185 Miles South
A hardcore punk podcast.
185 Miles South
34. Carl Valdez (Ill Repute)
This week I'm joined by the original drummer of Ill Repute. This episode rules, and Carl is the man. We talk about:
- Being friends with all the guys before doing a band
- Being late getting into punk
- The IR demos
- Hearing IR on Rodney on the Roq the first time
- Recording Land of No Toilets and drum mishaps
- What Happens Next?
- Going on hiatus then getting back together for Transition
- The IR comeback show in LA in 89
- Big Rusty Balls
- Leaving the band
- Tons of stories old and new
Killer ep and super long. Check it and share with your friends!
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Hey guys, if you want to support the podcast, please like, rate, review, subscribe, share with your friends, toss it around on Facebook, Instagram, wherever. Please spread the word. Also, you can go to patreon.com slash 185 miles south, become a patron, dollar a month, three dollars a month, etc, etc. We're finally rolling out some bonuses and... And just much respect to all the people that are helping me out. I really appreciate that. You can also donate PayPal. It's paypal.me slash 185 miles south. Get it done that way. On this week's episode, we have Carl Valdez from Ill Repute, the original drummer. And this is a nice long one. Carl has a fucking impeccable memory and goes into everything. It's fucking awesome, so here we go.
SPEAKER_00:185 miles south, a hardcore punk rock podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Alright, this week we have Carl Valdez, the original drummer of Ill Repute. And Carl, you said you were going to clean up all the gaps for me, huh?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'll try to do my best. I've been known to have a decent memory, so I'm going to try my best to fill in some of these gaps of what some of these other guys have been talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Cool. So, well, let's start it off. How did you meet all the guys in Ill Repute?
SPEAKER_02:So one thing I was thinking about is all four of us, we were all good friends or pretty good friends before the band even started. The others had talked about how they knew each other in junior high and earlier. But I knew Jimmy from playing football. Yeah, so we both played football since we were freshmen in high school. It's kind of funny because Jimmy played defense. He was a defensive back, and I played wide receiver. Okay. So we had gone against each other on the football field every day at practice, and I'm sure Jimmy's given me plenty of sticks over the years. So we were close in that way because we were all part of the football team.
SPEAKER_01:And this is Wainimi High.
SPEAKER_02:This is a whiny me high. Yeah. So we played together from freshman year on, uh, all through varsity. Uh, and so we had a lot of common friends. I met Tony. Now he was in a math class of mine and, uh, me and another couple of guys always wanted to start this garage band kind of thing. We always had the dreams of being in a band and we had heard Tony played guitar. Okay. So, uh, uh, So we met Tony and we said, hey, we heard you know how to play guitar. He goes, yeah. I goes, hey, we'd like to start a band. Can we come over sometime and just hear you play? It was really funny. He's like, we kind of made Tony audition for us. And we didn't even have a band. So I remember he was playing like... You know, his brother's acoustic guitar, and he was playing Evil Ways by Santana and Proud Mary by Creedence and stuff. I said, all right. So we had a band there. And then John was a year later from us, but because he was good friends with Jimmy, you know, he just hung out with us. And it's funny because there was a club in high school called Interact. And I think it was our junior year or senior year in high school, the club picture has the four of us standing real close to each other in the picture. Three of us were actually officers. So me, Jimmy, and Tony were officers in the club. And John is standing like right behind one of us in the photo. So we were all friends. We ate lunch together, went to Tony's house all the time, playing music. You know, Jimmy... His family, I was really close to his family. His younger brother, Stephen, was actually one of my best friends during this whole era. So we became really close. I know that Stephen's brother, I'm sorry, Jimmy's brother, Stephen, was good friends with my sister. I know John's brother, Mike, hung out with my sister for a long time, too. So we were all pretty close. well before the band years. And we had spent a lot of time together going to parties, going to concerts, and that kind of stuff together as friends.
SPEAKER_01:That makes sense because it seems like you genuinely like each other because there is so much early output, right? There's a million demo songs, and so you're obviously jamming a ton.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's funny because you talk about how close we were. I remember, uh, you know, Jimmy, even during the band years, cause Jimmy was the only, Jimmy and I were the only ones who were really into sports. So we would go to football games. Jim and I would go to the horse track down at Santa Anita. We did a lot of, you know, we'd go to hockey games together. So we did stuff like that away from the band. John and I spent a lot of time with each other too. Um, Yeah, so we were just close. I really think that was one of the things that helped develop that band, was just our closeness as friends and just wanting to create together.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that's the original line-up, just the four of you coming together, right? There was no, let's try a different bass player, try a different drummer or anything. It was originally the four of you.
SPEAKER_02:Right, I know. They... Like they've said before, too, they had the concept of the band before I even got in there. Now, because Tony and I have a little garage band in high school, they had asked me a few times. And it was interesting for me because I just wasn't into the punk rock scene. And it wasn't like they asked me. You know, they may have asked me, hey, do you want to go to punk rock shows with us or whatever? But I don't recall that being a conversation so much as, hey, will you be the drummer in our band? Into a style of music that I really didn't know, and I'll be honest, probably just didn't even like it because I just didn't get it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you, Carl. You're a total poser. You didn't get into punk rock until 1982. Yeah. Or 81 or 82. Exactly. What a new jack.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But it was funny because, yeah, I wasn't into it at all. And it's funny because they said, too, I used to argue with them. Nobody could play like this. I don't understand what this music is. That's not real drumming because it's too fast. Nobody can even play that way.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah. So do you remember the first practice? Yeah. or any of the early practices?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes. They were always at my house. My parents were really cool about us practicing there. And what part of town are you living in, Carl? No, this is in South Oxnard on the J Street, J Street House, which is where the cover of the Land of No Toilets was literally right outside of my front door. And we just practiced there regularly. almost every night that we possibly could. If somebody wasn't working or whatever, it wasn't like my parents said, nope, you guys can't practice tonight. We practiced as much as we could. And Tony would just kind of play a song, hey, we want to do this. And I didn't know punk rock music. I didn't know how to even go about it. So they would just say, hey, Kind of play this kind of beat, you know, and I'm thinking, OK, and I just do the best I can. And so, OK, play a little faster or whatever. And all I really tried to do was try to incorporate the bands that I had listened to, but just faster.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and, you know, I was such a rocker, you know. I'm not going to go into how much I love Bad Company, but I listened to Kiss, and Boston, and Cheap Trick, and Van Halen, and Zeppelin, and then I just played those kind of beats, but just faster. And that was all I knew. I didn't know that there was drummers like Lucky from Circle Jerks, or Derek from Social Distortion out there creating their own style. I was just kind of playing what I just What came natural.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. And the drumming on the demos is a little more straightforward in punk rock, don't you think?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes. And it was more because I just had limited exposure to really what was going on at that time. And the only exposure I really had was what Tony or Jimmy was writing. So I'm thinking, okay, they're playing. Okay, this is the kind of beat I would play in this. And sometimes they say, no, play it like this. But then I kind of grew into the style that they were writing.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah, well, that's becoming a band, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's exactly forming a band and being a band and learning together. I mean, we were all self-taught. So I think we all just kind of grew and matured into our instruments together. And that was the fun part of it all.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. How long after you guys started jamming do you think you went and did the first demo recording?
SPEAKER_02:You're looking back and I'm thinking literally it was probably just months. Yeah. I don't know the exact date that we first started practicing. I'm going to say it was probably sometime in the summer. Okay. I mean, if I'm looking at timelines, it's probably the summer of 81, and we were probably in the studio by, shoot, probably by October or November of that year, and sending a demo tape to Rodney. I really think it happened that fast, and we just didn't know it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, and then when do you start playing shows? Do you remember?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, so New Year's Eve was our first show. It was the first official paid gig, and that was for the Al-Anon Club.
SPEAKER_01:With the beer
SPEAKER_02:guts? No, no, no. That wasn't... So that was our first punk show. We played a show for an Alcoholics Anonymous New Year's Eve party. And they weren't expecting a punk band. It was the mom of one of John's friends. They said, hey, we need a band for this gig. And we thought... She says, well, you guys have a band. And he's like, this is some kind of style of music that... you want at this? And she trusted us and said, no, we want you guys to play this. We opened up with this song. It's on the demo. It's called Rapid Pulse. That was the first song that we played there just to kind of shake them up and say, hey, this is what we're about. And I don't even think we finished the gig. They just kind of said... Okay. Thank you guys. And you know, after the first break, you know, they gave us some money. We got, we got paid 150 bucks for the show. Wow. Okay. Yeah. That was our very first gig.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. How many people fell off the wagon that night?
SPEAKER_02:That was the big joke is that we probably just drove a lot of these people back to drinking.
SPEAKER_01:So then the first punk show is that one that I've seen the fire with the beer guts.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Beer guts circle, a circle one headlined, um, and aggression played as well. So I think we had played a number of house parties by, you know, between there and we were playing silver strand a lot. So at this time, I don't know if this time, but because I had this big garage that was pretty much empty, um, people were coming to the house to watch us practice all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Cool.
SPEAKER_02:And, you know, other bands were coming over just cause it was just, just seemed like that was a thing to do. Yeah. It was a place to hang. I mean, you know, nobody was getting in trouble. Nobody was, you know, drinking out in the street or anything like that. It was someplace to be and we would practice and then we would go from there. And I remember, uh, domino's pizza had just opened around the corner and uh you know so i remember i was going to get pizza a lot with like ron baird would be there from you know so that whole scene was just always at the house and it just it would just seem like a natural thing that we were always doing i mean probably a few times a week people were just coming over just hanging out with us
SPEAKER_01:sure that's so cool and so then you start playing shows Are you building up some popularity?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I remember we just, especially we do the house parties and we're doing the demo tape and we get these, we get it out, we make copies for friends or whatever. I know we started getting some LA house parties. One of the more memorable house parties that we played was Black Flag and Sin 34, Suicidal Tendencies, and Us. And maybe even some other bands, but those are the only bands that I remember. And that's a house show? It was a house party.
SPEAKER_01:Are you playing in a backyard? We were playing in a backyard. How many people do you think are there?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, shoot. I don't know. A hundred?
SPEAKER_01:God, that's insane.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I remember actually Suicidal Tendencies was going to open for us at that time. Oh, I'm, I'm pretty sure circle one had played as well because they were the ones getting us all these parties, you know, down in LA. And, and so I remember Mike, you're talking to John Macias about it was like, why the hell are those guys? They're not even from LA. And why do we got to play before them?
UNKNOWN:Uh,
SPEAKER_02:I just remember. But it was crazy because, yeah, I mean, Black Flakes in 34 was playing and Circle One and stuff at a house party. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's totally insane.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So and then we became good friends or I actually became good friends with a lot of girls from Ojai because I worked with one of the girls' moms there. And I told her, yeah, we got this band. And she's like, oh, my daughter would probably like your music. So she introduces me to a whole bunch of her friends up in Ojai that went to this private school up there. So they became real good friends of ours, too. And so the buzz of our band started going up into the Ojai regions and then somehow merged into the Ventura area. So we got a pretty good fan base there. outside of the Oxnard area pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and can you talk about how you met the Circle One guys?
SPEAKER_02:I'm pretty sure Tony and Jim and John and especially Tony and Jim could probably tell that story better because they were already going to shows. Right,
SPEAKER_01:they probably just met them going to shows.
SPEAKER_02:So they met them going to shows and I've heard different stories about how dave met him but they became really you know close with him and i think they were the ones who encouraged jimmy and tony to start the band
SPEAKER_01:gotcha yeah because they were playing that was kind of my question is those guys have always had the the reputation of being like really intimidating guys where and ill repute always kind of like you guys are you're like a fun awesome band you know and like and ever like everyone to a man is like a nice guy And so it's just kind of, it was kind of an interesting pairing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. How, how we got hooked in with the circle one guys. I think it was because they befriended, you know, John Macias was a great young man. This guy was to me, he was just as a big towering presence. And even my times around John, he was always just really cool to me. And, and I, and I have some, vivid memories of being around them, and especially that reputation that they had. And so the song Bad Rep, I wrote, that was one of the few songs that I wrote, but I wrote it after a night that we were in Hollywood, and the Circle One guys kind of had... I don't know. I don't want to say they had a reputation for starting trouble, but somehow trouble seemed to follow them. We'll say it that way.
