185 Miles South
A hardcore punk podcast.
185 Miles South
12. Larry White (Agression/Stalag 13/Dr. Know)
Larry White drummed for 3/4 of the Nardcore big 4. He played in early Agression, prime Stalag 13, and late Dr. Know. A true wingspan of the late 70's into the early 90's. We talk about Agression on the BYO tour, why he left the band, joining Stalag 13, the Stalag 13 metal demo, and playing with Dr. Know for Wreckage in Flesh.
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SPEAKER_00:185 miles south. A hardcore punk rock podcast.
SPEAKER_02:We're going to start. Alright, this is recorded on April 27th, 2019. And today we have Larry White. who played for three out of the four, big four. We got a petition to get you on one Il Repugio, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you know, I almost had it. I almost had the whatever four is, not a trifecta. But yeah, their drummer at the time was going to be out of the area and they had some shows. Chuck hit me up and I said, yeah, man, that would be awesome. Then I can like seal the deal on the big four. But he ended up not having to go where he was going to go for work. So that kind of stalled out. But I did get a little excited for a minute and thought, wow, you know, I guess I am kind of like a drum whore.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and to clarify, so, was the first NAR band you played with Aggression? Yes. On the Somebody Got Their Head Kicked In?
SPEAKER_01:Correct. There was three recordings, I believe, is all we did on that compilation and that had, you know, everybody from Social Distortion, The Blades, Battalion of Saints, The Joneses, quite a few bands that some continued on. Look at Social Distortion, I mean, they stayed going strong and never stop and then some that kind of like us you know you play and then you fade out and then you come back and you fade out you know they do a reissue or remaster and you come out but yeah that was that was one of the first times I got exposed to like the whole Nardcore sound and the bands that were happening I was living in Ventura and hanging out a lot in Oxnard and I'd heard about these bands you know there was Stalag 13 there was Aggression There was Dr. No, Ill Repeat, and a handful of other bands. And with me, it's always been right time, right place. I'd had a couple bands that I'd started with friends and we were just doing covers because at the time we had been exposed to like Black Flag, Jealous Again EP, Circle Jerks, DOA, a lot of the local LA type sounds, you know, and even though DOA is not from LA, they were around a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Well, they were an early touring band.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. And that's how we kind of tied in with them. But pretty much all the bands from LA, Orange County, Agent Orange, you know, You name them. Adolescents. They were all in our ear from whatever source we could get it from. And at that time, I want to say Adam Baum was the only radio guy playing anything. And he's college. And he would come on at midnight. I want to say it was like a weeknight, like a Wednesday at midnight. And he would broadcast from Loyola Marymount University. And he was kind of the guy. He would play all the stuff that we were going to know about if we hadn't already heard it from a friend. But yeah, it was just us emulating and wanting to be like them and realizing that there was something going on out there musically. And with the music comes the visual effects of how you look and how you entertain, go into those shows. And then I remember one of the first shows, And I hadn't been in any of these bands yet. Let's go back. I had had my local Ventura band that was called White Trash, and that was made up of some friends. And we did all the covers. I mean, if it was being heard, we were playing it. It was so cool because people knew it. It was almost like a punk rock karaoke before it was invented. But a good friend of mine, Art Pena, said, hey, man, you want to go see a band in Hollywood? And I was like, cool. I'd never been to a show there. I think my earliest memory of a show was my brother taking me in the 70s to go Black Sabbath and Grand Funk Railroad. And I was 13. So that was like, you know, not really something that I followed right after that. But I went to it many years later. But my friend Art took me to the whiskey. We saw the Runaways. And I was blown away. And I'm like, wow. You know, knowing it's not really punk, but it was like my first trip to Hollywood. It's
SPEAKER_02:definitely punk adjacent.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, and being at the Whiskey A Go-Go. And that's the old whiskey, the one that was almost like the CBGBs. Sure. It just was funky. What year is that? I want to say this is 78. Then he hit me up and said, hey, we're going to go see another really cool band that's kind of punk, kind of metal, but kind of, you know, they're artsy. And I'm like, cool. So he didn't tell me we get down there and who we see, but the plasmatics. And that just blew my mind. You know, Windio comes out pretty much naked with just electrical tape and whipped cream all over. Richie Stotts and that crazy, you know, bustier bra thing. He's like 6'6", bald head, mohawk and playing a flying V. And I was just like, like, what the hell? This is it. And then, of course, at these shows, we were seeing the punks, you know, the engineer boot, like dog collar chains wrapped around the boots, pants tucked in, bondage belt, bum flaps. You know, it was a look. Pendleton, crazy hair, crazy hair color. And from there is when it just took off for me. And then I pursued a lot more locally here in Ventura-Oxnard. Started going to more parties, heard about this aggression band. And at the time, again, like I say, right place, right time. I stepped in, and they liked what I brought, and... We played a little bit here and there. One of our first big shows for me, and I think for the band, was the Olympic Auditorium. And I just saw the flyer somebody had posted on Facebook. And it was Olympic Auditorium, CronGen, Vice Squad, a whole list of bands and us. And I found a picture. I think Alison Braun had shot it. And I look like Billy Idol. I got like spiky blonde hair. And
SPEAKER_02:it was
SPEAKER_01:just...
SPEAKER_02:It's amazing to think of a show there. The only time I ever went to the Olympic Auditorium was to watch wrestling.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's a huge place.
SPEAKER_01:It's giant. And many years later, I'd revisit it after I... One of my good friends who was very close with Motorhead, the band, and Lemmy personally, would take me there in the 80s to go see Motorhead. And, you know, I was just like, well, I've been here before. I've played here. But that was it. And so that was, you know, just hanging out with the boys in Silver Strand, rehearsing, you know, coming up with a lot of music, but then got asked to do the Someone Got Your Head Kicked In on BYO. Three recordings, three songs. went on that tour, and it was basically two buses. Ours was an old school bus that was held together with duct tape and bailing wire. The other bus, like Social D, and those guys were in was a much better running machine.
SPEAKER_02:And just to clarify for the people, this is the tour
SPEAKER_01:that they made. This is the tour they made. Another state of mind. Another state of mind, and, of course, that was the other– bus or van that was being documented. Ours was kind of like, yeah, you know, if you're smart enough, bring a camera or one of those big giant shoulder, uh, video cams. But, um, because a
SPEAKER_02:lot of people don't know that aggression was going to be on that tour, which would have been insane. So sorry. Sorry to jump in. I just want to make sure people know
SPEAKER_01:that
SPEAKER_02:because that is such a famous tour for, for the history of punk rock.
SPEAKER_01:Well, BYO, the Stern brothers were so, um, And they were so behind music and so behind so many things in the industry that I had never heard of a tour like that. You know, maybe one was put together on another state in the United States. I had never heard of it. This was something that L.A. was starting to explode with music in the late 70s, the 80s, early, early 80s. And I think it was smart. they found bands that they believed in, they let us record, put us on the tour, and the rest is history. I mean, Ours, there's so many stories about our tour. And we started in the northern route. So we played L.A., we went to San Francisco, Oregon, we went up that route, Montana and around the top, and then came down the East Coast. And our school bus had broken down so many times, I was just going, we're not going to make this. This isn't going to happen. And I remember pushing that damn school bus in Boston, getting out, and there's like, I think, 12 of us inside this bus, and we're just pushing the school bus up the street. You know, it's, of course, all stenciled. That bus that's on the back of the someone got their head kicked in, that's ours with all that graffiti on it. That thing was just like horrific looking in 1980. That's when that tour was because we rolled into Oklahoma and the town exactly was Okmulgee. And I remember when we hit town, people were driving by us in station wagons throwing beer bottles at our bus. And we're like, what the hell? Just like town folk? Town folk that were like, We don't like your kind here. I mean, you know, we had spiked air. Those are my attack dogs there in the background. They just didn't like our type. They didn't know what we were. We were so far from the future from anything they had seen. And actually, while we were in Oklahoma, I remember at a bar watching the launch of MTV. And we saw that first video, the first everything. And I thought, that's a weird thing, you know, these like video things and bands. And so, I mean, it It was pretty memorable, but it was 1980, and that was a real eye-opener for me. We got all the way through the tour. We did break down. I think it was New Mexico, and we kind of had to pull the plug. I had to take and get money wired to me. I took a bus home, got one of my dad's vans, and drove back to pick up the boys and the equipment. So our tour could have been documented as just interesting with the failures. I didn't realize you guys did that much of it. Yeah, we did about three quarters, and we played everywhere. Why
SPEAKER_02:didn't they document you on the documentary?
SPEAKER_01:It's hard to say. We had Battalion of Saints on our bus. We had, I believe it was the Jones or the Blades, us, and I can't remember the other band. I believe there was three or four bands in our school bus. This bus was... like 30 some foot long. It was huge. And we got it all the seats except for a couple. Um, so you got all the gear, all the personal effects, all the stench of that many people.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And a guy that owned it, it was our driver that just constantly was apologetic to say, you know, Oh, I don't know the carburetors problems. Oh, the transmission, you know, and it was on and on and on. And I thought, well, at that time, I think I was, uh, Let's see, in 1980, I was just out of high school, so I was probably 18, 19. And the wherewithal of like, am I doing the right thing? Am I know what I'm taking part in? You know, no, but it was interesting. And I was with some friends that I had met in Oxnard and we're in a band with and we had formed a union. But quite an interesting event. Which later I would tour the U.S. in smaller vans with Dr. No. And we would have success and fun and no breakdowns. I think the most was like a blown tire. So to me, that's easy. That's easy road work. But when you have like every hundred miles stopping on the side of the road and the carburetor and the fan belt and the, you know, it's... You're young. You're like, all right, whatever side of the freeway. What state are we in? All right, let's go find a mart, get some beer, get some snacks. And you just... You know, there were no time. There were no timetable. You knew you had to be at a certain club on a certain day. But that same tour, I mean, we pulled into Lawrence, Kansas. And it's a real college town where we were. Walked into the bar. They had flyers up. We're like, right on, man. This is a cool bar. We're going to kick ass. The bartender goes, who are you guys? We said, we're Aggression. We're from Oxnard. And they go, oh, yeah, cool. Well, tomorrow's going to be an awesome night. And we're like, wait, tomorrow? Well, we're here now. We got a, we thought, because we got to go. And we're supposed to be. And the guy goes, oh, no, it's tomorrow. Well, let me call some friends. And that's kind of the way our tour was. It was before Internet and social media. It was a little black book of phone numbers. It was somebody had a stolen phone card. Somebody's parents gave him a credit card, phone card, something. So the technology was very archaic in a way from what we know now. But it was also real interesting that to tour like that. was really a feat. It was something to, to look back on and go, yeah, I mean, we had to, we had to keep, there was no digital log of, you know, the earnings. It was like a bag or a, a little, um, you know, go bag for your, your, your toiletries and you'd step the cash or, you know, there wasn't any like, uh, ATM cards. We just go to the bank and draw, you know, no kind of like, well, there
SPEAKER_02:wasn't business. There wasn't GPS.
