Middle Class is Mike Atta, Jeff Atta, Matt Simon and Mike Patton (no, not that Mike Patton). Depending on who you ask, you might be told they are the first ever hardcore band, or you might get kicked in the gut with a pre-scuffed Urban Outfitters combat boot. After a very long spell, the band reunited last year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Frontier Records—the label that put out Middle Class’ 1979 EP, “Out of Vogue.” Now they’re returning to the Echoplex to play a badass L.A. RECORD show with Kid Congo, the Urinals and Grant Hart. This interview by Jonny Bell.

Do you get confused with the other Mike Patton?
Mike Patton (bass): Yeah, when I was living in Santa Monica one time I got a phone call and it was a girl and she asked, ‘Is this Mike Patton?’ I go, ‘Yeah,’ and she just screamed. ‘Aahhhhhh!!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you must be thinking of that other guy …’
Mike Atta (guitar): Nobody’s ever screamed for me. People have screamed at me …
Do you ever get super fans coming into your vintage shop Out Of Vogue?
MA: I wouldn’t say super fans—they don’t scream or anything—but I get kids in here who will be standing over here by the records or by the guitars and they’ll be nudging each other and whispering, ‘That’s him.’ And I’m just like the slob behind the counter, and finally I’ll ask ’em, ‘Can I help you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Are you the guy?’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, that depends. What guy?’ ‘The Middle Class?’ ‘Yeah I’m the guy.’
So tell me about The Sound of Music club in San Francisco …
MA: The club I remember best of all was the Deaf Club.
Matt Simon (drums): I remember very distinctly playing there, like an afternoon show with the Toiling Midgets where we were going to leave right after and come home. And I started coming on to the acid and I remember seeing all these people—rolling drunks and stuff—this is my Sound of Music story—and I see this old black guy who comes walking up and I was like, ‘Hey, you should be careful. You’re all drunk and I just saw these people rob this guy.’ So I sat and talked to him for like five or ten minutes. Then he said, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and he opened his jacket and he had a badge and gun and everything, and I thought, Oh, Jesus Christ. I was just coming on to the acid.
MP: The Deaf Club was really cool, it was a club for deaf people and we played a show and the deaf people that were around were behind the amplifiers and a bunch of them were touching the bass amp and putting their heads against the walls to get into the vibrations. We played with the Bags and Patricia [Morrison] lost her bass after the show and I remember going into a room looking for it and asking if anyone had seen a bass. When no one turned around I yelled, ‘Hey! What are you all deaf?’
MA: I remember it being next door to a hotel where punk rockers lived and it was like one of those places where you walk in past the guy in the glass case and he hands you a towel. One of those kinds of places with heroin addicts and everything.
You guys were pretty interested in the San Francisco scene?
MA: I think we were more accepted up there by the scene and the kids and everything than we were in Los Angeles. I think at that time, when were playing with the Wounds and the Toiling Midgets—what would that have been 1980, 81?—I don’t think their scene was like the scene down here. The scene down here had become more hardcore with like the beach scene and everything, and they may have had hardcore elements up there but it wasn’t the same kind of thing. It seemed like they were open to more kinds of music.
Why do you think that the bands in San Francisco didn’t end up being quite so ‘legendary’ as a lot of the Southern California bands?
MA: Well, the Avengers and the Nuns and all those bands—they were all pretty big San Francisco bands and they could do pretty well in L.A., but I don’t think they did well with the crowd that was the crowd that liked TSOL and the Adolescents and all that kind of stuff.
MS: I think the L.A. punk scene was bigger too—there was more music industry stuff down here, more records put out.
MP: What was the Sound of Music’s or whatever’s fanzine? Oh, Search & Destroy. It was too intellectual —it was intellectual and party and L.A. was not.
MA: I would say San Francisco was more like the earlier parts of the L.A. scene, where you had a lot of people that were art school, you know like the Weirdos and X and all those bands that went to CalArts or whatever—poetry readings and all that.
What were some of your favorite bands growing up?
Jeff Atta (vocals): Leading up to the band, like before ’74-’75, me and Mike would go to Licorice Pizza in Santa Ana and they’d have all these weird imports and stuff like that, and we got into Eno and Roxy Music and stuff like that.
MP: When I was growing up, I didn’t listen to music. And when I met Jeff in high school he introduced me to Mott the Hoople and New York Dolls, and I kind of got introduced to rock ‘n’ roll when Jeff and I were hanging around. I remember Jeff had the English music magazines, and Creem magazine we used to read. Creem had this little article about this new thing in England called ‘punk rock,’ and they listed the Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Buzzcocks—those three bands. And in high school people would ask you what bands you liked and I would say the Damned, and I didn’t even know what they sounded like.
MA: I think for me, at that time—I was about 14 when you guys were discovering all that other stuff—I was listening to stuff like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, anything that would go along with my pot-smoking at the time. And then I remember when I was 15 and a half, almost 16, I started playing guitar and everybody else that was playing guitar was trying to learn Aerosmith and stuff like that, and you guys had gotten like the Dictators and the Ramones in like ’76, and you said, ‘You should try playing this.’
MS: You guys covered a lot of Ramones songs when you first started right?
MA: Yeah, when we first started and it was me and Mike and a couple other people. We were doing Stones songs, Ramones songs …
MP: ‘Cause it was easy.
You started off playing a lot of cover songs?
MA: Yeah, just in our studio. We had a storage unit that was converted into a place for us to rehearse and that’s where we started playing that, and then writing some of our own stuff. But we were into writing songs like Wire and the Ramones. We just didn’t know how fast it was going to end up.
I know it’s a simple question, but why did you start playing so fast?
MA: It wasn’t premeditated—that’s for sure.
JA: I think we thought, ‘OK, punk is loud and it’s fast,’ so we just played as loud and fast as we could. We weren’t intentionally trying to play any faster than anyone else …
MP: And it wasn’t something we really noticed until people started saying, ‘Wow, you guys are really fast!’
MA: We didn’t know anything about the ‘rules’ of music. You know, all those bands like X and everybody, they were all based in blues—they all still had that ‘thing.’ We didn’t know anything about that. We didn’t know about relative minors. I’ve had people say, ‘You know that song “Introductory Rights”? Did you know that song is only one chord?’ [Laughs] Rob Ritter from 45 Grave, Gun Club and all that—he always recorded bands early on. He had a cassette recorder with him all the time, and he goes, ‘I was trying to figure out how to play your songs. What kind of alternative tuning do you use?’ And I go, ‘Alternative? I just tune to Mike.’ … On the speed thing, we recorded on the record that Frontier put out there a version of a song ‘You Belong’ that’s a half a minute longer than the 45 version—and it was just a six-month period till we got to the speed of the ‘Out of Vogue’ single. And like I said, it wasn’t intentional. I don’t know how we got there; it was just a lot of Dr. Pepper and Suzy Q’s. … I remember consciously drinking Dr. Pepper and being kind of like straight-edge after reading in Trouser Press magazine where they were first talking about ‘the punks’ and that they’re against all rock ‘n’ roll conventions, all what’s supposed to be rock ‘n’ roll—the drugs and all that. So we took that to mean that we weren’t supposed to get high, we were just supposed to play this music. It didn’t take long to find out that wasn’t true.
MP: Well, that was one of the reasons I think the L.A. people liked us—we were cute. We were from Orange County, we were straight, we were VERY straight.
MA: I smoked pot before Middle Class, and I quit once we started because I thought you weren’t supposed to do dope or anything like that. It wasn’t until later that I really started smoking a lot of pot. [Laughs]
JA: At that time we were living in Santa Ana, and later in Fullerton. That’s why we got so big up in L.A., because as far as we knew we were the only people in Orange County playing punk rock. Later we found out there were people in Fullerton, Huntington Beach, recording around the same time, but were totally isolated.
MA: At that time there really wasn’t a lot of bands coming out of Orange County at all. When we got interviewed for the Masque when Brendan Mullen was writing his book, he asked, ‘Was it hard? People always said that people in the L.A. scene wouldn’t allow bands from the South Bay and Orange County to come up and play?’ Well for us, it’s because that didn’t exist yet. Everybody that was in those early bands—those first waver bands—they were all from someplace else anyways. How many people were really from Hollywood? They were all glitter kids from the Valley or the Dils and the Zeros were from Carlsbad or San Diego. … Our first show, I just met the guys from the Zeros and asked if we could play; told ’em we had a band and they said, ‘Yeah, you can play next week.’ It was that simple. It was with the Bags, the Controllers and Skulls or something like that. Kind of a different time—that’s for sure.
