Deborah Iyall describes her own music with all the appropriate adjectives. “Poetic. Passionate. Danceable. Personal. Fearless. I’m influenced by new wave and punk . . . but the fact is the punk music I listen to isn’t what people think punk music is. I prefer bands like the Talking Heads or Television.”
Iyall has loved music ever since she was a small child. “I was always the kid who knew the lyrics to the songs on the radio” she says. It was because of another performer that Iyall became one herself. “One night I saw Penelope Huston of the Avengers play at Mabuhay Gardens, a really big punk club in San Francisco.”
Iyall saw Houston strut her stuff, and realized she could do that, too. “Yes. I thought, I can sing as well as that. I also had something to say. She was about my age, too. I loved her energy.”
A short while later Iyall had success as lead singer of the legendary new wave band Romeo Void. Two of her hit singles, “Never Say Never” and “A Girl in Trouble” ended up being chart hits.
Mainstream pop will always be there, but independent music is where the best bands originate. Outside of the industry the dogs eat the dogs with greater ferocity because it’s the jungle. Because of that, only the best independent musicians get noticed, and Iyall is proud of where she’s at.
“Indie music is better because it’s what you and your friends made,” Iyall says, laughing. “We aren’t trying to reach for the lowest common denominator or looking for a market. The mainstream writes, ‘This Summer Let’s Party in the USA’ because a demographic tells them that the song will be popular.”
Singing Until Sunrise is Iyall’s latest album. The title is a reference to her own Native American roots. “My tribe comes from Washington State. During the big ceremonies some tribes would dance two nights, but our tribe would dance four nights.” Such a commitment to music is certainly in the singer and songwriter’s blood. “Singing Until Sunrise is my own way of saying how I’m going to sing until dawn.”
The album was produced by Grammy Award-winning Francis Buckley, and the quality certainly shows. Singing Until Sunrise has class, evoking the atmospheric tones of Echo and the Bunnymen or the seductive grace of Souixsie and the Banshees.
What would Iyall like her future to be? “I’m performing down here in the southland to get people to notice I’m making new music.” It’s not that she wants to sell out; she just wants to sell out some venues. “My fans still love my old songs, and that’s great, but I still want to cash in on my new songs.”
“I would love to supplement my income with my music. It’s what I love to do, but if I have to carry around the baggage of being a punk musician I want something to show for it,” Iyall says.
To the young female performer, the LP is both a tribute to music and to people in her life who are long gone. “I love knowing I give people thrills when I do play. I’ve lost a lot of friends, some to AIDS, and it’s sad that they aren’t here to enjoy music anymore,” Iyall says. “I feel like I’m a member of that generation, so I have to carry on and represent those people. I have a responsibility.”
"Bro'" is a term we're all familiar with. It's synonymous with "dude" or "G." The slang seems more surfer than anything else. "Hey, bro', there are some killer waves out there today."
In Southern California a bro' is what you get if you combine piercings, blue jeans, biker rings, gangster iconography, Metal Mulisha, Tap Out t-shirts, mixed martial arts, spiked leather belts, lifted trucks, tattoos of "Inland Empire" or "909" with a serious gangster/rock-a-billy/native SoCal flavor, dirt bikes, skateboards and everything else the X Games have to offer.
My description is still insufficient, and I've hung out with bro's forever since I started writing for Skinnie Entertainment Magazine nearly a decade ago. If you live in the Inland Empire, you know what a bro' is, and Hollywood doesn't, for the most part.
Beau Manley and Colin "Scummy" Morrison in Bro'
My point is that any music-oriented youth subculture is always difficult to pin down because that's just the way it is. I was very surprised that Nick Parada, the director of Bro', chose to point his camera at a demographic largely ignored by Hollywood. I still can't think of a single film or television show that seemed to capture the spirit of the Southern California hardcore punk scene I experienced growing up in the 80's and 90's throughout San Bernardino County.
My friends and I listened to bands like The Dickies, the Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag, rode skateboards and wore all of the spiked belts, leather jackets, band shirts and combat boots we could purchase off of Melrose Ave. in L.A. to wear that weekend to the Voodoo Glow Skulls show at Spanky's in Riverside. We were punk, mostly into music produced by Dr. Strange Records, but beyond that no one I ever saw that was supposed to be punk on the big screen ever looked like me or my friends, which is why I enjoyed Bro' so much.
In one of the early scenes of Bro', the main character, Johnny (played by Will Chavez) goes with his new friend, Jesse (played by Beau Manley, a former member of Metal Mulisha) to a party out in the Inland Empire, where we meet Jesse's friend and fellow dirt bike rider, Rudy (played by Colin "Scummy" Morrison of Metal Mulisha) I was blown away. I've partied in Riverside, at houses like that, with people like that. A few minutes later, Johnny watches as Jesse and Rudy beat up and kick out a few other people who came to the party for being posers. I almost laughed out loud, because I had seen something like that happen a dozen times at some of the parties I'd been at.
Johnny's story is the primary component of Bro'. He's a college kid growing up in Burbank, working at a gym, and that's about all you find out about him, aside from the fact he lives with his mom in the suburbs. He could be anybody.