SPEAKER_01:There was none. It was a Thomas guide. It was, uh, Some guy at the club, oh, I know how to get you to the interstate, and it'll get you to, you know, I used to live there, and it was that. So it was quite interesting in, you know, 1980, trying to explore the United States like that. I'd never been out of the state at that magnitude, you know, of just taking off. And I don't even remember how long that tour was supposed to be. I feel like it was about a month to two months total from start time. But, you know, we'd have to drop shows because we couldn't get there. Again, equipment failures. But it was, yeah, when we pulled the plug on it, New Mexico, we just kind of went, yeah, this is, you know, I remember, funny part about that one, too, we were coming through Colorado, just come from, God, I forget where we were at, pulling to Colorado. We literally had, I think, I want to say about$30 to our name. The bus had some fuel. We knew there was a gig that night and it was, you know, breakfast time. And somebody said, there's a taco bell. So we roll in, we said, how many tacos can we get for 30 bucks? And it was like this absurd amount of tacos. And that was our meal. And we waited till the gig that night and it was packed and we got paid and, and we got us to, you know, cause I think we came out of Colorado, Southern route across New Mexico. And that's where it died. But I mean, that's, that's kind of the tour. And, I've recently been on a couple tours to Europe, and again, to have the technology we have, it's a good time to be alive and experience this type of technology, because I went to Europe in 2008 with an Elvis punk cover band called G.G. Elvis, and had not toured... anywhere in the States during modern times of technology than just get on a jet and go to Europe and do all of the Eastern Bloc, Prague, and just totally trust this thing called the TomTom to get us everywhere.
SPEAKER_02:And what is a TomTom?
SPEAKER_01:It's basically like a GPS unit that was one of the first ones. The Garvin, I think, is the brand. But to trust that to get us, because I remember on the bus in 1980, we had maps. You'd go to AAA, and they'd give you maps of the whole United States And you'd pull these things out and you're like, here we are. And you'd estimate mileage. And that was it, man. It was the old school paper technology, paper trail. And I think Thomas Guy probably went United States wide. But at the time, that was a lot of money to buy one of those. But we'd get free maps from AAA. I always seemed to be the responsible one that had AAA. So we could go into any state, get maps. But to go to Europe in 08 with this Elvis band blew me away that everything was so smooth. You know, you You look at your phone, and here's the contract. Here's the guarantee. Here's the location. And I thought, man, this is really a good time to be alive. This is the truth. And then we went back in 2017. I did a double with Stalag and Dr. No. Basically, dropped the doctor. So it was Dr. No Music. It was the
SPEAKER_02:current Brandon. First
SPEAKER_01:Reads of Brandon, Fred, and E-Smile, and myself. And we... one time, all were a Dr. No member. Sure. But not, I never was in the band with those three guys. I was in the band with Kyle and two other cats. And that was in 89, like the whole thrash metal crossover thing was happening. So the album I recorded with them was
SPEAKER_02:wreckage, right? The third LP.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, I mean, um, it's, it was a fun project going in 2017, but I did a double every night, you know, and we never knew if Stalag or, or no was headlining. But to me, both of those bands are such different running machines that to me, uh, Stalag is almost like a minor threat feel. It just, you get in it and go, it's not, uh, too out of control where no, uh, Yeah. pretty consistently over the last 35 years. There was a window from about 87 where we stopped into the 90s. I kind of got myself buried in a relationship and just then hunkered down. I'm so thankful for guys like Joey Wolf and some other locals to pull me out sometime in the late 90s and 2000 to get me playing drums again. And we started a band called the Nardcore All Stars, which was, again, kind of a cover band, but there wasn't anything we couldn't play. We would play and people loved it. Again, it's almost pre-punk rock karaoke. But I got back into the music and it seemed like between then and like 87, there were little bursts of a Stalag reunion. There was a 30-year thing in Wainimi we did. And of course, me being the whore that I am, I had to play in Caught Off Guard because I was in that band with Forrest. And then I did Dr. No. And I did Stalag. I did Aggression. And of course, Mark and Henry were already gone during that 30-year reunion. But, you know, everybody wanted me to kind of play a little and be a part of it. So yeah, over my last 40 years, there's been a lot that's happened. The touring now is so much fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, 2017 was awesome. That was... Land in Copenhagen, play with Discharge right under him. Those boys were solid.
SPEAKER_02:Still great in 2017, huh?
SPEAKER_01:Just, I mean, powerful. And even though it's not Cal on vocals, the guy doing it, solid. And I guess Bones, who was the original drummer, is now guitar. They're all so nice. Very, very accommodating. And then we did four dates in Germany. We went to Bologna, Italy. We did Pula, Croatia. And then did the Rebellion Fest in England, which was just a mind-blower. If you want to go see the Super Bowl of punk rock, Go to the Rebellion Fest. Which is how many people? It is... A giant, they call it the Winter Gardens. And within this property, there's probably six to eight giant ballrooms that hold thousands. Oh, Jesus. So it's huge. Yeah. That's why I say it's beyond the Super Bowl. But it's broken up. And so you have to, if you want to see a band, decide, well, who don't I want to see? Right. Because they don't schedule them. It's like this venue has these bands these times. This venue, this venue. So for me, it was nice because Stalag played at five in the afternoon at one giant ballroom. And then No played at 11.30 on another one. And, yeah, it's just a fun place. So we did five dates in England and then come home, and it was just such an experience. Again, technology is just so awesome. And this year now we're going to go back to Rebellion with No only. And then in September, Stalag's going to do Tokyo, so that'll be something. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, I've been looking at videos, like, just tripping out that it's like Mad Max meets Tron meets– because technology there is so insane. Yeah. The technology is everything you can imagine from anything you've ever seen in a movie. It's like Times Square, Times 10, steroids. Sure, sure. So yeah, still doing it. But yeah, I got a lot of history to tell you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so let's go back to... You did the Tour of Aggression.
SPEAKER_01:You recorded those songs. I recorded three songs. I was with them probably two years, really, as well. And why did you leave? When I got back, the band had kind of taken on a manager. And at that time, Mark and Henry felt the band needed a manager. It was still so... young of a music and a scene that I think only a handful of bands needed a manager. Those were playing and touring constantly. They were doing big venues and needed their writers and their guarantees and that stuff. For us, we still weren't even on the map. Oxnard still wasn't recognized. You know, you had people talking about Boston and New York and Texas and L.A. and Seattle, San Francisco, but they'd skip Oxnard all the
SPEAKER_02:time. Sure.
SPEAKER_01:you know, bands from Arizona. Um, you know, there were little blips about, um, um, you know, bands that weren't in those major cities, but for us, um, We took on this manager, and I just didn't see eye to eye. I had some business sense because at a young age, I was raised in the carnival with my dad. He dragged me around at 12, 13, 14, 15. I was hanging out at carnivals, hustling, making money, working swap meets on the weekends. I had a business sense, and I thought, there isn't anything here we need a manager. This guy was slick, lived in a big house in Agora, and I just felt like we were way out of our league. And so basically the guy kind of broke the band up, in my opinion. So aggression was dissolved due to just differences in ideas and beliefs. There was no bad blood.
SPEAKER_02:What time frame is that, though?
SPEAKER_01:Is that before or after the LP? This is about 80. This is just before that, don't be mistaken, album with Arthur Lake on the cover where they had Mark Aber come in.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And they put those BYO songs on that album.
UNKNOWN:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:They re-recorded, and I'm not even sure who the label is. That's on BYO. Is it still BYO? Yeah. And it's funny that I just kind of let it go. I don't need to pay attention. But this was probably 82-ish, I want to say. I'd have to look up the time frame. So they
SPEAKER_02:actually broke up before they did the LP.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. And then reformed. And then got back
SPEAKER_02:together.
SPEAKER_01:And they got Mark Aber, who ended up being a good dude, and he really, I think, pushed the band into a harder, deeper sound. When I listened to the original Stalag, and again, I'll be the first disclaimer here that I was never the first drummer in these bands, Stalag, Aggression, Dr. No. There were many before me. And in all three of those bands. And I'll give credit to anybody I can remember. How were
SPEAKER_02:there so many punk drummers in Oxnard?
SPEAKER_01:Well, they sucked. Okay. Not to say that I was any better, but I could hold the beat.
SPEAKER_02:At the time. At
SPEAKER_01:the time, I could keep a tempo, hold the beat. I could be creative. I had my own drum set and I had my own wheels. So you got to imagine that like 18... not a lot of people had wheels, not a lot of them had jobs, but again, because of my upbringing, I had to drive. If I needed something, I had to work to buy it. So, yeah, there were a lot of drummers before me in Aggression, and very cool cats that, you know, Robin Cartwright comes to mind. He, I feel, was in a lot of the bands that I pursued, and he just, I just, you know, if you're a drummer, you're a drummer. I think Robin had other talents in other areas, but he played drums, you know, and he played with Aggression, and I can't even tell you how many more and I think at one time you have guys like Rick Heller who were Dr. No rooted in the old days and I feel like Rick probably played for Aggression I just feel like everybody had moved around because they were like oh cool this band's not doing anything but I heard this band's going to do this and they got a better gig so I'm going to break up and it was kind of like whorish and we did a lot of that but for me I stepped into Aggression right time right place we put together an entire set list we played some live gigs we had the big olympic auditorium show then byo comes in we record we go on tour we come back and i don't even know if we even played after we came back from that tour so i bet it might have even been about 81 that that band kind of dissolved yeah so uh and and you know i don't i don't have the month of that tour i bet uh that the movie another state of mind probably documents year and month yeah so i mean basically was with aggression in like 79 80 the tour happened sometime it wasn't the winter i know that the weather was good we were in boston sure shorts pushing about so these are my recollections that I'm feeling a good year to a year and a half probably with aggression. And then the band, when we got back from the tour, just didn't do anything. Again, the difference is, and I don't recall doing any shows after the tour. So it could have been a real dissolved thing in 81. Then you cut to, I go back to Ventura. I hang out with some cats, put together some other music. I've got this band that gets together called Heroes of Noise. And that was local guys playing. Eric Heiss on vocals from Ojai. Chad Warner was a smoking guitar kid. And again, I'm a little bit older. I'm now 81, 82-ish, I want to say. It's like 1920. And some of these guys, there's nobody really that's my age. They're all I'm noticing. They're a little younger. They're like 18, 17, 18. So Tony Black on bass, who's a monster, he now plays with Marshall Tucker Band, and he's had a great musical career. So what do you guys sound like? So Heroes of Noise was very... God, when I listened to it, it was so fast. It was faster than Minor Threat. It was like gangrene-ish, but not gangrene. It was so energized and so original. Those gangrene demos,
SPEAKER_02:that's about as fast
SPEAKER_01:as you can
SPEAKER_02:go. You know, I mean, it's... Without going into like If you're playing the straight double time beat, how much faster can you go?