Do you think there’ll ever be a scene as vibrant as the scene back then?
MA: I talk to a lot of the kids coming in here today. I talk to Audacity, and I ask them how they keep up and everybody’s in a band now—it’s easy for everyone to get their content out there. Before it was like you had no choice—if you wanted to be part of punk rock you had to be part of a little scene. I mean there are little scenes still. Burger Records has their little thing—
MS: —but it’s not underground. You can’t keep anything underground anymore; it’s very difficult in the computer age.
MA: It gets co-opted or whatever, and I don’t know, it’s just like fashion today—it’s just all taking parts of other things. … We never dressed like punk rockers; we dressed pretty much like what you see now, but in high school everybody had long hair and it was still an outcast kind of thing. … Now, you can go to any high school in the United States and you can’t tell what people are into because everybody looks hip or indie or whatever. Before, you could identify a person and be like, ‘That guy’s a loadie, that guys a surfer, that guy’s a punk rocker.’ Now it’s like the guys that are in bands like Mumford & Sons or whatever, look the same as the guys in Audacity! They’re all wearing flannel cowboy shirts, and these guys are playing songs about squirrels?
MS: When I got into punk, I just cut my hair and started wearing ties, and older people would say, ‘You’re a very nice young man. You’re thinking of joining the military?’ And people my age were like, ‘You’re just an idiot.’
MA: I just saw this posting from a friend of my wife’s son’s band and it’s called ‘post-hardcore,’ but they all have haircuts like Disney channel kids. But I guess that it’s ‘post-hardcore metal’, not ‘post-hardcore punk’ or something. I don’t know! … You know it’s interesting because in the original punk rock scene from L.A.—and I think S.F was the same—when you look at bands that were involved like Weirdos, Screamers, Middle Class … when you listen to these bands individually, they kind of sound like they shouldn’t be playing together. You got the Middle Class playing with the Screamers and when you listen to the Screamers now you hear them doing like bloop-beep—all that kind of stuff. I think they all fit together because it was all outcast things. Later on, when you had your hardcore punk scene, you could put four hardcore bands together and it was kind of a blur of music.
MP: And the problem with the hardcore scene was that it became very regimented, and there was a certain way you were supposed to look and a certain way you were supposed to be and it was completely the opposite of what punk started as.
MS: It was not a friendly scene! If you weren’t connected or dressed right you were in danger of getting hurt bad.
MA: I just remember when you played shows up to 1980 or so, you could look out into the crowd and there would be a bunch of girls in the audience. By 1981 you looked down there and everyone had a shaved head and no shirt on! I saw this amazing picture on this Mabuhay thing: Black Flag playing at Mabuhay Gardens and it was Henry Rollins and he was just like all tense and flexed and tight and everything, and there’s like four guys in the front and they all looked exactly the same.
It became like a church …
MA: Yeah exactly. I read this thing about our band and our relationship with hardcore and they wrote that if we would have just done our first single and kept with that music, that we would’ve been as popular as Black Flag. But we changed the formula.
MP: I remember when we played the Fleetwood, some guy came in with long hair while we were playing and got pummeled by the crowd because he wasn’t supposed to be there, and there was a real visceral reaction. I remember Jeff refused to play the first singles. We wouldn’t play them and we broke from that.
MA: I just remember you would start playing and everybody’s back was turned and they’d be all ready to start throwing down and stuff.
MS: I think the ratio of being hit to throwing punches must’ve been 50 to 1. We’ve been beaten up a lot more than we’ve beaten. [Laughs] It’s not a TSOL kind of thing where there are these four big guys who were like ass-kickers.
MP: The original punks were not jocks, you know—they were all losers. But then the jocks got into it and saw about an inch deep of what punk rock was. Didn’t get the whole concept of it. Put on the uniform, and there were jocks and assholes coming in, and now that was hardcore.
MA: We’re going to get beat up again, aren’t we?
Do you think ‘Out of Vogue’ was the first hardcore single?
MA: Some people that were in the original scene, Alice Bag or something, they’ll say it was proto-punk or the beginning of thrash punk or whatever, and I’ll take it, because it’s what gets us known and stuff. And people say this led to that, or Black Flag was a heavy metal band till they heard the ‘Out of Vogue’ single. People will argue that thing with the Bad Brains: ‘Look at the two records—Middle Class was ’78, Bad Brains was ’79.’ You know, I think that the arguments are pretty funny. A blog I was just reading yesterday was saying Black Flag was the first hardcore band. ‘Their single came out in ’76.’ I’m like, ‘What? Where did you get that from?’
JA: All that stuff is just a record collector thing. You have to pick something, somebody always had to be the first one. It’s just like the argument about who was the first ‘punk’ band, and somebody will say, ‘Oh, Iggy was.’
MA: No—Sonics!
MS: It was Charlie Parker!
MA: Next thing you know people are saying it was the Carter Family or something. I think [‘Out of Vogue’] was influential to a lot of people, and I’ll take that.
What do you think about all the old punk bands re-uniting?
MA: I find the whole thing kind of interesting that bands like ours, or bands like TSOL or whatever the bands are can actually play these shows, and they’ll be a mixture of young people and old people. I just remember being 19-20 years old and having absolutely no desire to see bands that had existed 30 years prior, you know what I mean?
MS: Yeah—like going to see the Coasters!
MA: I remember one time when we were about 23-24, and we went to go see Eric Burdon. We were fed up with punk rock so we were looking back at some of the old stuff like the Animals, doing something different. So we went to Eric Burdon at the Roxy and he looked all Vegas! Had his shirt open and all these gold chains on. And he did a medley of the Animals’ hits and we were all like, ‘Uhhhh …’
MS: I remember that and we were—I hate to say this—a little bit famous at the time and the guy was like, ‘Here, we’ve got seats for you right up front.’ After like the third song we were like, ‘Let’s get outta here!’ It was terrible. It was unbearable!
MA: I think it’s interesting that kids and people find inspiration in going to see these old bands and everything. I mean, I’m completely thrilled by it. I’m flattered that a 15-year-old kid would come in here and actually value my opinion on music and stuff, cuz I could tell you that when I was their age I could give a fuck about what somebody that was 30 or 40 years old thought about music. People will bring CDs in for me and ask, ‘Can you listen to this?’ and I’ll say, ‘You know, there’s nothing I can really do for you.’ [Laughs] It’s kind of cool that they care. With the Audacity kids I was like, ‘You guys wanna play behind my store?’ Haha!
MP: The fact that anybody cares is fucking awesome.
Watching you guys play was great, as opposed to maybe the Germs or something. You heard about what they’re doing now?
MA: Yeah, of course. We were going to try and get a guy from ER to take Jeff’s place if he wasn’t going to do the show. .. An actor! But anyways … they tried to get us to do the Germs return show a couple years ago. They said, ‘We got the Minutemen, we got the Germs.’ And I was like, ‘D. Boon’s dead, Darby’s dead. How are you guys doing that?’ Didn’t make any sense to me. … Maybe the actor is good, but to me it’s like going to see Wild Child as the Doors or Atomic Punks doing Van Halen. But, believe me, more people go to see that than the Middle Class!
MS: You know, like I watched the Adolescents and TSOL and they’ve obviously practiced all the way through and they’re tight and perfect, but to me that’s not really the most important thing. They’ve been playing the same set over and over again like for 20 years, but for us it’s a lot different, you know, cuz we’ve just started playing this stuff again this year.
MA: It’s kind of like Middle Class was before … The way we play and the way it is, all it takes is just one little thing to go wrong to throw it into a complete mess. You never know when the wheels are going to fly off and that’s what makes it kind of exciting. And you know with some of these other bands you can tell that it can be done in their sleep.
What’d you guys do in the thirty or so years since the band broke up?
MA: I was in a band with Alice from the Bags called Cambridge Apostles; I did that for a little bit. For a very short time I had a band with Ward Dotson from Gun Club, and for a while I didn’t do anything except for play with Matt’s band—he was in a band called the Pontiac Brothers. They discovered the Doll Hut here in Anaheim and started that thing.
MP: I played in Trotsky Icepick with Jack Grisham [of TSOL], then I was going to college and was in a couple bands—Breathe and Young Caucasians.
MA: Wait, you were in Breathe?
MP: Yeah, when I was going to Fullerton college. A different Breathe.
MA: Oh, there was a band Breath—
MS: —Bad Breath! They were the first hardcore uhhh …
MA: —Gingivitis band! Then you took over the Eddie empire—Eddie and the Subtitles.
MP: Yeah, when Eddie bailed, I presided over the crumbling empire—produced China White, Adolescents, Christian Death …
MA: Oh, I thought that was the other Mike Patton!