Will Chavez, Colin "Scummy" Morrison and Rebekah Graf in Bro'
Johnny picks up on Jesse's sister, goes to her house, meets Jesse, and the story begins. You can't blame Johnny for hanging out with Jesse. Compared to him, Johnny is dull, more mainstream than anything else. That's the point of any coming-of-age drama, though. Oliver Twist, the central protagonist of Oliver Twist, is a nice kid, but he's also a fucking bore. He really doesn't get interesting until he meets the Artful Dodger, a criminal operating in London that provides the nice kid with the reason to rock the streets living a life of crime.
Jesse is the Artful Dodger. He drives a lifted truck, races dirt bikes, is covered in tattoos and seems to run the show. He smokes weed, parties, sells cocaine and buys firearms. He's a badass. Of course Johnny wants to hang out with Jesse and his partner-in-crime, Rudy. The parties alone are worth the two-hour jaunt down the 210E from Burbank, where Jesse just points to a pretty girl and just about commands her to have sex with Johnny. Damn, G, you sure roll funky.
Mr. Parada, the director of Bro', has given us a film that's a snapshot into a whole lifestyle I wouldn't mind seeing more of on the big screen in more films. The characters in Bro' are primarily into dirt bikes, and I would have preferred to see some mixed martial arts up there, but I was still impressed by what Mr. Parada had done because, like I mentioned before, when I grew up punk I never saw anything on the big screen (or television) that seemed to accurately represent what my friends and I were into. In Parada's film, the scene is right there, just like it is out in the High Desert.
When people think of punk music they typically think of Suburbia. That's because few films could accurately capture what was going on in the Southern California punk music scene back in the day. Other films like Dudes, Sid and Nancy and Repo Man almost captured the spirit, but it was really just a photograph of a reflection of the real thing. If you want to see what was really going on, you have to watch The Decline of Western Civilization.
I liked Bro' because the people I was looking at on the screen were involved in a music-orientated youth subculture I could identify with. When Jesse tells Johnny they're going to the I.E., it was surreal. The Big Screen was finally going to show what was going on in my backyard.
Bro' also reminds me of Easy Rider, which is why I enjoyed it. Easy Rider was panned by critics and hated by everyone who was a millionaire in Hollywood, but Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper made a low-budget movie about guys who are into motorcycles, drugs and music, trying to find themselves and get away at the same time. The film made millions because the predominant youth subculture saw themselves up on that screen. They could be Captain America and Billy, all they needed was the clothes, the attitude and a motorcycle.
When I see the desert that is Riverside in Bro', I am reminded of how those areas really are that desolate, where kids grow up dealing meth, cocaine and weed because everyone's doing it and there aren't enough cops to go around. The guys living lifestyle out in places like Riverside are going to see themselves in Bro', too.
That's another reason why Mr. Parada's film is so compelling. Just like Easy Rider, it's a low budget flick, featuring a few relatively green actors in a movie where cocaine is the catalyst for the action to follow, but the plot is tight enough to relate to. Most of the time in a Hollywood crime flick the characters are dealing and stealing millions of dollars. In Bro', the characters are transporting thousands of dollars of cocaine for a dealer connected to hardcore Mexican gang members. It's low-stakes, so it's plausible, just like the violence. When the blood flows there's no reason it shouldn't and the scary fact is it's the kind of thing that really is happening every day, right next door.
Johnny is at first a lot more cool than he was in the opening credits, dressed like his new friends, rolling in a car financed and approved by Jesse, but he always seems just a little like the poser Rudy beats up at the first party. He just hasn't been that hardcore for that long, so he's forcing it. Unlike Rudy and Jesse, Johnny really has no fall-back option for being cool. If Bro' is Easy Rider, Johnny is Jack Nicholson's straight-laced, college graduate, vacationing from his mainstream-approved, square lifestyle, only cool because he's in the area of his motorcyclist friends. Without them he's kind of a schmuck. Johnny pushes himself closer to the abyss because unlike Jesse and Rudy, there's no fallback. These are his cool friends, he has to impress them, or it's back to his day job in Burbank and wearing whatever the fuck Sears had on sale that Sunday.
That's not to diss on Will Chavez. In one of the opening scenes of the film, as he stares into the mirror, high on cocaine, in calamity up to his eyebrows, and there's a loss and desolation in his face anyone who's partied too much can recognize. Just like Oliver Twist, he gets in trouble with the law and suffers for hanging out with criminals. He's a nice guy, and the fast lane wasn't meant for him.
Jesse's character is all about the fast lane. He's a competitive dirt bike rider on his way to the professional big time, but the guns, drugs and gangs posses a gravity he can't escape. The gang members he's dealing with are violent, and Jesse knows it. He owes them. The character should ditch the dealing and stay with racing dirt bikes, but by the time you've met the players he's working for, you understand why not picking up the phone when they call is a bad idea. That, and the money is too much. Who'd ditch that, the parties or the girls?
I draw comparisons to Easy Rider because Mr. Parada's film captures a spirit, a lifestyle, a counterculture attitude with Bro' that people need to see. Hopper, Fonda and Nicholson did the same thing with their own film back in the day. All of the characters in those films are on the edge of society, in their own way. The landscapes in Bro' are a wasteland, at times, much like Easy Rider. They are on the edge of society, even if the lines between the two are ill-defined.
Danny Trejo, Bro'
While the film is certainly sturdy enough to head down the highway on it's own power, Danny Trejo's presence in the film is a high-octane booster. Trejo has played it all, but for the most part he's the dangerous gangster you don't want to fuck with. His role in the film carries a gravitas that's impossible to not feel. The actor is, after all, a proven A-lister who's been in scenes with Robert De Niro. His role in the film is a restrained one, but it's the reason Bro' hits as hard as it does.
