Interview with Metal Mike
of Angry Samoans
December 2003 -- Page 2
Page 1 - Page 2

What does that mean, that she 'managed'? What did she do exactly? I mean, what did it mean to manage a punk band in 1978?
Made the phone calls to get -- a lot of work to get the gigs.
Dee Dee: Yeah, artist manager and personal manager didn't really differentiate between them … But in those days, the people around here didn't differentiate so you ended up trying to give them a record deal and trying to get them gigs. So you made the phone calls to whomever for PR, gigs, and record deals and you -- Actually, that's artist manager and personal manager, and that's what most managers did.
Yeah, yeah. So the bands out playing live that to my mind were doing something -- 30 degrees tilted. Faster, shorter, louder, gigging heavily in the L.A. scene, irregardless [sic] -- and there was no popular base for this. There was no big demand for it. 'Cause the L.A. scene in Hollywood had imploded. It was pretty much back to ground -- back to a, um --
What -- in 1980 you mean?
No, in '79. Fall '79, you know, the Go-Go's and X had graduated to the big clubs, and in it for the big time. There, there -- By the start of '80, the Go-Go's and X are beyond the -- what you would call the punk scene. They've already pulled in mainstream crowds. Go gigging heavy in the fall '79, we played with these bands, saw them, took notes, watched carefully, you know, comparing Black Flag, the original Red Cross, The Crowd from the beach, The Crowd from Huntington Beach, and our band. Four totally different takes on the same idea from different regions -- Hermosa [Beach], and inland, although Red Cross and Black Flag technically shared the same geographic --
Where were you guys based? Were you in North Hollywood?
Total Valley band, totally a Valley band. Practiced in Hollywood, shared space with many of the punk bands of the time, fall '79 through summer '80 at Wilshire Fine Arts in the guts of Hollywood, in East Hollywood. At that point in time, Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" 7" song had come out in June 1979. It could have come out long before, but that's how long it took them to finally decide to press it themselves. Could have come out on Bomp the previous year, but didn't. June '79 is the actual release date. It's documented in Joe Nolte's log. And then the Rodney tracks -- I mean the Posh Boy label tracks of The Crowd, first on Beach Blvd. [in Huntington Beach], then Red Cross later on in early '80 on the Siren comp were on record. It was really good documentation of what those bands were doing live. What all those bands had in common was one-minute songs. Not every single song, but in Red Cross's case, almost every single song. In The Crowd's case, almost the majority of their songs, really short songs.
Okay, so then it seems like the Circle Jerks album [1980's Group Sex] was like the first LP that was like that sound.
Yeah, yes. Rock classic. Yeah, the four albums that came out almost within the same 30-day period in the fall of 1980 were Group Sex -- Circle Jerks; the first Black Flag 12", the "Jealous Again" on the -- the Black Flag 12" --
The one with Chavo [Ron Reyes] on it?
Yeah, the 12" where Chavo sings, the Decline soundtrack, and Inside My Brain by the Angry Samoans. Then distributed nationwide, there was definitely an explosion of L.A. product across the nation. Those bands became national bands the minute those records shipped. And the Germs album of course was a big, big deal preceding that.
Okay, now what about the -- like, okay, so a lot of times when they talk about it though, they talk about -- like I've heard the Bad Brains record from 1979 -- well, it's not a record, there's a live recording of them, Black Dots from 1979, and it's superfast and I know Minor Threat and all them talk about Bad Brains being --
Yeah, so there was a parallel happening. L.A. just got theirs on record first.
Okay, now, uh, so then by 1980, you have it kind of splintering and you have these Circle Jerks and you guys that are really fast. X -- what was --
Although in 1980, that was hardcore. That was the hardcore --
Or 'thrash'? Did they call it 'thrash'?
