a bit, right? Once we once we play, even to this day, they may not want us to play, but once we play, they're like, You can come anytime you want, just let us know when you want to play. Like that's the experience I try to give them, right?

SPEAKER_07 1:24:23

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:23

But so I'm laying behind. We get to the to the showcase showdown and corona early. I'm laying in the that was the ease up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he didn't know when he called our number that he's speaking to me. Okay. He's I can do this persona.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:38

Like I did So you're you're pretending you're like the I'm the badger.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:41

Yeah, I'm like I'm uh Silver or something. I said I'm Maurice Silver or something, you know, or Mike's Michael Silver or something. Like I'm a Jewish manager, rock manager, right? I'm doing that get that stick, right? Michael Silverman. Because in the structure of it, you can't you have to have that stuff because even though it's non-union, you're working, there's union contracts there. So you're breaking the law. So I knew this stuff because I was involved in the union. And uh so I'm laying behind the showcase showdown, and the owner shows up to open the venue. We're there way early, and he goes, Oh, are you in the spin house? I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I'm in the spin-house. He goes, Hey, I wanted to ask you, I want to talk to your manager, you know, your booking agent. Yeah, I had a manager and a booking agent, so all me. And it's a front man. There's three, I have three positions in the band, right? All slightly different names. Yeah, and um, he's like, When I call the number and I talk to your booking agent, your manager, who am I talking to? Who am I actually talking to? I said, You're talking to me. He's like, What? He's like, does the double, he's like, come on, man, I'm not talking to you. You're like laying in the gutter, you look like a fucking hobo. You know, he's like, I'm like, he goes, I'm talking to you. And I'm like, yeah, you're talking to me.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:46

In a glass office.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:49

That's what he's picturing. He's thinking we got representation. He's thinking we got representation, you know? And he's like, he just was like, God damn, he just thought it was so cool. He's like, Wow, man. He goes, How do you know about this? Because I I I made him pay me for a show he canceled. I got 300 bucks from him. As you should. Yeah. I made him do it. So that's why he wanted to know who he was talking to. He's like, Who the fuck are you talking to that's telling you guys this? Because none of these bands, I don't want these bands knowing that I see because you uh so you actually uh had contracts, right? I it was a verbal contract, but they were neat, they bumped us. Nice, we didn't get to play. So I'm like, you owe me 300 bucks. That's that's the booking fee, you know. Yep, and I made him give it to me. You know, so he wanted to know who you know. I need to talk to this guy, maybe he can work for me. You know, that's what he's thinking.

SPEAKER_10 1:26:31

Because even like when I was tour managing, we'd have shows cancelled, and I I made sure the the people paid. Yeah, I go, we're here. You cancel the show, you gotta pay us our guarantees.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:40

Yeah, we just drove 100 miles over here, man. It's like it's not free. But you know, that's concept's gone today. I mean, you just pay to play, even if you're not selling tickets because you got to rehearse, costs money. It's not as simple as it was back then, you know. But yeah, yeah, he was like, I blew his mind. He's like, What the fuck? Who are you? Who is this guy?

SPEAKER_09 1:26:59

Did you do the thing where you wear a different hat for each different person?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:02

I'm just behind the phone. I'm behind the phone talking to cops, getting out of legal shit. I'm doing all kinds of stuff. And plus, I got representation. I can have my dad's lawyer write these guys a letter. And then it's a fucking powerful.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:14

As long as it's on a legal. It's a real lawyer.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:17

It's a real lawyer. I have the lawyer do it, and it's free through my union. You know, I was involved in my union behind the scenes of my union. So I just like this guy goes before Congress. You know, they're like, the guy got me the witnesses. You know, he's like, get this guy, you won't lose the case. Yeah. You know, like that. So generally, people don't think like that.

SPEAKER_10 1:27:34

They say, I'm gonna sue you, but I actually have what I was trying to say was you got that letter that had that that uh the legal representation with it's a real uh uh letterhead from a lawyer's attorney.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:45

That's what I was trying to say. Written by a secretary that always looks good. Oh yeah, scared the shit out of people back then, you know. Now I don't know so much.

SPEAKER_09 1:27:52

It's like I don't know, but I got they would send it through Twitter saying we're assuming Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:59

You get a Letter from my lawyer if you cross the spin idols.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:02

Yeah. But that that makes it even more dangerous, but also it shows the intelligence you can't pigeonhole. Okay, so this guy, when he's on stage, it looks like he just crawled out of a manhole. But when I talk to him on the phone, all of a sudden I have this deal that I want this guy to help me out on because I bought this car and it's a fucking limit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Michael Silverman, can you help me out? That's right, exactly. Yeah, let me let me do my show first. I'm on stage with the band.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:29

As long as they don't meet me in person, I'm gonna win. Meet me in person, I might do 15 to 20 in prison.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:35

They they recognize your voice and they go, Oh my god, this is Mike Spinner.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:38

I'll pick up this persona, you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:41

You know, I'm a vocalist. I can I can deflect my voice.

SPEAKER_09 1:28:44

Makes it even more dangerous. Yeah. Which is even more but realistically, that it part of it it worked back then. I don't think it would work. I don't think it'll work today. No.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:51

Yeah, and it was naive. There's more people had more rights generally.

SPEAKER_10 1:28:54

It's well we didn't have the social media back then.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:57

No, and the social media nothing was real today. It's a big problem. To me, it's a big freaking problem, but it ain't going anywhere. It's the new world, you know.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:03

But yeah, we until we get hit by China and all electronics get taken out.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:08

Yeah, the EMP. Once the EMP blank takes everything out and we go to like The Last of Us, and it's like the last back to the Stone Age. But uh, you know, I always always have lived like when I was a kid, my favorite movie is this Vincent Price movie called The Last Man on Earth, which is like that movie Will Smith did later on with the vampires and stuff.

SPEAKER_10 1:29:24

Legend.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:25

Yeah. Is that it? Is that what it is?

SPEAKER_10 1:29:26

I I am legend. I am legend, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:29

I've always lived like that. I still live like that. I I w wanted as a kid to be that last man on earth. I people bug the fuck out of me, and I just wish I was alone on this planet, could do whatever I want. And I still I live like that in Mexico.

SPEAKER_08 1:29:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:42

I nobody knows where I'm at. You know, I'm just hunkered in this little bunker in Mexico, living like everybody's a zombie.

SPEAKER_09 1:29:48

You know, that's you write a song about that at all?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:51

No, no, I'm telling you guys, but yeah, I live like that. That movie influenced me in the way that I pursue life in our society. Like I live right outside of it. I I I exist among you guys. No, I say you guys the world we live in, the society, but um I'm not I don't really feel a part of it, you know. And I'm watching out because they'll suck the fucking blood out of me.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:13

You know, yeah, I can I can definitely relate to that.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:16

I know you can. I know you can. I know you can too.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:18

I question it usually the first thing in the morning when I'm down here. I get in front of the TV at 4 30 with my coffee and I'm staring at it, going, What the hell am I gonna find to keep my mind occupied? Because I just sometimes I wake up and I'm so insecure. I don't I don't know, you know, I might have been up since one o'clock in the morning thinking about stuff.

SPEAKER_10 1:30:37

I don't sleep. Oh my god, dude. Well you gotta find some peace, Jerem. You gotta make some peace. I do, it's just been kind of rough. Too much stuff going into his back.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:46

I know, I know, and I can relate to you, and and we've talked about stuff like this, but I found peace, and I've able to forgive and forget and stuff. And you'll get to that point when you just get sick and tired of feeling like that, and then you just surrender to it and it goes away.

SPEAKER_09 1:30:58

Well, we're about to start over again. We're starting actually, we're starting on Thursday. Sam and I were gonna write our sophomore album for Deathias. Good for you. So, to actually have a project that I know for sure is solid, and it's gonna be he and I, and you know, I've known him since pre-Soma. So the fact that we're writing this album like 14 years later, I'm gonna be able to vent a lot of stuff, and it just it's gonna be able to keep me focused. The wife's happy with it. The Soma album, and it's with realistically, it's not even gonna be about Soma, it's gonna be the furthest thing, which is you know, the way that Sam writes, it's a little bit different in our first albums. A lot of like I don't know, just your your your pop stuff. It's just pop, rock and roll. So to be able to be in that place, I should be able to help keep things focused so I don't have to worry about as much. And then I can, you know, find a happy place. You know, and I get stressed out, and and that's where on stage I became the maniac.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:32:00

Which was always fun whenever you're used, dude. And when we would play, you know, the side stage when one of my bands would play with the spent idols, you know, I'm I'm doing the show.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:10

I have pictures of you, by the way. I just got I was trying to find 'em. I got my I have photos of you.