By the end of the film, there is a perfect synchronicity to all of the plot elements that feel as inevitable as a barrel going over Niagara Falls. We've seen this story before, only this time it's told against a different backdrop, and when each of the characters get what's coming to them you expect it, even though the end result is entirely because of natural choices each person in the story makes, so it's good writing.
Like Easy Rider, Bro' is not a perfect film, but a low-budget, independent flick doesn't need to be if it's shot and written well enough to show us something new. Mr. Parada has done something very cutting edge with this movie, and I'm sure Hollywood is going to give us films in the future that feature more of Metal Mulisha, real skateboarding, mixed martial arts and the modern hardcore punk scene thriving in the desert down here in Southern California.
The official Facebook site for Bro' is right here.
The official AMC Theaters website for Bro' is right here.
I have a nightmare that in the future we will all only be able to buy music either online or at the mall. Deafened by stereo speakers blaring obnoxious pop, blinded by multiple screens replicating soulless videos, you will search hopelessly for real music from a collection dwindling with the passage of time like the English language in Orwell’s 1984. Why? Because enterprises like Dr. Strange Records won’t exist.
The building that is the physical representation of Dr. Strange Records was the first post office in Rancho Cucamonga 100 years ago. Located in the city’s old town, it’s a music store, punk museum, social center, clothing and accessory shop, and the very epitome of that corporate outlets like Virgin are not: a locale of wood, dust, grit, soul and history.
When you walk into the place you enter a store of wooden floors and plaster walls replete with posters and paraphernalia from punk bands both old and new. Rummaging through several used sections will reward you with solid gold: You can find crazy, obscure albums like Wakey Wakey by The Toy Dolls, Television’s Marquee Moon, and Coulda…Shoulda…Woulda by Black Market Baby.
William “Bill” Plaster is Dr. Strange, the man who runs the business that put the city of Rancho Cucamonga on the punk rock map. His office is a cold room where he runs his company, answering emails and shipping music all across the world.
I had to step over cartons of merchandise while Bill took a seat next to a computer that was probably manufactured in the mid-90’s to find a place to perform the interview. Between the posters, the cd’s, the shirts and other punk paraphenalia, it was difficult to tell which was merchandise and which was his.
“The online store keeps me busy,” he says. “It took three to four tries to get the website up. I used to do mail order with a typewriter. I’d retype it every month. Right now I’m sending a big package to a Russian embassy in Belgium. I send stuff to Tahiti, Croatia, Greece…any developed country, all over the world.”
The man who would be Dr. Strange got into new wave in the 80’s, as it bled into punk. “By my sophomore high school year I was listening to The Cars, Blondies, Devo, Oingo Boingo, then other bands like Black Flag, Stiff Little Fingers and The Circle Jerks.”
In 1988, Plaster was working his last “real” job as a waiter, going to Mt. San Antonio College and putting together a record label. “I didn’t do it for the money…I just wanted to pay rent, but I realized I had to put out a punk record before I died. I worked seven days a week, 12-16 hour days. I still wear a million hats. I’m the order guy, the label guy, the retail guy...”
1993 saw the rise of a dozen Inland Empire punk bands under the label of Dr. Strange Records. Groups such as Letseatlots, Guttermouth, Face to Face, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Golfball Liberation Front, and Mindless Thoughts were pushing the scene in a city that had never had one, playing at local venues like Spanky’s, Munchies and The Showcase Theatre. “Between 1991 and 1996, anything would sell. I fathered a lot of bands, mostly from around Rancho Cucamonga.”
Now, ten years later, Plaster has a history behind him and a future of doing what he loves ahead of him. His recent releases stand like menhirs in a punk rock Stonehenge: Coulda…Shoulda…Woulda by Black Market Baby, Killer on Craig’s List by The Texas Thieves, and The Golden Age of Piracy by The Skulls, to mention a few.
I tell Plaster about my nightmare, and how I feel the small chains are being ground under by the big ones. But even those big chains are being destroyed by the Internet in the form of Internet piracy. Virgin Megastores are going down in flames, so the smaller operations, owned by normal people who understand the art like Mr. Plaster, aren’t going to be able to take it for long.
“You’re 100% right. It’s cd burning that’s killing me.” The man known as Dr. Strange admits that it does hurt him. “Before it got big, I’d sell 10,000 copies of an album. Now, I can only sell 1,000.”
His record store is one of the many hardcore punk landmarks you can find throughout southern California. The business is more than just a place to find all things obscure (or place an order for what you want if Dr. Strange doesn’t have it), it’s also an inspiration to the future punk musicians living in the suburbs around the store that still believe in the old skool.
Because of that, Plaster is still proud to have the job he has.“I have been allowed to do what I truly love to do. I’m one of the few people who get up to go to work thinking, ‘I get to go to work!’”
Steven Blush is the author of American Hardcore, a book that chronicles the rise and fall of the hardcore punk scene in Southern California from 1980-1986. The books was used as a basis for a documentary of the same name directed by Paul Rachman, featuring interviews and live concert footage of legendary puink bands like Black Flag, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks and Minor Threat.
70’s punk had hit America, splattering itself all over the place, energizing the youth and leaving the rest of the country with the feeling that something awful had just happened. When punk came back for another infection, SoCal youth was ready for the sickness, creating a genre that scared the mainstream and set the tone for future bands that the same aggression and hatred of the mainstream as their British punk predecessors.