SPEAKER_01:You won't be the one starting the rumor. You don't have to worry about it in 2019. Plus, John Macias
SPEAKER_02:is gone now, so he's not going to come after me. I remember we were at the... Oh, I can't even think of the club. It's on Hollywood Boulevard. Anyway, so we're at the whiskey. We're at the whiskey. We're seeing a show. I don't remember who was playing. I think Fear was playing that night. And all of a sudden, all the guys in Circle One and who we used to call the family started walking down Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard is what it is. And just start messing with people. Maybe start intimidating people. Next thing I see is people are getting beat up and a girl's car catches on fire at a gas station. Yeah, I mean, it was crazy. And I remember the cops coming. That
SPEAKER_01:escalated quickly. Talk
SPEAKER_02:about it escalating fast. And I remember us running down Sunset Boulevard, hiding from the cops. And I remember ducking down this alley and I can't remember who exactly I was with hiding from the cops. And I'm thinking, fuck, I'm just a guy. I'm just a drummer in this band from Oxnard and I'm running for my life and I didn't even do anything. And that's exactly the lyrics of bad rep. Yeah. That's awesome. And so I wrote bad rep just from that. I mean, literally probably the next day. wrote these lyrics down and wrote that song and said, this is, this was a story of my life right now. I am being associated with these guys and you know, I'm going to have a bad reputation because of
SPEAKER_01:that. Yeah, that's cool. So you guys are building up a little bit of a name and then the song comes out on Rodney, right? And is, is it like an overnight thing? Do you see like a lot more popularity after that?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. So once that comes on, we're talking about being on the radio. And at that time, I mean, K-Rock was really the only alternative rock station. And at that time, nationwide, it was known for being the... uh you know the top alternative radio station like if you're going to have alternative radio that's who you're you're going to emulate after carol q so getting on rodney or getting on rodney's show and then of course and getting on the on the album you know you're just telling people oh yeah we're ill repute and you know we we did Clean Cut American Kid. And now everybody's like, oh yeah, we know Clean Cut American Kid. So it's amazing. So there was this one show that we played and there's a video floating around from 1984 at the Stardust Ballroom. So Land of No Toilets was already out. But it's not like a household record or anything. It was just before What Happens Next had come out. But When we play Clean Cut American Kid on that video, you just see the crowd is just going nuts. They're all over the stage. They're jumping on stage, singing along with John the best they can. That was such a breakthrough song for being a first song. That's
SPEAKER_01:a legit hit song.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, right away. I remember when Tony presented the band, he's like, hey, I got this song. It just clicked. right away. The original version isn't too different from what got put on the record other than Robbie Fields wanted us to do whoa-ohs instead of the little guitar lick. Yeah, exactly. But that's exactly what a record producer does. He just says, we're going to do this instead of that. Trust me. In the middle, we're going to do this big chant. We're just singing Clean Cut American Kid, where it's just the drums, and we're going to come back in. So that was pretty much it. One thing I did want to say with Tony's musical songwriting genius, I think, is that song is a two-chord song.
SPEAKER_01:I know.
SPEAKER_02:And from there, with his limited training at that time, too, to write this hit song with two chords, It's just amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's a shower song. It's a song he had to have just started singing to himself in the shower and then came out of it and laid it down. Because you're writing a hook, right? You're just writing a hook. And then you've got to figure out how to not fuck it up when you're trying to put it down onto the guitar.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. And it's just a pretty basic song, but it– It's got all these little intricacies, too. People love singing along to it. Everybody's doing their part in the song, and it just comes together as the hit song. We're like, wow, okay. Yeah, it's so cool.
SPEAKER_01:Now, that's one of the most amazing things about Ill Repute, though, is you sniff a little success of the song, and then you make the hardest right turn ever and do Land of No Toilets, which is just a viscerally kind of ugly 7-inch.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. The way it sounds. Like, the guitar tone is gnarly. You step up the drumming to, like, you go full force instead of, like, you're doing, like, the faster mid-paced punk beat on the demos. But here you're going to, like, full fast. Right. So what was that to add the speed?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's funny because I remember, you know, when Tony did his– It's funny, Tony depicted it probably better than I would have even thought it. But as I was thinking about this, it was really just about I had that much more exposure to what was going on in the punk rock scene. Yeah. Here we are, I'm the total rocker guy with the longer hair, didn't want to go to punk rock shows, didn't want to even be in a punk rock band. So once I got in it, I was the one driving down to L.A. two, three, four nights a week, taking us to all the punk rock shows that we can go to. So now it's really just about exposure, and I'm just seeing... all these different bands at different sized venues, whether they were small clubs or were going to these big clubs or arena shows like the Olympic Auditorium. We're playing with bands. We played with Circle Jerks a number of times in those earlier days. I remember playing with Social Distortion a number of times. Seeing those bands and being around them, I started just understanding, not trying to be like every other drummer, but just kind of understanding the music style. And I really think that when you talk about punk rock, you can't compare the L.A. stuff, like the New York stuff or the English stuff. L.A. was hardcore, that's what it was. So really just getting into the hardcore style of music really got me uh listening to it more starting listening to uh what drummers were really doing in the songs and and um and i just started getting faster at it and i was like you know this is i think one of the other bands that i probably don't give a lot of credit for and i probably don't even listen to them a lot too like bands like gangrene Well, yeah, they're out of this world fast. You know, SSD, you know, some of the DC bands listened to a lot of, obviously, Minor Threat was a real big influence in those earlier years. And I just started thinking, okay, this is what they're doing. I can do this. And I just started playing it more and more. And I really think as a band, they started writing more songs in that style, too. So, you know, when you're talking about, like, Songs like Fuck With My Head. I mean, it's a... You know, just... You know, just figure out how to put those breaks in there. Right. And to me, that's the amazing part about our band is that we didn't have any training. We didn't have a producer telling us, oh, you need to do this and that. We just listened and just kind of worked on these songs together. You know, I wrote the beginning of Sleepwalking know the picking part i probably was you know maybe a little bit influenced by tsol but also you know but also obviously uh you know influenced by um you know uh acdc's hell's bells
SPEAKER_01:sure
SPEAKER_02:i mean it's like or or uh those kind of songs but i wrote that a beginning riff And then I kind of figured out, well, if this is the melody of the... And I thought, okay, well, this is the kind of drums I got to put in it. So we just start producing the song. And Tony tells me, after I showed him my little lick, he goes, and he says, I think that's going to go perfect with this other song that I've been writing, which happened to be in the same exact key. So that's where the fast part comes in. Right. So I think... you know from the seven inch it was really just you know getting to play a little bit more with each other i know we always had talked about putting i won't kill for you on there just because it was the first still repute song so i think there was always an intention to put i won't kill for you on that seven inch um
SPEAKER_01:right and that's the song that survived from the demo right Right. It was a demo. Crank it on the seven inch.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, you know, we played, you know, obviously you could tell that we've matured as musicians and as a band at that time, there was some other songs that I know we wanted to put on there. Like I know we wanted to put death row on there, but I just don't think, I don't think we matured enough on that song for it to make it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. There's not a ton of space on a seven inch.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So, um, you know, we'll get back at them and, uh, you know, in society, who cares? I mean, those are like, you know, really fast songs. And so that's, they, but they became our better songs. We like playing those songs. Um, I think even when we did sleepwalking, we had no idea that was going to be, you know, a trilogy of hit songs that were going to be, you know, staples. It was just a song that we wrote and, you know, there was a story to tell and, um, Yo, let's just play
SPEAKER_01:it. You're kind of fucking with those dark chords. And the only band that's kind of doing that is the TSOL, right? Right. In the punk genre. Right. Of course, there's the ACDC, and then you have all the death rock type stuff, too.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But
SPEAKER_02:it's funny, because my experience on a guitar was very limited. I mean, I could probably be the only person to ever say that Tony Cortez was really my... guitar teacher influences as far as guitaring goes. It's just because from being around the band and to come up with a lick like Sleepwalking, I didn't even own a guitar at that time. It's pretty amazing how I think about it.
SPEAKER_01:Super rad. So how do you lose the kick drum track on the 7-inch when it's not digital? I don't even understand how that happens.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not even really sure how it happened. I'm sure. Well, I would presume that maybe a cable got disconnected or or something on the board. Maybe they had hit the mute button on the kick by accident.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So you think it just didn't record?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So we think it just didn't record. So when we go to the final mix and actually it was only. Well, I'm not sure how many songs it was. It was a few songs. It wasn't the entire record, but it was a few songs.
SPEAKER_01:You catch it after a couple songs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and we're going there for the final mix. So, you know, we do a couple of songs and everything's fine. Then we go to a couple more songs and we're like, where's the kick drum? And so at that time, it was like, you know, this is probably, you know, weeks later and it was down in L.A. So we don't have a kick drum in the studio. It's like, we're not going to re-record these songs. Sure. And the engineer, he's looking around the studio for stuff, and he pulls out this Folgers can and this wooden spoon, and he looks at me and he says, do you think you can play the kick drum right here on this Folgers can? I'm like, what? I mean, because you're talking, I mean, it's a totally different. dynamic of your foot versus your hand right and and i said well i'll try i mean that's the best thing we could do so he so he hooks it up and we're setting the eqs right and actually it made a better kick drum sound than my own kick drum and i remember asking him how did you even know to do this and
SPEAKER_01:i fuck up all the time no
SPEAKER_02:he said that On the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street album, Charlie Watts did the same thing, but with a cardboard box. Jesus. And so he had read this in a trade magazine, so he thought, let's just try it. And it really didn't take that many takes. I mean, I really think it was just like a couple takes on getting that in. got the timing down, which to me, I think is pretty amazing too, because it would be hard for a, a slow rock song, much less doing it on in society. And who cares?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. That's insane. No, I mean, the story is insane. So that seven inch comes out and, uh, do you see the popularity go up again? Or are you just, you're just now you have a legit release,
SPEAKER_02:right? So, so now we're going out and, um, Um, you know, we're getting shows and we actually did a Western UL. Well, I went, yeah. Western us tour of, uh, that seven inch. We went to, uh, I remember we went up North. So we went up to the Bay area up here. Sacramento went across to Reno. And that's when we first met Kevin seconds and that whole Reno scene. And then we cut over to, um, Salt Lake City, Denver, back down to New Mexico, then Arizona, and we might have played Vegas and then on the way home. So that was that first seven-inch tour was a little loop.
SPEAKER_01:And then are you touring in the pickup truck?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that was in the pickup truck. A lot of those photos were from that tour. The crazy thing about that tour was was we get to Salt Lake City and I'm just running super high fever, probably at least 103, if not even high. I was as sick as a dog. I didn't even know. I mean, I was just in so much pain. And I remember we did a show and those guys actually had to help me put my drum set together. Oh,
SPEAKER_01:Jesus.
SPEAKER_02:Because I just had literally no strength. I just had enough strength to do the gig. I remember I slept the entire time before, slept right after. I think I slept in Salt Lake City for like two days. Jesus. And got better, finished the rest of the tour. And when I got home, I found out that I had compromised my appendix. and actually got my appendix taken out shortly after the tour. So definitely could have had some fatal... Could have had some fatal... Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:some bad results
SPEAKER_02:there if you didn't take care of it. So that was some memories there. So... That was a pretty hairy tour, but we made it home. Go ahead. Carl,
SPEAKER_01:so people know you're touring in a pickup truck, and you have a trailer? Yes. Okay, so it's two dudes in the front, two dudes in the back of the pickup truck, and then your gear in a trailer.
SPEAKER_02:Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's
SPEAKER_02:wild. It was a Chevy Love. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, we did all kinds of really crazy, crazy, crazy stuff. Can I put you on hold one second? My wife's trying to call me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, sorry.