SPEAKER_01:And I love that term because I just learned that about the last five years. Power of violence, blast beats. I'm in high school. I play drums. This new technology is awesome. I love watching the guys do it. But yeah, Heroes of Noise was a local made-up group. I got that together. And at the time, the Cafe de Grande in Hollywood was happening. All these clubs in Hollywood. Back then, you submitted a cassette. You know, nowadays you email. Sure. You know what I mean? You put people in touch with your social media and check us out. Videos and YouTube. So everybody out there, think about this, man. This is like the Wild West when we were doing this. There's still a
SPEAKER_02:lot of word of mouth
SPEAKER_01:nowadays is the most. There is, but I think the clubs rely so much. And it bugs me, and that's another topic we can go into. Yeah, Heroes of Noise was awesome. It was so fast. I listened to myself, and I'm like... Did you record? Yeah. We didn't do it with a label, but we have recordings, and I'm trying to find a way to convert them. I have them in one of my computers, and I'll be so upset if I can't get them converted because I listen to it now. I mean, it's been some years, but I got a copy, and I've got a friend that's got another copy of it. It is so fast, it's freakish. I'm like, is that sped up? He's like, no, man, we hauled ass. You've
SPEAKER_02:got to get it.
SPEAKER_01:So
SPEAKER_02:it's on tape, and you need to get it to digital? No, it's digital.
SPEAKER_01:It's digital. But what happened was I took it from this email, put it into this old computer, and then because of Microsoft 98 and 2000 and all these upgrades, I'm running whatever the newest mic
SPEAKER_02:is. Oh, we can have someone
SPEAKER_01:fix that for you
SPEAKER_02:easily. Joe Revis can do it for
SPEAKER_01:you. Yeah, and it would be so awesome because I'd love to put it out there. So I did Heroes of Noise, and we had some shows in Hollywood. As any band coming from Oxnard, Hollywood just kind of goes, where? What is Oxnard? So it took a lot of the bands from Oxnard a while to get kind of a stronghold on anything in L.A. You know, if you went to the OC and you tried to play any of the clubs or the music machine or any venue, you know, it was just kind of like, where? All right, well, let's give it a listen. So eventually we did. We broke through. But, you know, Heroes of Noise didn't last forever and again. I couldn't even tell you why that band is all. And I actually, well, let me back that up. I do know why. Cause somebody goes, Hey, I hear Stalag needs a drummer. Their drummer, Harry Meisenheimer is going on to the cramps. And
SPEAKER_02:so, yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I have to retract that comment. I do know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So, so that's the lineage
SPEAKER_01:of the, so that's the lineage of like the 82 ish right in there. And then I get involved with Stalag.
SPEAKER_02:And Stalag, uh, Joey Libkey was the demo drummer.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. There's Libkey. There's again, I feel like Robin Cartwright. I, I feel like Rick Heller. I feel like there are a bunch of people. There's Harry Meisenheimer. You know, Harry did the recordings.
SPEAKER_02:And Harry played on In Control.
SPEAKER_01:Harry did the In Control recordings. But
SPEAKER_02:you came on right after because you're actually, your photo's on the
SPEAKER_01:LP. Correct. And I told the boys, I said, we'll go back in the studio. I think it was Skip Saylor was the recording studio. And we'll redo it with you. And I said, no. I said, I, you know, believe me, I play totally different than Harry. People will see us live and go, oh, wow. Like, they'll get it. And Harry's awesome. Harry had a great career with Stalag for the minute. He did the recordings. He went on to the cramps and had a great career, along with numerous other great projects. But you always want to be different as a drummer. And so Harry had his style. And when I came into Stalag, I did my own thing. And with time, people go, oh, okay, I see what you did different. And that's just me making it a little nuanced difference to make it my own. I even gave credit on the back of the album and it took me nearly 30 years. I'd never seen Harry other than, you know, heard he was close and I'd go look for him and I just missed him because he's kind of a private guy. And I just wanted to thank him. I said, you know, to myself, I'm going, this guy gave me this career so long ago. And, um, But, you know, I finally did. I finally hooked up with him. It's been a long time ago and thanked him. And he was kind of like, what? You know, and I said, no, I mean, think about it. You played on that. My photos on it. They know me. But your name, I gave it right here. Yeah, I'm recorded with. I said, so those are your props, dude. But again, you know, when people see me, they kind of go, oh, OK. You know, and I've I've had my my kind of persona changed. It was created in another band I was in with Tony called Mothers of Ascension, MOV. And I had a reporter watch us. And just by style, it's very Keith Moon, but very animal, but very... It's aggressive. What year
SPEAKER_02:is that band?
SPEAKER_01:MOV was only 10 years ago, maybe 8 years ago, I feel like. And that was something that... Carl from Ill Repute. He was in that band with Tony and the boys. And I... Again, it was just... I'm jumping ahead here, but... That was something this reporter, after seeing us and seeing what I do versus the other guys I follow, he just kind of went, you're a monster biker hybrid, visually arresting centerpiece. And it's like when you watch me, you kind of go, I get that. And so it's been a very long one to think about. But anyways... So back to Stalag. Yeah, I jumped in. The album was recorded. Our first show, The Sidewalk of the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Wilshire. And I work in Hollywood for this motion picture industry, and I go by that thing all the time. And I look over there now, and they've got a fence. You can never touch that sidewalk. But Lewis... I hope I said his name right. He has shot videos forever back in the day, and they're all over YouTube. He has numerous videos of us in different stages of our years of playing. Well, that one's on YouTube. Yeah, that one's on there, and I have hair, and I'm wearing little short-fingered bicycle gloves at Pendleton, playing a big massive snare and a 26-inch kick and a big 16-inch rack tom. And I hand-silkscreened the skeleton and the Stahlg logo on the bass head. And that was like, again, that's that thing. I step into it. Same with aggression. You know, boom, the Olympic. What? I'm on this huge drum riser and there's thousands of people. You know, and I'm like 18 then. Cut to 21 with Stalag. And same thing. There was hundreds of people at that show. And I'm going, wow, this is pretty cool. Because all the other little projects in between Stalag aggression and white trash and Heroes of Noise and these little things were just, you know, they're just little things. things you do they're small so Stalag you know we ran for quite a while we played numerous places and of course when you do Stepping Stone no matter where we played back in the day the people came on the stage and you couldn't see the band from the crowd dancing around stage diving and they would crash into your gear and literally I remember the music machine down in Venice we played and we could not get that song off the ground we started it three four times and the drums were just trashed and once we finally did it I ended up throwing most of the drums out with a crowd and they destroyed a couple of the toms and pulled the legs off the floor tom and i it was i'd always play kind of beater sets you know in a weird way here and there when i knew it was going to be insane just for the the shock element to be like yeah i don't care trash them you know this is yeah dudes are always gonna jump off the yeah but that's that show i there was collateral damage on the drums but it was so much fun and to this day never found any video or things like that because again nobody was shooting video unless you were black flag at the cuckoo's nest and they had you know professionals
SPEAKER_02:sure
SPEAKER_01:circle jerks um the big boys you know anybody that were were playing that were really drawn huge crowds and creating riots you
SPEAKER_02:know
SPEAKER_01:yeah video cams were there but for us you know we had lewis he was out there shooting and thank you again lewis for all your you know right place right time because he shot us again at it was um some holiday and it was ton of bands over at the Stardust Ballroom in Hollywood. And that's another one where they got on stage to the point where I couldn't even tell where the band was and Blake's guitar broke. I was starting to shift gears too visually from kind of the punk visual, which, you know, I look back then and I look at the picture of me in Aggression. I had this little funny mustache. I had some hair. It wasn't spiked. I was wearing like like a cardigan sweater and jeans. And I'm like, we were considering ourselves punk visually, along with the music, but we hadn't jumped into spikes and mohawks and the colors yet. But our idea, what we were, we went through the Bermuda, short, high-top skater, early surfy look.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of beach culture in
SPEAKER_01:there,
SPEAKER_02:right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and going back real quick on the aggression thing, when Mark Aber came in, he took it to a harder punk sound. A thing I never got to say was when I was in the band, we had a very surf punk sound. It was very surf, skate, but punk. It was fast. It was aggressive. But I listened to those recordings on BYO, and they're so adorable. I know it sounds totally weird, but yeah, I listened to it, and I listened to what Mark did, and I'm like, I love what Mark did. Mark really brought the hammer down and got the chainsaw and started cutting things. Me, it was just very backbeat. Very, like, even more adorable than, like, you know, Agent Orange and the Surf Sound. Sure. But, you know, back to the sound, it was... Yeah, Stalag was progressing, and now we're talking about 87, 88. We've been doing it 82, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, about five years solid. A lot of big shows, a lot of, like, we did some tours. That's a long time to go without doing another record. It is, and... To jump way ahead, to be in a band almost 40 years and do one album, I feel like we're the sex business. And people go, what do you mean? What do you think about it? How many albums do they have? And they go, oh yeah, they only have one.