SPEAKER_09 1:32:15

There's some of the the infamous ones is with my fuck shirt, you know, the nylons, and then of course my bondage pants, and then whatever creepers, and then I have earlier stuff of poor.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:25

I have poor pictures. Yeah. And I have a handwritten poor sticker.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:29

Yeah. That's a ballpoint pen.

SPEAKER_09 1:32:31

Yeah, I I haven't seen some of that stuff in years.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:34

But you know, when I find it, I'll shoot you over some pictures. Cool.

SPEAKER_09 1:32:38

It's but that's the release, you know, just to get up there on stage, and then that's when I can find my balance. So then, you know, if I start watching the news and I start losing my mind, but a lot of times, like before this, I start thinking a few days and I'm doing research and I'm looking at old stuff of whoever's gonna come in. And with you, it's like there's so many years that we have behind us, but a lot of these stories we didn't really talk about because whenever you would come and well, you're always working, and you were you're serious when you're working.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:07

Yeah. I mean, you get us all lined up, wait over here, you guys. You know, like don't leave this area. Yeah. We're like wandering around.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:17

Which makes me think of Gabriel and uh and and Henry walking around and thinking, okay, they need to be corralled in with what trouble are they gonna get into?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:24

I'm like, yeah, you guys, you know, you it's wait over here, you know.

SPEAKER_10 1:33:26

Because we were dealing with controlled chaos basically. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of stress. Yeah, I know. Yeah. So you gotta have you had to have your head on a swivel. You're like watching over all kinds of stuff. Yeah. We had to worry about the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:38

We had to worry about we had our spot right next to the chain of fence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:42

Yeah. And the funny thing about that is is to be, you know, the the punk rock and well being punk rock or whatever, just being a kid, so we knew what to expect. Because we were not that much older than the majority of people playing the club. Right. So we know what to expect. If we hear a bottle break, someone needs to go find out where it is and then sh you know the people in or out. Cops are gonna be there. I'm not gonna talk to the cops, I'm gonna stand there all stout and fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. But Jerry or someone else in the front can deal with them, and everyone had their place to keep it organized because we know what's gonna happen. The minute we let go, it could turn into just get hurt, killed. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:27

You know, but it's got to happen too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:34:30

But we also gotta, you know, have it be. I remember this from the early days was one of the things that um Lynn and Mike would talk about is it's gotta have a bit of that chaos element at shows. Because if it's just kind of like a jewel show for you know whatever reason, or if it has that what would you call it, sort of persona knowing, you know, it's not it doesn't have that bit of danger, especially in in um. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:01

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_09 1:35:02

Even though the parents were leaving the kids there eventually, it still had that but even even uh union.

SPEAKER_10 1:35:09

I don't remember a lot of little kids there.

SPEAKER_09 1:35:11

Oh no, because it it started off it had to be 18 and up, and then because Metro was where the kids were.

SPEAKER_10 1:35:16

Yeah, yeah, but 12-year-olds.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:19

I remember I remember a bunch of kids, and then I remember I mean, where was it where we played? What what it was the second venue, right?

SPEAKER_10 1:35:26

No, yeah, it was the first. It was the first?

SPEAKER_04 1:35:28

Yeah, Union. Was it the first?

SPEAKER_09 1:35:30

Trying to think.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:31

So what was it Chain Link Fence?

SPEAKER_09 1:35:33

It was probably Well, we've had them at both places. Maybe at both places.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:37

So what year what year was it that you played? I don't know, 95, 94, I don't know.

SPEAKER_10 1:35:41

Well, 90 94 was when it union closed down and Metro opened. Yeah. If you played 95, then you played Metro.

SPEAKER_09 1:35:49

They could have played one show.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:51

There was a Chainlink Fence.

SPEAKER_09 1:35:52

Because that's where Daisy Chainsaw was.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:54

Yeah, that's where we played. What years was that?

SPEAKER_10 1:35:56

That was Union, right? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:35:58

Yeah, so that was um by 94 we were we were out of there.

SPEAKER_10 1:36:01

89, what, 88 to 95?

SPEAKER_09 1:36:04

Yeah, and I came in in 89. And then where'd it go? And um, well, after that we did oh, excuse me. Did a couple either three, maybe even four shows. I don't even remember. I believe we did three at the Scottish Rights Center. And then Len had finally found because we would scout for venues. I did not think I was coming back. As a matter of fact, I was just talking to someone yesterday, I think. And I was not gonna go back to the new Soma. I wasn't gonna go to Metro until Len had basically threatened me.

SPEAKER_10 1:36:36

I was like, you know, you know what's funny because like you talk about the Scottish Rights Center. Well, when we had issues at Metro after you left, and I was doing production for Golden Voice, we actually ended up doing shows at a bunch of different locations. Oh, that's right. When Metro was kind of on the way down, right? So I was doing shows at the O'Brien Pavilion in Del Mar. Yeah. And then a couple other people, huh? I was I was floating around, which sucked because that's not my element. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:37:03

Yeah. And and until he and Scott Raynor had opened up the the newest one, which is yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:14

It's the old um I'd never pan theater scene. I'd been in there before for someone. Is that movie theater? Is that what I'm doing? Pan theater. Okay. Yeah, I've never been in that one. But I've known it's been there. It's still there, huh? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:37:24

That's the longest lasting Soma ever. Okay. That's it's been over it's uh I would have never played Soma if it wasn't for this.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:30

Twenty-one years now. I think I didn't even care.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:37:34

Because that opened that opened October of uh 2002.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:37

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:37:38

That's crazy. So it'll be 21 years. Essentially 20 20 years right now. Yeah. But it's you know, the element of what it is now versus what it was is you know, night and day. It's I walk in there and it's so much darker, it seems, and it's well, we don't even know what it's like now that Live Nation put a ton of money into it.

SPEAKER_10 1:37:57

So it looks like big chandeliers. You know, it's just not it's not gritty like it was.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:04

Yeah. I mean, even if you think about it, where we were in downtown, that was the quintessential punk rock club, what you would think of. There's the homeless people. And the more and more people that I talk to in in groups and stuff, or just meeting random about the podcasts, they'll say, Oh yeah, union. I used to go down there and I would stash my skateboard. And the more and more I talk to people about this, I mean, girls and guys and and all the like, it's you could probably have gone and sat there with the homeless people and spotted a few dozen skateboards, and I didn't realize how heavy, and the the more with this season, the more skateboarding keeps coming up. Oh wow. And I'm like, I had no idea because when I was doing that, I didn't talk about skateboarding. Yeah, that's just what I do.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:52

Yeah, I remember you skateboarding around, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:55

But now it's like it's all those things came in together, and that place, the the back part, the parking lot where the homeless people were. They weren't homeless people. Those people were frickin' bums. Yeah, it was dirty, it was gross. Yeah. And you know, you had to be cleaning up and oh yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:39:13

Yeah, that was that was before all the homeless thing all that started before that was.

SPEAKER_09 1:39:18

It became a hashtag and a way of life, and you know, oh, this is great because I could do meth all day and steal you. I miss those days.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:27

Yeah, you know, there's all downtown San Diego was like that when I was young. Yeah, they had all those tattoo parlors and shit for the Navy by the way. Sailor Jerry's? Yeah, dude. I have a couple Sailor Jerry's tattoo.

SPEAKER_10 1:39:37

But if you remember, there was, you know, you you would actually knew every bum's name because there wasn't there wasn't hundreds of them.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:44

Where that where that mall uh they put the mall in where they all lived. That what's that mall down there? Um I mean it's been a parkway plaza. Is that Parkway Plaza right there in downtown San Diego? Right down the road here.

SPEAKER_09 1:39:54

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Parkway plaza. But you know, the reason why we got kicked out is the city had decided they were going to gentrify downtown. Literally. So they they put those across the way it was just all warehouses and they turned that into high-end.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:11

Yes, yeah. They're doing that up and down the coast. They're going up. Yeah. Multi-use structures. Everywhere. Multi-use uh structures.

SPEAKER_10 1:40:19

You know, they're gonna supposedly tear down the wiper room. Yeah, but a big empty. Yeah, it's gone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:40:24

So they're gonna put up a parking lot.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:26

Yeah. Boom. That's gonna it's gonna be rise.

SPEAKER_09 1:40:31

Yeah, and then they'll they'll say this is affordable living, and well, it's just it's all hypocrisy. Yeah. And um, we're digressing. But then with Metro, that's when things change. We literally, when people would start, when you would come in to get to be part of the Soma family, you had to be one of depending on the night, five, six, eight people that would go around the parking lots. We would clean the parking lots cleaner than they were all the rest of the time when there was no shows.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:41:06

I mean, literally, we might as well color wise. Well, yeah, because we kind of had to work with the city. Yeah, you have to keep them happy. So here's you know, and that's why when I was on the cover of the Tribune and did that that interview, I was so nervous because it's like you don't want and back then, you know, I had all my piercings and everything. And the the probably the Mohawk then too. I'm sure I did. You're wearing a ball cap. And um probably my my postman ball cap, but I didn't want to be that guy, right? I didn't want to be the smokes hole. So when the cover comes out, there's the picture of me and then the little, you know, whatever tagline for it. But on the opposite side of the tagline, and I have the piece somewhere.