No no no. Thrash came later. Yeah, so proto-hardcore became -- the term must have been used by -- big time by the end of 1980. Meaning D.O.A.'s Hardcore 1981 album. So the minute someone coined the word, it was a real good catch phrase. There was definitely no word "hardcore" in 1979. It was just like when people have a fairly similar idea, and in our case there was a big cross-influence. That these bands are doing the same thing, then it has to be cool. 'Cause these are, in my case, these are my favorite bands, Red Cross and Black Flag, and The Crowd also a big favorite.
Now that first Circle Jerks record, did that have a bunch of Red Cross songs on it that they kind of reworked?
[hums riff to Circle Jerks' "Live Fast Die Young"] "We're a cover band" -- it came out "Live Fast Die Young." Yeah, the first Circle Jerks album is a classic of, um, appropriations. "World Up My Ass" is "Gimme Sopor" by the Angry Samoans, with one chord accidentally translated. It came out of a practice room in another band I was in. Roger [bass player] played in a band --
Roger from the Circle Jerks?
Yeah, he played in a band with Andy, the lead singer, myself on guitar, and the old drummer from The Terminals, Lucky [Lehrer, also of Circle Jerks] on drums. We were doing two Angry Samoans songs to fill out a 12-minute set. One of them was "Gimme Sopor," which was taken to the Circle Jerks.
Oh, for which song?
"World Up My Ass." There's only one chord difference. They hit one -- Actually, I think "World Up My Ass" is a slightly better song. Both are excellent songs. Yeah, the first Circle Jerks is a classic of folk music appropriation. Any song that's not legally nailed down, what the hell? And by no mean coincidence, it's the great Circle Jerks album.
Okay, so then -- But X by this point is in a different zone even though they were on Slash Records?
Oh, the first album [1980's Los Angeles] -- the first album sold massive. You know, they're headlining The Whisky. They catapulted the scene, being courted by major labels. No major label in America was going to touch a punk rock band, nor did they ever after '77. Now, well, the funny part when you look back, and look at the crap that was written in the mainstream press, meaning any newsstand magazine, because punk rock labels, Frontier Records on out, were not mailing free copies to every bozo that works for Rolling Stone. Those people really didn't even acknowledge or even realize the music existed. They never heard that shit 'cause they weren't getting it for free. It wasn't within their musical sphere. And so you have these hilariously asinine histories of punk rock where there's this gap between the Sex Pistols to Nirvana -- just like this --
Yeah yeah yeah. I know what you're talking about. I know, I've noticed that thing -- the whole American scene is kind of ignored until whatever -- Bad Religion's album [1988's Suffer] comes out.
Yeah, there's so many -- not even dozens, hundreds of bands, far beyond mere dozens, so many records that they can't dumb it down to a catch phrase. Because Black Flag and the DKs were so huge, those bands always wind up -- in fact these days, they wind up in the Rolling -- Black Flag gets into the Rolling Stone Top 500 albums of all time. They had lyrics that were interesting, and people who are lyrically-oriented writing a review could latch onto that. Record reviewers being notorious for being overly lyrically-oriented instead of musically-oriented.
Now I've seen you write about -- so the Dead Kennedys formed in San Francisco, right?
With a name taken from Cleveland, Ohio. A Cleveland, Ohio, band in Cle Magazine, the fanzine that was a -- probably a "fuck" band, a spin-off band from some of the Rocket from the Tomb guys. Maybe they didn't play, but had an alphabetical listing.
But you saw the name somewhere or they saw it.
I saw the name about the same time the DKs, in a fanzine. So he [Jello Biafra] pulled a really good name from a fanzine. You know, a band that didn't even exist anymore. It's been done many times. You know, Pandora's name has been used many times over the decades. Pandora's -- Yeah, so Dead Kennedys was a name floating around.
But what about their music? Did you, did you, uh, when you were living up in the Bay Area, did you see them a lot around then?
Just a couple times.
How were their shows? What was a Dead Kennedys show like?