Blush treats the subject matter with great respect. He’s created a work that could serve as a college textbook for scholars who want to explore the roots of punk, indie and rock today by following them deep into the hardcore American underground scene of the early 80’s. He captures the excitement and adrenaline of that lost era, but reminds us that the savage soul of the punk music lives on and is still with us even now.
How did you originally get into the punk scene and come up with the concept for American Hardcore?
I was somebody who was lucky enough to fall into it during the 80’s in Washington, D.C. My girlfriend was so hip that she had tickets to obscure punk bands playing downtown in underground clubs. I saw Gang of Four before they were big. I saw the Birthday Party and Bauhaus when they only had a dozen people in the audience.
I fell into it the subculture of punk through the radio stations, too. I remember booking the Dead Kennedy’s, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, GBH, setting up concerts at independent halls and venues. They didn’t last too long because some band would always destroy the place during a show.
Why did you choose to cover the punk scene between 1980 and 1986?
What I got from the scene was that it was an all-encompassing subculture. The indie rock music label started because of this. Youth Brigade started BYO. Bad Religion started Epitaph. This was an American version of punk that had a speed and aggression with an emphasis on speed. It was very different than the British version.
I’ve come to this conclusion: In history we talk about the post-WWII subcultures like hippies and beatniks. We should also include punk.
How do you think the punk music scene was a reaction to new wave?
Other punk bands like the Ramones got signed up, but they were at the top, but to be hardcore you had to be into punk and you had to be against what music had become, which was new wave. What happened was in the late 70’s was that you had this Ramones/Sex Pistols thing, and people were really revolted by it, the safety pins in your cheek, the spitting, the violence, etc. The music wasn’t respected by the industry.
What Sire Records did was create new wave, which was about promoting music, to treat it as a business, and they pushed punk in that direction. But there were kids in the hardcore scene who wanted punk. These bands became more of a youth culture where the bands dressed like the kids. It was a Lord of the Flies setup, where kids created a scene that was great at first, but then it went to hell.
So the early punk scene in Southern California wasn’t about selling out, but it was something more?
The music was the bloated reaction to the entertainment industry. Now there isn’t even such a thing as selling out. Now you can be hip and sell out. I don’t like to be the old guys who complains about music, but I find that a lot of kids today don’t want to be bothered with how hard it was to promote a scene years ago. How certain people took the burnt culturally, painfully, lives ruined because they wanted to have a scene of their own, so they pushed.
That’s how punk rock became strong, it was about meaning and intensity. We all watched the hippies sold out and there was this feeling that we’d do things different. A lot of bands don’t even have a concept of selling out, now.
Do you feel that most modern punk bands have become so corporate that they would be unrecognizable by their punk ancestors?
If you talk about the bands of yesteryear, I think they still mean it. Of course it’s not the same when a band gets together 30 years later, but hardcore never really sold out. I certainly feel that we have to be honest about what it is. As for younger bands, well, let’s face it, there’s a conformity with playing music that’s 30 years old. I don’t think there’s the same social movement.
Why did you cover the hardcore punk scene in Southern California?
I’m most interested in people who use punk as a way as an attitude, as a lifestyle, and not just because of the music. I feel that the hardcore scene has its roots in Southern California. It came from the suburbs, where kids were brought away from the city to a place of hyper conformity, and it just created this new breed of monster. If you went to a show you could get your ass kicked for dressing the wrong way.
It’s 100 % California lifestyle. It’s a rite of passage. Hardcore is being passed down to the children. I can’t tell you how many 45 year olds with punk tattoos showed up with their kids. I remember being in Appalachia and hearing fathers tell their kids to listen to "Simple Man" by Lynard Skynard. Now it’s "Mommy’s Little Monster" by Social Distortion.
How did the mainstream view the hardcore punk scene back then?
The mainstream hated hardcore. It took thirty years to be accepted, which is why it is to me an art form. It was dangerous, a walled fortress that you couldn’t penetrate. Back in the day there was no chance that record companies would pick up hardcore music.
Oh, you could talk to hipsters about 70’s punk shows about how rough it was, but 70’s punk changed the world. They were shocked and disgusted about it, but a small minority who were new to it were clued into the new style. The Sex Pistols and their whole notion of punk, that’s’ where punk started and that’s why it developed the way it did.
There seemed to be a lot more violence, back then.
Violence and danger was inherent to the excitement, the popularity, the interest in the scene. We talk about how things have become so sanitized. They try to remove hardcore from the violence, but a lot of it is just being flat out honest that you are ok with it. Slam dancing and stage diving was the reality of the culture.
Young, male, testosterone, angst, alienation and confusion. That’s what Southern California hardcore culture was about. It was a very violent scene. All of the people who are lionized, who pushed the scene, they were violent. They were into clearing house, starting over, ground zero.
Was it a youth reaction to politics?
I think the election of Reagan created a whole new mindset in America. We were all going back to the 1950’s. At the time you couldn’t articulate it clearly because it’s happening around you, you are young, but you know something is wrong. It all goes back to Reagan.
The fallout of the American Hardcore scene was the re-election of Reagan. There were rock against Reagan concerts and shows that protested the government, like today.
Do you believe that the spirit of the scene is still alive?
A lot of bands today can all trace their roots back to hardcore, so the spirit is still alive, at least when it comes to the spirit of “Do it yourself.” Its political roots are alive in disparate ways but the pioneers usually don’t get the credit.