SPEAKER_01:No problem. All right, and we are back.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So, yeah, two guys in the front, two guys in the back, all equipment in a trailer. We had bought that trailer in Oxnard. I don't even know if we saw. It was just in front of somebody's house, the trailer for sale. I think we paid like$150 for it. That's awesome. And we figured, oh, this could fit. It was like a homemade trailer. It was like a U-Haul box trailer, but it was homemade. It was made of wood. Wow. And it lasted us that whole first tour. There was no problem with that one. It was when we took it out on the second tour did we have problems with it. Or maybe, I don't know if we were on tour or we were going to Arizona. That was it. We did an Arizona trip. And so we're going down I-10 through Indio. And we get a flat tire on this trailer. And the trailer had like really small, you know, trailer wheels. It was like, yo, yo, like, yeah. So, so, so we have a flat tire. We didn't have a spare. We didn't even think of getting one of those fix of flats. We didn't know what to do. It was literally in the middle of nowhere. And we thought, well, we've got these shows in Arizona. What are we going to do? So we take all the equipment out, put it in the back of the truck and, And we ditched the trailer on the side of the freeway, probably about 100 feet off the side of the road.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I think we tried to cover it up with some tumbleweeds or something. And then we said, okay, let's leave it there. Let's go do the shows. And on the way back, let's just figure out what we're going to do. So we go, we do these shows. So now we're going to Arizona with no trailer. All the equipment in the back of the truck, and I think the way we did it then is three of us sat in the front, and one guy, we made one little cubby area in the back for the person to sit in the back. All the way to Tucson or whatever, and back. So we get back, and we go back to the spot, and we see our trailer still sitting there. And we're thinking... Well, okay, it's sitting there, but it doesn't do very good. We're not going to get it fixed. It was probably a Sunday. We thought, well, what are we going to do? I thought, well, we just left it there. And we thought, okay, you know what? Let's come back another day and pick it
SPEAKER_01:up. What's that? Just book a show next month and grab it then.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So what we did is like, okay, let's come back and we'll go get it. We'll borrow somebody else's truck. Who's got a bigger truck and we'll try to fit in the back or we'll try to go into town and get a tire or whatever. So, so we're so stupid. I think it's still going to be there. And, um, It was at least a couple of months until we finally made it back out there. And it was just Tony and I. It was just Tony and I this time. And we drive out there, and we're all excited. We're like, hey, that'd be so cool if it's still there. Yeah, and we're like, it's going to be there. Who's going to mess with this trailer that's got a flat tire and stuff? And then we're about five minutes away from the spot. And I remember looking at Tony and thinking, Oh, I just had a feeling it's not there. So he says, yeah, me neither. All right, well, so now we go to the spot. We're pretty sure because it was next to this storm drain channel. And I said, okay, I know it's going to be right here. So we get there, and we're looking all over for this thing, and it was gone. I was like, what do we think? We're going to leave this trailer on the side of the road two months later. It's going to still be there. I don't know what the hell we were thinking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_02:So the next tour that we go on, we ended up renting. So we take the same truck out, but then we ended up renting a U-Haul trailer this time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then we just started having more breakdowns. You know, the clutch went out. Engine was overheating. Blew a head gasket. Blew radiator hoses. You know, we weren't mechanically inclined. We had no idea that a little four-cylinder Chevy love truck trying to go in the middle of summer or in the heat of summer.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, 110. 110
SPEAKER_02:all the way out to, you know, florida and back we we didn't know that we had to take care of these kind of things i mean we really didn't and so uh when we finally made it home and looking back we didn't spend a lot of money on repairs but it was every dollar that we had
SPEAKER_01:sure
SPEAKER_02:so that became um yeah that was a sick you know we we called it the disaster
SPEAKER_01:yeah well it wouldn't be the last
SPEAKER_02:No, no, that was, you know, and it pretty much set us up for tours to come.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. So after that, then you go in and you start to do the, what happens next LP. Right. And this is the masterpiece.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I appreciate that though. I, I know I listened to what happens next, uh, you know, pretty often. And, uh, And when I listen to that, I mean, there's songs on there where I even impress myself. I'm thinking, what was I think about? What possessed me to even do the drumming like this? You know, and I want to start with the song Oxnard because I remember hearing John talk about that. I remember the exact moment we thought of the song. We were at my sister's house and John just says, you know, we got to write a song that just is a... you know, a chant for Oxnard. You know, just something like, and I told him, I remember joking with him, what, something like, Oxnard? He said, exactly. And that's exactly what the song is. So once again, so with my limited guitar knowledge, you know, probably the next time I was, you know, at practice, I just asked him, hey, Tony, let me see that. And I just strummed the chords for Oxnard. And he came up with the guitar riff at the beginning. And, you know, so that's really how the birth of Oxnard came through. And then What Happens Next, you know, that song, you know, is just so... It's just a
SPEAKER_01:blast of fury.
SPEAKER_02:I couldn't even describe the drumming on that song. It's not like anything I've ever seen. And it's definitely not anything I've ever heard or I've ever done before.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, someone needs to try to put it down into sheet music.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. I couldn't even tell you what time it's in or anything like that. And what I do on that song is I don't even play like a regular. I mean, there's parts of it where I'm playing a beat, but the meat of the song, I'm just hitting cymbals like I'm doing cymbals and drag rolls and and and flams in this big, giant whirlwind of circle the entire time. And I don't know what made me think that was the drumming that needed to be on that song.
SPEAKER_01:Well, maybe the song is a tornado, so you're just literally working your set like a tornado.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I don't know if there's any video of me playing that back then, because I would love to see, because I don't even know what that even looked like. And then one of my favorite songs on that album is Wayward.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And Wayward, to me, if I was going to depict the musical genius of Ill Repute, it was Wayward. I mean, the stops and the starts, those weren't produced in the studio. Those were real starts and stops that we were doing on the fly at 240 beats per minute. And I don't even, once again, I don't know what made me think, hey, let's start the song like this. Who thinks of that? I mean, I don't even know what even made me think of that song in that way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's ahead of its time. It's like, it could be a precursor to like what a lot of the power violency bands did. And a lot of the starts and the stops, it's like, you know, once you move beyond Uniform Choice and you get into like the Youth of Today's and like the the late mid to late eighties straight edge stuff. Like a lot of that music is, is predicated on starts and stops.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And yeah, I mean, this is, this is very early for hitting starts and stops like that in fast music.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. And, and Jimmy's bass playing, I'll, I'll, I'll go on record and say he was, you know, he was doing bass lines that, you know, once again at, super fast speed. Once again, self-taught. One of the things I really liked about our band was just creating that all together. Everyone
SPEAKER_01:was kicking in, right? Because Jim wrote a book in his cover?
SPEAKER_02:Right. He also was the mastermind behind Cherokee Nation.
SPEAKER_01:so
SPEAKER_02:little known fact about jimmy he was a huge fan of 60s pop music so i remember in the earlier days of ill repute him just listening to a lot of old 60s music or early 70s music and just trying to figure out which of these songs can we make into a punk rock song
SPEAKER_01:well he chose a good one
SPEAKER_02:so cherokee nation was one cherry cherry by neil diamond was another one um There were some other songs that we were playing with, but we just never came to a good production or arrangement. But Cherokee was one where we just figured out, we listened to the song a couple times on his record player. We kind of figured out, okay, well, this is how we're going to do it and arrange it. And yeah, his bass lines on that song are just freaking incredible. I really think he, I don't know, underrated or not. He was very, very good. And we were so new to the whole music writing thing and understanding what a bass player, you know, as a rhythm section was supposed to do. We never really followed each other in a format that most rock bands do. We just kind of played what we thought was good for us. And I at one time actually compared our... musicality to like the who the band the who i mean
SPEAKER_01:because each guy's playing an instrument he's like jimmy isn't backing up yeah he's not following the kick drum to add meat to the sound he's just like no getting wild
SPEAKER_02:he's just getting wild i'm doing my thing tony's keeping it all down with the rhythm guitar you know john with his singing style you know brings it all together and that's that's to me is what became the the beauty of ill repute As a songwriting core. I know in the first 7-inch, we gave each other... We each took individual credit for the songs that we wrote. But when we did What Happens Next, all songs were written by Ill Repute as a band.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you just are a band by then, right? Yeah. And it's obvious that you guys played together so much. And that is like the... the culmination of ill repute is what happens next. It's inarguable that it's the best thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, until bleed, which I also love.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But, you know,
SPEAKER_02:those, you know, those light yourself, they, they, they did some good stuff on that too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I love a lot of that. So what happens next comes out and, uh, what happens then? Like, do you, do you, is there another popularity boost? Like, are you,
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. So by this time we're playing Olympic auditorium and we're like, main support for, you know, bands, and we were playing, you know, and I think as we started getting more gigs with the bigger L.A. bands, you know, we're headlining a couple shows of our own, you know, we're going on that second tour, yeah, we're basically, you know, it just becomes a blur because we're just playing so many shows, we're getting feedback, we're getting radio airplay, you know, Clean Cut America's kids still being played out there even more but then college radio stations are picking up you know um what happens next album when they're playing that all over uh book it is cover and and cherokee and and fill it up just become you know staples for you know stations to play oxnard starts getting played all over the place so we're playing a lot more um And the entire idea was to come out with another album. And some of those songs ended up on the Nardcore, first Nardcore compilation. Yeah, I mean,
SPEAKER_01:you have a song on every Mystic Comp, basically.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. So we're playing that. We're, you know, Sleepwalking 2 is written. Another song that I wrote was, which I still, I underappreciate, is It's Not Gonna Happen to Me.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love that song.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so John wrote the lyric set, but I wrote all the music to that, the slow part, the fast part, and the slow part. Now, that was definitely heavily influenced by Minor Threat. But those are songs, and we did a couple other songs live that we wanted to have on the album. So we had... I'd say we probably had enough music for about 75% of another album. Uh, we did a song called stop and think, which is on the Halloween live album and change, which ended up being on the, uh, best of demo tape. Um, so we had, we probably had, I don't know, six, seven, eight more songs that we could have put out on another album. And we were kind of working toward that. And that was when, uh, the conflict of do we go on tour again uh you know had risen and those three guys said no let's go on tour again and it was funny because me and doug moody were the only ones who said don't go on tour right now so um i decided i decided not to go on tour and
SPEAKER_01:so this is right before the scared straight tour
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Yes. It was right before the scared street tour.
SPEAKER_01:Cause you don't go, you don't go, but Scott Radinsky plays drums for over.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. And I had a regular job too, which, you know, I'm, you know, 35 years later into public works, engineering and maintenance, you know, that was the beginning. And I was like, well, you know, if we don't have a album to tour on, then I'm not going to take time off to go. If we're not going to be, and, and I was so ignorant and, of how the process worked anyway. Looking back, I probably thought, you know, we should have just gone on tour again because we would have really killed it, you know, a year later after What Happens Next had gone out and touring the full U.S., you know, doing a full U.S. tour the right way. Right.
SPEAKER_01:So What Happens Next comes out in 84. When does that tour take place?
SPEAKER_02:The tour I did not go on was in 1985. It was
SPEAKER_01:almost a year later.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, um, I didn't, uh, so I didn't go on tour, but I didn't leave the band either. I said, well, I'm not going to go. So that's what they got Scott to play. And I kept track with them and, and they would call me, you know, or, or there, they would call their girlfriends and their girlfriends would call my girlfriend. And so, so I would, I was pretty much knowledgeable of what they were doing. Sure. You know, you know, so I was keeping track of them and, and, You know, wishing them the best. Hey, I hope everything's good. And they tell me how we're here in Detroit. You know, this show got really killer and stuff. So, you know, they let me know right away when the stuff got stolen, too. It wasn't like they were hiding it from me. And when they came home, I was still part of the band, and we had gigs in L.A., and I played them.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And so do you keep going strong through 86, 87? No,
SPEAKER_02:pretty much through 85 now. And maybe 86, and that's when it just started getting to be a little bit more. So
SPEAKER_01:Omelette comes out in 85, and that's kind of like a compilation of a lot of the comp tracks and so forth. Right. And Cherry picks songs off each record. Right. And so you're going through 86, you think? Yeah. End of 86? I'd
SPEAKER_02:say by mid, well, let me think. So in 86... february of 86 uh i got married to my first wife okay and my son was born so i know at that time we were not playing okay so and
SPEAKER_01:because like how is it how is the scene is it like is it strong
SPEAKER_02:no i think at that time it started getting a little bit more violent i mean i think that was when uh there's a lot of reports of us playing and then People are just watching out for their backs because fights are just starting out in the crowd left and right.
SPEAKER_01:Is that LA or is that Oxnard as well?
SPEAKER_02:I don't remember it in Oxnard as much, but definitely in L.A. And that just became the prevalent thing that was going on there. There was talks of certain bands being, you know, attracting a gang element. I think the, you know, unfortunately due to the popularity of the What Happens Next album with the skinhead on the cover, you know, a lot of the Nazi racist skinheads started coming showing up our shows not not thinking that we were the skinhead band too but it just i think they started to like our songs and showing up too and then crowds just wouldn't like that so then more fights start and i think we just kind of quit playing i mean i don't even i didn't do a lot of our booking it was all of a sudden we just quit playing and there just weren't shows for we decided we're not gonna play right now
SPEAKER_01:Do you think you quitting playing, though, was it reactionary to that stuff, or was it just because you were kind of becoming a little more of an adult?