SPEAKER_02:I heard rumors about a more heavy metal demo. Stalag. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And that's where I was just getting to that timeline that me and Ron... The singer, we're just really hearing a lot going on. We're listening to a little more Adam Bomb. We're hearing about Beowulf. We're hearing about Excel, Agents, Agents Steel. You know, Suicidal, of course, has always been around. But they were shifting gears. They were going heavier, more bludgeoning. And it... was kind of a natural progression and curiosity because I felt with that many years playing punk, what I considered
SPEAKER_03:punk,
SPEAKER_01:what I had heard, what I had seen, what I had emulated, what I created, what I had laid down on vinyl, I felt like a change was coming. And the change was merging with the long-haired dudes and us short haired punks the attire merging the pits were no longer chaotic they were getting more organized everybody was in there nobody was getting beat up but the music was getting faster and you know the term heavy metal really had been around but I mean that goes back to more acid rock and heavier rock You know, like when I saw Sabbath in the 70s, which is kind of weird that my parents would let me go with my brother at like, you know, 13. Which is great. But it was awesome, you know. Yeah. I think the date was 74. I looked it up on the forum down in Hollywood and LA. They have kind of a timeline of all the bands. But anyway, so the music was colliding with another sound. So the long-haired dudes, the heavier rock and roll guys were playing faster. And really, I don't know if any of those bands really started as punk bands that converted. So for me, me and Ron were like listening to Venom, black metal. We were listening to King Diamond, Merciful Fate. Metallica was on the scene. You had a lot of bands. Anthrax, you had... Give me another one here I was thinking of, like Testament. You know, this is... Testament's a little bit later. I want to say more 88, 89. That's when I shifted with Dr. No. But in Stalag, we decided to tamper, and I call it tampering. And I even have some little anecdotes on YouTube when I posted those videos. They're not videos. They're just soundtracks that we... had that curiosity. We wanted to hear what would we sound like. And another change that had happened to the band, and this is a good timeline to talk about it, 86, 87, I'm not real sure what happened to John Morris, our bass player. I don't know if he just took a break. Blake, I know, wasn't around. So that leaves me and Ron. And Casillas was not in the picture. So we pick up Tony Black, who I know from Heroes of Noise. We pick up Tim Harkins, who's another Ojai phenomenal guitar player who now plays with the new current Dr. No Kyle version.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And we get a bass player, Mike Purdy, who's from Ojai. Oh, I got really lost there for a sec. Sorry. No, Mike was in Dr. No. So it's Tony Black on bass, Tim Harkins guitar, and then a close dear friend, Chuck Collison, a.k.a. Chuck Steak from Oxnard. He's now in I Decline. No, Until We Die. Sorry. I've got so many things wanting to come out of my head. So Until We Die, Chuck Collison, current band. They're awesome. But I've got Chuck, I've got Tim Harkins, I've got Tony Black, Ron, and myself. And... I had done a project somewhere in the Stalag years where it was between 82 and 87. And it was me playing double bass. I played at the heavy metal band for a minute. And then Ron, Tony, Tim, Chuck, myself get together and we go, let's do Stalag songs in this crazy new crossover sound. Slow it down, chugging, speed it up double bass. Hence the video that Lewis shot of us in Oxnard at the C Street Civic Auditorium. and basically we played the whole set with a strobe light smoke machine and some police beacons on the tops of the cabinets
SPEAKER_02:and it's on youtube
SPEAKER_01:it's on youtube i think it's hard as hell to find i have it on vhs which will be converted and i will post it but
SPEAKER_03:it's
SPEAKER_01:it's tony who is like a classically playing bass flamenco bass but tuned to d and at the time d was like heavy Now they're tuning to
SPEAKER_02:some letter. D is still heavy. D is heavy. If you can't make it work, I mean, the first obituary album's in E. So it's like if obituary can make it work with E, you don't need to be tuning to B. D was
SPEAKER_01:pretty heavy. D's heavy. And Tony would open songs with this reverberated, echoing bass, but in a Flamingo style. And we just would bludgeon people. And that's the song City Wheels that we'd opened with, and it's on this video. But people were expecting Stalag 13 because they hadn't played in a while. Again, it's like a seven-year window, five to seven-year window there that we hadn't played.
SPEAKER_02:Did you record with that lineup?
SPEAKER_01:Um, those songs that are on YouTube. Okay. I think there's five
SPEAKER_02:songs. Okay. And it's like,
SPEAKER_01:and it's basically, yeah, it's studio, but it was all done live in one room.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, very low budget. Uh, I had a good friend help me put the tracks together. Yeah. Somewhat mix them. But, uh, even then I listened to myself and the drums. I'm like, Holy shit. Yeah. You were like peak performance. Double bass. I'm on fire. Yeah. Well, but it was something though. That I had had experience with the metal band Dark Carnival locally here for a minute when Stalag was in this weird transition where Dave go, where did John Morris go, Blake, all this. So us reforming it. And nobody had seen us in a while. And we go and play with Dr. No. And even after the show, even Rick Heller, the drummer for Dr. No, the time comes up and goes, what the hell was that? And I go, I don't even know, but it's awesome. And people were like blown away. They were in total shock. They were in denial. They're like, no, no, no. That's not the Stalag 13 skeleton, you know, triptych guitar player on a cover of a yellow album. No. What was that? So we didn't play anything in the original tempos.
SPEAKER_03:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:It was heavy and it was pretty creative. So that was a little kind of a bit that had happened there in Stalag's journey. And then it just didn't work. It just wasn't being received well. Ron went off on a journey. I went off on a journey. And you cut to, hey, I hear Dr. No's in the studio. They're on Metal Blade Death and they're having some problems. And I'm like, well, that's funny because I know the owner of Metal Blade Records. Yeah. So let me see if I can make a call and make things work. Well, Rick, who was drumming for them, Heller, for Dr. No, had moved on basically because there was a lot of money in advance given to them and it was used. And there was still an album that needed to be recorded. They had about half of it done.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I put the deal together with Brian, the owner, and he says, you've got to match the money to get this album off the ground. Well, at that time, E-Smile's gone, Rick Heller's gone, and it's Kyle and myself. And so I said, well, I got this guy, Tony Black, who did come into the band for a minute, but he left. Then we got Mike Purdy and Tim Harkins. staying with me, following me, you know, and you could see how that kind of like when you get a good, like everybody's working well, you, Hey, there's a project over here. Let's go do
SPEAKER_02:it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So we basically now, uh, are a defunct stall. I tried our hand at like this black metal ish.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I liked it. So then to
SPEAKER_02:clarify for everyone, it's the third doctor, no LP
SPEAKER_01:record wreckage and flesh. And they had already had some songs that, from you know i don't know what it was um but basically the band got reformed put back in the studio from scratch um we had to showcase a bunch to earn money to finish the album but what we came in with was now a double bass backbone this tune to d bass with tony and then once tony left tony didn't record the album mike purdy did so mike followed tony black's footsteps um tim who stayed there who's phenomenal and kyle so you got two guitars this menacing young kid on bass and myself on double bass
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:and literally i it was in the studio recording it and learning it kind of to that day still we had only had a So it wasn't like a lot of money. We didn't have to play a ton. It wasn't like a year's worth of work. It was only a matter of a month or two.
SPEAKER_02:So now Dr. No is in the studio. Because Dr. No is doing well at that time? Like are you headlining? Are you booking a show? You're headlining. You're playing somewhere like–
SPEAKER_01:But this is now the Kyle Dr. No, so you have to think this is a different
SPEAKER_02:– I'm
SPEAKER_01:well aware of the band. You know the energy is different.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So like what type of club are
SPEAKER_01:you playing?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We're playing wherever. We played the old... What's the one in Long Beach that finally burned down? It had been there forever. I'll think of the name of it. Fenders? Fenders. Yeah, Fenders.
SPEAKER_02:So you're playing Fenders.
SPEAKER_01:We're playing Fenders. We're playing... I feel like we played the Stardust. I feel like we played... There's a Balboa Theater or something in San Diego. We played some kind of a skating rink somewhere that was another... It's kind of blurry in there.
SPEAKER_02:You're headlining. Are you drawing a couple hundred kids?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We're drawing. We're getting our guarantee. So the money's coming in. It's proving to be a good lineup. And it's a crossover crowd? Totally crossover. But you've still got the handful that show up and go, Dr. No, the witch lady with the staff. And they're like, where's Brandon?
SPEAKER_02:Where's... Okay, so there's your handful of like cocksucker little, like, you know, like the disappointed punk people. But is the crowd, is it still like it's punk and metal mixed? Totally
SPEAKER_01:cohabitated. There's
SPEAKER_02:people that like it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're drawing, you're headlining. At one point, one of the videos that's on YouTube of us at this theater, and I want to say it's in San Diego. kyle's gone come on up here you bunch of pussies you know what are you doing back on the back wall and there's a shitload of people but they're all packed against the back wall i think that's the metal crossover crowd because they're not slammers you see what i'm saying so they're worried then they've heard dr no crazy pit yeah you know rioting type level of energy so um the band dr no then hits the studio records the album comes out I start doing my due diligence of the business thing. I contact a guy back in Jersey, put together a tour. We hit the road in 89. I want to say it's between 88, 89. I think the album was done at 88, 89, somewhere in there. And we proceed to go out. And there's a couple of videos, one from Texas and one from Florida. And the rooms are packed. And just off the hook. You're
SPEAKER_02:killing it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just awesome. This lineup's great. We play CBGBs. We do all the way from California. I think we went the southern route this time, went up, came over the top. And it was pretty impressive and very non-eventful. But that was another one that short-lived. Do
SPEAKER_02:you have line CBs?
SPEAKER_01:What's that?
SPEAKER_02:Do you headline CBGBs?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I actually have a cassette of that that came off the board. One of the guys in Prong.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's one of my biggest regrets is In Control, my band, we played CBs. But, you know, we didn't have any money on tour. And we were so used to John Lyons in the living room. He'd give you the tape from the board for free. He'd just bring a blank tape. Hey, can you
SPEAKER_01:just plug
SPEAKER_02:it in, whatever. Yeah, we played CBs and whatever. I think they charge like 75 bucks or something for the tape. And we're just like, Oh, that's a little out of our price range, you know, at the time. And now I kick myself so much. Cause we could have easily had someone put that out as a record. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm like, God damn it. Why didn't I spend 75 bucks? It's like literally my biggest hardcore regret.