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS THE MIDDLE CLASS WITH KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS, GRANT HART AND THE URINALS ON FRI., JUNE 24, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $16-$18 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE! VISIT THE MIDDLE CLASS AT FACEBOOK.COM/THEMIDDLECLASSOFFICIAL.

Download: Dinosaur Jr. “I Want You To Know”

(from Farm out now on Jagjaguwar)

Rather than interview J Mascis ourselves, we thought it would be more fun to continue our tradition of getting famous people to interview famous people for nothing more than the thrill of schmoozing with each other and taking work off our hands. This interview was conducted by director Allison Anders, who cast Mascis in films such as Grace of My Heart, and Tiffany Anders, the musician/singer/co-curator of Don’t Knock the Rock and also Allison’s daughter. Though the transcript below may make Mascis seem like a lively, free-spirited music buff, rest assured that on tape he sounded like Benicio Del Toro in The Usual Suspects as interpreted by Cookie Monster on lithium. This interview was curated and painfully transcribed by Dan Collins, with much-needed help by the Anders.

Allison Anders: We want to talk about the fact that you were never in Mi Vida Loca when you were supposed to be, so you’ll have to be in it this time!
Tiffany Anders: He does need you to make another movie. His acting career is starting to slip.
Allison Anders: Well, I’m going to do Mi Vida Loca II. Tiffany, remember? You, Jason and Spike ended up buying drugs, but it was supposed to be you, J and Mike.
J Mascis (guitar/vocals): What happened?
Tiffany Anders: I think it was your schedule. You guys were recording, and they showed up to the set the day that the other girl shoots Ernesto, so you didn’t have time to shoot the scene.
J Mascis: I don’t want to buy drugs.
Allison Anders: It would have been really interesting twenty years ago, but it would be a little inappropriate now that you’re a father.
Tiffany Anders: What’s up with the Dino movie?
J Mascis: He’s just filmed a lot of interviews with different people, a lot of shows and … I dunno. I don’t know if he’ll ever finish it. Give him a date that he has to finish it by and maybe he’ll finish it.
Allison Anders: Actually, you know what? Krakow!
J Mascis: Krakow? Auschwitz!
Allison Anders: How did you know? Have you been there? To Krakow? It was kind of surprising when we were over [in Europe]. There are so many young people with babies! And they were not stressed out! Young people who didn’t look totally broke and that were really in love with their babies. And then Tiffany’s friend said that they get quite a nice subsidy from the government.
Tiffany Anders: For babies. And dogs.
J Mascis: I think that’s why the punk rockers have dogs. I don’t know if they do that anymore, though.
Allison Anders: Has fatherhood changed your records? Do you think you would have made the same record if you hadn’t become a father?
J Mascis: Possibly no.
Allison Anders: I think sometimes I know if I hadn’t had a big experience, the work may have gone in a different direction.
J Mascis: I have no idea. But there seems to be a lot less time. So we did it in less time. Three or four months. The last album was probably over nine months.
Tiffany Anders: Lou’s a dad too?
J Mascis: And another one on the way.
Allison Anders: Dinosaur Jr. juniors!
Tiffany Anders: So I am supposed to ask about Witch? What’s up with Witch? What are the plans? I saw they were playing All Tomorrow’s Parties.
J Mascis: Yeah, we had one gig! Woo hoo!
Allison Anders: I love that song ‘Isadora.’ That’s my favorite. I’m a big Isadora Duncan fan. It reminds me of—I don’t even know what. I would say Quicksilver Messenger Service, but that wouldn’t be right. But it reminds me of a San Francisco band.
J Mascis: Flipper? Are there any good bands from San Francisco? We were having a discussion the other day in the van.
Allison Anders: I don’t like things that people are jumping around with their fists to. You know, just kind of doing a little hoedown. I’m not into hoedown kind of things.
J Mascis: What’s a hoedown band?
Allison Anders: The Grateful Dead! I don’t mind the psychedelic kind of dancing that’s like, ‘Ooh, I’m on acid, and I’m floating through air!’ But I don’t like the jug band-y kind of thing.
J Mascis: Thigh slappin’?
Allison Anders: I’m not into that! It bothers me a little bit. And somehow—I may be wrong—but it seems like the Flying Burrito Brothers never inspired that kind of hoedown dancin’. But who knows?
J Mascis: Well, it’s because they didn’t have any fans.
Allison Anders: Ha! There were just people standing around going, ‘I want to party with these guys when the set is over.’
J Mascis: They were all backstage, maybe.
Allison Anders: Who are some people that you are listening to now that we should know about? Because you are the first person who alerted us to Scott Walker. All those many years ago—in the ’90s.
Tiffany Anders: He was the first person who alerted me to Sandy Denny!
Tiffany Anders: But I have a feeling that you turned him on to Nick Drake!
J Mascis: I’m sick of Nick Drake since he’s on the cover of MOJO every week.
Allison Anders: Well, that’s kind of the problem. We have to wait a while before we can get close to him again. It’s hard when the whole world finally discovers somebody. But back then, nobody knew! I tried to tell her about Rodriguez and she already has his records! I can’t tell her anything anymore. I thought I was really going to be onto something! I buy a lot of tunes. If I go into a record store, I get too overwhelmed. You should be doing ‘What’s in your bag?’ at Amoeba. You shop, and then you open your bag. They just videotape you saying what you bought. They want me to do one, and I haven’t gone and done it yet. Maybe I’ll do it this weekend.
J Mascis: It’ll be like one single. For a hundred dollars!
Allison Anders: For a while, the only Bags single was there for a hundred bucks, for the longest time. But it’s not there anymore! Somebody bought it.
J Mascis: What do they have back there, behind those doors?
Tiffany Anders: Oh, tons! And apparently there’s another warehouse off-site.
J Mascis: I found a record there I’d been looking for since I was 15. And it was there on the wall for 30 bucks. I know a lot of record nerds and none of them knew about it. This band called the Mirrors. ‘Cure for Cancer.’ I guess they’re English, but there’s some Detroit band same name. I had to have it.
Allison Anders: I love that there are still some records that people don’t know anything about. Except Tiffany!
J Mascis: It’s weird what people know about, like kids. They know really obscure things about certain things, but there are these big holes where they don’t know things. It’s really odd.
Allison Anders: I found out with my students because often I make them do a mix CD as part of their assignment. It’s supposed to be like the songs of their life—it’s supposed to have a kind of narrative. I’m always amazed at the vast knowledge they have, but yet if you mention a certain band in the class, somebody really obvious, they don’t know anything about that band. But they’ll know something super-obscure. Needless to say, they know that funk stuff so well. I’ll never catch up to their knowledge of that. I didn’t grow up with anybody aspiring to be a DJ, you know? They’ve actually grown up thinking, when they were 14 years old, I want to be a DJ some day!
J Mascis: I need to go to Amoeba to get out of some crappy interviews. They’re filling up my schedule with crap. It’s so weird, because Al Gore’s TV channel—
Allison Anders: Current TV?
J Mascis: Yeah. They wanted to go with me where I would go in L.A., but then they wouldn’t let me go where I would go! ‘No Amoeba. Too many bands have gone there.’ I wanted to go to Erewhon. They’re like ‘That’s a grocery store.’ So what if it’s a grocery store? That’s so weird.
Allison Anders: Like, ‘Where do you want to go? Go here!’ After you’ve been coming here for like twenty years.
J Mascis: Black Market Music is closed. I used to go there.
Allison Anders: I do have a record store for you out in the valley. Freakbeat!
J Mascis: That already sounds like somewhere I’ll never go!
Tiffany Anders: Apparently Jimmy Page was in Freakbeat. He likes to go to record stores.
J Mascis: He used to go to Black Market.
Allison Anders: In fact, this Sunday, I just got a coupon for Freakbeat! Ten percent off! Because it’s a vinyl record day. So I’m gonna buy some vinyl.
J Mascis: Ten percent isn’t much of an incentive. How about like 87 percent off?
Allison Anders: They have a documentary this year about the death of the independent record store, which is a sad thing. Thurston’s in it. Which is a sad thing. I don’t like that—I need a place to go and listen.
J Mascis: And some nerd to talk to you to tell you what records to buy.
Tiffany Anders: If those nerds are nice and not jerks!