The San Francisco scene was a totally different punk rock animal than L.A. L.A. was -- they had the heavy-duty stuff, the best in the universe. Oh, you know, just because there was, I totally agree with people that will say that L.A.'s great -- L.A.'s one original contribution to punk rock was hardcore. Yeah, they had the bands, they got it on record, you know, at a moment in time when it's brand new, no rules that anyone has to follow. It's kind of being made up as it goes along.
Okay, so let's talk about the audience. 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982. Did the music alter the audience or did the audience alter the way the bands played?
Uh, when a scene increases in size like the way L.A. just mushroomed in 1980, that definitely turns everything on its head. I mean, the vibe of the people in the band where all of a sudden they're actually making money and getting big low-level rock star feedback. If you look at footage of a band, say like the Circle Jerks or Dead Kennedys, and compare it just a couple years apart --
What, like 1979 versus 1981?
Like 70 -- even early '80, pre-explosion of the scene and later, yeah, it's really got a different vibe to it.
Okay, and I've read that it affected you guys, that you intentionally altered or tried to take a different approach to the music by the mid-'80s because you didn't care for --
Right, when the California punk rock scene went bad, it went BAAAD.
Bad, like what happened? Like what would happen?
The really big bands like Black Flag and the DKs were playing hall gigs or even small auditorium gigs in the size of say, 20,000 or more. Huge gigs. And the normal level, the club gig, large club gigs or rollerrink gigs. I remember, okay, in '83 or '84 -- Okay, Social Distortion's original line-up broke up on New Year's Eve, it had to be '84. New Year's Eve '84.
December 31, 1983.
They had a fiasco at the Cathay de Grande when the audience was up on-stage, knocking shit over, just being complete assholes and --
Was this in L.A. or Orange County?
In L.A., you know, Cathay de Grande in Hollywood. Big Hollywood gig. Wasn't there so I can only mention what I've read. You know, it was just fucked up. And for various other reasons, you know, the drummer quit [Derek O'Brien] and the bass player [Brent Liles] quit too, and that was the end of the original Social Distortion. We deliberately dropped out of playing gigs, or playing the punk rock scene gigs in -- fall '84 was our last one. This is like -- it was horrible, you --
Was the audience just yelling at you and not even really into the music?
No, the vibe was bad, the violence was bad. I remember we played with Suicidal Tendencies up north at Longshoreman's and thinking, "Why the fuck are we even here?" It's not like it's a well thought out thing. It was just like, "This is fucked up."
Okay, so then by the late '80s, or by '86, '88, there were Black Flag and some of the SST bands that were kind of getting recognized a little bit by some of the mainstream press, because they were -- Were you guys able to -- I guess you guys were able to continue playing in the late '80s and continue despite the crowd problems and like, redefine yourselves.
I lived up north, summer 1980 on, in the East Bay, and we deliberately did not play S.F. for four entire years -- 1985, '86, '87. Not until the end of '88 at Gilman Street in Berkeley. That the violence in the S.F. scene was absolutely notorious. Like some of the gigs at The Farm, I started -- I would tell the band, "You don't wanna play up here. It's fucked up." Meaning a full-on punk --
When you say S.F., the East Bay and S.F., just the whole scene was bad or just in San Francisco itself?
S.F. especially. There were incidents of people getting beaten up on and pounded. Tim Yohannan got pounded once for no reason except that he was Tim Yohannan and people who -- You know, there was no one enforcing law and order at gigs to the goons. So it was a free-for-all for the --
For the goons?
Yeah, it was a bad -- in Frisco, there were notorious skinhead elements.
Okay, so let's start -- you were up in the East Bay in '88 -'89 during Operation Ivy and things like that.
Yeah, we played with Op Ivy in early '88 --
'Cause I don't know much about 'em and I --
Could've been '88. I have the log. If I decipher what date it was. We played with them once, wanted to play with them again during a big gig with no admission at the, um -- We played with Op Ivy full-on once. That would have been at the Covered Wagon or C.W. Saloon in S.F. It was definitely an Op Ivy gig.