SPEAKER_01:It's that's why I say there are so much. footage out there somewhere. So many photos. And the only people I knew that were shooting were like Alison Braun and, uh, Kathy Rogers. You know, those two women were like, again, ahead of the time, female photographers, they can ask, they can emphasize Ed Culver and Lewis, you know, shooting video. And I'm sure there's people I, I not even talking about. Um, uh, the other ones were Nick and I forget his, name from for use. That was an early 80, 81, 82, three ish Hollywood. They'd go to the shows and photograph document, put it on this 11 by 17 and bring it to the next show. Wow. And you'd be all looking for yourself and it going, dude, look at that. You know, Maggie from Ozier's or, you know, there's a bone, you know, and you're just the Mao Mao's and you're just like, just going, dude, this is awesome. Who are these people?
SPEAKER_02:But
SPEAKER_01:they were ahead of their time. They've actually, I think, since had some art showings of their, you know, documenting of all this. So, you know, there's a lot going on now between, I'm going to say, 80... 84 and 88, 89, 90, right in there, things are starting to change. You know, not only is the music shifting and all these awesome bands are coming out. And again, I'm listening to, you know, these bands at midnight on a radio that I got in the window and I'm trying to get signal because I'm in Ventura and they're broadcasting out of Marina Del Rey. And I'm hearing about the, you know, Beowulf Excel, Agent Steel, the new Suicidal Sound. So it was just something that kind of, I know a lot of people are like, ah, you changed, but it's like, I was just curious. So was Ron. So were some other people that were like, let's try it. So, you know, that defunct, you get to the metal Dr. No, the crossover. And I hate to say it, I'm new to Instagram. I'm just, you know, lazy. Just now, like since I've just had the surgery and I can't do anything, I'm tweaking on it. I'm just hashtagging going, I finally understand hashtag. And the stuff that's coming up is blowing me away, especially all over the world. Not in California or Oxnard, but you name it. I'm talking all over Helsinki, Germany, Russia, uh, just all over people with that Dr. No album, people with the Stalag album and the Dr. No album. I'm talking about wreckage and flesh,
SPEAKER_03:not
SPEAKER_01:all the others, but like those two that I had my hands in really, uh, I've not heard anything negative.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_01:Once in a while, you'll pick up somebody, like I did see on Instagram, there was a top, I think it was 14 horrible album covers, and we made it. Dr. No Wreckage and Flesh. Because it was pretty hokey. The dog, the woman in the tornado, or dogs. It's a
SPEAKER_02:little dated. It's a dated. But it's also a record that,
SPEAKER_01:I don't
SPEAKER_02:know,
SPEAKER_01:you kind of know what it's going to sound like. If you saw the bands that we were in the grouping with, you'd go, oh yeah. Those are pretty bad. Ours is... You know, marginal. But nobody in any of that said the band, the music sucked. They're like, this is an album cover issue, boys. Really? So, you know, like I said, things were changing. My tastes were changing. That band after tour, literally, I almost left halfway through it because I am so driven by business and a clear thinking process and linear in a way, but very broad focusing.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:When you're in New York, and I had the flu at the time, and trying to play night after night and being sick, lucky that I didn't die. But I got to a point where the band was on a pretty high roll, and the money was being spent. We allotted daily per diems to survive and have money for fuel, have money for these unforeseen things. And that's just me, knowing because I went on a school bus in 1980. You have to do that. You know what I mean? That's a normal thing. And so this is 89, and I'm like, I've grown a bit in nine years. And it just wasn't working. So when we got home, I think there was one more show. And the band took another shift. I want to say, at one point, again, here we are, Rick Heller came in on this thing. And I can't really remember if he was before me or after, but the band trudged along, and then that's the last I heard of it. So after Dr. No, I've now conquered, in a way, Aggression, Stalag, and Dr. No. And now we're in like 2000-ish, 2001, and I start talking with... Well, you
SPEAKER_02:can't skip the 90s. What do you do in the... Oh, the 90s? What do you do in the 90s?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's true. You're right. Yeah, 89, 90s. So the 90s, I fall victim to marriage. Not a bad one. I'm thankful I have a beautiful daughter. And, you know, 18 years. I learned a lot, but I... I packed it up. I stuffed it away. And Mark and Henry had passed within that window, I feel like, somewhere in the 80s, later 80s. Mark died, I could be wrong,
SPEAKER_02:later in the 90s.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then Henry died, I want to say, right around
SPEAKER_01:2000. I have a poster that I have to, I just found it. It has the dates on
SPEAKER_02:it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's a Gresham tribute band that another friend of mine came out with, which is another thing we can talk about. Because this is, you know, we're getting to that.
SPEAKER_02:Henry did... You did Aggression after
SPEAKER_01:Mark died. Well, I played with Henry. See, the thing is, Mark died. There was a big thing at the Ventura Theater here in Ventura for Mark. Aggression played. Mark Aber was in the band, and I was across the street having drinks at the little bar, San Susi. And guys were coming over, and Mike Hickey, Mark's brother, dude, you've got to go play. You are and will be the, and you have to, and, you know, pumping me. And I'm like, dude, I haven't played in, like, years. I don't even know if I know... Yeah, I was there. I sang a song with Henry and with
SPEAKER_02:Burning
SPEAKER_01:Dog.
SPEAKER_02:I think it was 98, 99.
SPEAKER_01:Was it that far? Yeah, it was late. And that's Mark Dine. That
SPEAKER_02:was Mark Dine because Henry was
SPEAKER_01:alive. Henry was later. He played that
SPEAKER_02:show.
SPEAKER_01:I kind of freaked out. Didn't do it. Felt really bad. And when I saw Mike many years later, Mike Hickey, I said, I'm so sorry. He goes, no problem, man. He goes, I could see it in your face. You were like, breathe the fuck out. I said, you know, I had put it all away. And it's like a bike. I'm sure I could have done it. But me... Where I was in my space, in my head, I just didn't see it. So that's when Joey Wolf contacted me somewhere in the early 90s. Hey, me and Eric Anders and Dave Casillas, we've been playing covers, but we need a drummer. And I got a spot down at the fairgrounds in the Quonset that we could practice. I'm like, well, I got to get a drum set. Early 2000s, right? Yeah, this is like 2000, probably 2000. 98, 2000, 2001, somewhere there. This I don't have any real time frame on because a lot of things that happened for me getting back to playing. So they call me and I find a drum set. Oh, Yeah, no, I'll cut to that.
SPEAKER_02:So, yeah, because I hadn't played,
SPEAKER_01:so...
SPEAKER_02:Well, we should skip back to the 90s. Stalag gets back together and does a CD as Stalag with no 13 on it. Well, that's...
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_02:it's totally... It's a different band. It's Blake
SPEAKER_01:only. And a whole new lineup.
SPEAKER_02:Right, it's just Blake.
SPEAKER_01:And the only reason I don't have a lot of knowledge of it is because I wasn't aware until later, and I kind of went...
SPEAKER_02:It was Blake... Well, it was Blake and Joey Lipke.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_02:So the guy that played on the demo, and then he did Edge Records and put out some local bands.
UNKNOWN:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:He put out, like, No Motive... without burning dog.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:But so you
SPEAKER_01:weren't. I wasn't anywhere near it. I just had known about it. And again, I'm in my shell.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, so I'm not staying in touch. I'm not going to parties. I'm not going to show.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I had my daughter in 88. So you can figure from 88 to like 98. Yeah. Family man. Yeah. You know, um, Listening to music, watching MTV, Headbangers Ball, going through it like everybody. Actually, yeah, the hair was still there because in 88 it was long for the Dr. No era. I think probably around 98 is when it came off. But still listening to a lot of the grunges happening. I'm falling into what's going on in the world. But that's it. I hadn't really played.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so early 2000s, you hooked back up with Dave, and you started doing NARC or All-Stars?
SPEAKER_01:No, that. The All-Stars was... Oh, sorry. Yes. Yeah, the All-Stars. Yeah, with Dave, Eric Anders, and Joey Wolf. Joey sang, Eric based, Dave on guitar. And so when I sat in for the first one, it's like I thought. You know, it's like riding a bike. It all comes back. But we were doing everything from Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Misfits, Descendants, Social D, KSOL, Agent Orange, Bad Brains. You name it, we did it. We'd have hours of music. And we became a house band in Simi Valley on a Sunday, always packing them in, always making money. We never... Anything I ever was in, we never didn't make money, but not the kind of money when people hear this, they'll be
SPEAKER_02:like, oh, you're
SPEAKER_01:wealthy now. But I mean, we got gas money. Sure. We had drink money. We had food.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So to me, that's like a plus. And this will be interesting for anybody that thinks in my 40 years of doing this, I've seen a dime, no dimes, no pennies. From Aggression to Stalag to Doctor No, I've never seen a dime. A, because when I did it, I was young. We just wanted to be on a record. We wanted to say, well, those are those big black 12-inch things that nobody really knows.
SPEAKER_02:Is it because the... Well, the only one that you would think you would get money from would be the Doctor No, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, anything that I record, that's part of my creation, which would have been the Aggression. Stalag, we... It could have been... worked so that any part of a record sale, but not the creative, you know, the BMI, but
SPEAKER_02:upstarts long gone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And then with Dr. No, absolutely. Because, and I never really told you where that music came from, which I'll come back to that because I was starting to get there. And of course it was so much in my head. It's exploding. Well, let me ask you
SPEAKER_02:this. Cause we're, we're before I forget, um, Stalag is the one that never associated with mystic.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. We, we did, uh, I mean,
SPEAKER_02:obviously you're
SPEAKER_01:on the Narco comp. What was that song that we did? Do It Right, which was kind of a funky. Again, me and Ron, this was before the metal were going. You were on comps. Let's get funky. Let's try some Beastie Boy weird. You know, because the Vandals had a turntable. I mean, so we just always had a pretty broad spectrum of music. And never were so punked. that all we heard was you know punk we always you know and i grew up on blue note jazz as a kid my parents listened to jazz i went through the disco i went through everything i listened to it all and i think because you open your eyes and ears to everything you can draw from it all so ron was another one that was always interesting to me that he always would say yeah man check this out and so we did that those i don't know if it was one or two songs with mystic but it was a couple of songs on the narco
SPEAKER_02:comp and a couple of like random songs.
SPEAKER_01:Like
SPEAKER_02:you might've been on slimy Valley or you were on compilation maybe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And we did them, but we never went, but you never went and did
SPEAKER_02:a seven inch or anything.