SPEAKER_10 1:41:49

That was like four pages when that came out.

SPEAKER_09 1:41:50

Yeah, it was a big it was a big article. Article with maybe I don't know, half I remember maybe like what 300 words from me. Yeah, but um so on the cover, you know, they have that with the the little tagline on the other side with something about a rapist or something. So when my mailman sees me and he's like, Oh, you gotta sign my paper. That's cool. You're famous. And he's like, What's up with this? And I'm like, I don't I don't know. But I signed it and he gave me a postman hat because he thought it was so fucking good on you. And the complete opposite of that is when Len had his boat and he was, you know, plan on traveling, and it's down here at the marina, he didn't want me there.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:36

And I found out, huh?

SPEAKER_09 1:42:39

Oh no. Because I remember people were working on that Jason, yeah, uh, I can't remember his last name, but he was another one of those, you know, would would work with me cleaning up the lots. That was the late 90s when he was getting ready to leave.

SPEAKER_10 1:42:52

Yeah. That's when he sold Metro. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:42:54

So I think he's sailing the world. Yeah, I think around 94, because I left in 97. So probably around 95, 96, he started that. And Jason had told me straight up, he goes, Look, he Len does not want you around there. He doesn't want to ruin his reputation. And I'm like, I'm on the fucking cover of the Union Tribune. Ruin his reputation. He put him on the cover. And I assume you were the manager, right? Didn't it say manager of Soma? Yeah, but to Lynn, I was, you know, the the peon that booked all the bands until he took them over. So I'd I was always confused. I never, you know, me, even to this day, I don't really understand. And I was talking to a kid um, because he was doing this flyers thing, and I sent him some flyers. I said, Yeah, these are from the back in the day, you know, some of my shows. And he had put a quote, these are from Germ, and he used to run Soma, so I immediately seen it and said, No, I'm not the owner.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:43:52

I ran it, kinda, I don't know, but then he's you know, we just went back and forth because to this day it's we were you were a building manager and you were the production manager. But I did everything from booking shows, flyers, just every pretty much everything. Yeah, it's just rebuilding the club, um, opening, closing. You were Mr.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:11

Soma. You've definitely heard Mr. Soma.

SPEAKER_09 1:44:13

And um, so I mean, I guess it's flattering that I was put in that position, but it's still It's a cool thing. You know, and then at the end when I had to hide my face because I supposedly had everyone and their mother out, and my wife would, you know, we we talk about things. It didn't end well.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:28

Well, I remember you saying, Hey, Mike, I hear you're like Malcolm McLaren. Do you remember telling me that? What were you hearing? Because I was like, what the fuck is this? That's gotta be from Gabriel and stuff, right? Or where was that from?

SPEAKER_09 1:44:38

It probably just and in hindsight, thinking about it now, I would say because the controlled chaos. Yeah. Because of the way that you controlled. I had to control them. Oh, yeah, but that wasn't just a a fur on stage thing. You had to control them. Yeah. Because they couldn't be able to get away.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:54

They were always getting fired and quitting and stuff and coming begging to come back, and it was just insane. It's like in doing drugs, and I'm like, hey man, we don't drink, we don't drug. You know, we're musicians here.

SPEAKER_10 1:45:04

Yeah, that's how I approached it. So it was a personality conflicts.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:07

Well, it's just like well, Gabriel wanted uh he okay. When I broke up the band, we had a record contract. He picked up my record contract uh from Flip Side, I was through Flipside up in L Hollywood, and then um he became New American Mob. Well, in the beginning they played two gigs of spent idols without me, because it wasn't Spen Idol.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:25

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:26

It was like the band without me. So he bleached his hair blonde because I had blonde hair and he's like trying to be me. But and then he he gets a he has that deal and he just double sells the deal, sells the same CD to two different parties. So two CDs come out about the same time, and there's a big scandal over this because he's just ripped everybody off, and then the band just imploded, you know. But it was like that kind of stuff. So he was always trying to push me and take my girl, you know, just bugging the fuck out of me. You know, because that he's probably doing drugs, you know. Uh I love the dude. I to this day I love the dude, but he's a he's a mass. You know, he's just he's a hard dude to deal with, and he's still just the stuff he posts on social media, it's just insanity. Just absolutely insane. He goes by Gaby Omega. You got so there's Henry Trejo, Spin Idols, Gaby Omega, Jesse Valedez, Rest in Peace, Jesse, the top of the rest in peace. They they have Facebook presences, and if you guys hear this, please go, please go say hi to them because they are part of the Spin Idols, big part.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:23

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:23

And um, and then there's John Pankoff, Johnny Fire, big part. There's Jose Navar uh Navarro from Oceanside. Go say hi to him on Facebook. But I wanted to I since I'm bringing like Jesse made me realize something. So there was a guy in the 2000s. I had a guy who was a local Anthony's rock star guy. There was a band called Wally's World. Did you guys ever hear of Wally's World? They could have been like the singer was like um somebody from Led Zeppelin. They were like this 80s, they wore spandex and shit like uh like uh that dude with the shaggy haircut, Rod Stewart, you know, just that era, right? Early yoga package. They were fucking good, right? They were really good. But they were local boy partier boys, you know. So they never made they actually have the the the the award of the worst song ever, the worst music video ever made, and you can Google that. And that's Wally World. And this guy, Aaron, who was like a rock and roll guitar player, savant. I used him in the 2000s because I knew him since he was 17. He just recently passed away last week. Yeah, Aaron, Aaron Meyer, he's his uh Facebook page is still up. Uh he's a lot of people loved Aaron, he's a good dude. You never met him or anything, but he's a good dude. He died. Uh-huh. Okay. Um, rest in peace, Aaron. Yeah, because he, you know, I have recordings of him and photographs, and hopefully I'll get them on social media. And then this other guy, Earl Smith, who was in Vegas and he was doing a uh Stigstench radio show. He recently died, you know, this week. So I just wanted to mention those guys, you know, to the to whoever's listening. And um, you know, just like they're gone. You know, so it's happening more and more now.

SPEAKER_10 1:48:03

More and more.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:04

Suddenly dying. You know, just suddenly dying. There's a third person I can't. My brain just went dead. I don't know. Aaron bothers me because I've known him since he was 17, and uh you know, I used to babysit as kids at a point, and just an old old friend and a hell of a guitar player, and you know, my go-to guy if I needed somebody in a pinch because he just knew the songs I could learn, and he was really freaking good. But um had a lot of raw talent, you know. But yeah, Aaron Myers passed away. You know, a lot, a lot in one week. Yeah, not good. Not good at all. Not good. Yeah. Darren. Uh fuckface or Darren Lod uh Lones. Lones. Yeah, man. Uh I called him happy because he never smiled. I thought I cut his death lock off and he hated me. But you know, we're still friends and he's on social media. I I tagged him in the invite, so I don't know. Oh, okay. But yeah, yeah, Darren was great. He was like a rhythm guitar player and stuff. Yeah, yeah. The what was this band called? The Confederates.

SPEAKER_09 1:49:09

Confederates and um originally was um uh Riverbottom Nightmare Band.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:14

Yeah, River Bottom Nightmare Band, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:49:16

Because we went up um I used to hang with them a lot because yeah, he um I have a few pictures. We did this Hollywood trip, Jerry. Okay, this was the craziest thing. The weirdest people, um, eclectically, and we all went up in that station wagon that I had. And I don't know why we took that, but there was Darren, Justin from Riverbottom Nightmare Band, um, Jane, who ended up that was Darren's girlfriend, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:49:42

Was that your girlfriend's wife? His wife, which used to date her too, right?

SPEAKER_09 1:49:45

Yeah, for a short period.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:47

Yeah, see, I think that's where I know you from, from her.

SPEAKER_09 1:49:50

And she sent me a letter, a dear John letter, that I should um seek some mental health extra. We all should. Because I was a little loopy.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_09 1:50:03

Um, well, yeah, I worked at Soma, of course I was. But um, and then Christina, remember Super Tall Christina that would ended up marrying um uh the big big mulatto guy, security guard. I cannot remember his name for the life of me, but one of our big like muscular Nathan Nathan Big Nate, yeah, big Nate, and then um he was with us and for secure Kelly.

SPEAKER_10 1:50:32

I wonder whatever happened to Big Nate.

