burger co-owner lee rickerd (r) and nobunny

Download: The Burger Basher! Mixtape

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Hunx & His Punx “You Don’t Like Rock ‘n’ Roll”
Harlem “South of France”
White Night “Settle This”
Nobunny “Monster Kiss”
Thee Makeout Party! “Kids”
Hunx & His Punx “I Won’t Get Under You”
Devon Williams “Forthcoming”
Thee Makeout Party! “Change”
Harlem “Caroline”
Nobunny “Apple Tree”

Anaheim’s Burger Records picks up bands that could have been on Bomp! (or Kama Sutra!) and puts them out on records (and tapes!) that add up to an OCDIY response to locals like Recess and PPM. They’ll be hosting their first-ever Burger Basher! this Saturday at downtown’s Five Star Bar and Burger co-owner (and thee Makeout Party! guitarist) Sean Bohrman takes a break from looking at pictures of boats to make us the above mix and talk about breakfast. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What’s a Burger board meeting like?
Sean Bohrman (co-owner): I don’t wanna say we get stoned all the time—we listen to records and come up with crazy ideas and fantasize about what it could be. We use the Secret at the board meetings! It’s a book they sell at Kinko’s and if you think positively—I flipped through it, and Lee watched the video—if you think positively, things will start to happen for you!
What’s the craziest idea still demanding actualization?
Starting a used record store—the craziest thing we have so far.
You should start a restaurant.
We wanna sell burgers! But being in that kind of business seems extra hard.
Because you could kill people if you’re not careful?
You can kill ‘em with records, too.
How?
Throw them really hard. Or play them really loud.
Doesn’t the Army do that for interrogations?
Yes—musical warfare.
What do the kids in Anaheim do when they hear the Burgermobile coming down the street?
There’s no Burgermobile yet—but we wanna buy a taco truck and turn it into a record store! So we can drive up to shows and sell out of the truck—that’s one of our crazy ideas!
And it could run on veggie oil.
We really wanna do that! That’s something we’ve been talking about for a long time. We were driving behind one guy and it smelled just like French fries—that’s perfect!
Who is the best new unsigned band that Burger has its eye on?
We use the Secret, so bands come to us! But the best band I’ve heard lately is Davila 666—I think they just released an album on In The Red and we’re probably gonna do a tape with them. We’re playing with them at Alex’s on August 29. They’re from Puerto Rico and they’ve got really awesome songs. Some are like the Zeros and some are psychedelic—it’s just really catchy good stuff. And Pipsqueak is out—he’s from just down the street. He’s 18 and just graduated high school and we’re making him grow up a lot faster than he should.
A true son of Burger?
Yeah—we recorded everything in our garage. Dan’s been recording people we dubbed all the tapes. I have a tape-dubbing machine and whenever someone orders one, I just dub a tape! This is the first thing we’ve done ourselves completely.
What are the ingredients of a good Burger band?
I don’t know what they all have in common. We become obsessed with something—‘We have to put this out!’ Like King Tuff—we heard it and for a week I was walking around like, ‘I wanna put that out!’ And it turns out Devon Williams’ best friend Alan was best friends with King Tuff when they were kids. Within two weeks of first hearing it, we got the tape out.
What label is Burger’s biggest role model?
Recess because it’s local and he started the same way we did—loving music and wanting to be part of music on all sorts of levels. And he’s still doing it and making a living off of it—that’s the dream! Just doing it for yourself and making a living and putting out good music and having people appreciate it—it’s cool! Tapes are so cheap and we can make lots of ‘em, and we’ve been putting out tapes from all sorts of different friends we know from all over the country and the world. And it’s cool that through Burger they can hear each other’s band—it’s a family! The Burger family!
Why the affection for cassettes?
They’re cheap to do. They’re like little business cards and people buy them—you wouldn’t think they would but they’re coming back just like everything else! As long as you put out stuff people wanna hear, they’ll buy it. And there’s a whole group of people with tape decks in their cars.
Who are those people?
They’re not the cleanest people. But they really enjoy music!
French fries on the floor mats?
That guy whose car smelled like French fries—he probably had a tape deck in there.
Where does Burger eat breakfast?
At Willy’s—right down the street. A Greek restaurant. It’s an old man and an old woman and they run it and they’re married and they love each other and they’ll show you their wedding pictures! And the guy is a ping-pong champion and there are trophies everywhere, and it’s really good food and extremely cheap and we love to go there! It’s in Anaheim, California—State College and Ball!

THE BURGER BASHER! WITH HUNX AND HIS PUNX, NOBUNNY, HARLEM, THEE MAKEOUT PARTY!, DEVON WILLIAMS AND WHITE NIGHT ON SAT., JULY 18, AT THE FIVE STAR BAR, 267 S. MAIN ST., DOWNTOWN. $10 / 8 PM / 21+. MYSPACE.COM/BURGERRECORDS.