SPEAKER_02:I think it was a little bit of both. I think Tony had his son– my son and Tony's oldest son that passed away very close in age. I mean, they're actually– six weeks apart from each other. So
SPEAKER_01:you guys both have a kid. So we
SPEAKER_02:both have kids. Right. So we're all taking a little bit of a turn into the family life, or at least Tony and I were. And that obviously becomes a major focus of things. So that becomes obviously more important. And being around violent shows becomes less important.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Okay, so then... what do you do for the next couple of years? Or there's, there's a handful of years before you get back in and do
SPEAKER_02:transition. So, um, at that time, I remember, you know, John started going to guitar school and we're still hanging out. I mean, I remember going down and visiting John at the, at his school and stuff. And, um, you know, we're, I think, you know, a couple of years goes by and he said, Hey, I got a couple of songs I want to try out. Do you want to jam? Um, Before
SPEAKER_01:this, Carl, do you guys still play once a year or anything? Or do you still jam twice a year?
SPEAKER_02:I don't even think we did in 86 and 87. I don't think we did. We didn't play any shows that I recall at all. So he's off at guitar school, and we decide that, hey, let's jam. John says, hey, I got some new songs I wrote. I'm going to jam. And that was pretty much the transition album. But in addition to that transition album, we had made a whole different other album of other stuff that Tony was writing as well. Pretty much just rock music. It was not punk rock at all. I'd say the most punk rock song that we even played during that time was a song on the transition album called Burnin'. And that's not even that, or Sleepwalking 3. Those were probably the closest thing to punk rock songs. We just turned into a rock band.
SPEAKER_01:There's two songs on Transition, and I'm not super familiar with the record. I have it. I don't listen to it a lot because it's not that good. But there is two songs that Tony sings on that are really good. And I don't know the names. Vernon's probably one of them. Vernon's probably one of them. And there's another, there's like, cause I listened to it last week or a couple of weeks ago and there's legitimately two good songs of Tony singing that are like good, good songs.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So that, and, and there was a whole nother, probably eight other songs that we had recorded as well in the, in the whole, uh, in the recording sessions, we were going down to San Diego and, probably every other week
SPEAKER_01:to
SPEAKER_02:record when Mystic moved down there. And we recorded these songs. I don't know if we had the intention of coming out with another album. I mean, they offered to write, you guys want to come out with an album? We said, well, all right, let's record them. And we recorded all these songs. And once again, it wasn't until the final mix that we just thought, we can't release this stuff. I mean, we just dawned on us that one, it wasn't really that good because we weren't talented enough to pull off the songs. I think if we played those songs today or if we gave them to another band, it would probably be decent. I mean, it's not going to be a great album, but it'd be decent. I remember Jimmy saying one time, we were just trying to be a band. We recorded a video of us practicing these songs in John's rec room that he was working at. So we were practicing there like every other Sunday and we would record ourselves. So there's a video of us playing these songs. And we had fun playing them and we didn't think anything about, you know, Our fans aren't going to like this. We would work on it just like we worked on other songs. We would arrange them the best that we could. We would practice what we can. You could tell John was getting a little bit better at guitar and Tony singing a little bit more too. We had every intention of just recording these songs. When we pulled the plug on it, Mystic said no. You guys got to come out with something. So which of these songs do you want on there? So what came out in transition actually ended up being the best representation of us at that time that could actually be presented on an album.
SPEAKER_01:But it's only about half of the songs you recorded.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You have everything else?
SPEAKER_02:I do have everything else. I found an old cassette tape from when we were mixing. And I converted that digitally. So maybe that's my, I could hold that over the band's head for ransoms. Like, hey, I could always release this because I'm sure I have the only digital copy of this stuff. But it was funny is there was a time where Tony and I wanted to go down to Mystic and try to find the original tapes because we were always afraid that Mystic was going to release that stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And which is still a fear, I guess. We never found them. But yeah, we went down to Doug Moody's house and Doug couldn't stay with us for the weekend, but he let us stay in the house. And Tony and I looked all over that place for those tapes.
SPEAKER_01:A bunch of stuff was destroyed. Wasn't it like the sound of California? Yeah. What was that? It was something.
SPEAKER_02:Oh,
SPEAKER_01:right. There was a fire.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. I've heard of that. So hopefully it got destroyed there, but I did happen to have one cassette tape of that. And actually,
SPEAKER_01:I'm glad you have it. So it's a bunch of the stuff with Tony singing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's both Tony and John singing songs that I guarantee nobody else has ever heard outside of our band and our closest family or friends who heard this demo tape.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Carl, I hope you spread the love.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so that was a... And I didn't even know I had it. I think I was cleaning out one of my moves. I found, what's this cassette tape? I played it. I thought, oh my God, this is the... We had a song called New Day. And we thought, this is the New Day stuff.
SPEAKER_01:The New Day sessions.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, even when you listen to it because the tape is so warped, you can just tell it's so slowed down. I mean... It's definitely not an E. I wouldn't even say it's an E-flat. It's probably closer to a D-tuning by the time you listen to it.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:But it's pretty up... There's some upbeat songs. John wrote some cool songs. But it was definitely rock. It was not punk rock anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so what happens after transition because it's still... you take four years until big rusty balls comes out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, so somewhere along there, we ended up playing that riot show, uh, which was infamous for, um, Jimmy basically starting a fight out in the crowd.
SPEAKER_01:Tell the story. So where's, where's the shot?
SPEAKER_02:This is in downtown LA at like a community center in literally in downtown LA. And, uh, So we're playing and it was supposed to be the return of ill repute. Cause now this is the first show. This is, I think in 1988. So this is the first show that we've played in at least two and a half years.
SPEAKER_01:And this is so, but 88 is before transition. So
SPEAKER_02:it would have been right after transition.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So sometime in 89. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So, so we're, so we get the show and now we didn't know that operation IV was opening for us. And if you see the flyer, one of the other opening bands in real small print says The Offspring. So it's The Offspring, Operation IV, that says from San Francisco, and us. And so those two bands play, and they've got a good crowd going. Yeah, so they've got a good crowd going. And we have a few of our friends from Oxnard are with us, and we're playing. And... We were playing a lot of transition stuff, but we knew we were going to play the old staples. We were going to play Laugh It Off was in there. We were going to play Fuck With My Head and Sleepwalking. They were coming up, but the first few songs were all new songs. And we even opened up with Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll. I don't know why, but we just did. So the crowd's just kind of like speechless at us. Yeah. And I guess there was a donation box of clothes or something there. And they just started throwing clothes at us. I mean, I don't know if they were really trying to hit us at first. To me, I just thought they were just screwing around. Right. And I remember Jimmy just turning to me. He says, one more fucker throws something up on stage. I'm going to deck him. He just says that to me in between songs. And I'm like, all right, whatever. So... We start playing a song, and I think it was Laugh It Off. I remember playing it, and somebody throws a jacket, and it lands right on Jimmy's bass. And so in the middle of the song, Jimmy just puts his bass in the guitar stand, and the rest of us are still playing. He goes out in the crowd, nails the guy, and then the guy's friend tries to jump in. Jim nails him, knocks him out, and then Jim just walks back up on stage like, okay, let's get back to business. Within seconds, this mob riot goes on. People are up on stage trying to beat us up. I remember just seeing Jimmy with his bass in his hand by the neck and just swinging it. Just swinging it all over the place. And I remember somebody got a microphone and And I got hit in the head with a microphone. I see people come at me. So now I got my cymbal stands and I'm just swinging people. I'm just swinging to just keep people away. And then at the last, you know, I look over and Tony's trying to keep peace and trying to, you know, protect what he could on stage. And then all of a sudden I didn't see Tony anymore. And they had the steel bait doors for these auditoriums and they just let it down. just to protect us from the crowd. And I was like, what the hell's happened? So during this riot part, Op IV and Offspring, they're gone. They're like, who knows what the hell happened. They just took off. They weren't going to stick around for this. And so now we're gathering up our equipment and we're like, where's Tony? I don't know. Well, let's get out of here. So we get all of our stuff and then meet Jim and John. And whoever was with us, we'd go meet up at a bar somewhere, just kind of decompress and think, what the hell just happened? And we still had no idea what happened to Tony. And I don't think it was until the next day that we find out that he got a beer can, full beer can, thrown at his face, point blank. And it split his lip wide open.
SPEAKER_01:so
SPEAKER_02:he was in the emergency room the whole time and if you ever see next time you see tony you can see he still has a scar on that on his lip so so that was it we just kind of well you know that didn't go very well that was the return of the repute so that was so we just didn't even talk to each other i mean we literally didn't play again for another couple years
SPEAKER_01:yeah but then in the early 90s you guys start playing like It has to be before Big Rusty Balls comes out, right? You guys are getting all this traction, playing mogs, and killing it in Ventura.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so what happens is the next couple years goes by again. And Tony calls me up one day, and he says, hey, I got all these new songs you want to jam. And around the same time, I think John said, hey, I got these songs too. Let's start jamming. And I thought, all right, well, this is called Jimmy also. And then we just started up with a whole new deal, the whole Big Rusty Balls era of songs. And we determined as a band that we weren't going to be a rock band anymore. You know, punk rock had progressed dramatically just in that four or five year break that we had in recording. you know, so we, we ended up playing a lot of the songs from the big rusty balls album before it was recorded.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Now, uh, one of the things, you know, so we're playing box and we were still playing locally. I don't, we didn't, we're going to LA or anything. We just played in Ventura. Uh, I remember, so we opened for green day somewhere along the line in, um, in Ventura at the old pussycat theater, which doesn't even exist anymore over on Santa Clara street. Um, So we're doing shows and trying to figure out how these songs... We're basically arranging a whole new album. Now, the very first song on the album of Big Rusty Balls is called Hold On. The original version of that, and this is one you were talking to John about, I have that original version, and the version was actually called Stand, and the lyrics were really more about standing for peace and instead of standing for violence. It's the same exact music. And we had recorded this demo tape with Jerry Finn. So we did four songs on the demo tape. And by the time we went in the studio to do Big Rusty Balls, Tony says, no, I got a whole new vocal pattern. And we changed the song, the song lyrics. I mean, the music was still the same. But we hooked up with Jerry because Jerry was... had a punk rock band. What was the name of their band? It was kind of like more of a psychedelic rock band. Jerry was a really good drummer, but he was going to recording school at that time. And when we were getting ready to record, I think John was hanging out with Jerry a lot. He says, hey, let's ask Jerry Finn and see if he'll do it. We offered Jerry$100 to record us. And so he took it. And since he had connections with studios, he would get us in, but we'd have to go like in off hours when nobody else was recording and stuff. So we recorded the demo. and uh we kind of shot that demo around and that's how we got on doctor strange and he was like sure i'll take you guys um and also uh fat mike had got a copy of it and he wanted he wanted to produce this as well and um for us it was a you know it was a hard decision but it wasn't really that hard i mean look back and think wow we could have been one of fat Mike could have been on Fat Records in the earlier days, but they were the early days of Fat Records. So we didn't know. And plus, it was a guy that used to open for us. I mean, NoFX used to open for us. And NoFX had gotten big, but we didn't know the value of Fat Mike's record producing talents. And so we thought, well, let's just go with Dr. Strange, because he already had a couple other bands. He was doing Voodoo Close Goals, and he had just signed Face to Face, I think, for their first LP. And also we went with Dr. Strange, and we were happy with that. We were happy with working with Jerry again. I think he created the magic on that Big Rusty Balls album. I listened to that album. quite often i think the production is very good i think the songwriting is good um
SPEAKER_01:yeah jamie just six songs
SPEAKER_02:jamie just yeah you know i remember you know jim wrote that and i think uh you know um Yeah, a lot of the songs on there really showcased Tony as a better singer, and John's guitar playing was so much better as well. So we were really excited about that. I remember when we took the picture for the Big Rusty Balls, I remember we had to climb a fence, because those Big Rusty Balls were over on Harbor Boulevard, and we had to go over a barbed wire just to get in there, and we were spray-painted. big rusty balls that was real spray paint it wasn't photoshopped at all so we had a great time recording that again practicing for it and you know then we started getting a lot more shows with that and we thought okay this is it we're gonna do this again you know we're a band and we're gonna do this
SPEAKER_01:yeah and then you just take off and play some more And then break up? It didn't last that long, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Well, that was that whole thing with the Portland trip and the tour and John going surfing.