SPEAKER_09 1:50:34

Um actually Kelly might be watching this live right now or pop into this later. Um but yeah, that was uh she was yeah, because I had the picture somewhere. Wow, that was the craziest trip up to LA. It was just I again I do not know why we went in my station wagon. Yeah. And um, that was when I was living up by Metro. But I always have fond memories of Darren from back in the day.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:57

Oh, I love Darren. Yeah, we had a fun. We we got into big, you know, I I was like very maybe that's where you got the the Malcolm McLaren thing, if you were tight with him, because me and him had got into it. And uh because I was very controlling, you know, like you were saying. But and he had I can't I don't even know what it was about, but we did have words one night and stuff. He was ready to kill me. I was like Lynn to him, you know, he was like ready to let me have it. But we we worked it out and everything. And um, you know, we're we're friends on Facebook and stuff. But no, Darren's fucking great. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:51:27

He's been in town a couple times, but I'll get a message when it's a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:30

Where's he at?

SPEAKER_09 1:51:31

Um crap, I don't remember to be honest. Okay. He might actually, you know, he might pop in on this. It's uh I'll be able to look through and get the comments later.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:40

I d I went to this antique sale that was over at uh one one bunk. And next door is this building, and a girl had uh the lady in there had a Confederate shirt on. I said, I know those guys. And she's like, Oh yeah, you know Darren, and she knew Darren and his wife and stuff. And yeah, I can't remember her name, but she works in there, you know. It's like right, I think it is one bunk. She works in the one bunk.

SPEAKER_09 1:52:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:01

He's like the manager in there, but she had a fucking Confederat shirt on. I said, I know him really well, you know. And I said he was actually in my band for a little bit and stuff.

SPEAKER_09 1:52:08

Yeah, so I was gonna ask you, how did he end up being in?

SPEAKER_04 1:52:11

We needed a guitar player, and I forget how I knew he was a fan of the band. And um, we got him to do it. But I was like, hey man, you gotta cut your hair. And he was like, I'm not cutting my hair. And but his wife talked him into it, helped talk him into it. And then um, you know, I got I fired him or something. You know, I I don't remember what happened, but he was like, Motherfucker, I cut my hair for you, you know. It's like that. And he wasn't, you know, he was upset, you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:52:33

I know the feeling because I I ended up slowly but surely cutting my beard down to nothing because it's Simpson 77. Yeah, yeah. Which is funny because it was my band that I formed. I got Stoney in, and then Stoney and I formed the band, and then I ended up leaving. Yeah, and Stoney kept going, right? And Stoney kept going. Um there was three bass players they landed on Pete from Rocket from the Crypt. Okay. But I'm yeah because I I remember kind of distinctly and being pissed about it. The beer just didn't really look at it.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:05

Yeah, you want to have the image. And that's what that's what I was telling Darren, you know. But then it didn't, you know, it's like I forgot what it was. It was like it was just like a personality thing. He's a lot younger than me. Yeah, I mean, but he's a great dude. I just didn't have the patience I had. He didn't do anything, it's just me being a dick. Yeah, just me being an asshole.

SPEAKER_09 1:53:23

Well, then again, I mean it just through the conversation we know, this has kind of been this has been a long time coming. So when you have a project that you've been doing and you know, I have focus, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:33

You know, and I want and he did and he did it begrudgingly, and then I was like, okay, I'm done with you now. So, you know.

SPEAKER_09 1:53:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:39

But you know, he ended up coming back too. So it's just like I forget. I don't e I couldn't even tell you what was over, but it was over nothing.

SPEAKER_09 1:53:45

Yeah. You know. Because I just remember seeing some pictures at one point, and then um Oh, you had posted something about a new album coming up. Yeah. Um a while back. Remember when I asked you uh there's someone named Germ in the band? Yes, and I had to double check to make sure that I wasn't in a Yeah, yeah, that was the German 7-H.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:03

We were gonna have this record contract the beginning of last year, but the the the label fell apart. But we were w waiting to sign the contract, you know, and it didn't happen. So it's like it's you know, it's kind of the story of the band. I mean, the things just don't fruit, you know, the fruit doesn't bear the tree doesn't bear fruit or whatever. But yeah, I thought that the album thing was like we were supposed to do this contract thing, and I was waiting for the contract. It kept getting pushed back, and then finally the it was a parent, it was a company out of like the Bay Area, and then they're the parent company was in Australia, and they actually had like Led Zeppelin and big punk bands and big rock bands on the thing, and they had picked this dude up who did like the warp tour circuit, and it's kind of a rock star from like Sacramento or something. Um and he had his little label, you know, and he was like signing all these bands, all my friends' bands up in LA and stuff. So he's like, finally got to us, asked us to be on it. I was like, sure, we'll do it. And um, it fell apart because of COVID, I think. COVID kind of killed the whole thing. Yeah, killed a lot. Yeah, it killed a lot. So we were that was the album, you know, we were working on that. But we want to do a second German 7-inch, so we're working that song he opened up with is gonna be on there, and then this uh I Became a Punk, which is a big audio dynamite song, Mick Jones song. It's probably a clash song, didn't make the record or something, but it kind of tells like mine and Richard's story. Uh Richard's a guitar player, the guy with the platinum record, um about you know, just the lyrics, the lyrics of it's kind of like how we got into punk rock. It's kind of our story, you know. Yeah, so the the it's Mick song, so we I edited, yeah. I kind of changed some of the lyrics to fit us, and it's like a three-minute long song, but it should be pretty good. I have a demo play after. I'm not I don't the vocals are just scratch on it, and I'm not the guitar playing, Richard's guitar playing sounds great, but against my vocals, the what we did. I don't, I'm not, it's not something I play on live for anybody. Right. So but I'll let you guys hear it so you can example. And like the song is like big audio dynamite style, but it's really like a Slade song or an ACDC song. So Richard picked up on that, me and Richard picked up on it. So um it's guitar and me, you know, for my vocal parts, and then we're gonna put the there's keyboard on it and stuff. So it'll be a cool song, it'll be our song. Kind of like okay, that song you opened up with, that's a Godfather song. And um Peter Cohen is a singer of The Godfathers, and I saw The Godfathers here a number of times in the early 90s, right? And like I love The Godfathers, they're kind of a cleaned up punk rock band from London from the mid-80s. And um, you know, I was a fan of it, and I hit him up. I said, Hey man, I want to cover this on he's like, have at it, you know. So I got his blessing, and we we did that song. So we didn't write that. It's a Godfathers song, a number one hit song for them in 1986 because I said so. Yeah, wow. So that's cool. So we're doing the cover thing. Yeah, he liked it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:56:49

Well, that's a good sign if we said don't ever put this out.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:51

No, no, no, it's like it's good. And then we did we're doing the passenger. And oh really? Yeah. I think I sent you the passenger, didn't I? Yeah, it's a demo version, but you know, I don't have a problem you playing it, you know.

SPEAKER_10 1:57:04

Yeah, but I don't know if we can.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:57:06

Because you don't own it.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:07

Yeah. Okay. Then don't do it. No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 1:57:10

Yeah. Well, we'll have to we'll figure it out. We can play it afterwards. Plus going live and they wouldn't be able to hear it. Um as you know, we're doing this. But so where are you recording? What studio are you in right now?

SPEAKER_04 1:57:23

Well, I use a place called Pawn Shop up in Van Ice for my mastering and stuff, but Richards has an in-house studio called In In Into the Dark.

SPEAKER_09 1:57:31

I like the name. Yeah. Kind of reminds me of coming in here and you come in here.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:36

Red Rum, Red Rum. Yeah, there's got like Mockingbird Lane vibe in front of your house. Yeah. That's cool. Into the black. Into the black.

SPEAKER_09 1:57:44

Into the black.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:44

Into the black. Yeah. And uh that's where we record we do our scratch stuff there and work out the guitar parts and all the stuff. Me and Richard. And then, you know, like uh Pat Todd's on that uh Godfather song. He's he's from the Rank Outsiders and the Lazy Cowgirls are kind of popular in the 90s.

SPEAKER_09 1:58:01

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:03

Yeah, yeah. They're good.

SPEAKER_09 1:58:04

I I have to always look at Jerry. Did the Lazy Cowgirls play?

SPEAKER_10 1:58:07

Not that I remember.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:09

No, but they have played down here. Um I think probably Casball. Probably with the dragons or something like that, you know. But they're gonna be. No, well, me and Richard are b we have uh we use a guy named Scott who is like uh infamous Valley LA San Fernando Valley drum punk drummer. We use him. In the studio we use this guy, uh Boomer or Tony Tony from The Dogs. I'm I want to use Boomer on these and um in studio. Uh-huh. And uh he plays in a band called Slam Dinistas. And um it's kind of like uh kind of a late 60s kind of rock band, a good rock and roll kind of band. And um, you know, so there's like there's like this wrecking crew I use up there, Richard and stuff. But when we play live, Richard, like when we played um Casball in September, Richard, you know, Richard's been playing with me since about 2016.