Yeah, and what was the audience like?
I was booking those gigs, so I had it on the log, the names, that I check, referenced it later.
What was the audience like at an Op Ivy gig?
That was a Frisco gig, so we didn't see their real audience. We got short-changed. So we didn't see Gilman St. till the end of '88 which was still relatively early. We played there every five months or so like clockwork, summer '89 through mid-'91, and I was -- You know, when you pinpoint some point as the epicenter by default, that was definitely the epicenter of the American punk rock scene seriously changing.
What was? What point? 1988 --
Well, it was safe to go to a gig if you were a girl. Instead of "Don't mess with the slam pit," you had the famous Gilman St. guys where they had Big Wheels. They had a pit, a circle pit with guys riding Big Wheels tricycles.
So it was safe again?
It was an entirely different, new age, new way of doing things. So if you have to give credit to anyone, that was where the ripple started. 'Cause I could definitely testify that that point in time in the late '80s was absolutely the low ebb in the punk rock world for gigs out here on the West Coast. You know, the size of the audiences, the venues, and the Bad Religion album was a big turning point in bringing American punk rock -- the Suffer album, when that came back. 'Cause they'd been out of order on the recording level for a long time.
And, uh, you had good things to say about Green Day. What was so great about Green Day?
I like rock bands. I like rock music. You know, guitar bands play good and I thought, and still think, that they were the best fuckin' rock band in the history of this country.
Green Day?
Everything, top to bottom, songs, everything. And they would have been definitely a different type of band with the original drummer who was more of a hard rock drummer -- Killer drummer.
What was his name?
John Kiftmeyer guy. Yeah, to me, Billie Jo plays guitar like a combination of Angus and Johnny Ramone all at once, just so good. Like the best of the Ramones, the best of AC/DC, at the same time. So they play in a style that I'm really partial to in the first place.
What were other bands besides Operation Ivy and Green Day from that scene that were really good that you would wanna --
I'm not an expert. Someone who would've been 16 at the time, like a teenager at the time, would be barely into their 30s now.
Okay, now I understand you're interested in pop music? Or maybe you've always been.
I was twelve years old when The Beatles went on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. Okay, and Top-40 radio in the mid-'60s was across the board crossover. Every style you could imagine, and pop music being predominant. I grew up on really good pop music. It was never a problem to my mind liking an Ohio Express record three or four years later. If I liked a song, it was a good song. If it was a good song, I liked the song. And when I came of age listening to the radio, at age 13, the Shangri-La's were still in the Top-40 big time. The very last vestiges of the go-go era. The funny thing about pop music is that it never goes away. It mutates slightly, or the arrangements, the recording styles might change with the decades, but a pop song format --
Like Nirvana had the pop song format of the verse-chorus-verse and everything.
Well, they combined "More Than a Feeling" and "Wild Thing." Their big hit ["Smells Like Teen Spirit"] is a collaboration between "More Than a Feeling" and "Wild Thing." No, actually the point is I grew up in the era when writer-producer-singer, writer-producer-artist -- Motown, hello, you know -- What does it matter who wrote the song, who produced or recorded the song, and who actually sings or played the song? It's a song. That's what songwriters are supposed to do, is write songs.
It's all about the song.
Yeah, yeah. My thing in music is I like the song. I like doing it, you know. My loyalty to a band goes about as far as their latest album and whether I like it or not. Or music as music, as opposed to music as a lifestyle. Otherwise, you become an Oi! punk, or a rockabilly numbskull, or God knows what. I grew up in the era where the -- There was a real broad sampling of styles on Top-40 radio, which is what you listened to. It was all about singles till 1967.
Then what happened? Then it was about the longer songs?
Albums took over for all kinds of reasons. I'm not a good business historian. Albums were cool in a different way, although not as cool in a way.
Economically, or some money-making way --
Yeah, yeah.
So you said you're not -- You're retired from being an accountant?