SPEAKER_01:So what's your take on it? What's your take on it?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I remember vividly, you know, we were sitting down and said, hey, we're going to get these shows. And I remember John just saying, hey, I've got these plate tickets to Europe. And we're like, you know, we just came out with this album. So why would you make these plans? Because you know we want a tour. And it wasn't like he was just going to be gone for a week or so. It was like a month. And it was right after the album had gotten released. Well, you know, this is the formula. This is how it is. And he says, yeah, but I've got non-refundable tickets. And he told us that. And John had always gone to Europe. part of the summer in the four or five years that we didn't go playing, which was fine. But now that we had a new album, there's a reason why we need to stick around for the summer. And he says, well, I need to go. And I remember the words was, well, and he was saying, so you guys are kicking me out of the band. And we said, no, we're not kicking you out of the band. You're making a choice. And you're choosing to go to Europe now instead of you know, going on the road with us. And he felt it was an ultimatum. We just felt like he was making a choice. And we said, well, we're going to keep doing this. So we went to Portland, Oregon to this huge punk festival. It was three days. I don't know how many bands played. I mean, probably, you know, it was a mini, it was a mini Lollapalooza, mini Warped Tour before they even had them. And we, you know, We played right under, I think, Channel 3 on one of the days. I mean, we were pretty high up there. And there were probably a thousand kids there, probably just wondering where the hell John is. So we tried to pull it off with Tony as a lead singer.
SPEAKER_01:Did you do a three-piece, or did you get a rhythm guitarist? That
SPEAKER_02:show, we did a three-piece. But then by the time we went on tour, we ended up getting Mike... Vallejo from Circle One. And we tried out a bunch of other different guitarists. And it just didn't pan out. I mean, we tried our best. Tony did a great job. I mean, I think...
SPEAKER_01:So you did a tour, though.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we did a tour. We went all the way to the East Coast. We went from here all... Well, we did two separate tours. So we did the western half of the United States. We went all the way up to Seattle and looped back down through... colorado back to i think west texas like el paso back home
SPEAKER_01:and that's a three-piece in one with
SPEAKER_02:that one we did with mike valeo
SPEAKER_01:okay so the portland was a one-off and then he did the
SPEAKER_02:west portland was a one-off came home and then we did a tour again
SPEAKER_01:okay
SPEAKER_02:and i think i think when we came home Well, no, because we did a tour of two halves. So we did the western half first, came home again, and then we were getting ready to go for the eastern half of the United States. John was home by that time. And I had a conversation with John years later, and he said he would have gone on tour with us. But I think at that time there was egos in play, and we were waiting for the first person to apologize. And nobody ever did, so we ended up going without John. But... hearing from John later on, he admitted that he would have gone if we had asked. But we never asked, and so we went on the second half, and that was all the way across to Texas, straight up from Texas all the way to Minnesota, across Minnesota to New York and Connecticut, then all the way down the eastern seaboard down to Florida, and then come out. So that tour was going okay. We had a big show we had a couple big shows I remember one in Oklahoma and one in Connecticut those were probably the two biggest shows and you know met up with Billy Joe from Green Day came and saw us in Minnesota so that was kind of cool he had stayed at my house earlier in the year so he kind of he kind of knew that we were going to be in Minnesota he was going to be in Minnesota at the same time so he came and saw us and Jimmy and I had a falling out in Minnesota, and I wanted to come home. I just wanted to stop the tour. It wasn't going well. We were starting getting shows canceled because they started getting word that John wasn't with us, so a lot of promoters started pulling out. And, you know, we did our best we could as a band, but by that time, you know, My son was at home. He was already seven or eight at this time. His mother, who was supposed to be watching him, who I had already divorced, she wasn't doing a very good job watching him. So I'm worried about him the entire time, too. So coming home, I just thought, you know, I need to take care of my son. This wasn't working out for me anymore. It wasn't fun. That was really what it was. This wasn't fun anymore.
SPEAKER_01:And so you leave the band.
SPEAKER_02:So I left the band at that time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then do you play with them again? They get back together in like 2000 to do some one-off
SPEAKER_02:shows? So during that 2000 time, they wanted to do a reunion show or a benefit show for... It was either... It was either for Henry, when Henry Knowles passed away, or Mark Hickey. It was one of those two. I think it was Henry. They wanted to get together for a reunion show. So I'm thinking, okay, I'll do it. And so we start practicing. And it was me and Tony and John. And we get this other guy, Fred Dixon, to play bass. Which I had just met Fred. And we only play the old stuff. We're just basically playing the Seven Inch and the What Happens Next album. We just go through and we're just playing. We're just practicing these songs. And we were having so much fun. We were just sort of laughing. We were showing up for practice and just trying our best to get through these songs. And it was starting to sound really good. And then someone was going to book us for a reunion show, Return of Ill Repute show opening for Guttermouth at the Ventura Theater. So at that time, Jimmy gets wind that we're playing again. And so he says, hey, why aren't you having me play in the band? And so we talked to him and we say, hey, okay, well, if you're going to show up for practice and here's where we're going to be with your equipment, then, you know, we'll see how it goes. So we, so now the four of us practice a couple of times and I'll admit it sounded really good. We were just better.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So, um, so then, uh, what happened was the show got canceled or something happened at the Ventura theater and they couldn't do it that night and they got moved to a different venue. Um, and then that show got canceled and, And at that time, I was just like, you know, tried. You know, it sounded good, but I'm not going to keep putting this effort in to something that I don't know where this is going. You know, there's reports. And at that time, I had become, I don't want to call it religious, but I became a student of the Bible at that time. And that just became my focus. You know, and I was attending, you know, our Bible fellowship regularly. And then I was remarried and that, you know. you know, that just became my whole focus. And then playing in the band wasn't a priority anymore. And even though those practices were fun, when things just started falling apart, I really just thought it was revelation from God that I didn't need to be playing with them anymore. Now that's, that's the truth. I just felt like, okay, these are signs the first time. Yeah. Maybe
SPEAKER_01:God told me not to rock.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. You know, take a break from these guys right now. And then, then that's where they found Chuck later on. And I've always supported them. You know, even though we moved away, even back when I was still living down there, whenever a little review would play, I'd always try to show up, uh, became really close with shock. There's no hard feelings. We talk all the time. Um, I'm really, I'm really proud of Chuck and he's, he's kept my style in most of the drumming, you know, at least 90, 95% of it.
SPEAKER_01:He's such a, he's such an unsung hardcore hero.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. No, he is. And when I watch him play, I mean, some of these songs, like I said, like with Wayward or some of these other songs, and I'll listen and I'll watch how he plays it, and I'm thinking, hey, he got that part really, I mean, he's almost doing exactly what I would have done, which, not that I'm saying it was really hard, but he had He had done that. He didn't try to make the songs his own. He really tried to play the songs in the ill-repeat style and really in my style with drumming, which I think is the reason why they still sound very good to this day. Because he's just still, they didn't try to slow it down for him or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, you have to play the wild beat, right? Like you can't just do a straight fast beat on some of those songs. It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:Right. That's
SPEAKER_01:amazing for him to come in and be selfless like that. It's weird to be the new ill repute guy when he's been in the band for almost 20 years now.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. He's still a new guy. The one thing I've always appreciated about these guys too, especially Tony, is that he's kept me involved with what I call the business side of ill repute. Like when the documentary and the book were being written and developed, He Tony and I had talked about doing a book years before that. And so we had gotten a lot of notes down together because he he at the time when he was still talking to Doug Moody, Doug said, hey, I want to do an ill repute book. So Tony knew that I would have the stories and the memory. So there was a few weekends in a row where Tony would just hang out and we would hang out. We just start writing. writing the stuff down and figuring, you know, what happened here, what happened there. And, you know, what happened next, you know, no pun intended, but it was kind of like what, what we did. So he kept me in the business side of things. So then when the, the documentary was being developed by Stan, Tony would call me and say, Hey, this guy wants to do a book and documentary. I was, you want to meet with us here? And, and so I, I would go and meet with him so he kept me involved with that then with the Netflix shows Glow and Stranger Things he's keeping me involved with that so now we've got Head of Steam gone and then when the documentary came out I remember Jeff Hershey was saying how he'd love to get this thing promoted at a high level and at the time when I was working at the city of Ventura One of my coworkers happened to be the mayor or a council member at the city of Port Hueneme. And I don't remember if I came up with the idea or Jeff came up with the idea. He goes, hey, is there a way you can get a key to the city or something like that? And I said, I don't know if you can get a key to the city, but they have these things called proclamations, and they give these out to people who do significant things for the community. So I talked to the council member. His name was Ellis Green. And he and I were pretty close at the city of Ventura. I said, hey, I got a personal question. You're on the council. Would you consider giving our band a proclamation? And he says, well, what for? He didn't know anything about punk rock. So I start giving him the whole history of Ill Repute and how we all grew up in the area. And it created this whole music scene. And now they're doing a book and a documentary on us. So it would be really cool. So he ends up talking to the council. And one of the council, well, the mayor at the time, his name was John Sharkey, was an old rocker and knew who we were.
SPEAKER_01:I
SPEAKER_02:mean, he was an older guy. I mean, he's got to be like in his early seventies now, but, and he was just like, so he was excited. And so Ellis tells me, you know, a couple of weeks later, uh, you know, work is, he goes, okay. write something up. We'll get it through council and I'll give you a date. And then he says, okay, you got to get a date April 7th. We're going to give you a proclamation. So, so, uh, can we get there? And I, I have videos that, and the council chambers was packed. I mean, it was, it was so packed that we found out that from friends who showed up a little late and we're just hanging out outside, uh, out there on Ventura Road because they couldn't get in. I mean, it was literally standing room only. I remember one of the council members saying, you know, I've never seen so many tattoos in my life. But, you know, to me, so my point was that, you know, Tony had always kept me involved with those kind of things.
SPEAKER_01:To finish that story, Carl, that's when the first ill repute day got called, right? Right. Yeah. Just so because not everyone that listens to the pod knows everything.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. So that became the old repeat day, April 7th, 2014. Tony had special buttons made, you know, and they gave us a proclamation basically commending us for our musical achievements, you know, in, you know, in creativity and, in the city of Port Hueneme.
SPEAKER_01:So now every
SPEAKER_02:April 7th
SPEAKER_01:is the old repute day.
SPEAKER_02:It's the old repute day, right. And it's kind of a, I don't want to say it's cheesy, but it's kind of cool that we got this proclamation. How many bands get a proclamation?
SPEAKER_01:I don't think it's cheesy at all. It's so rad.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so that was exciting. That was exciting. And then the official documentary and book come out that same year, I mean, months later. So now I'm kind of connected with the band without playing with the band anymore. And that still just became satisfying to me. I mean, you know, they're doing their thing and I keep track of them. I try to see them when I can. Yeah. But I'm pretty content where I'm at now, too.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you moved.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we moved. So I got remarried, and I moved up here to San Jose. And whenever a Nardcore band comes through the Bay Area, I always go and see them, seeing the Grimm up here. Yeah. I'm trying to think, Stalag 13 played here not too long ago. Fistfight on Ecstasy was here a couple times. I went out and saw them. They're not an hardcore band. Walk Proud, who was instrumental in our return in the early 90s, played up here. I went and saw them. I'm really close with Jeff Hershey, so whenever Night Demon comes up to the Bay Area, I go see them as well. Drink
SPEAKER_01:from the chalice! Shout out, Jeff. Yep. Jarvis, Jarvis, my
SPEAKER_02:bad. So whenever bands like that come here, Dr. No played up here not too long ago, went and saw them at Gilman Street. So I just still try to see them. I started drumming in a Scottish bagpipe band, in a competitive Scottish bagpipe band on their drum corps.
SPEAKER_01:That's pretty
SPEAKER_02:rad. Yeah, so that's like the hardest drumming I've ever done. I have to practice to be good at it. And then the other side thing I've done musically, I started teaching at school of rock
SPEAKER_01:oh cool
SPEAKER_02:so there's a school of rock that's literally about two less than two miles from my house and that was my way of giving back to kids I mean these are kids from seven to seventeen in varied levels of talent and all the other instructors are like working musicians and stuff. And even when they asked me why I want to work there, I said, well, I got a regular day job, but this is what I've done musically. And I just want to be around and teach kids what it's like to be in a band. So whenever they get squirrely, I sit them down and I tell them old man story time. And I tell them the stories of ill repute and what it was like to be forming a band, you know, getting on, you know, being on the radio, making records, touring, you know, sleeping in the back of a van or a pickup truck, you know, and having riots, you know, start at a show that you're at. Some of the kids are really talented. We'll probably be professional musicians some days, and other kids are just there. Parents drop them off, and we end up babysitting them for an hour or so. But it's fun. It's great to see these kids do these songs and pull them off really well. We had a girl in our school a couple years ago. There's an international competition called Hit Like a Girl. Uh, it's a drum, drum competition and she actually won it. All
SPEAKER_01:right.