SPEAKER_01:No. And we never went against Doug Moody who came to one of our Stalag shows in San Diego about four years ago, five years ago
SPEAKER_02:when Ryan was singing.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Cause I met him that night.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And he was in the track suit.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I was like, Oh my God, I just found my, that was great. I think that was the wife. They'd work to the nines. And, you know, I look at it like he's a businessman. And anybody, and I'm sure Brandon has something to say. I think everybody's had something to say. Tony Cortez. I looked at it like this. I wanted to be on, A, in a band. I wanted to be on a record or cassette. And that was that. And you always hear these terms, and I know them to the day I quit. You'll get paid after the recoup expenses. Sure. So when you cut to what a recoup expense is, it goes off in so many different ways that a lot of people think, oh, it's very linear, A and B in a straight line. But it's not. It's distribution, advertising, who does the artwork, who does this, who does the hand. It's crazy.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So as an artist, I've always, and the person I really done this a lot with was Bill from Dr. Strange. He actually wanted to send us royalties. He wanted to send us money from the sales, and it still does well. And to this day, when he picked us up and wanted to do...
SPEAKER_02:Because he did the repress
SPEAKER_01:of In Control. He did the repress of In Control, I told him, You just take whatever comes in and you put it in the kitty because as a small punk rock, a label record store, I've never seen another record store like it. I mean, that store is awesome. Anytime we go to Vegas, we always get off and we, we do our due diligence and say hi and hug and photos because that guy saw something and He's still doing it, and he's behind the bands 100%. I've told him. I said, I still get the reports. He sends them to me once a year. I see what gets shipped out, what gets sent back. I see the pluses, the minuses, and there's money. But, again, if you are living in a motorhome and want to survive,
SPEAKER_02:yeah,
SPEAKER_01:those royalty checks would keep you going a week or two.
SPEAKER_02:That's it.
SPEAKER_01:So me being who I am and have been since a young kid working at carnivals and swap meets and having a sense of you need it, you've got to work for it and earn it, I've had my career, you know, I got 28 years in the motion picture industry and I'm looking at four more years. I'm out. Yeah. And I don't even feel old enough to talk about retiring, which is really wild. Sure. So I tell my wife, I said, yeah, four more years, we're going on tour. And she looks at me this way. You already tour. What the hell are you talking about? So it's kind of my joke, but, um, yeah, the monies from anything I've done, um, never asked for it, never needed it, never felt, um, I'm entitled. You know, I've had a lot of people, even my wife, say, well, you guys were naive. You guys should have went and copywritten, done your, you know, the bug, the BMI, all this stuff. You should, you know, it's out there somewhere and you could still do it. But I just, I look at it like there are those that need it. There are musicians that I know that are close to me that are from bands I've been in, not naming anyone, but there are those that need it. And I... It's
SPEAKER_02:just important that that stuff got documented. Because if it wouldn't have, it would have been a fucking shame. You think about all the 90s Nard bands. There were so many good bands. The Clutch Fist and the Burning Dogs. The
SPEAKER_01:stuff that was in the scene, that's what I'm really bummed is I was kind of under the rock through the 90s. And I really missed the Annihilation Time, the In Control, all those bands you said. Because I still to this day laugh and say punk rock never died in Oxnard. Never did. Never went to sleep like I did. And really, if you think about L.A. and other states, yeah, in a sense, it kind of got pushed back with other stuff coming in, other types of music. But literally Oxnard's scene never stopped. And it's very impressive. Very thankful to be a part of it and support Oxnard. any way I can still. But like you said, it had to be documented. And that's all I wanted. That's all I ever wanted to do. And when you're young, you know, to go, hey, look, that's a picture of me. That's me playing. That's why I get kind of like the giggles when I'm listening to Pandora and it's the Dr. No station and, you know, Dear John Letter comes on and it's like me, this little 18-year-old, 17-year-old, punky backbeat surf drummer. And I'm like going, oh, my God, that is funny.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's amazing. And then I cut to the recordings I've done with Stog, which totally, again, are different than what Harry ever did. And we've done some recordings recently to kind of lay it down. You did a
SPEAKER_02:new CD in 2017.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's really cool. I think it needed a little bit more oomph, but I like it because it's punk. It's 13 from 1983. Sure. And then I listen to when I really am feeling... Like the horns got to go up. I put on a little wreckage and flesh and we'll sit out here. I got a big stereo system out there under the shed and we just crank it and just giggle and go, what are we thinking? That was my growth. That was me expanding and saying, yeah, it was fun. You know, I had fun doing it. Uh, And maybe there's some hardcore cats out there that they've only stuck to their sound and never shown anybody that they've grown musically in their likes and dislikes. And to this day, until they die, they'll only play this song. To me, I'm like, I get bored fast. If I'd have kept every drum set I ever owned since I've been a musician, I'd need a huge property to house them on. But I always got bored with everything. Get rid of the drums, new drums. Yeah. You know, my first drums were basic. And then once I hit stog, I'm a
SPEAKER_02:big,
SPEAKER_01:big 26 inch.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's got to be huge, man. Like big toms and big snare. Yeah. You know, going to shows, you see somebody rocking that. You're like, whoa, that's huge. Yeah. So it's about, again, that sound.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What you're creating. But I just always got bored. So I don't. I think the only thing I really have from the past, which is pretty funny, is one of the double bass drum heads from the Dr. No, you know, 98, 88, 89, sorry, 90s, just don't get me, 89, 88. It's one of the bass drum heads that Eric got us when he did the album cover. I got it in the, you know, the man cave.
SPEAKER_03:Cool.
SPEAKER_01:And the one with the spider, I don't know where that ended up. Somebody made off with it. Probably a girlfriend. But, I really only have photo memories. Uh, very thankful for the video memories that are out there. Um, yeah, there's people have flyers. There's only going
SPEAKER_02:to be more and more popping up if you think about it, because, you know, it's like you, you saying right now, Oh, I just need to be able to convert this from one thing to the other. You know, there's, there's old punk dudes out there. Like I got this videotape. If I just figure out how to convert it, you know, the
SPEAKER_01:metal stuff I did sat on a half inch reel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. For years. Well, that's a white whale. Like, I came here today saying, like, I heard a rumor about it, right? And I'm a fucking moron. It's on YouTube right now. It's on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01:All five songs. Yeah, I'll find it. And they're awesome. And what's funny about them is when you look for it, you're going to find really interesting photos. And it kind of is misleading. And I did it purposefully because I know there's going to be the hardcores going, what the hell? You suck. But I also have had a lot of people say, man, I heard that. I heard it like you said. It's just a rumor. What the hell? Literally, and I'll go back here real quick because the Doctor No Wreckage in Flesh music was music from a band called tony black was in belial they were a heavy heavy band out of ohio single bass drummer i'd already messed with my double bass again right place right time and i'm a little pushy sometimes like you need a better drummer and i feel bad because my boy who i pushed out it was like a brother and recently i had to like drunkenly go i fucking love you dude but guess what your time was up yeah you know what i mean
SPEAKER_02:remember back in 89 you
SPEAKER_01:know that was me you're hugging you're all like i love you bro but And then he's off, but you kicked me out. You got me fired. But literally, I was playing with Tony and Tim, and we were doing the Dr. No material on Wreckage and Flesh. So you bring Tony and Tim, who it's their music, to a studio under Metal Blade Death, and there's your music. So that music is not written by Kyle. I mean, of course, his lyrics, yes. But that music was created somewhere else, and we had played it. So hence, I knew it. But we, of course, you know, you manipulate it and change it so that it's a little different. As what Kyle's doing now with the music from Wreckage and Flesh. Because I listened to their drummer who is, it was so awesome. Because I hadn't seen Kyle in 100 years. Hadn't seen that band in 100 years. And we do the Nard Fest, or what I love to call Nardstock. Come on, guys in New York from Woodstock. Isn't that
SPEAKER_02:hilarious?
SPEAKER_01:But you know what? Got it. So Nard Fest comes off. Second time we do it. There's the metal year and the punk. I go to watch the Dr. No and had heard about a guy. I think I don't know if Steve Vega is the current guy or the original one whose brother was somebody. And they sounded awesome. But I got to see him with the guy. who I want to say is me. He gets off from behind the drums, no shirt, bald beard, dad belly. And I'm like, I love this guy. And you know, I give him props because he plays it 99% like the album.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Now he's, and I do this a lot and I get critiqued for it, but he's a real drummer.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Me. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a timekeeper. I'm a metronome with a little flair, but, This guy, he's, you know, I call them trained drummers. They can do rudiments and rolls and fills and, you know, all the proper stuff. And, you know, I'm kind of a punk, a punk drummer, but, you know, but this guy really brings it. And so I've really been appreciative to see what he's done and they haven't butchered it. They've slowed some stuff down, which totally makes sense from what we did. Again, It's an evolution, and Kyle wants to keep it going. And it's a shame that Kyle tied up the name and hasn't really done much. I heard they had a new album, but this has been quite a few years. I haven't heard of anything. So, you know, when... Brandon, which is another later story here for us, the No Project came along. He's like, can't be Dr. No, it's just No. I'm like, cool. I think that
SPEAKER_02:makes sense. It's cool,
SPEAKER_01:right? It's the old Brandon, Dr. No. It's just so people
SPEAKER_02:know. You know the Cro-Mags this past week, they finally hashed out their legal stuff because Harley's been playing a band and John Joseph's been doing his thing. And actually, they're both awesome. but now you'll be able to tell which one it is.
SPEAKER_01:That's cool. I just recently stumbled on something. I thought I wasn't even aware of this, but
SPEAKER_02:you do want to know who you're seeing, right? Like, yeah. And especially those two, they're, they're different,
SPEAKER_01:you know, and they're both awesome. And Kyle does play some of the early Dr. No punk stuff. Yeah. It, uh, their drummer is awesome. Don't get me wrong. I don't think he's a punk drummer. I think he's solid as a metal, hard rock, very versatile drummer, but there's something about what I do and drummers of the early era, there's just something. I hear it, and I watch drummers. I'm a heavy drummer watcher, and by no means am I perfect, but when I watch them, I'm like, you know, I can see a faking it. I can see it just getting through it. And when they fall back into something that's more that drummer style, then I'm like, aha, I see where his strong points. So, you know, it's, it's kind of like, I think what I've done in 40 years is develop something that as in the no project can go fast as hell. And even I giggle when I'm doing it going, holy shit, dude, I'm going to light myself on fire. I'm going so fast. But yeah, Yeah. And easy to play.
SPEAKER_02:Are you going
SPEAKER_01:to record with Doe? Yeah. He's got some guys from Scheiss and Minnelli.
