Emergency Broadcast Systems LP
1981-82 at Emmitt Rhodes Garage, Hawthorne, Ca.

At this time, in the late seventies-early eighties, if you wanted to play in a band you needed either two things; one, shit loads of really nice gear, and two, shit loads of hair. Punk rock was pretty frowned down upon—you sorta took your life into your hands when you went to gigs or even listened to a record too loud. People really thought you were a degenerate.
Black Flag was just about ready to take off, locally. They set the standards all the locals tried to meet, and when their label, SST, started releasing records by other local bands, the scene really grew.
If you were a punk band at the time, and not affiliated with them for whatever reason, it was hard because you were still an outsider, and in this case, not punk enough. We were never able to meet their “requirements”, whatever they were, even though we’d see them at parties in our neighborhood all the time. Maybe it was just the “pecking order”, and that’s how things are supposed to be done, but it still makes for bitter memories for me.
We decided that if we really wanted to play out more, and get taken seriously, we had to record. Again, Black Flag screwed things up-- by proxy--recording studios heard about a “bad local punk band” and wanted nothing to do with recording “that shit”. It took a while before we found a studio with someone who had an open enough mind to take our money.
Emmitt Rhodes was a guy who was a teenage rock star. He fronted a band called the Merry-Go-Round in the sixties, a psychedelic rock act. He played on “American Bandstand” when he was fifteen. He was in his early thirties, as I recall, lived across the street from Brian Wilson’s mom, had a Jacuzzi in his backyard, and was incredibly stoned all the time. He also had a 2-inch 24-track machine and a full studio in his garage. We spent about a grand recording and mixing, and being young and poor, it took a while before we could raise the rest of the money to press the record—another 2 grand, I think—at Rainbow in Santa Monica.
I played bass, Juan played guitar, Korky on the drums, and Mike Mooney sang. Mooney was from Philadelphia, and had the worst case of stage freight I’ve ever seen on anybody. He puked before rehearsals! He quit after the record came out, and started a band called “fun”. I don’t know what ever happened to him—the last time I saw him he came to my house drunk off his ass and challenging me to a fight. I’m six-foot-six and 230 pounds, and this idiot’s five eleven and 160. I laughed and closed the door on him.
We released it as soon as we could, and the first person that really picked up on it was Jello Biafra. Jello really went out of his way for other bands, ensuring that they had their records listened to and had at least one decent gig—opening for the Dead Kennedys. Maximum RockNRoll picked it up too, and we were soon regarded as San Francisco’s favorite L.A. band, which was fine by us.
We were never really liked by the L.A. crowd, and “Flipside” downright hated us. I think it was because we just didn’t fit the L.A. mold of bands—we didn’t skateboard, didn’t wear makeup, we weren’t flashy. Our songs were too political as well.
This, among other things, was a big reason why we ended up in Oregon. L.A. is a very, petty and shallow place, and we were alienated. The only gigs we could get were with bigger bands from outside of L.A. The other local bands wouldn’t have us on their shows. We had to tour to play, and coming back to L.A. found that we still couldn’t get booked. Eventually that changed, but for different reasons, and it still wasn’t fun going to gigs and watching the other bands get to play while you had to sit on the sidelines.

 

 

Listen to Emergency Broadcast System here

Your Childs War 7'
The single for Just Another Reason LP

 

 

listen to Prison Bus here

Just Another Reason LP
1985.86 Recorded in a garage in Redondo Beach off of Inglewood Blvd.