SPEAKER_02:Came from our school. So, um, you know, so it's kind of cool. So there's, so there's some good talent coming out there. And so I, I usually, you know, I've been teaching there a couple, two or three nights a week, uh, after work, just for a couple of lessons, I'll give private lessons to the, to some drummers. And then we do group lessons as well. And we just do some, you know, depending on the age level, we'll do, um, Some songs, easy songs, hard songs from all different eras of rock. So it's funny to try to see a 10-year-old kid try to play Blink-182 or Face to Face or something like that. But you teach them just their role in a band and how you have to start listening to each other.
SPEAKER_01:I think I would have them play that song, the, I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the drum all day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I don't think we've ever played that song.
SPEAKER_01:That should be the first song, and see if they're committed or not.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. See if they give you that look. One of the punk songs that we do for all of our beginner bands is we do Blitzkrieg Bop.
SPEAKER_01:Perfect, great song.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, this is great, and it's Ramones, so it's pretty basic beat and with basic chord structure so we teach them that and we just teach them how to listen to each other I tell my drummers now that the role of the drummer in a band is just to keep the band together all these fancy fills and all that don't worry about that start together and together make sure you're going into breaks together that's your role as a drummer So that's been pretty satisfying. So that's what I've been doing musically lately.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's awesome. It's good to still be involved.
SPEAKER_02:And I'll get in the band again someday. I always joke with Tony, before I moved up here five years ago, when we started Mother of Dissension. That was fun. To me, that was just an extension of the Big Rusty Balls era. with a new guitarist and bassist. Randy Miller on guitar and Michael Jones on bass. Those guys were very talented and had done a lot of different bands. Tony was coming off with the loads and this was basically my return to the Nardcore scene. We had a lot of fun with that. Recording and playing. I was seeing a place that we played all over the Oxnard area, but we also had a show up in Lompoc or Paso Robles once. We even played Las Vegas So we played L.A. a couple of times, too. I think if we were younger, I think that band would have really taken off. Then, you know, my wife and I moved up here to be closer to our kids and our grandkids. So once again, that was a decision I made. And, you know, I don't regret it at all, but I really enjoyed creating music with Tony again. And I think Tony's one of the best songwriters that I'll ever meet.
SPEAKER_01:There's plenty of time. You can do another band 10 years from now. I don't think neither of you guys are going to stop, right? Why stop now?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. And we'll move back to the 805 area. Probably when I retire from work in a few years. I plan on retiring in three years. I'm still young enough. I'm going to go down there. I'll get together with Tony again and we'll start another band. We had toyed with the idea of an acoustic band before Mother of Dissension took off. Tony and I were practicing to do an acoustic gig. We had found out that other former punkers like Kevin Seconds was doing acoustic stuff. And Tony really liked it. And we were practicing a lot of our old Ill Refute stuff as an acoustic duo. And it was fun. We were rearranging it to work out. And at the time, he was still playing with loads, so he didn't have a lot of time to commit to it. But it was something that we had worked on for, well, I'd say for a good six weeks or so. We were meeting regularly. And so... we'll be in a band together again yeah we we will and uh so it's never over i still have my my drum set set in my bedroom here and you know i've got all my equipment so um i'll get back into it again
SPEAKER_01:do you have any uh other gaps or anything that you feel like we missed
SPEAKER_02:i'm trying to think uh No, not really. I mean, it was a lot of fun. Like I said, creating and spending time with, with those guys. I remember the first time I went to punk rock bowling with John, I think it was in 2011. Maybe it might've been 2012. It was my first time going to punk rock bowling and, and, and, you know, the first time John and I had been in a car together and probably almost 20 years and just getting caught up over a three day weekend, John and I had spent, um, out of a 72 hour period, I think we spent 70 of those hours together, just getting, just getting caught up with everything. And, you know, Jim and I are good now. And we've been talking a little bit lately, just communicating ill repute stuff. Um, You know, Tony and I, you know, we're still spending time. Whenever my wife and I go down to the 805, you know, Tony and Don are, you know, the top two or three people we're calling outside of our family. They're coming up here, actually, to the San Jose area to spend his wife's birthday up here. So, yeah, we still get together. And, you know, so, no, I think... As far as the band years go, I think we covered up a lot of ground there.
SPEAKER_01:Cool. So the people like it want to ask, do you feel like you've been well-represented?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Okay, good, Carl. I'll be honest. The first time I heard your... you know podcast with tony and and you just asked all these drumming questions i did i i really felt like you know almost a tear came to my eye because the way tony represented it but i appreciated your asking i know one thing i was going to mention too is in those early years we were just trying to figure out the band and you know i was trying to figure out drumming I do want to give a shout out to the original Nordcore drummer buddies, which I had, which was me, Larry White, Rick Heller, Harry Meisenheimer, and even Mark Aber. I spent, you know, when we were at shows and parties, I didn't know a lot of people, really, so I just kind of gravitated to the other drummers. And even though the four or five of us had such different styles, we all had such a great respect for each other and learned a lot from each other. I remember having just drum conversations with all four of those guys over the, you know, during those two or three years where everything was a sound, you know, during those classic years of the, of the dark core scene, um, those guys were just as instrumental to my drumming development as anybody else.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. I think that's a great thing to bring up. That was good to get that in there. Yeah. Cool. Well, Carl, thanks so much for doing this.
SPEAKER_02:All right, Jack, thanks for calling. And, uh, We'll keep in touch.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll circle with you to give you updates on this.
SPEAKER_02:All righty.
SPEAKER_01:Take care. Talk to you.
SPEAKER_02:Bye.
SPEAKER_01:Now, like most interviews, usually I'll do an interview and someone will hit me up right after and be like, oh, fuck, I remembered all this stuff I want to talk about. Because I love talking to Carl so much, I let him come back on. And I was going to try to be all slick and edit this shit so you wouldn't notice, but you guys are too smart for that, man. So here's a break, and then bring back Carl to wrap this up. We're going to go for another 45 or so. All right, we're recording. Okay, so a
SPEAKER_02:couple things I wanted to share was, you know, I wasn't into punk rock, but I think I needed to start being... more familiar with the scene and going to shows more. And I just remember my very first punk rock show was at the Goleta Valley Community Center. I don't recall what year it was, probably 81, maybe 82, but I doubt it. It was probably 81. My very first punk rock show was Black Flag and Channel 3.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:And
SPEAKER_01:it was all downhill from there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:exactly. Until you saw Minor Threat.
SPEAKER_02:Right, exactly. So I can't even recall which singer that would have been at that era, but I remember going to that show, and I probably didn't get a chance to really enjoy it so much because I was just so scared. I had heard stories of them just beating guys up who just didn't have shaved heads, and I just hid behind Tony the entire time. And Tony's such a good friend. He's kind of protecting me. Okay, stand here. Don't look at guys in the eye. That kind of thing. So that was kind of memorable. And then I remember my first L.A. show. I don't exactly know who was playing. I remember seeing Bad Brains and Bad Religion in one of those earlier shows. And they played together? Yeah, I'm thinking so. Oh, my God. Yeah, so it's kind of weird that it was a waste to a guy like me who really didn't even know this punk rock history that I was being attached to and seeing these bands. And once again, this is my first time now in L.A. and being more concerned about being scared than enjoying the scene and the music. And I remember the Riot Squad ended up showing up. I'm not sure how or why. And I find two guys that I knew from Oxnard who were bigger than me, who I'm hiding behind. And the funny thing is these two guys are the sweetest and funniest guys that you'll ever know. And one was Ruben Sanchez and the other one was Ismael Hernandez. Okay. I didn't know Ismael that much, but I'm thinking that this is the guy I'm going to hide behind. So the cops don't come beat me up. Yeah. That's awesome. Um, but one of the things I wanted to share to you, like I remember going to the Santa Monica civic show, the classic one that had the black flag reunion, the misfits, original misfits and the vandals. That was, that was the, that was the lineup. So that was the infamous black flag show where everybody in black flag played that night. Yeah. And they played the era of the songs, um, where they sang. So they, they opened up with the Keith Morris, uh, uh, era. Sure. You know, you know, and then they went into Chavo, you know, Des sang a few songs and then Henry finished it out. Um, so the, the notable thing about that night was, you know, we used to hang out with the circle one guys a lot. And, uh, I guess Circle One, a lot of times, and I'm not sure how or why, but they would get free tickets to shows. And I think it was the promoter's way of trying to keep peace. Like, if we give you, basically, John Macias and your friends tickets to show, then you're not going to cause trouble, and actually you're going to help keep peace at the show. Right. So, at the Santa Monica Civic Show, they didn't give them tickets.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, shit.
SPEAKER_02:So John's like, you know, he's talking to all of us that were part of this group. I don't want to call it a gang, but those of us who were with them that night said, okay, we're going to rush the doors. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to stay in line. Like we have a ticket. And when I give the signal, we're just going to run in. And basically it's every man for themselves at that point. So I'm a smaller guy and we're in line. And there was another guy who, who I believe his name was John Olso. I don't know his last name. And he's kind of, you know, don't worry, Carl, I got you. And I'm hanging on to the back of his belt loop of his pants. So we're all kind of walking in like we have tickets. And all of a sudden, someone must have given the signal and everybody starts running in. So I'm holding on to him and I'm getting through the first wave of security. And now we're in the lobby, and all we need to do is get into the crowd, and then there's no way they're going to find us. Right. So we're getting ready to open the doors into the auditorium itself. And right then, right when John grabs the door, somebody comes out at the same time and slams the door open and hits John right in the head and knocks him out.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, jeez.
SPEAKER_02:So John's laying on the ground. I remember this, and I'm going to pick him up. And right when I'm going to pick him up, I see, I don't know, three, four bouncers coming right our way. He's pretty much knocked out. And I let him go, and I was like, I'm sorry, John. And I let him go, and I run into the crowd. I mean, kind of a dick pussy move, but I was like, what am I going to do? I'm already in. He's already knocked out. They're going to go. I figured this is the way it goes. So fast forward. a number of years. So Bill Rapute goes through their eras of breaking up. We do the transition stuff. Riot Show breaks out. We get back together. And now we're trying to make our comeback.