SPEAKER_10 1:59:17

How how was that show with the Casball? It was great. It was absolutely a lot of heads there.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:20

Yeah, it was packed. It was packed. We raised like $3,000, our band. So um we were the headliner at the thing, you know. But there was I mean, there was like uh a bunch of good bands there. I mean, it was like a wide spectrum of music, you know. And uh it was really a good like the old Somo days. It was good, dude. It was a good it was a really good, it was a fundraiser for um reproductive rights, you know. Okay, like all that it was donated. It's just a really neat experience. You know, they she did uh Megan did a really good job with the help from her friends and stuff on the it was a really fun thing. There was supposed to be another one this month, but I guess I haven't heard anything. So Tim had said they could have a second one because they raised it was such a good vent uh event for the venue. So but I haven't heard anything.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:04

I'm sure they sold a lot of drinks.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:05

Sold a lot of yeah, it was just happening. It was like uh get together, old punkers, like people I hadn't seen in years were there and stuff. It was cool. Yeah, it was really cool.

SPEAKER_10 2:00:13

Kind of like when the last uh Casball show we were at. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:16

Yeah, it was respond to all this. But I was surprised that Tim even had let us play because he's just said no to me every time I wanted to play, you know, and my friends' bands are playing, and you know, it's just like he's just not having it, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:00:29

But I've only played there once with Simson 77. Okay, probably because of Stoney.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:34

Yeah, he's good friends with Stoney.

SPEAKER_09 2:00:35

But you know, and I still I'll see him every now and again. Well, he's married to Lucy. Okay. My keyboard is from Simpson seventy seven. All right, all right. So, but realistically, I haven't I haven't seen Stony in a million years. He's um Scandinavian or whatever. He went, I think he went back to his home like Sweden or something. Yeah, Sweden, maybe.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:04

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:01:05

Yeah, I haven't seen Stoney in in years.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:08

Yeah, me neither.

SPEAKER_09 2:01:09

He came into my gallery when actually we had um my uh the owner of the gallery when we had the art gallery, the lunatic fringe. Mm-hmm. So the owner of the property and the owner of the gallery with you know, I I was under her basically, we ran the place. She was an equestrian. Okay. Used to go down to Bonita, and Stoney lived down in Bonita. That's where we used to practice down at Stoney's place for a sin. Okay. And she had ran into him at one of the ranches or whatever. They end up talking, because he's riding horses back then. And um, lo and behold, they start talking about art, blah, blah, blah. And then me, uh, you know, I come up. So we had some of his art at the gallery. I have one of his pieces here.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:54

Stoney's?

SPEAKER_09 2:01:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:55

What what kind of art do you do?

SPEAKER_09 2:01:56

Um it's kind of well, the one that I have is an old man. He would do like a painting. Um, yeah, paintings, but mixed media. Okay. Um, paper, pasted, all right, rough brush. Yeah. Um, just an amazing artist.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:11

Oh, wow. Like I would say before I leave.

SPEAKER_09 2:02:13

Yeah, yeah. It's just on the inside of the the hallway there. But like I knew that he painted because I would at his place for band practice. He had this one room and he would always have big easels up and yeah, he had his own studio and stuff in there, right? Yeah, we used to practice in the uh in the pool room. Yeah. So it was it was fun. I'd playing with Stoney was definitely an experience, and I wanted to work with him on this band specifically. And the 77 came in because I told him I wanted something to do with 77. Good old fashioned English. Yeah. He liked all that. Yeah. Yeah. Because he was doing Diablo 44.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:51

Yeah, I remember, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:02:52

So the Sin Sin came in because of stuff. I still have problems with my hands, um, arthritis and stuff. Okay. So it's kind of like a tiger bomb, and it was called Sin Jin. Okay. Something like that. Yeah. Um, and so we came up with Sin Sin 77. All right. And Stoney and I would write stuff, and just playing with him was like, for me, because I'm a fan. Yeah. You know, first and foremost, that's why I liked you guys playing. That's why. And I didn't want to, I always thought my band should be easily fit in with whatever show is going on. We only did one, then I was like, I don't think we fit on this. Yeah. It's a little too poppy. But so working with Stony and doing since in 77 was kind of like this is our roots. And so with that band, we were able to play LA and Orange County. We did a little bit more, and of course, we played the Kaz Bob. Right on. It was a little bit more mature than the rest of the projects.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:03:51

Where I'm playing the Velvet or Crowbar and Velvet was great though, right? Let's hope I make it through the night sort of thing. Yeah. You know, especially with cockroach.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:04:02

So that being that's that being said, um, what would be some of the craziest shows that you had done? Like, what sticks out of like, I hope we get out of here.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:11

Well I know we're getting paid one way or another, but well, when we were in Bringo Terrace was pretty the place got destroyed. They ripped the sinks out of the bathrooms. They ripped the I mean, they destroyed the place. Yeah. It was like this rec center. It got freaking destroyed. And you know. And then um we played in um Austin, Texas. I forget it was called the DMZ. And I started yanking the had like these hanging lights. I started yanking the lights, and there's like 300 fucking uh punk rockers in there, and they're like, he's ripping the lights down. The owner comes out and says, Hey, hey, I was like, Well, this is what we do, you know, we'll fix it, we'll replace it, whatever. It's a supply bulb. And he's like, stopping us, right? And we're like not having it. And he's like, turn off the power, we're turning the power back on. And I didn't think we're gonna get out of there. Because these kids were like, How dare you just to create our sacred ground, you know? And I'm just like, and I and when I got up on stage, I said, It's so great to be in Phoenix, Arizona, you know. And we're in Austin, Texas, and they're like, What the fuck? And you don't mess with Texas, right? Right, oh yeah, and that's why I did it. I thought it would be funny, and they didn't think it was funny at all, you know, and they're like kids, like big kids, you know, like the big ones up front, like security, you know. I'm just like they didn't get us, you know. So we barely we got three songs off before they got us out of there, you know. We just barely got out of there. What year was that? Oh god, 96, 96, 97, I don't remember something, you know. But yeah, that was pretty hairy. And there's video of it.

SPEAKER_09 2:05:49

Did you get paid for that gig as well?

SPEAKER_04 2:05:51

No, no, we just got out of there. I that specifically thought. We just barely got out of there, dude. Like barely got out. They were like, you know, fuck you guys, California motherfuckers, you know.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:03

Yeah, it was just like, no, we barely got out of there. I didn't, I wasn't pressing it, you know. But yeah, that was that those two were probably, you know, the 90s and then the 80s, like we just destroyed places, and I knocked out my friend one time because he was like slam dancing by me, and I pushed him and he flew against the fucking, you know. I pushed a guy through a plate glass window one time by accident. Because it was violent, you know, it was like in the 80s, you know. Yeah, it's just like I knocked out my friend Tim Cook, rest in peace, Tim, who was a big original San Diego punk rocker from around here, Tim Cook.

SPEAKER_09 2:06:34

Yeah, that name sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_10 2:06:36

I was with a band in um plain Vegas, they dropped it was House of Blues. Okay, dropped a mic, they charged us $100. Then they took 35% off the merch. Wow. Yeah, dropping the mic. Yeah, that they that was automatic. But didn't make it so basically the band ging didn't get their hundred dollar guarantee.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:52

Yeah, they probably do that on purpose. Screen. Just a screen. I mean, that's probably uh you know, they're probably doing they probably something they do. Oh, yeah, yeah. It sounds like something they like to pull.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:02

It was horrible.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:03

I'm like Yeah, like an SM58, you can't damage the spring screen on this.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:07

And what it wasn't screwed on all the way.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:08

Yeah, it was a it was a 58.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:10

It's gotta be. That's a standard, but it's like it sounds like a setup to me.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:15

Cause I I knew like things like that. I knew things, you know, setups and stuff. That sounds like an old setup.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:21

No, my favorite thing was somewhere in the Midwest, uh, I would go to uh settle the show, get get our get our money, and the the promoter puts a gun on the table.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:35

Like, yeah, what am I I'm gonna steal your money?

SPEAKER_05 2:07:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:07:38

Just just pay me what you owe me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:07:40

And I can I can relate to that because there's there was times that guns were um carried, I guess is a nice way to put it, and I was asked to hold it, which I'm not a gun guy. I mean, I got my red rider, and I will shoot your eye out.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:57

You'll pick a knife.

SPEAKER_09 2:07:57

But I'm not, you know, I'm not a gun guy.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:58

Christmas story, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:08:00

But you know, back back in the 80s, that's kind of you know, I was the guy with the knives. You have to have them. But if you go in to do paperwork with, you know, the the the club owner, the what whoever you have to deal with, and they start pulling that, it's like, yeah, you're you're you're kind of a douchebag, aren't you? Yeah. You know, am I gonna get paid? Are these gonna be counterfeit? Is it money laundering?