I worked 22 years full-time straight-up. No time off besides standard vacation time, meaning I went from job one to job two to job three to the merger. The job site #3 lasted 14 entire years at the same address, with a merger in between, and I did the American thing, piled up my 401K's massively until they were red-penciled enough that it looks like a pretty reasonable retirement stash. Plus, as many of us baby-boomers want to, there is estate money coming in at some point. So with no alimony, no child support, no college tuitions, I changed jobs and cut back just to "pay the rent" work. So all I've gotta do is pay the rent and expenses. And so since early 1999, I've been on the three-day work week lifestyle. In the same profession, in accounting, working at a CPA firm part-time instead.
So what do you get to do to occupy yourself now in your free time? Are you writing more?
No. Doing what any responsible third-grader would do with massive free time -- goofing off.
[laugh] Alright, well I think that's a good interview. I think that's long enough.
Uh, is there any point you would wanna make with the music from that era being valid, where an old band can go out and do their old set? Okay, like say The Dickies, great point. We saw The Dickies three times last year when we played gigs, and their set was killer. There was not one slack moment in that whole set. It was in the moment. It was not some guy punching the time clock, you know? It was of the same spirit as the original band, or of the same sincerity. There was nothing at all cynical about it.
Okay, yeah. I've never seen The Dickies live. But I've heard that when they got signed to the major label in the spring of '78, it -- people were -- other bands that were kind of -- it seemed like The Dickies had just shown up recently, and The Weirdos, X, and them --
The Dickies were so much better than any other band. In '77, The Dickies may have been better than all the other L.A. bands combined. That's how fuckin' good they were. I saw 'em. You know, again the singer is subject to opinion. What is rock singing anyway? It's the guy on tape. If Bob Dylan's a singer, then anyone's a fuckin' singer.
[laughs]
But ahh, an amazingly great band. You know, there might have been musical jealousy involved, who's to say? And they were from the Valley. There was definitely a Valley factor at work there. It never was cool to be from the Valley.
Oh, The Dickies were from the Valley? I thought they were from Whittier or something.
No. A couple of 'em went to the same high school as one of the guys in our band.
How many Angry Samoans shows are you playing every year now?
Usually just Saturday night only. Sometimes, occasionally Friday night and Saturday night. And southern California is such a large area, and such a big market for punk rock, it works for us to play each town or venue or county or place once a year. And so the average person might see us once every, what, three or four years, and so there's a big turnover just within one year. And the audiences today -- [thumbs up]. The minute slam dancing started to die back down on the club scene, that was like priceless. That was such a relief. You know, people who wanted to get up-front or have the good visual line to see a band can actually do it without being maimed or kicked or beaten on.
What is it that makes you wanna keep performing Angry Samoans songs?
Well, the songs are cool. The songs are a fun set to play because luckily they are good songs. So there's a certain musical -- I don't know the word. And the audiences are fun because they are really good audiences. Like the younger the audience is, almost rule of thumb, the better it is. Like the Troub gig [12/19/2003] was definitely average age in the teens. Definitely a younger crowd. And plus, having been part of the original L.A. -- original first two waves of the L.A. scene, '77 to '82, we take great pride in having been there. Just being fortunate enough to be in that time and place. So it's a representation for someone. It's a very reasonable representation for someone who never saw it -- of how things were done then.
At that time -- because that's, for me and a lot of people that like punk, that is the punk that was coming out before 1982 or whatever line you wanna make, is -- everything after that kind of continued that tradition and it wasn't breaking any new ground, kind of.
Oh yeah, but anyone who's been a fan of other genres, like heavy metal or any other other, will tell you that you have the first big explosion, and then, unfortunately, rules tend to get set. Like this is the way to do it. You have to. Some styles even got a dress code, you know.
So at that time, you knew you were, in '78 or '79, you knew you were in something that was unique.