SPEAKER_01:This is leading up to Big Rusty Balls?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is like right around the Big Rusty Balls, right before Big Rusty Balls era. And we're playing down in Norwalk with the Walk Proud guys all the time. There were these two girls Kim and Peggy That I used to hang out with During this era all the time I'd go down to Long Beach They were from Long Beach But they knew the guys in Walk Proud We'd go to parties down there They would take me to raves I don't even know where they would take me They would come up to Wainini And hang out with the band there So one night They take me to this party And I'm not sure where it was at And we walked and the entire party is just dimly lit. I mean, very, very low lit. And I start looking around. I kind of get this weird vibe. And I start looking around and everybody there just seemed like they were a gang member. And I'm looking and I'm sensing now that everybody's looking at me because this is after an era that we hadn't played in a while. And I'm thinking, oh shit, this is the night I'm going to die. I really felt like, because I walk in with these two girls and everybody's looking at me like, who the hell are you walking into our party with our girls? I mean, that was the sense I got. So nobody, everybody's just dogging me the whole time. So I find a corner in the living room and I just kind of duck away. while Kim and Peggy are socializing or drinking or whatever. I'm just kind of sitting here and I'm thinking, okay, I'm really praying, God, if this is the way I'm going to die, don't let it hurt. I'm just really thinking that they were going to string me up that night. They were looking at me funny and bumping into you and just thinking, what the fuck are you doing here? So the girls kind of sense what's going on. And instead of just introducing me to everybody, which would have made it a lot easier, we go through this whole, almost like a theatrics of explaining why I'm there. So these guys start talking about classic punk rock shows that they've been to. And one guy mentions the Olympic Auditorium with Bad Religion. So Kim or Peggy, one of them just kind of mentioned to me, he said, hey, Carl, didn't you guys play that night? And I got my head down. I said, yeah, we played. And so one of the guys comes up and goes, what? You were in a band? And the girl says, yeah, this is Carl, the drummer from Ill Repute. And they're looking at me. No way. Oh, yeah, I am. And the guy starts saying, he starts listing all these songs. What? What? Like Cherokee Nation, Clean Cut American Kid, Fuck All My Head, yeah, those are our songs. And next thing you know, the guy starts reciting Book and It's Cover.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so then the whole party's starting to sing Book and It's Cover to me. And literally by the end of the night, I'm arm in arm with these guys, and they're thinking, and they're telling me, Carl, You want to come party with us whenever you want. You can leave Kim and Peggy at home. You're one of us now. It was 180 degrees from when I came into that door thinking I was really just going to die or get beat up to where I was these guys' best friends. That was one of the few times that being an ill repute really helped, I guess, build my credibility.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of times people refer to punk and hardcore as... It's that secret handshake.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it is. And years later, so now we fast forward probably another 10 years, I'm married, I have a kid, live in the house in Ventura, away from the scene for many, many years. And there was a guy that lived next door to me that was, we'll say he was associated with a disreputable motorcycle gang. We all knew, the whole neighborhood knew, the guy had been in and out. And he never really talked to me at all, and his parents lived next door to me, really. And one day, he were both out in the front yard at the same time, and he sees my car, and my license plate since 1984 has been IR drummer. I've had the same license plate since 1984. I've moved it probably on about eight or nine different cars. And he looks at it, and he goes, IR drummer? What's that supposed to mean? You a drummer? I go, yeah, I'm a drummer. He goes, what's that IR stand for? I go, I was the ill-reputed drummer. He goes, really? I love you guys. So from that point on, he was always like really super cool to me. You know, he would stop conversations. Like one time he was on the phone talking to whoever. And I pull up and I hear him say, hold on a second. My neighbor just drove up. Hey, Carl. It was kind of funny, but it's cool. And he was always really cool to me. One of the other things I just kind of wanted to... I wanted to talk about that I didn't want to go really unnoticed. And that's our relationship with Jerry Finn when he did the Big Rusty Balls for us. The Big Rusty Balls album. Because Jerry was just... You know, he was just making his way. He had his band. They were called Wonderbug. But he wanted to go to recording school. But, you know, Jerry had ended up, you know, worked with every pop punk band that ever existed. And the way a lot of you guys who grew up around that era, he revolutionized pop punk. I mean, he did. Not only did he do Green Day and the Moths. yo and rancid but he did blink 182 i mean he was so instrumental in our big rusty balls era that you know he went from recording he figured out how to record punk rock digitally which was unheard of at that time actually our demo tape He recorded analog, and he was just dead set against digital. He said, no, we're doing this analog because that's a better, cleaner, warmer sound, and it's just the best way to record. This digital stuff isn't going to go anywhere. So he said that from the time we went from there to the time we recorded the album. He said, oh, no, we're doing it digital. I found some stuff out. And so he kind of did everything digital. I remember going into the studio once with him when he was mixing the muffs and seeing him perform his magic in post-production and bending notes digitally just so it would fit with the music. Um, so, and then when he died years later after that, uh, it was a shock to me and I found a blog that, um, guys in Blink-182 were writing on. So me and I think it was Tom were emailing each other for a couple weeks just reminiscing about Jerry. During that time, I had spent a lot of time with Jerry during our recording sessions. He was spending the night. I was spending the night at his house. We were going to parties. We were going to concerts.
SPEAKER_01:He paid him$100. He deserved
SPEAKER_02:it all. Yeah, exactly. He owed it to us, right? I remember one time going to see a show with Jerry. We were going to go see a Kiss tribute band. Jerry was a huge Kiss fan. But one of the opening bands was, I don't know who they were. It was just this horrible heavy metal band. I remember Jerry turning to me and he said, I can't believe I just wasted my hearing on these guys. As a record engineer producer, hearing is everything. And he was so upset that they were so horrible that he had to listen to those guys. Those are some of those highlights. I think one of the other highlights I... was thinking of was the very first time that we heard Clean Cut American Kid on the radio. We were hanging out with these girls up in Ojai. I don't remember if Jim and John were there at the party, but I know Tony was there for sure. I think John
SPEAKER_01:was because I think John told the story.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So we're just sitting there and we're just talking. And I remember when I heard it with them that night, I just remember thinking, turning to Tony and I said, God, I keep hearing Clean Cut American Kid in my head. And he said, so do I. And then we kind of looked around the radio, you know, we see this radio and this staticky version of Clean Cut American Kids being played on the radio. And it was almost like that scene from That Thing You Do, where you're just running around the house, we're on the radio, we're on the radio. And, you know, that to me, of all the things we've ever done musically, That's definitely and probably one of the top two or three highlights. The first time you hear yourself on the radio, and it's not just like some small college radio, some punk kid playing. It was on Rodney on the Rock, which at the time was the biggest punk rock show that existed and that we were actually being played on there. And to me, what makes that so much more memorable, I guess, is that Somebody else is controlling that. You can go and play a gig, and you can actually throw your own gigs, and you can come up with your own money and come out with an album. But when somebody else is playing you on the radio, that kind of made me feel like, okay, we've made it. So that was a highlight there. Yeah, a little bit of validation. Yeah, that was certainly the validation of all that. So anyway, those are some of those highlight stories that went on. I did want to tell you this. So I finally just finished that podcast that you and Ryan did. And it started to make me realize, because I wasn't around during this whole era. I mean, I was completely removed from the scene. And to hear your guys' story, which is kind of funny because this is like when you guys were doing it was 16, 17, 18 years later than when we first started. Some of the things that you guys went through on tour were so similar to the things that we went through too. I was thinking, wow, I guess it really didn't evolve too much. But just hearing you guys' story, and I feel bad that I didn't know you guys during that time. I didn't follow it. I remember the band name, which I was kind of proud that, glad that the scene was still kind of going, even though I wasn't part of it. But the fun you guys had with it, just... and all that, I was like, that was, and I will tell you, that was a very good interview. So I didn't want to, yeah, I didn't want to, you know, we just share those kind of stories.
SPEAKER_01:We made it about halfway through because we were chitter chatting so much. We made it up to the year 2001. So we got three more years to go. Right. But yeah, it was funny actually, because we, there was a tour and we, we ditched our drummer in Texas and drove home and, And when I got home, I got a call from Tony on my landline, and he's like, that's so funny. The story had gotten back to Nard, and he's like, that's so funny that you ditched your drummer because we did the same thing once. But it was with one of the roadies. He's like, yeah, we ditched him and sent him home on a Greyhound. But it was so funny that the story had already made it home, and literally within a couple hours of me getting home, Tony's calling on the phone.
SPEAKER_02:I was digging through some old stuff maybe about a month ago or so, and I found a postcard that John had written to the band after we had kicked them out. Oh, he sent it from France? Yeah. I think it was. I remember
SPEAKER_01:saying, I think he did. He's like, I'm on the beach. Have fun in the van, pussies.
SPEAKER_02:No, it was actually the exact opposite. It was very heartfelt. It was like, hey, I'm sorry. Things didn't work out. I kind of felt pressured into this. You know I don't do well with those kind of things and really hope that everything works out with us in the end.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, it was very sweet. And that's kind of, I really, I guess at the time it was happening, a lot of egos, a lot of things were being said. Look back now, if we had really knew how hard that had to have been for John to have sent that to us.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it goes back to you guys were friends before you were in a band, right? Right. So there's a purity to your band there. That when you strip away all the bullshit, you're friends. Right. And that was a, that was trouble. I had a thing in troll because we went through so many members too. And you know, members leave and your butt hurt over certain reasons. And it's like, fuck, if I didn't have this band, I would have way more friends because why am I angry at all these people? Like, it's only because of this band that I'm angry at everyone. So, right. It's, you know, you got to strip that away and, and just, you know, people are people and those friends, if you strip away like the, uh, the, the commitments you have to each other due to this, like, you know, at the end of the day, it's a little bit of a business entity, you know, like you can enjoy them for who they are.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It was kind of like, you know, when I, you know, I was removed from the whole scene for many, you know, mid 20 something years. And then like when John and I went to punk rock bowling in, you know, 2011 or 12 or whatever that was. And we drove all the way out there. It was the first time that we'd even talked about life. I mean, here we are, we're in our fifties now. Or approaching 50. And a whole bunch of life has already happened. So it's kind of like, how do we deal with that? I had already been married twice at that time.
SPEAKER_01:You can remember why you wanted to be around this guy in the first place, right? Why did you want to do a band together? Because you liked each other. Yeah. Yeah. We start,
SPEAKER_02:you know, and we, it wasn't like we're just reminiscing over everything. We're talking about spiritual stuff and, and, and, you know, John's very spiritual in that respect as well. We shared a lot of common, you know, stories about our, you know, maturity basically. Sure. Um, you know, cause like when, like when Jerry Finn died, um, you know, John was close to Jerry too. Um, But we never talked about that. We never talked about it was like when I was when I had my second marriage, I just removed myself from the whole scene. So I didn't I sparingly saw John over those years. you know, but when his dad died, I was at his dad's funeral. You know, when Jim, when Jimmy's dad died, I was at Jimmy's dad's funeral. So you're right. You remember that you were friends before or away from the band and that you still just kind of a, yeah, you still enjoyed their company. You just had to have this band, uh, Kind of got in the way of things as far as that goes. That's why I still love those guys very tenderly, and I try to keep in touch with them as much as possible. Have no hard feelings for where the band has gone, because this is what we did. Like you said, Chuck's moving it on, and I'm still involved in some respects from an outer rim, which is okay with me anyway. Sure. Yeah, and we have all these memories. We really do. One of the things, too, like you mentioned in your podcast about getting that white whale of Doug Moody, that was another way I got back into the scene was when our documentary started coming up. They really wanted Doug to be part of the documentary, and we also wanted... Doug to give the rights to this, you know, he wanted us to release the song so we could use them at that point in time, even to this day, I am the only member of ill repute that Doug will talk to, you know, he, he broke ties with Tony. He never liked Jimmy Rio. Didn't want to talk to John. So, you know, so the producers and the developers of the, um, documentaries, like, well, he's got to be able to talk to, he's got to talk to somebody. And they asked me, Hey, can you try to talk to him? So I talked to, so I made contact with Doug and I said, Hey, I want to come down and visit you. I went down to San Diego, wherever he's at Vista or San Marcos. Yeah. Around there. Yeah. Around there. Yeah. North. I went to his house. I spent all day at Doug's house, like literally like eight hours. and just talking to him. He's, you know, he's really, he's telling me all these stories. He's telling me what he felt, what our problems were. I mean, he disclosed all kinds of different stuff to me. So it was kind of like, um, wow, this is like, you know, so, Just got a lot out of him. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:you got to reach out to him, Carl, and tell him to come on the pod. Well, you
SPEAKER_02:know I will.