Allison Anders: You really need that! That’s in the documentary. This guy is saying, ‘When I was a kid in the ’70s, everything on the radio was just this crap, classic rock shit! And then I went to a record store and learned about Gun Club. That record saved my life!’ It’s like countless people saying how they were steered in the right direction by somebody in the record store. Because you can’t rely on radio to do that.
J Mascis: And guitar stores are similarly closing.
Tiffany Anders: Why is that, do you think?
J Mascis: The Internet! The people who make it still have stores, just somewhere where people can come in. But if they don’t also sell stuff on the Internet, they can’t make it.
Allison Anders: Seems to be like that guitar we sold, that we sold on eBay with you playing it! It was like a bright yellow guitar, a really terrible color. But you were playing it—I used that picture on eBay, ha ha! Played only once by this guy! But there are a lot of people who collect these guitars. Guys who were in bands when they were teenagers, and now they have made a fortune in real estate or something, and then they collect guitars and just buy them.
J Mascis: As an investment it’s kind of weird. But it seems to have done better than the stock market. It’s hard. I can’t really think in that way. ‘Investment-grade guitars.’
Allison Anders: I just think about which ones are pretty. Jesse Ed Davis’ guitar was really pretty, and had all the flowers painted on it and stuff. Where do these guitars go? When somebody like that is dead, where’s the guitar? Or do you think maybe they get rid of it beforehand?
J Mascis: Probably.
Tiffany Anders: Or it goes in a museum, like J’s guitar.
J Mascis: A Jazzmaster. I don’t know if it’s in a warehouse somewhere that the museum has. What’s it called? The one in Seattle? The Paul Allen Experience Music Project. But they always rotate stuff and store it.
Allison Anders: So you just donated it.
J Mascis: No, they paid me. They paid a lot of money. I wonder how much he’s got left. Still, if you have 40 billion and now you only have 20 billion, I wonder if you feel it. I saw somewhere how Bill Gates went from 58 billion to 40 billion, but somehow he had gone up in Richest Guys, because all the other guys had all gone down and he was still the richest guy. He’d only lost like a third.
Tiffany Anders: I’m also supposed to ask about the Witch album cover of [Dave] Sweetapple’s dog and your dog. But I haven’t seen it!
Allison Anders: I like how she keeps saying, ‘I’m supposed to ask you …’
J Mascis: I dunno. I’m just the drummer.
Allison Anders: Is playing drums like a break for you? Do you have as much pressure? Is it a little more fun?
J Mascis: Yeah, I’m really tired of electricity. I need a break from having to rely on electricity, of things breaking all the time. I like that. I really don’t do much! I’m waiting for it to become bigger. I’m waiting for our legend to build.
Allison Anders: Maybe it will happen at ATP.
Tiffany Anders: Maybe! Maybe you should get up to some shenanigans. Fistfight with Kevin!
Allison Anders: That would definitely make NME. That’s all you gotta do over there. Get some scandal in NME and then Witch is like, everybody knows.
Tiffany Anders: ‘Didya hear about the fight between Kevin Shields and Witch?’
J Mascis: The kung fu master.
Allison Anders: I’m tellin’ ya, that’s some good advice there! Look at these punch-ups. Look at what that did for Oasis!
J Mascis: I know! I like when that guy pushed the guitar player over. That was funny. Some guy knocked over Noel … I mean, you’re just standing there and he just pushes you over—you’re not really ready. And then the brother, you know—I read somewhere he was like, ‘Yeah, it was just like a pub fight.’ He waits for all these other people to go run after the guy and then he takes a little fake swing like, ‘Noel’s gotta get in there.’ We have an open guitar spot. Maybe we need a wild man.
Allison Anders: Not hard to find in Britain. Harder to find in American rock ‘n’ roll.
Tiffany Anders: Like the Primal Scream guitar player worked in a guitar shop. J was saying that the Primal Scream guitar player was working at a guitar shop.
J Mascis: He was like the nice guy. Everybody liked him.
Allison Anders: What happens when Dinosaur Jr. plays in Japan? You played that crazy festival a couple years ago, right? It was on a mountaintop.
J Mascis: Kind of on a lame ski area. That’s weird—that festival—because everyone there is there for the show, and they’re all music fans. So it’s hard to like go anywhere. We played at another one, Summer Sonic, which is a bit more commercial. I saw Fergie at catering!
Allison Anders: Nice! What was she eating? She’s got quite a body.
J Mascis: It seems like a lot of girls hate Fergie.
Tiffany Anders: She’s kind of repulsive.
J Mascis: See?
Allison Anders: How does it work technically playing in a place that big? How do you hear everything?
J Mascis: They have in-ear monitors, and maybe they have little amps next to their guitar tech. So if you’re on the side of the stage, all you hear is like wimpy drums, that’s about all you can hear. Because they all have monitors in their ear, and it’s eerily quiet!
Allison Anders: That’s really weird. I’d probably want to keep everything a bit more organic and not get in that direction.
J Mascis: Yeah, I’ve always been more in a Woodstock frame of mind. ‘Oh, it worked at Woodstock, having all these amps and just playing loud!’
Tiffany Anders: I interviewed Nancy Nevins from Sweetwater and she was talking about how there were no monitors onstage at Woodstock. They were the first band. She was like, ‘You couldn’t hear anything at all!’ She thought it probably sounded horrible, being up there.
J Mascis: But monitors are the downfall of society! All these bands who rely on them now, especially English bands or something … ‘Where’s my monitor?’ If you have them, that’s fine, but you should be able to play without a monitor.
Allison Anders: All this second-guessing technology! We have the same thing in film. We have the video feed and people can’t seem to make movies without it now. It used to be that you looked into the camera. You could see the light! You can’t even see the light through a monitor. It’s a nightmare! Everybody’s crowding around. As a director, you’ll be sitting there and some makeup person is looking over your shoulder to make sure the makeup’s okay. Everybody’s hyper-reacting. I’m going to do this show ‘Southland,’ and he doesn’t allow any monitors, which I love. You have to rely on your own instincts and your own abilities to know what’s going on in the scene.
Tiffany Anders: Nancy said the sound system was just completely inadequate! She said that basically they were the soundcheck band because they were the first real band.
J Mascis: Did someone play before them?
Tiffany Anders: Richie Havens. They were supposed to be first, but it was so disorganized that they got to the Holiday Inn, and of course they didn’t know it was going to be as huge as it was. Traffic was a nightmare and they had to take a helicopter, so they were late. And Richie Havens was basically playing forever until they got there.
J Mascis: He comes off pretty good in that movie. It only got three stars in MOJO.
Allison Anders: I heard that the Grateful Dead started quite a set-up with their amps onstage, right? I always thought it was Blue Cheer that started the tower of amps.
J Mascis: All the Dead had was a PA, so they had the whole PA behind them so they could mix it themselves, and it was spilling out into the audience. It’s interesting. I had some Jerry Garcia skis! Somehow they were painted with some Jerry artwork or something. Like he had ties. He had glasses made.
Allison Anders: I can’t imagine Jerry Garcia on skis! I can’t imagine him wearing a tie either! J’s seen it though, I can tell!
J Mascis: I can see him skiing off into the woods and smoking a bowl with some other hippies.
Allison Anders: When is your son learning to ski?
Tiffany Anders: You put him on a snowboard, then you put him on a skateboard. There are Dinosaur Jr. skateboards.
Allison Anders: I’m sure you’ve seen the YouTube videos of the skating bulldogs, right?
J Mascis: In the video they say, ‘He just did it!’ Like they didn’t teach him. They’re lazy-ass fucking dogs! But he’s amazing. He can push and turn …
Allison Anders: It’s not you putting him on the board? He gets on the board himself!
Tiffany Anders: If I could teach my kitty to do that, it would be great.
J Mascis: Tell us about the knee?
Allison Anders: I fell down in Elysian Park! I went running to take a picture of these people in their low rider, and I tripped over a log and just went flying! If I keep it straight, it helps. It’s not feeling very well.
J Mascis: I had poison ivy and someone was like, ‘Why don’t you put bleach on it?’ And I did and it really helped. It dried out the oil.
Allison Anders: I don’t like the direction this conversation is going! L.A. RECORD doesn’t need to put that in there. Any last words?
J Mascis: Message to Japanese fans? They always ask me in Japan, ‘Can we have a message for the Japanese fans?’