Lack of gigs locally furthered our resolve to tour more and to record more so we could tour even more. Unfortunately, we cut costs on the studio choice. (Let this be a lesson to you younger bands out there—NEVER cut recording costs!!) This record sounds even more “dodgy” than the last single!!
We decided to try to shop this record to a local label to help us get more local gigs. We still had a hard time playing locally, and we figured that if we found a label in the area we could play some shows with other acts on that label, and somebody else could push the record for once. This, of course, never happened.
What did happen was that there was a girl who entered my life who had a lot of friends. Since she was incredibly good-looking, and had a lot of incredibly good-looking friends, we instantly had a huge draw; all of this girl’s friends had boyfriends who took to the band just so they could hang out with all these chicks.(Another lesson for you younger bands out there).
Unfortunately, the party never stopped, and in fact a sort of comedic tragedy happened.
While I’d be at work during the day, this girl would be crashed out at my house. Eventually during the day, one of her girlfriends would call and ask what was up for the day. She’d reply, “nothing”, and her friend would come by to smoke pot. Her other friends would wander by too, and eventually their boyfriends would stop in…by the time I got off work, there’d be thirty punk rockers in my house, eating my food and drinking my beer, and destroying my records.
When Suicidal Tendencies got huge, a phenomenon happened in the scene. The Suicidals were a gang before they were a band, and they would rush the security at bigger shows. They became such a problem that the promoters eventually hired THEM as security, which made them more violent. This spawned other gangs, and one of these was the Circle One guys from Long Beach. These were the guys who were my girlfriend’s buddies who trashed my house every day.
While it did help our draw, which made us more attractive to promoters, it was a pretty grim scene. Most of those guys ended up in jail at one time or another, and several of them ended up on the wrong side of a heroin overdose, including the old girlfriend. I ended up in Eugene, Oregon.

 

 

Listen to Iron Youth here

Balls To You LP
Recorded 1988 Gung Ho Studios, Eugene, Oregon
Billy Barnett, Engineer

The move to Oregon was a breath of fresh air, in more ways than one. In L.A., it seemed that everybody was too concerned with what they could get financially out of the scene to care much about the music, while in Eugene, folks welcomed us as if we were real artists. There were ample resources available that were affordable and easy to work with—no studio guys telling you to come back when you got better gear, for example.
The local environment is much better too; no waiting on a freeway for 2 hours just to drive 10 miles, and you weren’t afraid to look somebody in the eye out of fear that they’d jack you.
We wrote a bunch of songs and recorded them at Gung Ho, which is a great studio now, and had just upgraded at the time we recorded there. Billy Barnett is a very likable guy, and while his rates were high for the area, he’s still very reasonable in price—his studio would command three times the price in L.A., plus if you were short on funds, he would let you work it off; I helped him put in his console, and also did some labor around his studio, which included lifting his old back porch off of the studio.
Our plan was to license the record to a European label so we could tour over there, and import the record to the U.S. so we could get extra royalties—a higher rate for the L.P. as an import. Reiner Mettner at Double A records in Wuppertal, Germany liked it and released it (on red vinyl), and we toured Europe to support it in 1989.
I consider this to be our best record, and a lot of folks do too. It sells for a decent price on online auction sites, and I constantly get folks asking for a repressing. Not sure when or if that’ll happen.

 

 

Listen to I Hate The Rich here

Billion Dollar Nazis/ I Hate The Rich 7”
Econochrist split7” (Crime and Punishment/Day To Day/Angry Young Men)
1989/1990

After touring in support of the Balls To You LP, we decided to put out another single and we made it collectable by insisting on colored vinyl. The “Billion Dollar Nazis” 7 “ was recorded at Gung Ho, and the song was a re-write of Alice Cooper’s “Billion Dollar Babies” with political lyrics. This was sort of a tribute to a friend of mine who committed suicide in my backyard by taking cyanide—Alice Cooper was a favorite of his. The flipside is also a cover, by a Portland band called the Jackals, who were sorta a rockabilly/punk combo made up of guys who were in older Portland punk bands like Sado Nation.I liked them because they’d play Rezillo’s covers. Their version of the song was much more slower and powerful—I think we blew it on this one. This record came out on a label that I can’t seem to recall at the moment.
The Econochrist split was offered to us and we didn’t take it too seriously—thinking that it wouldn’t sell, and nobody would buy it. We recorded it at a studio that normally did radio commercials because we won the studio time in a contest for beer drinking. This recording proves that nothing’s free, even if you win a beer-drinking contest. A terrible effort.

 

 

Listen to Bastards here

Sonic Manifesto 7"

 

 

 

 

 

Live in Hope 7"

Listen to 21 Pigs here