SPEAKER_04 2:08:21

But did they pay you guys at all? Or what he what the gun did he give you in? Yeah, yeah, we got paid.

SPEAKER_10 2:08:26

But he's just like don't press it, he just laid his little gun down and just put my bigger gun down. Did you? Did you really? Yeah, he had his little 38 and I laid my 45.

SPEAKER_09 2:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:38

That's great.

SPEAKER_09 2:08:40

See, I I would have taken out my keys. Yeah. Put them down. Oh, I'll I'll open a lock. Put you in there.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:46

How if I open a bottle in front of you?

SPEAKER_09 2:08:50

No, that's it's funny now thinking about back in the day, especially the early days when people were trying to cut their teeth and do these shows. You know, it became by the nineties, it basically well probably by 2000 it really became kind of a more of a system and more of a machine. Yeah. You got people that started off cutting their teeth on trying to book shows, and then like there's um someone who made a lot of money and bought a house off of a band that shot up. Yeah. Um I don't know if we'd we've already brought up the name, but that sort of thing, you know, when a booking agent comes in and's you know bragging about having all this money, it's like and off of a punk rock band.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:32

Yeah, see, I can't stand that. And of course, everybody tries to do that, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:09:36

Yeah, but that became the new norm, was everyone was trying to get that that piece of the pie. So I think well that's that's when everything went commercial. That's yeah. Yeah, and then all the the big tour. So, Jerry, you were on the Ozfest, right? Did you do the Warp Tour?

SPEAKER_10 2:09:49

2000. I was supposed to do the Warp Tour in 2000. That's up doing OzFest and stuff. Yeah. Which was a better tour. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:56

What year did the warp tour even start? Do you guys know?

SPEAKER_10 2:09:58

I think it was ninety-four.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:01

I believe so. And they I think they that was uh Kevin Lyman from Golden Voice.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:06

We gave him the idea, dude. The guys, the Scott guy got the idea from us. You know, he's like, You guys are perfect, and we want to put this thing out, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:10:16

Oh, yeah, and that's when Vans and and all that.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:19

Well, they I think they got smart and they got a bunch of sponsors, so it's kind of covered.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:23

Dwayne Peters ended up doing a lot of the shows and stuff, but like with the bombs. Yeah, but see, we were more popular than them, but he was a skate star, you know.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:31

That was that's when they merged everything.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:33

Like Jerry Herrera is my favorite promoter from San Diego, and he's an old school 60s rock promoter, dude. He saw our band, he got my band. I mean, he got it better than I got it. And that was right from the Spirit Club? Yeah, and he put us with some really cool bands. Like we got to play with Arthur Lee's Love, and we played some really cool bands with him. You know, he's a legend. That that guy that guy was was rock and roll, man.

SPEAKER_10 2:10:55

I don't think I ever met him. I did go over the Spirit Club once. See Il Repute. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:01

Yeah, yeah, they played there a lot. Yeah, Unwritten Law, they started there. Yeah, dude. A lot of bands started there because he would book bands that nobody else would book. Yeah, he'd book us.

SPEAKER_09 2:11:10

I I would talk to him fairly regularly. And he's when he booked Gigi Allen, I told him, I said, I don't think that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:11:18

I believe Darren and Justin were at that show.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:21

Yeah, they were.

SPEAKER_09 2:11:21

And and the game I think they called me from that and was telling me I don't remember. I mean, the back of the thing. Yeah, and then start throwing chairs.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:29

Yeah, and the the fuck dolls were there. The original fuck dolls were there. Yeah. Played after him. I wouldn't want to play after Gigi Allen. Oh no.

unknown 2:11:37

No.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:38

You'd throwing shit on somebody.

SPEAKER_09 2:11:39

But I could sway if my memory serves me correctly, I believe that was the end when Jerry was like, Jeremiah, just I can't do this.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:46

Yeah, though that was pretty insane. That guy's pretty insane. But he was a big uh I mean I was a fan of his, but man, I wouldn't want to play after him. There's no fucking way. He's like absolutely insane at that point. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:11:58

You know. Suicidal to the

SPEAKER_04 2:12:01

Yeah. Yeah, just dangerous. And uh that's you know.

SPEAKER_10 2:12:05

Well, he wanted to uh kill himself and take out a bunch of his fans.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:10

And uh I have friends that were friends with him that knew him. I have a friend that has his butcher smock. It smelled like fucking blood and guts, you know, it was fucking horrible. And friends are still from Texas are still friend with Merle and stuff, but you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:12:23

Merle actually called me. How long ago? Um oh this was probably um, so it's definitely gonna be in the 90s. Oh, okay. Um I was living, it's right probably six months after Gigi played.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:12:40

He wanted to play Soma.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:42

There's no way they're gonna play.

SPEAKER_09 2:12:43

And I thought about it.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:12:46

Okay. I seriously thought about it.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:49

Was it the Texas Nazis too, right? It's like I don't even remember what it was. I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_09 2:12:54

So is so Gigi wasn't in the picture, it was just Merle's band, and I'm I I contemplating played, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:01

But they're not quite like Gigi.

SPEAKER_09 2:13:02

No, no, but I I I thought this is gonna be one of those just like was Merle's band, the murder junkies or yeah, the murder junkies, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:09

I think that's a good one. Yeah, they'd back him, but yeah, they'd play with their own thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, murder junkies still tour.

SPEAKER_09 2:13:15

Yeah, yeah. But I remember thinking to myself, this is gonna be another one just like when Len lost his mind when I booked Blink for Metro, and that was a show where they brought in all the people. He's like, Why the hell are you booking their you know, because they were pretty academic as far as their style and they weren't really seasoned, and I'm like, Because they're really good kids, yeah, and because they promote, yeah, and I think they deserve to play, but you know, whatever he probably doesn't even remember it, I'm sure. Yeah, but so I thought this is gonna be like that, and I didn't want to be on the end of that cutting knife of Len telling me once again, why the fuck am I booking these guys? So that comes in full circle with I ended up obviously not booking them. I'm like, I can't I can't take a chance with murder junkies, right? Yeah, Steve Jones called me not long after that, and Charlie thought he had uh neurotic outsiders at that time. That was he was strung out. He had just Charlie had told me because the UK subs had played before Told you was a mess.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:18

Yeah, sobered up after that. He's sober to this day now, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:14:21

Yeah, but he um I remember Charlie saying don't mess with it. Don't and I'm thinking this I'm getting chills right now thinking about it. There's a few shows I regret not booking, Jewel being one of them.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:32

Yeah, she was huge back then. She was I totally just coffee shop stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 2:14:37

But I told in Carl's back. I was supposed to book uh well, I was supposed to book she exploded. Golden voice wanted to do Jell-O at Metro, but it was a spoken word. I go, that that ain't gonna work. Yeah, right. You're gonna bring chairs and have everybody sit down.

SPEAKER_09 2:14:53

Yeah. I've I've been to um yeah, it was Jell-O. I was thinking it was Hank or Henry Rollins nod to as Keith would call it, yeah, yeah, yeah. But um only Keith can call him. I I regret to this day not booking Steve Jones because the fucking sex pistol, Steve Jones. Yeah, 96.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:15

He played in 96. I was there.

SPEAKER_09 2:15:17

But the thing about it was again, off because I to this day respect Charlie Harper so much. I think of him as a mentor because he just I played with him. I've played with him before.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:27

Yeah, the world's changing.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:28

And um, he's always treated me great. Yeah, he's a nice guy.

SPEAKER_09 2:15:31

And um, I just thought there's no way I can't deal with something happening. At that point, it was really, what am I gonna do with my life other than push a lawnmower and write a skateboard and do my art? Yeah. Well, here I am 54 and I'm pushing a lawnmower.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:51

Yeah, yeah. Doing your art.

SPEAKER_09 2:15:53

I didn't want to take a chance with Lynn because I didn't want to put us in that position. I was I was basically trained at that moment.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:00

But he would have been like you would have been like booking Sid Vicious. It would have been a mess, but you would have they would have loved him.

SPEAKER_09 2:16:06

Oh yeah. But it was going to be on the side stage.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:08

Oh, he wouldn't have gone for that, would he? Would he have gone for that?

SPEAKER_09 2:16:11

Well, he had a pretty big ego back.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:13

I have a point. So I think that's a good thing. Well, here's the thing. I think he would have gone for it. Yeah, because he would he um they they paid those guys a million dollars a person to play in the sex puzzle in ninety six to do that tour. A million dollars a person.

SPEAKER_09 2:16:24

Yeah, but that's that's so that's right around the same time, dude. Yeah, it would have been right before because I remember that.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:35

And it's like a super band. I don't think they would have played the side stage. You got like Duff McKagan's in that band and stuff.