I originally interviewed the Voodoo Glow Skulls for Inland Empire Weekly. I had seen the band play dozens of times at Spanky's, a punk club in downtown Riverside, so I was looking forward to talking to a group that had been one of my favorites in the 90's California hardcore punk music scene.
Other punk bands, like Circle of Violence and Golfball Liberation Front, were not as fortunate as groups like the Voodoo Glow Skulls. They burned bright for a short time and then vanished into the wind because of drinking, drugs, violence and prison.
Well, that's hardcore punk music.
...
“The World According to the Voodoo Glow Skulls”
For a band as experienced as the Voodoo Glow Skulls, there’d be an expectation that they’d have sold out by making seventy-two obnoxious music videos, a greatest hits album, and then retiring to do soda commercials. Instead, they have remained true to their own groove.
That groove has gotten deeper and traveled longer since their first album, Who Is, This Is, produced by Dr. Strange Records in 1992, going from a standard-issue aggressive punk sound, only to add manic, ska-style trumpets and sax accompanying the thrash-metal riffs, and then taking the multi-culture plunge a few years later with Spanish vocals aimed at the Latin side of the local population to create a sound the band calls “California street music.”
In a conversation with lead guitarist Eddie Casillas, I asked him if he believed that the Spanish-language vocals separated his band from the thundering herd of vanilla punk-prototypes the scene is heir to.
“Most definitely.” He said. “We’re the band that started that. We’re Mexican-American. It’s a part of our heritage. It’s something that we’ve always been proud of. It’s a big part of the scene-it’s unique to Southern California.”
They moved to Epitaph a few albums ago, causing a few detractors to accuse the band of selling out. Whereas hip-hop butt-humps the idea of getting paid, getting rich, somehow punk requires its bards to die poor in a filthy garage. The Voodoo Glow Skulls have walked this fine line with ingenuity and aplomb. They aren’t smiling their teeth out on MTV, but it’s been a while since any of them ate ramen because they had to.
“We got called sell-outs for going to Epitaph.” Eddie says. “Why the fuck would we not want to be there? We had played in Riverside for six years, and then when we went to a big label we got a lot of criticism, but I always felt that Epitaph was the one label a band could go to if they didn’t want to sell out, since they could still be independent.”
Since then the Voodoo Glow Skulls have delivered eight albums of their California street music to the farthest points on the globe from Brazil to Japan while still living in Riverside, the chewy center in the Tootsie Roll Pop that is the Inland Empire.
To listen to their sound is to realize that the Spanish lyrics and flamenco-tinged brass sections that are as mariachi as they are ska isn’t some band trying to make some leap to 97.9 LA RAZA to enhance their street cred.
They play Mexican-American music because they’ve been onto something for the past decade that the rest of So Cal is just becoming aware of: this whole side of California is Mexican-American, Anglo-Latino, white/brown…whatever you want to call it...the Voodoo Glow Skulls are here to celebrate the fusion.
I've been writing for IE Weekly since the first day of the magazine. I interviewed Dr. Strange of Dr. Strange Records.
It was a terrible piece of writing, but at least the interview went well. I had known Dr. Strange since growing up in the hardcore So Cal punk scene, so it was really just a talk with someone I had known for more than a decade.
Now I have to interview ultra famous people, I mean, people so awesomely popular that stadiums scream their name out loud to their faces every night. How could any ego handle that kind of pressure?
So I try to be as interesting and empathetic as I can, so they get to take a break from the business. I want them to feel as if they are just having a great conversation.
It's easy to do when I'm just cheerfully asking questions (without being corny) and letting the person on the other side of the conversation talk as long as they want, without looking bored. Would anyone you know let you do that?
...
Juan Velazquez, guitarist and vocalist for Abe Vigoda, met the rest of the members of the band growing up in Chino. “We all met in school. I met our bass player David Reichardt, and Dane Chadwick, our drummer, in junior high. In high school we met Michael, the singer. We all played music together and were all big music geeks. We’d end up hanging out all the time, talking about our favorite groups.”
They chose their band’s name after watching a skit on Conan O’Brien which featured the actor Abe Vigoda, made famous by his role as Sal Tessio in The Godfather. “We saw him on Conan O’Brien. He’d just show up for no reason. We thought of all of these bands and their names, and how they are funny or vague, so we decided to just call ourselves that. We kept on trying to change it, but we always just stuck with ‘Abe Vigoda,’” says Velazquez bringing up a great point: “I don’t really think there are any cool stories about how a band got named.”
Just a few short years later the band has released four albums, been interviewed by Fader, and composed 2010’s Crush, a work so good it ended up on Pitchfork Media’s “Top 50 Albums of 2010.”
As the band has matured, its sound has changed. The group has been described as “tropical punk” by Wikipedia, alternative/electronica by MySpace, and labeled as “pop” by YouTube. Velazquez and the band don’t worry about labels. “We used to have a more funny, punk kind of sound,” he says. Since then, each album has been just another side of the same group. “We really like bands like The Talking Heads, bands that can’t be just given one title or another. Maybe it’s because we have four records out, and we’ve changed with each record.” And if he has to pick a label, it’s not like the band will stay that way. “I guess we’re post-punk, goth pop. I’m not a big fan of saying any band is a certain genre. I don’t know, maybe we’re all over the place.”