DINOSAUR JR. WITH LOU BARLOW ON THUR., NOV. 5, AT THE HOUSE OF BLUES, 8430 SUNSET BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $25.50-$27.50 / ALL AGES. HOB.COM. DINOSAUR JR.’S FARM IS OUT NOW ON JAGJAGUWAR. VISIT DINOSAUR JR. AT DINOSAURJR.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DINOSAURJR.

THUR., JULY 2 at 8 PM: Chicano Rock!: The Sounds of East Los Angeles

“Let’s take a trip down Whittier Boulevard!” chant Thee Midniters, in Jon Wilkman’s beautiful love letter to the soulful sounds of So Cal. Narrated by Edward James Olmos, this lively and inspiring film explores more than fifty years in the musical history of East Los Angeles, America’s largest Mexican-American community. For decades, generations of East L.A. artists created a unique musical voice, and in the process, proudly expressed their cultural identity, from ’40s pachuco swing to ’50s teen idol Ritchie Valens, ’60s garage rock and soul, to punk and beyond. Chicano Rock! features the timeless music of these eras, including Lalo Guerrero, Ritchie Valens, Cannibal and the Headhunters, Thee Midniters, El Chicano, Tierra, Los Lobos, Ozomatli, and Alice Velasquez (The Bags, Cholita, Las Tres). Jam-packed with rare footage, photos, artifacts, Chicano Rock! treats you to an exhilarating lowrider cruise that could only happen on the streets of Los Angeles. Author Gene Aguilera (“The Golden Age of Chicano Rock ‘n Roll”) will be on-hand to spin classic 45s, and we’ve also got a post-screening live set by a very special seminal L.A. punk band!

Dir. Jon Wilkman, 2008, digital presentation, 60 min.

Tickets – $12

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THUR., JULY 9 at 8 PM: B-MUSIC & DJ ANDY VOTEL PRESENT: Hungarian Rock Night

British DJ extraordinaire Andy Votel will be in person at the Cinefamily to spin tunes and to present what is both a remarkable achievement in Hungarian pop culture and Eastern European film, starring some of the leading lights of both Communist era New Wave cinema and the forward-thinking Hungarian rock scene. Szép lányok, ne sírjatok! (aka Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls) stars Jaroslava Schallerova (fresh from her leading role in Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders) alongside Hungarian rock goddess Sarolta Zalatnay and a cast of freak-rock non-actors plucked from the disgruntled state-governed Qualiton and Pepita record label rosters to make this underhanded tribute to the ‘silenced’ pop group Illes, in disguise as a working-class drama/rock festival liberation expose. Directed by Marta Mészáros (wife of Hungarian New Wave luminary Miklós Jancsó) and featuring heavy footage of bands like Metro, Syrius and Omega (who can be heard on the recently released “Well Hung” compilation on Finders Keepers records), this buried and previously untranslated film holds serious appeal to fans of both Polish and Czech Cinema, Mod culture, Youth culture and obscure 70′s rock music.

Dir. Marta Mészáros 1970, digital presentation, 90 min

Tickets – $10

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THUR., JULY 16 at 8 PM: America’s Lost Band: The Remains

“Had these Boston bad boys stuck it out beyond their 1966 debut, we might today be calling them–and not the Stones–the World’s Greatest Rock N’ Roll band.” -Mark Kemp, Paste Magazine

They played The Ed Sullivan Show, were hand-picked by Paul McCartney to open for the Beatles, and then…gone. America’s Lost Band captures the essence of The Remains, one of the best of American rock bands you’ve never heard. The story follows guitarist Barry Tashian, keyboardist Billy Briggs, bassist Vern Miller and drummer Chip Damiani, the four young original members of The Remains, from their earliest beginnings to their all-too-early end, when they broke up on the brink of fame, right after opening for the Beatles’ last-ever tour in 1966. America’s Lost Band finds the heart of music that refuses to die, culminating in the band’s recent well-deserved rediscovery and reunion. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Michael Stich, producer Fred Cantor, Remains keyboardist Bill Briggs and Remains frontman Barry Tashian (who will also be on hand to sign copies of his book “Ticket To Ride”, as well as your Remains albums!), in addition to a live set by psych garage rockers The Living Sickness!

Dir. Michael Stich, 2008, HDCAM, 66 min.

Tickets – $12

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THUR., JULY 23 at 8 PM: It Came From Detroit

In a smashing, energetic presentation, It Came From Detroit lovingly puts on display the “Motor City”, home to an internationally renowned and influential garage rock scene. Starting with The Gories in the 1980s, the bands of the Detroit garage scene have been known for two things: an impeccable knowledge of rock history, and a raucous live show. As bands such as the White Stripes, The Von Bondies, and the Electric Six started to develop a following overseas, journalists everywhere started to hype Detroit as “the next Seattle”, and It Came From Detroit documents the evolution of this scene, from its humble underground beginnings to its ascension as a trend known the world over. And, perhaps most touchingly, the film deals as well with how the unexpected popularity of certain key bands impacts the scene’s small group of friends, as some are catapulted to global recognition, while others are barely known outside of Detroit’s crumbling confines. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director James R. Petix, plus a live set by special musical guests!

Dir. James R. Petix, 2008, digital presentation, 102 min.