Yeah, and the funny thing about before the beach scene exploded is that, you know, there was no demand for it, there was no audience for it, and all the media outside of southern California, or the fanzines outside of southern California, or say the English mags especially, "What kind of loser are you playing punk rock? It's over, man. Sid's dead." The West Coast was the -- was the, um -- you know --
Center?
In 1979, the West Coast was where -- was the last remaining -- Okay, my favorite bands actually came out of the Vancouver scene. My favorites are, as well as -- Vancouver had an amazing scene, L.A. had an amazing scene, and by proximity, San Francisco was a point in between with a fairly large scene. And so the rest of the world was like, pretty much considered California punk rock to be a joke. They did it originally in '77 because it was like, you know, it was squatters' rights, you know. New York and then London had first squatters' rights on the media to punk rock, so to this day, they've tried to monopolize -- You'll see coffee table books "The History of Punk Rock" and it's basically 90% English because that's their periscope.
Yeah. How did the -- A lot of people in California talk about when the Sex Pistols came and played in San Francisco that one show [in January 1978]. Did, um -- ?
Yeah. I'm pretty sure she [pointing to Dee Dee] or most or half or her fanzine were there. They did a big thing on it.
What was the -- I heard The Avengers put on a good show.
The Avengers were always good.
They were good?
There's no way The Avengers could not be good. [to Dee Dee] He's asking about the Sex Pistols at Winterland.
And The Nuns?
Well, the most punk rock thing about -- as I was told. I couldn't be bothered to go 'cause I wasn't a big Sex Pistols fan --
DD: I went up there and I reviewed it for Back Door Man.
Yeah, she did a center -- probably a centerfold, center -- spread right up. I was told that the most offensive, most punk rock thing about the show was Richard Meltzer getting up on-stage and getting barraged with various projectiles, boots, shoes, just for being obnoxious and offensive. It wasn't hard in his case.
How did he get on-stage?
He was the lead singer of VOM. Who knows how he got up on-stage. He was --
DD: I was on major drugs. I'm not really sure.
[laugh] But when they broke up, there was this general, in the mainstream media, it was like 'punk rock is dead.'
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. You know, ska was big in England as early as '79. 'Cause I remember we gigged with -- We were on a Madness bill in Frisco in '79. And you know, England was always changing over. Very trendy, changing styles over. So if they said punk rock is dead, then in their mind, punk rock was dead.
And I know The Exploited, that was their slogan, "Punk's Not Dead," and they had to keep mentioning that over and over again 'cause there were so many people that -- Okay, well I think this has been a good interview and thanks for all the info.
The thing to throw in there that I forgot to say is that the quality of the bands during that era in L.A., to my mind, was amazing. It's the part where I digested and hurled the records, and the quality of the recordings was amazing. Scenes happen for any convergence of reasons. But some people point out a slight historical parallel, whether it's expedient or not, that southern California and California itself was where a large percentage of classic 1965 American punk rock came from. There was a great suburban tradition of just ignorant -- or rather, dumbass rock 'n' roll out of California, pushed toward by The Seeds and dozens of others.
Okay, so this might have been a continuation or growth out of that.
I think the suburban mentality doesn't ever change in nature, just the details of it. Just the kids are cranky or pissed off about --
Okay.
I see it as someone that grew up in the suburbs. Not upper-middle class, but just straight-up middle class suburbs. You know, carport, bedroom big enough to be the band practice room. And you know, every punk band that ever came after the fact should pay about 5 cents per gig in performance royalties to the Ramones for teaching people a new way of playing guitar. No one in the history of the world ever thought of playing the guitar like that except for Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly did all downstrokes on The Ed Sullivan Show, but no one was aware of it at the time. The video hadn't circulated.
DD: That's the end of the interview when it gets good and he puts in what he really wanted to say.
Yeah, Buddy Holly and the Ramones should be paid royalties every time a band gets something, does a hammer-down downstroke on guitar.
All right. Thank you, Metal Mike.

December 20, 2003.

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