With each chapter Abe Vigoda’s quality has been consistent, although the band’s current sound is similar to darkwave or guitar-injected dance electronica. Velazquez says that the only formula their band follows when it comes to writing songs is democratic. “We’ll spend a lot of time on the road, and then when we get back we each have different ideas, different sounds, because we each pick up different influences.”
The band promises to release another record, but doesn’t have an exact date. “Maybe [in] a year or less. It’s going to be a while before we come up with a new album,” Velazquez says. “There’s one new song we’ve been playing a lot, it doesn’t have a name yet. It’s more bass-and-drums-centered. We’ve just added a little keyboard to it.”
Now that the band has had time to grow up, it’s only natural that its music has matured, too. “We’re tying to work with a lot more subtley, instead of going overboard with our sound,” he says. “We will offer fans something on the Internet soon.”
I covered The Sounds for Inland Empire Weekly, and ended up covering the band for Skinnie Entertainment Magazine a few months later. These guys are really great people to hang out with, and we ended up getting drunk and partying a couple of times.
Southern California punk rock, especially bands working with local producers like Dr. Strange of Dr. Strange Records.
...
The Knoits are a punk band straight out of Southern California, made locally famous after fighting their way to the semi-finals during the annual Battle of the Bands at the Chronic Cantina in the City of Upland.
Exhausted by the flaky antics of the rest of their group, brothers Sal and Marvin Oyarzabal kicked them out to make a two-man band, with Sal on guitar and lead vocals while Marvin handled the drums. With nothing pulling them back, they’ve gone forward ever since.
The music is solid where it counts and gritty where it needs to be, delivering punches and hooks with vocals that remind one of the light of good times with bros and the dark of the urban sprawl.
After only two-and-a-half years, the band already has serious credentials, citing influences like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Operation Ivy, Lars Henricksen and the Bastards, Guttermouth and Seven Seconds. When Eddie Casillas of the legendary Voodoo Glow Skulls tapped them on the shoulder to record their music, the two went straight to the studio and have been hard at work ever since.
Their latest album, Drunk Murder, is an album you must possess if you value modern punk. Your only hope is to hit up www.myspace.com/knoitskillkids and be somewhere near Riverside, Fullerton or Escondido when next they appear.
When Dropkick Murphys released their fifth album, 2005's The Warrior's Code, I was working for Skinnie Entertainment Magazine. The editor, Hans Fink, set me up with the interview as a favor because by 2005 I had written articles for just about every section the magazine had, including sports and comedy.
Of course this band is one of my all-time favorites, although I have to confess that I really didn't care for The Warrior's Code. 2011's The Meanest of Times proved that the 'Murphys still had plenty of firepower left. "Surrender" is my favorite song by this band, next to "Worker's Song" from Blackout.
Tim Brennan, guitarist and vocalist for the band, was a very friendly person to talk to, although I could tell that the band had been partying quite a bit the night before.
JTD: Hey man, thanks for talking to Skinnie Magazine.
TIM: No problem. Thank you.
JTD: Where did you get the name Dropkick Murphys?
TIM: The Dropkick Murphys was one of the first dry out clinics in Boston, started by a local boxer. There’s a song on the new album called “Sunshine Highway” that talks about it.
JTD: The Dropkick Murphys have always been very patriotic. I’ve been to your shows and have noticed there are a lot of American flags and everything. Did 9/11 reinforce this?
TIM: Obviously, to a point. Everyone had it to begin with, but 9/11 was a good reminder. It became more prominent, after 9/11. The American Pride Tour wouldn’t have happened, otherwise.
JTD: “Citizen CIA” has a very political message.
TIM: More or less. It’s a “what if?”
JTD: What if the CIA was using a temp agency to hire people, or something like that?
TIM: Yeah. “Why not pay for college? You’ve just graduated from High School, so join the CIA.” If the CIA is just hiring anyone, something’s wrong…so the song is hypothetical, not political.
JTD: Yeah. Once you choose a slant, it’s like you are labeled and put into a category that you’re stuck in.
TIM: We never had a political slant…Republican, Democrat, whatever. We always had songs about the unions, but once we did a song that ended upon on the Rock vs. Bush album. We got emails and letters from people who were just angry.
JTD: It gets messy.
TIM: That’s not us. We don’t want to just be known as a political band.
JTD: Do you feel the L.A. scene gives you as much support as you get on the east coast?
TIM: We do. The shows are great, so it feels like it. The fans really like us out here.
JTD: But I’ve always admired how you guys are very loyal to your Boston origins. You’re not some band that just moved on and completely forgot where they came from.
TIM: Obviously. I think where we came from, that New England mentality, really keeps us grounded.
JTD: Certainly.
TIM: We’d never move away from Boston.
JTD: I can’t imagine you guys moving to Beverly Hills.
TIM: Yeah, that’s not us.
JTD: When are you going to do another Who song? Your cover of “The Kids Are Alright” was epic. I like it more than the original.
TIM: Thanks, man. We actually do “Baba O’Reilly” too.
JTD: Really? Wow…
TIM: For our live shows. We almost recorded it for “The Warrior’s Code,” but we play it live. We don’t play the very end, though. It’s an abridged version. But the band loves The Who.
JTD: Is it because they kind of represent the early punk scene? The Who really helped to start it all off…
TIM: Well, obviously, I mean, they weren’t a total punk band, but you look at Pete Townshend, and he was just pure rock and roll.
JTD: When did you first incorporate bagpipes into your music? Did the audience take to that right away? It’s very distinctive.