SPEAKER_10 2:16:41

I probably the Pistols played uh Street Scene. Did they play Street Scene? Oh yeah, yeah, yep. I actually was on stage. Wow. Yeah. That was a good that was a good show.

SPEAKER_09 2:16:52

I think that's I was gonna go down, but I was I back then too, is like I I can't really it became for a while. I don't even think you knew this, but for one of the reasons why I dropped out was for so long was I was just afraid to go anywhere.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:05

I was I had to like anxiety, so something like oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, because I didn't watch it literally because you feel like you let people down or oh yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:17:12

Oh wow absolutely because he was booking local bands. Who was pushing local artists?

SPEAKER_04 2:17:18

Yeah, you know, and it did it fall apart once you left? Is that what it was? Like there was no more you so that didn't happen anymore, or he took it over.

SPEAKER_09 2:17:25

That would be you took it over. That's when Jerry had to pick up my scattered like a frickin' Hiroshima bomb blast of of parts and pieces. Wow. And I don't mind saying now because you know, whatever, get over it, Len. I didn't give them all the phone numbers. Yeah, I specifically went through and wrote a new book. I was not gonna give them kids, you know, Tom's mom and dad. Yeah, yeah, you know, from Blink. And there was certain I gave them specific numbers. I wasn't giving them personal numbers, I wasn't giving them pager numbers. Yeah. The local scene wasn't really emphasized anyway. Well, according to the outside information, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:06

He threatened my life enough to like that would make you not want to show your face, just and having that.

SPEAKER_09 2:18:11

And if V comes running down and goes, Oh, I got stories because she's got stories because she had the inside in from her best friend Jack.

SPEAKER_10 2:18:19

See what's funny is like he he got all this he's hearing this um from individuals, but work I was working with Lynn after he left, and Lynn actually never talked bad about Jerem when with me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:18:34

Yeah. Which made it even more confusing.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:36

Yeah, that is it confuses me hearing that.

SPEAKER_09 2:18:39

But according to quite a few people, and even like I remember seeing Big Perm, Big Germ. I was um on the OB pier going out there to go fishing, me and with Chickie Char man.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:53

Yeah, you had a bungalow on there.

SPEAKER_09 2:18:55

Yeah, when I was living on that kid's floor, my friends, yeah, because I was I just was impressed as shit, dude.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:00

I was like, this guy's gotta be making bucks.

SPEAKER_09 2:19:01

Oh, I was making bucks. I lived on my futon in their kid's bedroom.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:05

I was like, he lives on the fucking crystal pier. I'm like, that's fucking badass.

SPEAKER_09 2:19:09

No, that was Vernon Tira. Shout out to Vernon Tira. And uh but yeah, that that was a dark time because I went out of the car.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:16

I had no idea. I remember we dropped you off there.

SPEAKER_09 2:19:18

I was still paying for waited for I was still paying for the uh the electricity and the water, I believe, at the townhouse that I had with the ex and the kids that I no longer Long story and I digress. But um coming back, I completely forgot where I was on that story, so I guess it didn't really.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:41

Oh, yeah. Oh, here we go.

SPEAKER_09 2:19:43

Yeah. So we ran into Big Perm, Big Germ, and he says to me, Damn, dude, you you look fine. I go, What are you talking about? What's that mean? He's like, Len says that you're on drugs and you're all strung out and you're doing heroin again. And I went, doing heroin again?

SPEAKER_04 2:20:02

I got I never freaking did heroin to begin with. I know. I remember I kind of remember that just thinking, like, wow, really? Like it went off the deep end? Like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_09 2:20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:10

And um kind of hard to believe for me. Yeah, because it was because I know the real germ. I'm just like, really? Yeah. I just didn't see it, but I was like, concerned me, you know.

SPEAKER_10 2:20:20

I never saw him even smoke weed back in the day.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:22

Yeah. I know he drank. Yeah, he drank. Definitely drank. But he wasn't you drank silver bullets or something. What was I dranking?

SPEAKER_09 2:20:29

Yeah, to this.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:30

There was something, was it silver bullets?

SPEAKER_09 2:20:31

Yeah, um, coors before the fourth end would be it would be Bud Light, and then I I went into Coors. And I never saw him silver bullets.

SPEAKER_10 2:20:38

And to be honest too, I never saw him get drunk.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:40

Yeah, he could handle his liquor. Drank a lot.

SPEAKER_09 2:20:43

I didn't know I never saw him put away a lot of beer.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:20:46

I was I could I could tell more stories about putting away a bit.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:52

Hey, go get me a silver bullet, don't say anything. I was like, Jerm a couple silver bullets. Yeah, and he and he was always professional. He wasn't.

SPEAKER_10 2:20:59

He wasn't uh drinking the band's beer.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:01

No, but he's got the look, you know what I mean? Like like me. They look at me and they just think like you're automatic. Yeah, you just he's got that look.

SPEAKER_09 2:21:08

You know, he's gotta be that way because that's when you're right about it.

SPEAKER_10 2:21:13

Yeah, judging the book by the cover.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:15

Yeah, and I to this day. I mean, look at me. I don't fucking care. I look like a fucking migrant worker right now.

SPEAKER_10 2:21:21

And we all have our own style. That's the thing. Yeah, I'm just gonna fucking care about it. If you want to judge me, judge me. I don't give a damn.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:28

I'm not I'm not trying to get tail, I'm not trying to get a job, I don't give a job. We're just who we're who we are. That's all.

SPEAKER_09 2:21:34

At this point, I just sharing the stories and and I think of myself as a survivor, but the fact that you know, after this, we are gonna go and pull some avocados off of my tree because you know pick some tree.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:46

I just to be that stereotype.

SPEAKER_09 2:21:53

I do need some some help on my ramples. But yeah, it's funny how you know when I tell these stories and I look back at it, a lot of the things that I used to think was so I would just say like devastating to not so much the ego, but just trying to figure out life. Yeah. When I was at Soma and I do that, I had a purpose.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:22:17

When I ended up leaving and then eventually getting back into the boss is gone, I know anybody can relate to that. So I tried to do it with the bands, and then of course I kept it going with when doing since in 77 my alter ego was urine, which started with disurinary, which came from meat, and it was the heavy, just abruce, you know, abusive. I needed to get that out. Yeah. Because I was working at a 7-Eleven and just I was a you know a turd.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:43

I can't remember in the were you in the 7-Eleven red shirt and everything?

SPEAKER_09 2:22:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:46

Wow, I just can't picture that.

SPEAKER_09 2:22:47

Mohawk and you know, I mean I could see. I had to take out all the peering, piercings, and like a slurpey?

SPEAKER_04 2:22:53

Yeah, we yeah. You're gonna have to leave the store, sir.

SPEAKER_09 2:22:57

Can I see your ID? Yeah, you have to be two big tubes.

SPEAKER_10 2:23:00

No, you can't use the bathroom here.

SPEAKER_09 2:23:02

Yeah, well, do you work here? Fuck you, man. I I'm hired. I don't know why. I do know why I was hired. Because of Dominic.

SPEAKER_10 2:23:11

Basically, when I was the Soma door man, I had to go over. Remember when I asked you used to have to go over to the 7-Eleven and guard, made sure only three people were went in at a time. So basically, I was working for 7-Eleven while I was working at Soma.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:25

Did they want they want the Soma people?

SPEAKER_10 2:23:27

Well, they would they would just yeah, there would be like a mob of kids.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:30

Yeah, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_09 2:23:31

But they got ripped off.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:23:33

Going back into that, it was another thing we had to police so much of the neighborhood for them. You know, but on the flip side, are you?

SPEAKER_04 2:23:41

That's why you're told to stay in one area. Well, you'd roll around.

SPEAKER_09 2:23:45

Yeah. And, you know, the people that could pass off to not look like me. Like I come up, and the first thing you think is, this guy's probably going to frickin' run up my back, pound me on the head, run away, and I'm gonna be pierced. You know, freaking tackle boxes, as Sammy or sound man would say. But, you know, realistically, I was so insecure even back then. I just I knew my place. So afterwards, not knowing my place, and then, you know, like I said, now I still push along more. I'm I'm I'm living the life.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:17

But to be able to tell you, I live in Tijuana. I mean, top that one.

SPEAKER_09 2:24:21

It that's the escape plan is Mexico where my wife's family is. Mexico's great. I love Mexico. But you know, to be able to tell these stories and for us to sit down and just have a conversation about these stories and get them out.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:33

Feels good.

SPEAKER_09 2:24:34

It's it's great because these stories aren't being told in like it's gonna blow or any of these other documentaries.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:40

Like we're we're dinosaurs, dude.