SPEAKER_02:Although you could record digital here and just send them the files.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. We had talked about it. So, I mean, that's, you know, Fred is very busy with his MTV job. He smiles busy with his. So I think that's to come. Absolutely. Uh, cause I, I'm telling you, if I had to put one to sleep, sorry, everybody, but I put stall at the bed. It's just because it's, it's so energetic. People lose their minds with that music. And, uh, Fred has got to be one of the most insane, wiggly, wild guitar players. I mean, that dude is– I get a kick out of watching his insanity.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just he can't sit still, and he's so anxious and so pumped. And it took me a minute to get used to the– are you ready, Larry? Are you ready? Hold on. I've got to wipe the sweat. I need a drink. And he's going, and it's just– so it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy that band. The rules.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, I mean, back to the Dr. No. It's a cease and desist after the tour in 89. Then you get into the 90s. They pull me out after almost 10 years, I guess, to playing with Nardcore All-Stars. Then, now we cut back to the Aggression reunion. Henry's still alive. Mark's gone. And it's a show for Brandon Cruz's mom who's stuck down in South America and it's over at the old, was it the Roadhouse? Yeah, it's torn down now. So that is something that, again, my nervousness is like, Big Bob goes, you're going to play some songs? And I'm like, give me a CD because I'm doing this All-Stars thing and I'm really hip to that. But yeah, okay. And literally it was me, Big Bob, and who was on guitar? Was that... well rob i feel like it was rob thatcher and uh drew was singing and we played at the roadhouse i want to say it was a couple songs and it was so like because i'm just naturally my tempo's fast yeah it was fast it was tight it was awesome no rehearsal and when we got done big bob comes up and he goes oh man because they'd had all these numerous drummers sure in this, again, a 10-year window after Mark Aber. Yep. Jelly roll, and this guy, and that guy, and this guy, and you know. And I bring back this flavor, and Bob goes, we got to do shows. And I said, all right. So I... Hadn't had anything going on, really. You know, the All-Star thing was just, you know, hit and miss whenever we want to play. So I jumped back into the aggression. Now we're playing some shows that are picking up steam. We're doing the Covered Wagon up in San Francisco. We're playing here. We're playing Don Quixote's in Santa Cruz. And they're pretty full shows. You know, people want to see aggression. And Drew's slaying, you know, the front man spot. And I want to say this is probably within a year's time, and I don't have an exact year, but most of it is the 90s, whenever Henry now gets sick and we lose Henry. Well, there was kind of the, again, the dust settles, and now it's, you know, Jess Leedy says, hey, man, Henry's last words to me were like, keep it alive. So Jess says, let's do it. So me, Jess, Big Bob. and um little rob ron little rob's playing guitar i feel dave cassius came and sat in a few shows we did some stuff in hollywood um and it's kind of spotty in there because again these are like little bursts you know they're nothing that ran for any length of time sure no tours but aggression was back together and just slaying the shows and it was so much fun you know then uh Henry passes and it's now what I call the like, uh, flogging the dead horse in a sense. And I should have known better. I should have quit while ahead, but you know, there's something about it. Um, even with Ron gone in Australia, I still do. So I love John. You know, he is a friend, a brother, an amazing musician all the way around and just, um, has made me want to keep going.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, But yeah, as far as aggression, there should have been a time to stop. And so I don't even know when that really ended. We did some shows without any of the original members other than me and Bob. And then that just kind of, again, fizzled. And it just goes, again, back to its dormancy. But then you hear, oh, Big Bob's with Mike Hickey singing and Danny Dorman and Mark Aver and Now they're playing the Nard Fest. I'm like, awesome. And that's another one that after numerous years, I have no idea what Mark Abert thought. And if he ever listens to this, I love you, brother. He thought I was after him. And if he ever came through Ventura Oxnard, there was going to be this punk militia that was going to bury him. And I thought, what a weird thing, right? So again, 30 plus years, he sits on the stage with aggression. I walk up to him and I can see it in his face. He's like, oh shit, we're going to fight or hug. And I just said, yeah, man. It's been a long time. You know, you're doing, you've done a great job. Keep doing it. You know, I don't know with all this crazy rumors and he's just all fidgety. He's all, yeah, man, no, no, everything's good. I was just like, whoa. Yeah. So, I mean, just some weird history of like, you hear, you feel, but you don't know why. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. So, I mean, then that band's gone through incarnation after incarnation. I think it's back again. Yeah. I'm not mistaken with Jess. I, you know, and Bob, I think only plays so many songs and I think Avery's playing drums. Well, Jess does a great job as a front man. Oh my God. Jess, Jess is like golden. He's perfect for that band. That guy, whatever he touches, he, he is the consummate musician that is horn playing keyboard, playing drum. You know, that's why when we played the all-stars, Oh, that was a shift to when Joey left to go. work back east, Jess jumps in on the All-Stars, and it just starts picking up this steam, but then it also became he and I bumped a lot because he's a perfectionist. And I had to say a couple times, you know, punk rock's kind of raw. It's timing, technique, and tempo are out the window. You know.
SPEAKER_02:And you're a cover band.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so any variances that you're feeling and you're just saying we're sucking and let's pull it together and you need to pick your game up... You know, I have an opinion about that, and I've recently heard a lot of new Agent Orange, and they are so polished and so good. They were always good. But, I mean, 40 years later, you hear them and you go, they got a sound. Yeah, they're great. It's surfy, punky, but it's really good. So then I go, okay, well, the All-Stars, oh, man, you're playing Black Flag. You're playing Bad Brains. You're playing, you know, you're playing stuff that you can't clean that up. You got to keep it like it was. You got to keep the nuance. You got to keep those little, the robo-fills and six-pack. You got to, you know what I mean? Don't church it up. Yeah. Don't church it up because it doesn't work. But, I mean, as an original group, you know, if you're going to stay in that group, look at Social D, man. More power. Those guys, I watched their earlier footage on these videos and the movie and remember them, and they're just like the rest of us, all making a sound. It was raw. It was loose. hit the pocket out of the pocket. But, you know, they stayed with it. And they evolved as Agent Orange. They evolved as these bands that are still going. You know, DI, Channel 3, they've all just kept, you know, the Dickies. The Dickies were always good. They were polished from day one. I saw them at the Whiskey in like early 80s and was like, oh, man. You know, but I mean, to me, there's a big difference in real musicianship and, you know, people that get together and make stuff that you know noise that people want to bounce off the walls sure you know um and you know in control with ryan and listening to that band i was like holy shit man you want to tear things down you know annihilation time i want to rip you know things off the walls
SPEAKER_03:yeah
SPEAKER_01:that's what the music meant to me you know it was always about what's it what what's your instinct what's your emotional mood what's it doing to you and you just stand there be like rock your head or do you go, you know, you want to grab chairs and throw them out, you know, and that's what my, my era of music and my belief was, is if it makes you feel that way, then, you know, and I think that's the way flag was always. That's the way circle jerk. That's the way all those early bands were the DC sound, you know, the Texas, the San Francisco, the Kennedys, you know, the only one I still haven't put my hand on it quite this flipper. But
SPEAKER_02:they're
SPEAKER_01:in there, you know.
SPEAKER_02:But that's what they're there for. That's what they're there for. That's the point of the band.
SPEAKER_01:Boosker Dew, you know, Necros. I mean, these are bands that when I listened to them, I was like, whoa, listen to that guitar. You know, Septic Death. I mean, there's just, there's tons of bands, man. Like when I started digging in, I'm just like, Iron Cross. And just bands that they played and you just went, huh? You know, your sense is bad. perked up and you wanted to run through a plate glass window. You know what I mean? Well, it should
SPEAKER_02:do that to you. Music should make you feel something, you know, regardless of what it is. If there's no feeling there, then you're probably a shit band.
SPEAKER_01:You know, even I hadn't seen TSOL since about 83, 84 at the Devonshire Downs Fairgrounds. And that was when Jack was all white face and the women showing up were wearing like white wedding gowns, you know, white face, death, kind of a very ethereal kind of weird. And I was like... the band got down and made you want to start a pit and throw people around you know so visually you can't you can't take the band visually for what it is and that's the thing like when Stalag was shifting and going into this metal thing and Rod's growing his hair and he's wearing a venom patch on his jacket and I'm hanging out with Drew Bernstein from America's Hardcore and my hair is black and starting to dread and I'm wearing black you know denim jacket and black pants and we used to take silkscreen ink and make them as black as possible and then throw it in a dryer and cure it and then take paraffin wax and you rub it all over that everything iron it it just takes on that 30 year old grungy biker denim
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:and we were starting to like get into that like um the peace punk you know living off the earth vegetarianism and um trying to remember the band that drew went up north to play with crucifix And so, you know, again, everything is shifting. We're listening to crass. We're listening to rudimentary peni. And, you know, there's a lot, man, that's going on from like 80 to about like 90. Things are just coming unglued, unstitched. You know, the pins are being pulled out of the hinges.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's like, where are you ending up? Nobody knew. Yeah. I was... in a matter of days could go from one thing to another and, and never, you know, was so hard set on, this is my look, you know, it's like, this is the sound I like, and this is, you know, I want to fit in and, you know, you, you emulate what's going on. So, you know, now I just, um, I'm lazy and grow beard and, you know, still do what I do. And, and I, I, I enjoy it so much because it's the kids. Um, The parents are still there. They show up, but it's their kids. It's the offspring. And it's not about money. I would much rather, going into it, they go, dude, just show up and play. We'll give you some beer. Sure. And if there's some bucks, you know, the Concrete Jungle's awesome. I'll play there anytime.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Those are the best shows, best sounding room, best crowds. You get free beer. Yeah, I'm not straight edge. I have a little cocktail once in a while, but, you know, I grew up, too. Stog 13 was a big thing about straight edge, and we lived it, breathed it. But, you know, at 19, 18, 20, you think you know it all, but you don't. So you start growing up and you live. But, yeah, there's still so much... fire for it it's fun that's great it's good you still love it it's a ton of fun and I don't see it stopping and I you know from the literally 2000 with the re-release of Stalag we went on the road to Dr. No I think it was 2003 and this is Ron flies in from you know Australia me, Ron, John Morris, Blake and I don't recall if Dave was with us And we went up the coast and went all the way up to Washington and just an amazing time. And that was the Dr. No lineup with Craig on guitar, Ismail on bass, and Eric on drums and Brandon. And they just, you know, when they'd play, I'd just sit there in awe going, holy hell, man. Because they never stopped touring, you know, all those years between whenever Stalag was together in its weird form to 2003. Yeah. And then that, you know, Stala gets put to sleep again from three to... When was the Narmageddon? 2011? 10 or 11? When Nick put together the Narmageddon
SPEAKER_03:festival. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Three shows. It paid us a ton of money. Like, I just went, what? How much? Yeah. Sent it to Ron. All of it. Yeah. He brought his whole family out from Australia. And that was the lineup. Blake... Dave Casillas, me, John Morrison, and Ron. And we played the observatory to Full House, which blew me away. We played up in San Francisco there in Berkeley at the co-op club there. Gilman? Gilman. And we had a kickoff show at one of the bars over... Yeah, I came up because that was so fun. That was beyond capacity. That was the hottest I've ever been in a room. I almost passed
SPEAKER_02:out.