TIM: I think the band used them when they first started out.
JTD: Onstage, too?
TIM: No, at first they just had their buddy Joe Delaney, but then they just went with pre-recorded bagpipe music. Later, they actually had a piper with the band onstage during the shows.
JTD: I like bagpipe music. I’ve been to some highland festivals, and I’ve always felt that bagpipes symbolized rage and rebellion. It goes along with the punk spirit.
TIM: Totally. I agree. I think they fit.
JTD: What’s it been like performing a cover of “Tessie?"
TIM: We played it in New York, and we really should have had a fence to protect us. The crowd hated it. They started throwing bottles and everything.
JTD: Really? Ha ha! I never thought of that…
TIM: Yeah, it was like that one bar scene in The Blue Brothers. I didn’t think about it at the time, but we played “Tessie” the crowd just hated us…it was terrible. So the next night we’re going up on stage, still playing in New York, and I saw it on the set list…
JTD: Oh no.
TIM: I told Ken “No,” but he insisted, so we played it anyways, every night in New York. I just learned to dodge the bottles. There were some people who just laughed it off, but some people in the crowd were pissed.
JTD: Fuck, man…danger and excitement.
TIM: Yeah.
JTD: Did the Red Sox call you up and thank you?
TIM: I don’t know…they gave us free tickets, let us go to Fenley Park, so yeah, they were more than thankful. We didn’t have carte blanche of the whole stadium, but it was close.
JTD: That still must be pretty incredible, being a part of baseball history like that.
TIM: I don’t know if we were part of baseball history, but it was still great to be there.
JTD: Could you please explain the song “Wicked Sensitive Crew?" Were you guys just sick of Emo rock, or what?
TIM: Not really. It was originally just a dig at me from Ken--that was the idea--a song about being sensitive. About looking around at the pop punk, you got kids with tough tattoos singing about being sensitive. None of us are in a gang or anything, but we just thought it was funny, so we recorded it.
JTD: I remember being at a Social Distortion concert and hearing Mike Ness talk about how, back in his day, if you had a green mohawk and tattoos you’d probably get your ass kicked, and now everyone at the mall looks like that.
TIM: Yeah, totally. It’s weird…it was a style…people who were punk were just dirty, but now there’s a whole different sort of scene.
JTD: What was it like for you guys, playing in Ireland?
TIM: Pretty crazy. When I first joined the band, I figured we had fans in Ireland. I thought at first there’d be a few people who wouldn’t like what we are doing with their traditional sound, bagpipes and stuff like that. But no, we were well received. The fans really like us. We even got to play with Cait O’Reardon from “The Pogues.” People loved it.
JTD: Well, thank you for talking to me today. I really appreciate it.
TIM: Yeah, be careful with that “Three Straight Guys and Ken” thing. That might get me in trouble. (Laughs).
Steve Aoki and Dim Mak records deliver critical hits to clubs everywhere.
Steve Aoki has been rocking L.A.’s electro house underground since his days as a student at UC Santa Barbara. When he realized he could do what he was doing so well and make a living at the same time, he focused his energies on creating his own record label.
“I started it in 1996,” Aoki says. “There was no philosophy, business plan or anything.” He composed music, created CDs, designed cover art and kept working. “I just went to Kinko’s and started making copies. Then I got some labels, saved up $400 and sold the CDs for $3 each.”
Since then, Aoki has continued to unleash a barrage of dance floor megahits that earned him accolades from magazines like BPM and Paper. He also won a DJ Ibiza Award in 2007 for Best Set of the Season. In 2008, his first record, Pillowface and his Airplane Chronicles, won the Best Mix Album of the Year Award from Billboard.
The DJ has worked with everyone from Travis Barker and Afrojack, remixing everything from Peaches to Michael Jackson. Working independently from his own production company has allowed Aoki to succeed because he has a hand at every level of the process.
“If you don’t get your hands dirty you’re never going to survive,” he says. “You have to f#*@ing do it yourself.”
As wide and diverse as Aoki’s business is, it’s the end result of one person just being ambitious about making music. “If you know what you want, and you are able to just go for it, you can be a 15-person workforce, all by yourself,” he says.
Aoki’s DIY attitude is pure punk philosophy, juxtaposed with the fact that he’s been very successful in the industry because he is still committed to the art. “Taking money for music always felt wrong,” Aoki says. “I was always afraid of selling out. I wanted to be underground . . . to be punk rock.”
No matter how successful Aoki might be, he stays close to his punk origins. "Misfits," his recent collaboration with Travis Barker from Barker’s latest new solo project, Give the Drummer Some, is raw and aggressive, featuring violent, stomping drums, screaming vocals and a manic energy straight out of the soundtrack to an MMA competition. It’s pure punk rock, but the song’s surgical production level is pure Aoki.
The years have been harsh, but Dim Mak Records has survived and succeeded. Aoki doesn’t pat himself on the back for it; he mostly credits the people he works with. In an industry full of upheavals, Aoki’s business thrived because of a little luck, too.
“Dim Mak Records is still around . . . We’ve missed a bullet a few time,” he says. He tells me one of the secrets: “We still have that DIY aspect. That’s why the business has stayed around for so long.”
“We also believe in DIT: Doing It Together,” Aoki adds.