SPEAKER_09 2:24:42

Yeah. And I do find that the kids actually appreciate them. Yeah. And just a heads up on the live, we're gonna lose the the live feed in a little bit here because the battery is about dead. Okay. So on the phone. So for the people that are watching this live or the people that catch us later, well, we're gonna get much getting close to the couple.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:59

Um, two and a half. Oh wow. So yeah, okay. I mean we're gonna do that.

SPEAKER_09 2:25:03

Well, do we want to listen to a song? Or what do you want to do? You know, we're gonna do that at the end. Is there anything because they won't be able to hear it on the live chat? We just can't play something that is that you it's not licensed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:13

Um, yeah, you can play you could play Land of the Lost or Board Girl. You do you have those?

SPEAKER_10 2:25:19

Whatever whatever you sent me.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:20

Yeah. Or or uh you can play um I don't know what I sent you now. I don't remember. I tried to send you a bunch of stuff. I don't know.

SPEAKER_09 2:25:29

And speaking of it, an another time, I'll either have you come in again with someone else, but uh Sun Goes Gray?

SPEAKER_04 2:25:35

Sun Goes Gray is good, yeah. That's a departure from that. Like I did that in 2016 with Lauren from the dog. That was a guitar riff he wrote like 50 years ago. Gave to me, I came up with the lyrics. I think I channeled lyrics from him. Uh-huh. Because he's like, How'd you write these lyrics? I go, Did you have a broken uh girlfriend or something? Broke your heart at the time. He wouldn't admit it.

SPEAKER_07 2:25:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:53

But he's like, he was just like, How'd you write these lyrics? Like he was just because I think they meant something to him.

SPEAKER_08 2:25:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:59

And it was kind of like my Mamas and the Papas. Like, that was really the it's almost like a yardbird song, you know, the melody. But the lyrics are kind of like California Dreaming or whatever. It's like a punk. Should I go ahead and start playing? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:26:14

That's what we do here. Sweet. I like that a lot. Thank you, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:10

Lauren guitar rep and I wrote the lyrics. Richard and Lauren played guitar, Diana and Ile on bass, and Tony Mitucci from The Dogs on Drums. Nice. Yeah. Very cool.

SPEAKER_09 2:29:23

Yeah, is there any other shout-outs so we can wrap this up for now?

SPEAKER_04 2:29:29

I mean, I'm just going brain dead on it. And I wanted to mention, but I got a girl and God dang it, I can't remember the third person just too old.

SPEAKER_09 2:29:41

That's kind of the the the lay of the land when um trying to remember people that pass away. I mean that strikes.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:48

Yeah, it's just it's always a lot, three people in one week. Oh, yeah. That meant something to me. Right. Like just too much. Too much loss. Yeah. It's like you start getting our age and it's just loss, you know, when we're dying. You know, you name it.

SPEAKER_09 2:30:05

Yeah. Nonetheless, um at least we're getting a story out.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:10

Yeah, thank you for that. It feels good to talk about some of this stuff.

SPEAKER_09 2:30:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:14

Um when I can talk further with Doris I'll mention you because she'd be involved in this project.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:20

That'd be great.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:21

His mother uh is a filmmaker, documentary filmmaker, and he's worked with her and he's going out on his own. And she's a college professor from San Diego State or something. And so he's I I I when I spoke to him, I was rolling a it wasn't fun for me because I can tell he knows what he's talking about.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:38

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:38

And um it's the North County and probably San Diego, Punk Rock is like you know, I talk we touched on some of the stuff that we talked about, you know, and like hopefully can capture it on film video, I should say.

SPEAKER_09 2:30:53

Any documentaries on the on the scene that helps get the you know, because realistically the kids nowadays that are pushing the scene, their parents either grew up and had the thing is is it needs to be a complete documentary.

SPEAKER_10 2:31:08

Right. I not just a chunk. Yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:31:11

Yeah. An afterthought in a bigger piece. It needs to, you know.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:16

But yeah, we'll we'll help out however we can and you know, you gotta at least have a voice in it because you guys are part of the scene, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:31:23

Yeah. I'd love to. I'd you know maybe we can have him sit down here and and talk with us as he's moving things along.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:32

Well, he's in the Portland area right now, but he's plans on coming back. So he just hit me with this concept and he said, What do you think about it? I said, dude, okay, well like I want to know if he's ever done this before. Is this an idea? But he has. He worked with his mother, she's a documentary filmmaker. So and they do the the circuit, you know, and I've done that. I made movies before. I made a movie and I did the film festival The Circuit. I worked on it. I it was my it was Diana again, she wrote it. We broke up over it because I was critiquing it so bad, but oh my god, I picked it up, dude. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, but it didn't happen because the US imploded in 2007, but we were we were picking out actors and all kinds of stuff, you know, at three different times, like Lifetime, all these women it was a woman-based story. I didn't get it as a guy. Right. So I was like none of the men in Hollywood got it. Nobody wanted to hear it, but Lifetime and Hallmark, they got it, you know. Richard's wife is writing Christmas stories for Hallmark and Lifetime and stuff. She's up in Canada. She just got back from Canada, but she had three Christmas films on on those channels. Oh wow. Yeah. So her name's Paul Tiberias. And um that's Richard's the guy from Personality Crisis who plays guitar and produces those songs. I produce that song. And um yeah.

SPEAKER_09 2:32:45

Movers and shakers.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:46

Yeah, yeah, they do they're doing what they love. You can do it too. I mean, I can we can all do it. Yeah, don't you know, just see what you like and go into that. It's a new phase of your life, Jerm. You know what I mean? Like you do what you gotta do, you're pushing lawnmower to make I do what I gotta do to make money to eat, you know, but you still can find your creative outlet, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:33:07

Yeah, I I'm I've definitely got it, and this this helps a lot because uh you know, I brought it up before, but it was gonna be a book, but it was realistically, it was gonna be from my hindsight, and I would have to be a little bit more aggro.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:24

Write it, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:33:26

I like telling the story by sharing with the other people that were in the story. I'll participate in it if you want to do that. Well, it just helps us bring back uh memories we forgot. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the thing too, is you know, Jerry can keep me in line and check on certain things because I would have to look through the books and blah blah blah. So much stuff just blended in together.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:48

But well, you guys are a good team. Seriously, you guys are a good team. Oh, your phone just died. That's the end of live, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 2:33:55

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:56

Yeah. But are we still recording? Yeah. I just want to see I'm really curious to see which version you like the best. Because there's a little backstory to it. So can I go to the bathroom right now?

SPEAKER_09 2:34:13

Alright, Mike. Mike has been a long time friend. Thanks for coming in.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:21

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_09 2:34:22

Thank you, brother. Yeah. And um, so we're gonna go out on another song here. Um, but let's get all where we can find you on social media and all that. And also where do you still have vinyl out that's available? I do.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:35

And how do how do people let's drop all the Well you hit me up on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever. I I have I have it. It's in some record stores, get hips, still distribute some over the store. Okay. Um and I got a bunch of vinyl, you know, there's some still left. Um I've got Spino and New York horse, NYW, vinyl. Um, and you can find us on Amazon, iTunes, Google, you know, most of the main venues for the music digitally. You can listen to most of it for free and any course buy it if you want. And um, you know, um you can also find us on like Band Camp and I think Tune Core and whatever those are, you know, mainstream, you know, music and podcasting. Yeah, it's like you know, whatever those sites are, I don't even know. But um and then YouTube you can see that there's music videos from most of the song, so you can look at professionally made music videos and uh amateur made uh fan base videos too that you can Google Mic Span or Google Spen Idols on YouTube or go f go follow me, please follow me and tag me and uh share any photos, anything memories you guys might have. That would be awesome. And um you know, so there's uh fan base span idols page that's been idols, and then there's mic page span idols, and then there's my label page on Facebook. These are all on Facebook and Mike's been on Facebook, so just hit me up.

SPEAKER_09 2:36:01

And we'll have in the description I'll put all these as well. Okay And before we get to the song, thank you seriously, my brother, for coming in, sitting in with Jerry and it means a lot to me.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:14

It's good to sit with you guys. I think you guys have a great podcast.

SPEAKER_09 2:36:17

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:18

I feel honored to be a part of it, you know, and um just keep the ball rolling.

SPEAKER_09 2:36:23

Family.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:23

Yeah, it feels like family. It feels good to be here. Thank you, brother. All in all on, you know.

SPEAKER_09 2:36:27

I mean it too.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:28

It's good for me.

SPEAKER_09 2:36:29

All right. Well, let's listen to another tune and um Yeah, let Jerry do his magic. We'll be done. Thank you, brother.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:36

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_11 2:36:59

I don't know where.

SPEAKER_10 2:39:41

Music provided by Breakacre. We appreciate all our listeners and our guests. Please stay tuned till the next one. Have a great one.