SPEAKER_01:What was it? Oh, Woman's Center. There was basically four shows. A kickoff show with Ron. That's
SPEAKER_03:right.
SPEAKER_01:His chops back. But that was another bam, an awakening. The band gets together for one rehearsal. We do a live show in Oxnard. We truck up to Gilman. We do the Women's Center. And all the footage and photographs, it's great. Oh, it's great. Because it's like we created the demand. We didn't have so much supply. And so I kind of like that. We worked our butts off, though, 2016 with both bands, Noah and Stalag, to earn money to get over to Europe. So, I mean, that was something that, you know, you saturate. You play, you play, you play, you play everywhere. L.A., San Francisco. South, Vegas, anywhere. Just put the money in the till to get the tickets. That's what we've done now this year for Tokyo. We're ready. We bought tickets the other day. I'm going to start brushing up on my Japanese. I'm seeing videos of these automated robotic sushi delivery systems. It looks like a Tesla coming right in front of you and it stops. You take your sushi off and it takes off. It's bizarre. There's a thing called a robot diner and like this giant lift by every kind of led giant shark thing comes out with its jaw flapping and a band on its back asian women playing i mean it's yeah it's
SPEAKER_02:we gotta make sure you set aside time to go there
SPEAKER_01:i'm gonna like try to photo that we didn't do i did a lot of photos in europe in 17 not a lot of videos like this one i think i'm gonna make sure somebody shoots video because it's I mean, I wish we had video for the 2017 tour. The Croatian crowd. And what's so cool, again, back to my, like, I'm just awakening to Instagram. I'm touching base with all these people, finding their videos of us over there, and I'm
SPEAKER_02:just
SPEAKER_01:like, oh, my God, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because they were epic shows. They were, like, huge, huge squats. The one in Croatia is a giant, old, closed-down, almost like a university grounds, a school grounds. I think they said there's 300 rooms, and each one has– some kind of organization there. Part of the co-op, you know. We played at the Au in Germany, which is the oldest squat known. And they just pack them in day after day, week after week shows. But just such an amazing group of people everywhere we went, you know. And there's still a lot of world out there we haven't even touched. I've really been trying to touch base with this Naderjak. They're out of... Where are they at? They are Indonesia. Oh, yeah? And their punk scene down there is insane. Yeah? Like, there are no shows probably smaller than, you know, a thousand people. Holy cow. And their pits look like they were given, like, bath salts to, like, smoke. And then they go tearing their flesh off. It's pretty crazy. So, yeah, Indonesia. Bali is really one. So, yeah, there's still a lot to come. But as far as the history of this thing, it's... It's been cool, too, to have Joe and all these figures that have been there and keep, in some way, their hand in it. For me, I... I try whenever I can. When you work as much as I do, I'm 60 plus hours a week. My weekends are, am I playing or are we on tour? I've been in touch with a skate company locally at Oxnard recently and they seem like some good grassroot cats that are supporting kids' skateboards, skate parks. I said, yeah, let us know. I see that they had a show over there at that one out in Wainimi. The bottom was the girl's band name, but they're And I don't think that, what is it? Auxilio?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Are they LA?
SPEAKER_02:It's LA with the drummers from NARD.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my God. They're so awesome. Yeah. They're
SPEAKER_02:ragers.
SPEAKER_01:There's so many great bands and three day Holocaust and civil conflict. I mean, oh my God. I'm, you know, my eyes are being again, opened up in the backyard party we did over there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's all a big, big cycle. And art is on fire again.
SPEAKER_01:I'm, I'm just, you know, thankful that, uh, you know, that's why it was so important to document and you can like, you know, let them see what kind of energy, you know, we're not, uh, we're not old and slow, man. We, we still have
SPEAKER_02:not old yet.
SPEAKER_01:Piss and vinegar. And, but I think, you know, I think I covered most of the bands and all the, the projects. No, I think it's good. Like the 2000, you know, it started up again, like I say, with that tour and oh three with Stalin, Dr. No. And then there was again, that, that hole that happens. And, uh, then the Armageddon, And that's like, you know, again, from 2003 to 11, that's quite a few years.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And that's the end of using Ron. Then you get Ryan for a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:And then the Nard Fest, you know, and so we, you know, we hit up, you know, a lot of this is always run, run through Ron. Hey, how would you feel? And he's like, Hey man, you know, I'm in Australia. I'm getting a PhD. I got a life and a family, but
SPEAKER_02:not only in Australia, he's in Western Australia.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So, you know, we've actually tried to talk to him about, you know, come over to Europe when we come over.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Because that'd be awesome, you know. Well, if you're in Indonesia, I mean, that's not too
SPEAKER_01:far. So, you know, we still try to stay in touch. And... That's good. I think this has been good. Yeah, you know, there really isn't much really after Nardfest other than the Stalag train starts, you know, moving across the country again to keep playing. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:and you're going to keep going. You're going to play Japan.
SPEAKER_01:We're going to do Japan. And then, you know, I don't know. I keep asking everybody in Japan. I go, when are you done? And they go, I don't know. And I said, I feel we'll be done when one of you says I'm done because I really don't want to do an aggression again. And I love the boys. I love everybody that's been a part of Aggression over the years. But I think at some point, we really stretched it without Ron. Very powerful when he was here for the Normageddon thing. That was just wild. And I love John Carr. And I love Ben, who's replaced Dave. But I think at some point, once we lose one more, I think that'll be it. It gives it up for John. And at one point, John Marston said he was done. So... Um, I don't think I'll be the one to, to jump out. I think it'll be like, somebody is going to have to do it. I'll be like, yeah, I think it's time. Yeah. You know, because there is still so much out there. There's the no project. There's, there's people I know that love to do something like, you know, for a minute recently, we did something for Ismael's birthday and Brandon jumped in and said, let's do a discharge cover band. So that was off the Chuck steak, Chuck Carlson, Todd Boggess, me, Ismael and Brandon. And, um, I never thought I'd have that much fun playing Discharge Peppers. I can't think
SPEAKER_02:of anything better.
SPEAKER_01:It was– well, you know, and I told Bones in Copenhagen, I said, you know, I'm who I am because of you, the D-beats, you know, the whole Discharge, the style, and also very minor threats with– just certain rhythms that I like. I don't want to be the traditional, you know, kind of punk drummer. There's always something that I've wanted, a little different flair, kind of a signature thing, so. But, yeah, it's still a wild ride, man. It hasn't stopped.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you feel like you got everything out here?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's it, yeah, and I think there were points that I was worried that weren't going to make it, and I think for the most part, yeah, and When I say we, we've grabbed some older material that were like 20-second, 30-second songs, and I've worked on those and tried to fit those into the lineup. But, you know, in Europe, when we went over the first time in 08 with the Punk Elvis band, they want an hour-and-a-half, two-hour set. And I noticed when we went in 2017, 40 minutes to an hour is enough. They're okay. they aren't going to rip the place apart because you didn't play. And I'm noticing more and more, for all the young bands out there, headlining don't mean shit. Play the middle, man, because people leave, they get tired. Back in the day, we wanted to be the top dog. We wanted to be a headliner, but guess what? It's not the same. Now I find there's more people when we play the middle slot. When Stalag played a few years back out at the... in the Agora, whatever, that Canyon Club with DKs. We had the middle slot, and I think we had the most people. The place was off the hook. DKs got up there, and it was kind of like a bunch of crickets, and I feel sorry for the band, but it's that way now. It's rare. So, yeah, the middle slots are good. Good for me. We play. We get in, get business done, and leave. And Brandon's pretty much coined it the best. He goes, we leave them kind of with a shock and awe, like, what was that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You
SPEAKER_01:know, when we just played with the Rattle Essence, too, at the Five Star. you know, I, as I called it, we ripped their faces off and put it back in their hands. So they were like, what, what do I do now? Cause I guess after we played a lot of people were like, you can't follow the no project up. Like it's, it's insane. Yeah. It's totally insane. And I agree. So that was my horn. It's a lot of fun, but you know, thank you for, uh, you know, thank Joe for even, and you know, wanting to dig in on some of this, because this is just my perspective and I'm sure, you know, there are, And it'd be nice to find Rick Heller because he's got, you know, growing up in auction art stories. You know, E-Smile's got growing up in auction art stories. My accounts are from being there.
SPEAKER_02:I'll do E-Smile
SPEAKER_01:for sure. You know what I mean? The parties and playing shows and practices. And, you know, you assimilate a lot. My family had businesses in auction art. So as a little kid on a BMX bike, you know, I was riding around auction art, the Twin Centers, which is now Centerpoint and, you know, Saviors and Channel Islands and way out toward, you know, White So, I mean, I, my association is, is solid and true to form as those that live there. I mean, I think I spent a lot of time there and, uh, I have some good roots there and a lot of friends and family. Oxnard's not gone anymore. It's the weirdest, strangest scene. I'm so thankful for all these new bands. I get so excited seeing these new bands. Three Day Holocaust, Civil Conflict, all of them. All these new bands. It's so energizing to go. all right, there's no break in the chain.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:that's right. And that's the part that's been so amazing for nearly 40 years. We're like on 39 years. So it's close enough for me to call it nearly 40. Yeah. Because if I started in 78, I think I got my first drum set in 78. My buddy Pete Balmer, who was a metalhead, goes, dude, buy a drum set. And I'm like, I don't know how to play. Just buy it. Set it up in my mom's condo. They didn't sound like the records we were listening to. Yeah. Took a while.
SPEAKER_02:Good run, though, huh? All right. Well, thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate
SPEAKER_01:it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Dave is a good one. I don't know.