Tickets – $12

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THUR., JULY 30 at 8 PM: Pardon Us For Living But The Graveyard Is Full

30+ years. 2000+ shows. No hits. No sleep. In 1976, a gang of kids from Queens stumbled upon some abandoned instruments in the basement of the house they were renting and ended up forming a band. Little did they realize that thirty years later, they’d still be struggling to play their music and pay the bills. The Fleshtones were an integral part of the ’70s NYC underground scene and, amazingly, having soldiered on as a paradox, simultaneously legendary and obscure: boasting a rabid worldwide fan base and a reputation as a white-hot live act, but barely able to keep a record label for two albums in a row and ignored in all histories of the scene they helped create. Stunning vintage footage, insight from Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Clem Burke (Blondie) and Handsome Dick Manitoba (The Dictators), and candid self-deprecating interviews with band members Peter Zaremba, Keith Streng, Bill Milhizer and Ken Fox add up to a thoroughly entertaining portrait of the real hardest-working garage band in show biz. The evening’s screening will be followed by a live set by special musical guests!

Dir. Geoffray Barbier, 2009, digital presentation, 65 min.

Tickets – $12

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SAT., AUG. 1: BMI Roundtable Panel: Music, in Film, TV and New Media ’09

Join us for an intimate discussion of the changing landscape for music rights and new media. Musicians can find out how to get their music into films, TV and new media, and filmmakers can learn how to clear the rights for music for their work. The afternoon’s event will be moderated by Michael Des Barres, and guests include Doreen Ringer-Ross (BMI), music supervisors Tracy McKnight (Julien Donkey-Boy, Human Nature, Murderball) and Howard Paar (The L-Word, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Ken Park), composer Jay Ferguson (“The Office”), DKTR founder/film director Allison Anders (Border Radio, Grace Of My Heart, Things Behind The Sun), and more!

Tickets – $7

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THUR., AUG. 6: Wesley Willis’s Joyrides and Haack…The King Of Techno

Despite impossible odds, self-proclaimed rock ‘n roll star and “Chicago City Artist” Wesley Willis became an underground rock icon, revered artist and hero to many before his untimely death in 2003. Through his force of personality, his drawing talents, his unique vocabulary and an incredibly focused and singular songwriting style, Wesley’s creativity attracted people from all walks of life, and helped him to overcome the daily torment of schizophrenia, a haunting condition which plagued him throughout his adult life. Directors Chris Bagley and Kim Shively spent five years on the road and at home with Willis (along withn his many family members, friends and collaborators) to create the definitive portrait of Wesley as prolific artist and musician, on his path from obscurity to fame–a journey which will leave you uplifted, tickled and adrenalized.

Bruce Haack was one of the most musically and lyrically inventive artists of the early electronic age, combining homemade analog synths, classical, country, pop and acid rock elements into one massive, heady stew. His craft evolved from his passion and creation of numerous kids’ records, and today his work has inspired the likes of world-renowned musicians such as Beck, the Beastie Boys and Mouse On Mars, proving he’s an almost-lost treasure ripe for rediscovery. Packed with warped visuals, wild music and far out stories, Haack follows the King of Techno as he drops in on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and golden-oldie game show host Garry Moore, playing his bizarre instruments such as the Peopleodian, a device played by touching peoples’ skin! Directed in true Haack spirit, for kids, adults and music fans alike, Philip Anagnos’ directorial debut will send you out humming “School For Robots” and scrambling for Haack’s records! Director Philip Anagnos will appear in person for a post-screening Q&A session!

Wesley Willis’s Joyrides  Dirs. Chris Bagley & Kim Shivley, 2008, DigiBeta, 78 min.

Haack: The King of Techno  Dir. Philip Anagnos, 2004, DigiBeta, 57 min.

I Need That Record! asks the simple question: why have over 3,000 independent record stores in the U.S. closed in the past decade? As much a cool history lesson on vinyl as a portrait of greedy record labels, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, e-commerce, shoddy “stars” pushed by big money and even the digital revolution, the film is, at its core, a loving tribute to the cherished nerdy record stores which for decades have nurtured our access to the music we all love. In addition to the exploration of its juicy premise, the film contains interviews with Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Ian MacKaye (Fugazi), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Chris Frantz (Talking Heads), Pat Carney (The Black Keys), composer Glenn Branca, authors Noam Chomsky and Legs McNeil, rock photographer Bob Gruen–and dozens of indie record stores across the U.S. of A.! The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Brendan Toller, a panel discussion (moderated by Michael Des Barres, featuring special guests) on the fate of the indie record store today, a Danny Benair Record Club listening party (bring a record to share if you want!), and a record swap on the Cinefamily outdoor patio!

Dir. Brendan Toller, 2008, digital presentation, 77 min.

Tickets – $10

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THUR., AUG. 20 at 8 PM: ON/OFF: Mark Stewart from The Pop Group to The Maffia

This one’s a must for all post-punk junkies! The name of singer/industrial hip-hop pioneer Mark Stewart may not be instantly familiar, but his influence is felt the world over. From his early days with confrontational post-punk pioneers The Pop Group to his myriad collaborations with the likes of Trent Reznor, Massive Attack and Primal Scream, Stewart has provided ghostly beats and haunting vocals for over thirty years, and shows no signs of stopping. German filmmaker Tøni Schifer, who followed Stewart around for three years, has crafted a detailed, intimate portrait of the artist, supplemented by interviews with Stewart himself, his Pop Group co-horts Dan Catsis, Gareth Sager and John Waddington, Keith Levine (P.I.L.), Janine Rainforth (Maximum Joy), Douglas Hart (The Jesus & Mary Chain), Fritz Catlin (23 Skidoo), Daniel Miller (Mute Records), Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Massive Attack and many others, plus some terrific never-before-seen vintage performance footage. Plus, scenes of the wildly eccentric Stewart interacting with his mother are not to be missed! Straight from Berlin, director Tøni Schifer will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A!

Dir: Tøni Schifer, 2009, DigiBeta, 90 min.

Tickets – $12

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SPECIAL SATURDAY SCREENING

SAT., AUG. 22 at 5 PM: Of All The Things

The most unique comeback story of the year. Dennis Lambert was one of the most successful and diverse songwriter/producers of the ’70s and ’80s, with hits like “Ain’t No Woman (Like The One I’ve Got)”, “Rhinestone Cowboy”, “Don’t Pull Your Love”, “Baby Come Back” and “Night Shift”. He had chart-toppers in almost every genre of music–at one point, four of his songs were simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a feat previously accomplished only by The Beatles. That was then. Today, he’s a 60-year-old family man selling real estate in Florida. But it turns out his obscure 1972 solo album is huge–in the Philippines. A Filipino concert promoter has been begging Dennis to tour for decades, and in 2007 he finally agreed. Of All The Things is a hilarious and touching pop/rock/country/R&B documentary that follows Dennis on his whirlwind tour, as he rediscovers his passion for music and thousands of fans he never knew he had. Some lives deserve an encore. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Dennis Lambert, his documentarian/son Jody Lambert, and some very special guests!

Dir. Jody Lambert, 2008, HDCAM, 83 min.

Tickets – $10

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THUR., AUG. 27 at 8 PM: Night Flight tribute night

Before infomercials took over the late-night airwaves, overnight programming was a staid line-up of reruns, talk shows, and old movies. Throughout most of the ’80s however, there was one anarchic alternative—-Night Flight. Premiering on the fledgling USA Network on June 5, 1981–two months before MTV’s arrival—-Night Flight was a glorious amalgamation of music videos, short films, cartoons, interviews, concerts, and cult movies. For many viewers, it was a video primer to the counterculture of the Reagan era, featuring artists and films that at the time could not be seen anywhere else and for seven years, Night Flight was required viewing for stoners, punkers, headbangers, and insomniacs. Now, twenty years after the final episode was aired, the show’s producers have gone back into their video vaults and emerged with this best-of program that will bring tears of joy to fans’ sleep-deprived eyes, as well as a musical feature film picked from the Night Flight programming schedule archives! Night Flight creator Stuart Shapiro will appear in-person for a Q&A after the program!