SPEAKER_01:I've spoke to him several times, and I've met him before. So he should know who I am. But, you know, sometimes I think that some of the people that surround him, I don't know what they're looking for. I don't know if he always has the best people around him. So I think he's a little cautious about that stuff. And I wonder if he thinks he's walking into a trap that I'm going to– Blast him on stuff. And I'm just looking to do a friendly interview because he's been in the music business for his entire life. Well, exactly. He's an 80-year-old man now, and his dad was in the industry, and I believe his grandfather as well, right? Right. Going back to the turn of the 20th century, his family involved in music, I'd like to get all of it. Right. Unfortunately, he's older now, and I don't mean to be morbid, but... There's not going to be too many more opportunities. No, I would like to get the story down, and I'm not looking to trap him into asking about royalties and shit. Just hear his story. Yeah, and the early time of Mystic is so crazy because he's throwing so much shit against the wall. Like in 83, he's not committed to punk yet. He's doing all sorts of stuff, and he's like on the– the front end of like doing the weird shaped records. Like, yeah, I don't know if you follow the one 85 Instagram, but I have like most of that stuff. And he did that record for the sharks. It's like the coolest packaging ever with like the shark fin popping up. Like, okay. Yeah. It is absolutely amazing. So, you know, he did a Fernando Valenzuela like, Oh, I remember. Yeah. I did see that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like, I don't know. It's just stuff that I would love to get a story. Like, how do you end up, you know, in like 82, 83, doing a Fernando Valenzuela picture disc, like that's at the peak of his like popularity. Right. You know, and it looks like it's a legit licensed record. Like, so it's like, is he so above the board on some records and so like below the board on some, like, I don't know, but we gotta, we gotta get the story.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So he, he actually called me out of the blue. I'm thinking maybe a month ago. maybe six weeks ago. I mean, just out of the blue. And basically, the reason he called me was he wanted me to give the message out to everybody that he's still alive and that as much as everybody wants to bury him and all this other stuff, he actually said this, the more people are talking about him, It just keeps him and Mystic Records more alive.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. I mean, that's
SPEAKER_02:cool. That was the reason why he called me. He just left me a voicemail. Yeah. And he just said, you know, that's it, Carl. I just want to let you know this. He said, you know, you're the only one who I felt like I could trust and talk to. And... Yep, every time they talk about me, I'm still alive, so you let everybody know that I'm still kicking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I think this would be the perfect platform, so if you can help me get him on here, I would really, really
SPEAKER_02:appreciate it. Yeah, and you're down there. You're probably not far from him at all.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. I've met him before, and I would go to him, or if he's more comfortable doing phone, I'll do whatever. Right. And I'll do it any time of day or night, like whatever he needs. I'll do it. If he wants a hundred bucks, I'll give him a hundred bucks, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that would be your, your definitely your, your great white whale.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I want to share one really quick story. And I think John touched on this about recording and, and he was trying to think of the song that, you know, I was struggling with and just cause it was this repetitive over and over again. I kept losing my beat is, is when we were recording, taking care of business, you know, I remember that song because it was so vividly that I didn't do any drum fills really on that song. So it's hard for me to keep exactly where I am with the song. How many times we were. And so when we recorded that, we didn't do any scratch vocals with it. It was just me, John or me, Jimmy and Tony just trying to do all the rhythm tracks. So, you know, I'm playing the song fine. But then at the end of the song, whether we do the chorus four more times or eight more times or whatever, I kept getting lost right at the end. And I would just lose concentration. I'm playing 99% of the song, and literally in the last 20 seconds, I would just lose concentration, and I couldn't finish the song. And I think we must have went through that track, the rhythm track, I don't usually when we do a song, you know, cause we practice so much and it was just, you know, it was still punk rock. We probably would do the rhythm portion or my recording of it two, three times at the max.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:And I'd say a lot of times it was really one take and we've got it. That song, I'm going to say at least 10 takes. Wow. And I'd say the first nine of them, I, I, I just couldn't, I couldn't even finish it. And I remember where we're playing and they're like, Carl, what the fuck's going on? I go, I don't know. I know. And then I started getting mad at them. I was like, Hey, you guys fuck up all the time and I'm dealing with it. So you'll give me a break kind of thing. So we, I remember we took a break and I remember John and Tony and Jim, they're running me around the block of mystic. Hey, let's just go for a jog. And we, we shake it all out of me. We do everything we could. And I, We finally finished the song, but it was the most grueling recording session I had ever had, ever.
SPEAKER_01:For a cover song.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, on a cover song, exactly. Played it hundreds of other times, but just couldn't get through that one session for some reason.
SPEAKER_01:That's how it is in the studio. Yeah, yeah. You get one little hiccup and you can't get past it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's weird because there's other stuff I've let go. Like, even on Clean Cut American Kid, to this day, I really don't like listening to it on the radio because during one fill, I hit a drum mic.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_02:it's there. So I challenge any drummer out there to hear it because I think a drummer would hear it. But there's this, like, I do this drum, and then you hear this click, right? You know, just click. And I remember hearing it in the mix, right? And I remember sitting there with Robbie Fields and the band. I'm like, hey, I think I just hit a drum mic there. And they're like, don't worry about it. I think, really? I don't know how much they spent on us, but you're going into a recording studio to do one song. So we're there all day for one song, and you're going to let me get away with hitting a drum mic? I think, all right. And on Cherokee, I hit a drum mic also. but we let, we let that go as well. So I hear though, I mean, I hear them cause I know exactly where they're at, but maybe they're just buried in, you know, punk rock lore. Now
SPEAKER_01:people just want to slam Carl.
SPEAKER_02:That's true.
SPEAKER_01:They just want to
SPEAKER_02:slam. Yeah, they, they do. And then, um, I don't know if I ever shared the story about when, um, The first iteration of a three-piece that Ill Repute might have had to do at a huge show was we were playing the Olympic Auditorium. I'm not sure which show it was, but I think it was UK Sub. So it was a huge show. And we were supposed to be the opening band. What year do you think this is? Probably 84. I think What Happens Next was definitely out already. So we were going to be the opening band. But Jimmy was late for the show. So we had always because we only you know, I was the only one who had a car really that could go to L.A. regularly. And so we always travel together. We just always it was as a pack. We're going together. You know, there wasn't even an option. So for some reason, this show, Jimmy ended up going with his brother. So a bunch of people from Oxnard Radio, family members, we're going to go to the Olympic Outshore Room. So me, John, and Tony are there, and we do the sound check without Jimmy, and we're all set up on stage, and promoter's saying, hey, you guys got to go on. I said, our bass player's not here. And we actually convinced the next band to go on before us, and it was a band called Raw Power. from Italy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love that band. Screams from the
SPEAKER_02:gutter. We made them open for us just because our bass player wasn't there. So now, so they play, because I think they were going to borrow some equipment from us. So we said, well, you guys got to play before us then.
SPEAKER_01:How good were they? Do you remember that? Do you remember their set? They were
SPEAKER_02:pretty, they were good.
SPEAKER_01:I do remember them being good. That's one of my favorite LPs of all time. Okay. Yeah, Raw Power Screams from the gutter. It's probably 84-ish. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So they play, and now we're playing, and now we're going on, and Jimmy's still not there.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus.
SPEAKER_02:So now we're thinking, John, you've got to play bass. So John was going to play bass and sing. I mean, he literally had it ready to go. We're delaying as long as possible, and the promoter's like, no, you guys got to start playing. And so we're getting ready to play, and And the Olympic Auditorium, during those days, those shows were massive. I mean, easily a thousand people are there.
SPEAKER_01:You've got to play the intro to Sleepwalking for like ten minutes.
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's what I should have done. Well, anyway, so we're getting ready to play, and then we see this guy running from the back of the auditorium toward the stage, and it was Jimmy. And he finally got there, and I guess what happened was his brother got a speeding ticket on the way down. They were already running late, got a speeding ticket, so he came more late jimmy jumps on stage and you know he does you know then we go through the show but i remember that being one of the highlights uh also is when we break into cherokee nation and then the first break and the first break of yo cherokee people that hearing that entire auditorium singing along to that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That just brought chills. That was like, wow, this is crazy. This whole auditorium knows the lyrics of the song and they're singing along with us. That's sick. So, yeah, so that was, you know, that was just one of those other, you know, notable times of just what it was like then. But it was, to me, it was just, it was refreshing to hear your guys' podcast because, like I said, I wasn't around when you guys played you guys were too young to even know what it was like when we played
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_02:and and and you're just hearing these stories from us and you know when i'm talking about oh yeah my first show was black flag and channel three whatever oh yeah i saw bad brains and and bad religion play i remember i think it was bad rains bad religion and social distortion
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, playing a backyard party with Sin 34 and Suicidal Tendencies and Black Flag. Yeah, that's what we just did. And I think... I look back now and think, wow, I really wish I had appreciated it more for what it was. Not just like our... our role in the whole development of this whole thing but even just being attached to those bands i remember playing a show in um at the t-bird roller drone i don't know it must have been 20 bands but we played with circle jerks played and i remember uh playing and keith morris was just sitting right next to me the entire time just watching me play and you know, here, his drummer is one of my favorite, obviously influences, but one of my favorite hardcore drummers of all time. And probably arguably one of the best hardcore drummers of all time. Sure. And he's watching me play and telling me that he thought I was great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Just, just quit. You just reached the apex. Well, this is the best day of my musical career. I'm out. I'm going out on top. Keith Moore said I was great.
SPEAKER_02:That was early on. I remember running into Ian McKay at one of the Stardust Ballroom shows and just bumping into him. Apparently he knew who I was and he just said, hey, I heard your album. It sounds good. That was my interaction with him.
SPEAKER_01:How many times did you see Minor Threat?
SPEAKER_02:Um... At least twice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and how good were they?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it was amazing. So I remember the Dancing Waters show that we played with them, but they played the Cathay to Grant.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And I remember, so by this time it was when the Out of Step album was out, and this is when they added the new bass player, and I can't remember what song it was. And they had this massive song list. It kind of reminded me of our old refrigerator box that we used to use in my old garage. We just had all our songs up there. I mean, they were going to play everything from the Seven Inches to the Out of Step album. And Bass Player started a song, but he started the wrong song. but it has the same baseline at the beginning as the other song. And they start going into it. And then, and then I remember Ian just stopped and goes, Hey, that was the wrong song. Oh, okay. But you know, they're talking about the Kathy to grand where I don't even know if you could even fit a hundred people in there. It was probably only 50 or 60 people really. Yeah. And you're right on top of the band and you're like right there, like right there, you know? So, um, Yeah, so just being around that, I didn't realize what that really meant.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Well, you're living it. Yeah. Everyone's perspective, you get it in the future. Right. That's how you can figure out if you're doing something important or something completely insignificant. You ended up on the lucky side.
SPEAKER_02:I remember a story that John shared with me years later. He said, we're making our comeback. Big Rusty Balls era. And he's talking to Fat Mike. And NoFX had already made a couple albums, had done some tours. So they were pretty popular at that time. And John was pretty much downplaying our significance, our insignificance in the whole punk rock scene. And, you know, the Fat Mike's like, no way. You were that band that was playing Kathy the Grand on a Tuesday night at one o'clock in the morning. You know, you guys kept things good. You guys were groundbreaking for bands like us to keep playing later on. And never even thought of it that way. You know, John shares a story about some guy that he met that was in prison for John met him after that. And the guy told John that the one thing that kept him motivated to get out of prison and turn his life around was the lyrics to Book and Its Cover. Yeah. And when you start thinking about those kind of things, you start thinking, wow, maybe we did do something. Maybe we mattered to some people. You know, it's crazy. You add up all these things and you're getting a proclamation from your hometown, you know, and it, and it mattered to some people, I guess. And so, you know, proud of the work, you know, uh, like I said, I think what made it work is just, we were, we were just friends just trying to just, just trying to have fun with each other.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It came from a sincere place.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it really did. You know, um, Tony and I, we still talk about things. I mentioned Tony's songwriting is so meaningful. He didn't want to just make stupid lyrics that just kind of went with music. I mean, all of his lyrics had always meant something. He always wanted to tell a story. I remember when we... started uh mother of dissension and we would talk about how many times we should play a verse i would always tell tony well how many verses does it take for you to tell the story
SPEAKER_01:because it's like at least eight at least
SPEAKER_02:eight yeah yeah if it's going to take you three or four verses to uh to tell that story then that's how many times we're going to play it Because I knew he was just such a great storyteller in his lyrics.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, what about Kicked Off the Bus? Did you get down on the Bleed record? Kicked off the bus. We don't care. You were never going to be the one to take us anywhere. So good. Yeah. His voice is perfect on it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So he just, you know, he performs, he writes, and he sings with such passion. that I've always just enjoyed playing in a band with them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you guys are all awesome to a man, right? Yeah. Got to get Jimmy on here. I'm going to interview him on the 20th of September. Oh, nice. Then I've got to do a short one with Chuck, and then I think we got it. Maybe I'll get on Lipkey one day. Yeah. And Nashaya. Where are you at, Nashaya?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, definitely, yeah. You've done Joe Revis,
SPEAKER_01:right? Oh, yeah, yeah. We're going to do Forrest on the 21st.
SPEAKER_02:Very good, very good. Yeah, no, good memories. Definitely good memories. So thank you, Zach. I appreciate
SPEAKER_01:it. No, you've done a great job, Carl.
SPEAKER_02:All right, well, thank you. And I'm going to get caught up on all your podcasts so I can now get caught up in what was going on with the Nardcore scene in the years that I was gone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, we're going to work on... One that we're going to do that's Nardcore from 87 to 92, which are kind of like the rougher years. Right. So Joe Revis has curated a list of dudes to interview, and I think that'll be a really good one. Okay. Yeah, look for that. I'm going to hold you to getting Doug Moody for me, Carl.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I've got to work on that. I've got to work on getting you– I guess if someone wants to send me$100 per copy, I'll do bootleg releases of all this unreleased Ill Repute stuff. I'll just put that out for the band. I could always have that over their head because I know I have it, and I want them to know that I have that too.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. If anyone ever asks them who's the best drummer, they better say Carl or that shit's coming out. All righty. All right, Carl. Thanks so much. All right, Zach. All right.
SPEAKER_02:Talk to you soon.
UNKNOWN:Bye.