He is proud that the people who work for him at Dim Mak are invested in the success that comes from working together for mutual benefit. “Look at these people who built companies with just a few people, the right people, to build the infrastructure,” Aoki says. “We’re 50 employees deep, and we’ve done 250 albums because we’ve been able to stay ahead of the curve and continue to reach out and get new music.”
Is Aoki still independent because he’s been so successful? Or is he successful because he’s still independent? Beyond Dim Mak Records, he also has the Dim Mak Collection clothing line, his own magazine (Aoki) and he is currently designing his own brand of headphones for another company, WeAretheSuperlativeConspiracy (WASC).
Going to Kinko’s paid off.
But the scene isn’t without its negative aspects. When a young girl died of a suspected drug overdose after attending Electric Daisy Carnival last June, the electronic dance community took a huge hit. Of course, the media and the authorities quickly blamed the raves and the attendees, instead of the actions of a few misguided individuals.
Aoki isn’t afraid to discuss the subject, although he warns me not to take his comments out of context.
“It might happen again. It probably will happen again. You go to a soccer game, somebody dies. I have to be honest with you; you go to any other sports game, someone may die.”
He talks about how the loss of life is horrible, but out of 10,000 people, given enough gatherings over a long enough span of time, the odds are that a person could have an accident and get hurt or worse.“If someone dies, it’s deplorable,” Aoki says. “In every case it’s tragic. But when 10,000 people get together in one area, it could happen.”
Every year, across the world, large masses of people get together, but more often than not, people don’t get hurt . . . but there’s always the potential.“I’m talking about baseball games, soccer games, rock shows, raves . . . at the end of the day it’s going to be dangerous,” Aoki says. “What are they going to do? Ban baseball games?”
He points out that because of the Electric Daisy Carnival incident, there’s still a stain on the rave scene.“With all of us who are into this, it’s all about the music,” he says. “It’s a shame there [are] just a few knuckleheads that are f@*#ing it up for everyone else.”
Aoki is as realistic as he is compassionate. “I certainly don’t want anyone to get hurt. If I see anyone getting hurt, it really affects me.”
Even with his business in full swing, he’s still a DJ who’s very much in high demand, from Los Angeles to across the nation. This weekend, Aoki will be playing on the Dim Mak Stage at Identity Festival in San Bernardino at the San Manuel Amphitheater. [At press time, the festival was moved to a different venue, the Hollywood Palladium, in Los Angeles.]
The Identity Festival is a national tour featuring three stages (The Main Stage, the aforementioned Dim Mak Stage and the Advent Stage) with dozens of artists, including Kaskade, Steve Lawler, Pretty Lights, White Shadow, Nervo, The Disco Biscuits and more.
Since Aoki is running his own stage, what can fans expect him to offer?
“One big difference is my live show,” he says. Aoki promises that the visuals are going to be well worth the money. “We have a semi that just carries the rig behind the bus that carries all the technicians that make the live show.”
“The Dim Mak stage is the most eclectic, diverse stage,” Aoki adds. “We have The Crystal Method—they are legends from 15 years ago. We have Nero, we have DJ Shadow—and there’s nobody like DJ Shadow.”
Aoki is justifiably proud to be working with so much talent. “We are going to have a lot of diverse artists with songs that are cutting-edge.”
“This live show is based around the Dim Mak set,” he says. “I’m only playing my own records and a few key releases. If you go to YouTube, I’ll be constantly putting up new songs that I’ll be playing for the tour.”
He’s also giving his fans something extra in celebration of Identity. “I’ll be putting up a new song each day on my website at www.dimmakrecs.com."
Running a business, touring and producing isn’t enough, so the DJ is about to release yet another album. “It’s called Wonderland.” We’ll be sending it out December of 2011. It’s been a long project . . . it’s taken almost three years to put together.”
Aoki’s intent was to make an album featuring a diverse array of talent. “Wonderland has a variety of different vocalists and artists including Travis Barker, Lil John and will-i-am. I even did vocals on the album.”
Considering his previous work, what can fans expect from his album? “There are a lot of edgier tracks with catchy hooks that feature a rock influence,” Aoki reveals. “This album is all about the songs, not just the big club dance bangers. Every song is just a formula to fit the style of the vocalist.”
For Aoki, it’s been a long road . . . and there’s still a lot more road to go. Did he ever expect his music to be as monumental as it is right now?
“Of course not,” he says. “There’s no way you can expect something like this to happen.”
As in all careers, there are people who do their best and fail, and then there are people who do the same thing and succeed anyways. Did Aoki have a plan when he started out?
“There’s no road map or formula,” he says. “You can’t strategically make things like that happen.”
Any other reasonable human being could get jaded with the scene and retire, if they had accomplished half of what Aoki has. What inspires him now?
“Every day inspires me,” he says. “There’s always new stimulus—like fashion. It’s in the news, on the television, my Twitter feed, on the Internet, etc. Fans, people, friends. Everything inspires me. Every little thing comes into play.”
While Aoki’s spirit is still very much in the game, he understands the harsh realities of the industry, and how quickly those who can’t adapt fade away. “The people who are going to survive are the people who are flexible. Right now, fans are accessing music for free. Now you can go on the Internet and spend 10 bucks a month and have anything you want.”
The DJ warns that for any artist, technology is the key. The music business has to keep up with the technology if it wants to survive.
“I’m an artist,” Aoki says. “I want to sell records, but I also want the music out there. I do well with publishing, and I do well with my live shows, but all I care about is all those kids out there to have access to my music. That’s the most important connection between me and the fans.”
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