Tickets – $10

The public demands and Cinefamily provides! A second showing of Joe Rees’ Target Video presentation (co-presented by L.A. RECORD and featuring never-before-seen-except-at-the-7:30-pm-showing clips of first-wave punk bands like the Plugz, the Suburban Lawns and many more!) has been added and will begin at 11 PM tonight! Tickets are available ONLY at the Cinefamily box office. Cinefamily is located at 611 N. Fairfax Ave. (just south of Melrose and just north of Canter’s) and you can visit online at cinefamily.org or call at (323) 655-2510. Read our interview here to find out what wild things you’re in for!

What are we going to see at this screening that no one has ever seen before?
I have some things I’ve never shown before—for example, Suburban Lawns. They were from the Western Front festival. You have to understand that some of these don’t have the best audio quality because in those days we were working with a paper cup and a string for audio. But I tried to select the performances which were the most effective and gave a good representation of the bands. I mean, I love them all but there’s some that I care much more about. The situation was better for a band called Female Hands—they have a song called ‘Get A Job’and it’s a real pounding beautiful performance and you’ll see it in the show. Many of these bands, they may have had one or two songs that were outstanding—I usually got at least three songs from everybody but Female Hands, I got a half hour of their stuff. And then you had some nights that were better than others. When I’m working in a place like Club Foot or the Deaf Club, they had a real problem with AC power and they had a real problem with lights. But you know how it isyou get a good combination of energy and an outstanding performance, like the Flesheaters when they came on—it didn’t make any difference, it communicates. So that’s the kind of thing that goes down. You’re going to see stuff like Geza X. Geza X was the audio person for so many groups for many groups like the Screamers—he was the genius behind the Screamers. But he never really got a lot of his own recognition. Now I know Geza as friends and I admire him but I don’t think he got the breaks that he deserved. I do have a couple of Geza’s records. It was a battle between him working on audio things for the Screamers and various other groups and doing his own work. It was tough. I’ve got the Bags where you have Alice Bag in that band and you’ve got her in another group called Castration Squad. You can see the thread that goes through a lot of these things and that’s what’s really nice—that’s what I really enjoy. Now I didn’t know the L.A. scene all that well—I met these people and I wish I could have spent more time down there but I was living in San Francisco and of course I was dealing with the Dead Kennedys and the Dils and that was my main focus. Negative Trend was one of my favorites. But I always loved going to L.A. and I loved shooting it and of course I was a Screamers fan from the very first day.
Do you think they’re L.A.’s greatest ‘lost’ band?
I think so. This is the honest to God truth because I’ve looked at hundreds of punk bands from all over the world—I went to Europe and spent three years over there shooting punk bands—but the Screamers had a unique style. Tomata, Tommy Gear and K.K. and Paul really had their own unique approach and let’s face it—Tomata did plenty! He was an incredible person and he really projected a performance style—I love it. Sometimes I think it was better that they didn’t get a lot of breaks but on the other hand I’m just so grateful that I have a lot of video tape of them and a lot of audio recording of them because I’m still not through with that. Every time I go back to it, I get excited—I get goose bumps all over my arms. It’s that exciting and that’s why I opened my show at the Museum of Contemporary Art with the Screamers because I really think they had that savage, wild Los Angeles scream.
How many bands are there who were documented only by Target Video? What do you have that exists nowhere else at all?
It’s hard for me to keep up with that part of it because I work with so many different groups. I don’t compare myself to other things that are out there. I do know my experience and the people that were working with Target—you know we had a three-story brick building in the Mission District in San Francisco and people would actually live there for a while, so it was a family thing. We all had business to deal with and that’s the number one issue. We weren’t just screwing around all the time. We wanted to get serious. Especially when I think of bands like Black Flag who would come around. Whenever they would come into town, for me that was like, ‘OK, clear the decks!’ I’ve got from when they had Chavo. Black Flag was an exceptional band just because of their commitment and their dedication, you know—all the miles they put into hauling around in that van. They were great to work with. Chuck—thank God we’re still close friends and Henry, Henry is off doing his own things, but we formed a bond, and Dez, I love him—he’s another person that is so easy to get close to. When I look at—for example, today I transferred over some old material again of Black Flag and Dez is the lead singer, not Henry. But my God, they could stand against any band any day with that intensity. Dez singing—it was just kick ass. It just rips me out. I get energized—it gets me excited, it gets me really pumping. And I can watch Henry, he’s got a different style. I always tried to shoot Henry like King Kong—I tried to get a real low profile on him because he had that real muscular build and he does that song ‘Rise Above’ and I wanted to just drive that thing right through the screen. I wanted Henry coming out like King Kong belting it out.
Is that kind of energy what made you decide to start shooting punk bands?
My background is that when I was a little kid I was totally crazy about rock ‘n roll. I wanted to be a performer myself. I played a guitar and was in a band for a while. A band that was never heard of—just a local band in a little town in Iowa. We went on the local television broadcast and did a pantomime kind of thing but I was only about 11 years old then. I had this determination but I kind of lost that—lost my way for a while because I was also really into being a visual artist. I grew up in a place where it was pretty rough to be an artist period. In the middle of Iowa they always rejected those kinds of people but when I got a chance to go to art school because of my visual art abilities—my talents—I got into that right away. I got into art school as a painter and then I found my way to sculpture but I always had a total fascination with music. I had to have it in my life. When Lou Reed came out with Rock n’ Roll Animal, I thought that was the greatest breakthrough. When I heard punk rock in the ‘70s, oh my God—it just hit a button with me. That was the message. I’m a social-political animal—I’ve always had an anger about life and the way it treats people and to combine that kind of assault with music, I mean—my God, right away I was totally blown away! Obviously the Clash and the Sex Pistols came out, but even other bands like early Killing Joke and then the California bands when they rolled in one after another—the Weirdos’ ‘Life of Crime,’ it just got my blood pumping. So when I got to art school I met the Mutants—they were all friends of mine and they were forming a band and Penelope at the Art Institute was organizing the Avengers at the time and then I met David Byrne from the Rhode Island School of Design and he was doing that band Talking Heads. When he came to town, he came to the studio and it was great. He was enthusiastic about what I was doing and gave me so much support. I shot early stuff of the Talking Heads doing a free concert at Berkeley which was mind blowing. All of this kind of stuff stirred up in a big mixer and I became totally addicted to performance art and noise. We were also going through this problem the whole time. I was into performance artwork myself and the thing of it was we were going through this problem with art galleries and museums—they didn’t want to cooperate. They only wanted stuff that was saleable—that was marketable. So there was this great thing going on about alternative spaces in the ‘70s—an alternative space, an abandoned building. Some place where you could do your thing and invite your friends over to watch and it usually involved song and dance and movement and poetry. So that’s what the deal was. I worked with a lot of those people. Some of them made the change and started to deal with night clubs, some of them stayed the other way and that was what was going on in the ‘70s. And I got really excited about it and one thing led to another.
Why do you think it was necessary for Target to exist? What made this such a part of your life for years?
Back then I was a so-called established sculptor—in other words doing sculpture in galleries and art museums. That was a real disappointment because I was on a roll and had a lot of support. The so-called art critic in San Francisco was spreading the news that I was hot shit but the thing of it was that I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t getting the feedback that I wanted to get—obviously the people who would come to those kinds of events were real saps. I just didn’t like it. I found a need to communicate to my own peer group—my crowd, the people that I respected. And so that’s why I started an alternative art space myself in Oakland in the early ‘70s to present performances and artists that were what I called fringe—front-line people, people taking chances, real edgy stuff. Because it got me excited—that’s where I saw this whole thing going. So I started that and before Target Video it was called Targeted Open Support System. It was a completely different kind of idea but I was experimenting. I was trying things and so that started working. But then I realized that Oakland wasn’t the place to be—there was too much heavy crap going down. Black Panther Party was going down and there was a lot of trouble in the city so San Francisco was the place to be. So I hitched up my horses and moved to San Francisco. I get over there and as luck would have it, I found this three-story brick building in the Mission District. I met the owner and he told me that there was nothing going on here except some pretty heavy crap on the top floor and ‘I want those people out’ because it was too weird. He wanted to get rid of them so he rented me the place. It couldn’t have been better—they had a loading dock, three stories and an elevator and it was only a couple grand a month. Now I didn’t have that kind of money but I did have skills in those days—and a lot of friends—and we went in there and cleaned it and painted it and turned it into a shiny type of jewel. And I rented out the top floor at the time to a company for storage. They paid the rent.
How were you able to sustain an operation like that for so long?
Well, at the time I was on a roll with my sculpture and the art critic in San Francisco at the time got me a job as chairman of the sculpture department at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. As a young snot-nosed guy I got this big buck job. I knew that I liked the fine arts scene but at the same time it was only just a step—it was servicing my desire. I took the job of course.
What was the Target Video TV show like? What would someone have seen if they were just flipping around the channels?
After I graduated with a master’s degree in fine art I wanted to learn more about television production because I was already stirring up the thing with Target and I realized that there was a lot of things that I didn’t know. You’ve got to be in the right place to get any information out of these people because they’re so secretive and I was always beg, borrowing and stealing. I was making one deal on one side and one deal on another to get my hands on a good camera in order to do these shoots. When I first started back in the ‘70s, the only equipment available at that time was Super 8 and if you could afford it, 16mm. So I started with that but it was really difficult because you’d always rely on the whole thing of processing the film and waiting for it to come back to see what you got. It was a real challenge. But back in the ‘70s when I was in graduate school, the Sony Corporation donated a new device called the Portapak and it was one of the first single tube black-and-white cameras. And I did some stuff to alter the camera. Once I found out the limitations of shooting at night—a tech geek guy at my campus, he was always trying to give me advice and he was like, ‘Look, put in one of these security camera tubes because they are more sensitive to light.’ and you could shoot in night clubs which sometimes had only a little light. You’ll see, for example, the Dickies—when they first hit the stage, the lights from the stage would kind of blow their faces out so you get this black background with white silhouettes but as I adjust the aperture to try to deal with it—because it is such a radical change—it comes into zone and it looks pretty damn good. But at least we could shoot those! Otherwise we couldn’t shoot them at all—the early video cameras required so much light and so much intensity, it was a nightmare. So of course I signed up at Merritt College and started to take their video class and their TV production so I could have that access. Through that access I found out about a free cable channel that would service the Bay Area through San Francisco called Cable 25. Most of the shows on there were cooking shows or how to breast feed your children—the Maharishi had a show on Wednesday nights. Well lo and behold, I got my little piece—it was an hour-long section right after the Maharishi. When I first started—you have to understand this was the beginning of video, the beginning of editing, the beginning of cameras, but I had this determination. I said, ‘I want to get this stuff out there.’ The first shows were a lot of poetry and art performance combined with punk music but it was a mixture and then I’d follow Maharishi. The problem with the Maharishi was that by the time he finished with his show, it was always kind of sleepy time and I would go in there with my friends wearing our leather jackets and our defiant look and there was the Maharishi who was just his sweet person but it really irritated the hell out of me. I had to come up with an opening to my show that really was different than the Maharishi because he was doing the lotus position. So I came up with the idea of using a machine gun from an old movie and I would edit this montage of all the faces and issues of social political things that I wanted to talk about during the show—I would open the show with about a 3 minute blast of machine gun fire and it was so irritating. It was so completely the opposite of the Maharishi that at first people were totally distraught at the TV station—they thought, ‘What the hell is he doing? We got everyone all relaxed into a coma and up comes Target Video!’ And it was this punk thing. But listen—the Maharishi being the all-knowing all-wonderful guy thought I had a great idea.
So you got the spiritual support of the Maharishi?
Yes, I did! Goddammit, I swear!
Did he ever mention how much he liked Crime or anything?
No, no, it didn’t go that far. He knows how to handle anything—the point of it was that it served my purpose because we did have to shock the hell out of people to get some attention.
How were you ever able to get Crime into San Quentin? Or the Cramps into the Napa State Mental Hospital?
Because times were different then. We’ve got such an anal-retentive society these days you cant hardly do a thing. We’re destroying creativity—we are really destroying creativity with all the laws and restrictions. It’s a nightmare. Even my own kids—I am so sad about what is going on. It is so difficult to be creative. In the ‘70s people were begging. California was an open place, they poured tons of money into colleges, into art programs. I don’t even know if you were born yet, but believe me I would go to universities as a guest lecturer and they would have these incredible foundries for casting metal and making art. And they would have these incredible studios for graduate artists and they’d pay you a bunch of money—you could actually make a good living being an art teacher. The only problem was that it was still really conservative and they weren’t taking the big chances but that’s cool because when you have a situation like that it allows young snot-nosed people to come and say, ‘I want to try and do something different.’ So that is why we had a whole organization of people who were trying to think of ways to break out of the mold and that’s why when we contacted different places like San Quentin prison. I know all about those prison programs because I worked there for a number of years putting these things together—they were so happy to see you, you couldn’t believe it. That was an organization called Bread and Roses that used to exist in the Bay Area—they put together a lot of shows. Some of them real high-end commercial, some of them art-performance type of things but they were just into the arts and like I said, no one got sued in those days. People were willing to take chances—people were open-minded and that was what was so wonderful about the times. If you could come up with an idea like that, they were happy to hear it. The same with the Napa State Mental Hospital. You think that could go on today? No way! There would be like fifteen lawyers standing outside the gate licking their chops. One of the greatest things about that event—even to this day I am so moved when I watch that video over and over. But the thing of it is—those people who were going through such a heavy experience in life and were confined to that mental institution, the freedom and the happiness that they had that day during that event was almost like a miracle! It was almost like watching something biblical—something from a Cecil B. DeMille film but in a real sense, a true sense. Nobody was acting and I have never seen anything in my life so moving and I’ve been told that a thousand times. We were at the right place at the right time but we had the right thing in our hearts. We wanted to have an experience and it all came together with magic.
Are those the twin pinnacles of the Target videography?
There is one that you left out that was extremely important and that was the Mutants at the School For the Deaf. That was mind-blowing and you had to be there because the happiness and the joy on the kids’ faces and everybody. See, when you get this reciprocal thing going down—nobody made any money! It was the magic of putting these elements together. The Mutants doing a free show for deaf kids. The kids responding because it was exciting and nobody ever pays attention to them plus the energy that the Mutants generated because of their music and the kids responding to it—it was just a phenomenal experience. If you could bottle that experience it would be worth millions of dollars an ounce! If mankind could be like that, wouldn’t we be in a better place right now?
Why do you feel that punk was such a positive humanistic thing? And what do you think of its casual reputation for destruction and nihilism?
That’s because there are so many people trying to cash in on it and trying to find a way to market it and in reality the only good thing—and I got kind of bitter about the way things were going because I could see that there wasn’t enough of that true punk spirit that existed back in the ‘70s—but you know what I think? There are new kids who are innocent and idealistic enough to be able to generate the same kind of feeling. And I’m thinking of my own two boys who have a punk band that doesn’t have a name yet.
Have you filmed them yet?
Not really but they’re 14 and they’re getting close because they’ve been playing their guitars now for about three years. And then I’m thinking of Chip Dil and Tony Dil of the Dils and his son Dewey who has a band called the Plimptons and I heard them—they’re incredible because they’ve got that raw excitement and that energy. And I think if we encourage that, if we really support that—if you think of something that is really clean, idealistic and fresh, that’s where it’s at. That is gold! And the problem with the world we live in is we have a tendency to tarnish everything right away and exploit it to the point that it becomes dirty. It’s not good for us to think of anything like that because if we don’t have these fresh things in our life, then we don’t have this wonderful excitement of creativity. We need something fresh like that.
Why is the time right now for this Target Video resurgence? It seems like there was nothing for years and then suddenly the vaults crack open.
Because I’m not happy with the way things are going. That’s why. I’m not happy at all—I just explained to you what I do believe in. I believe in the young people—I believe in really trying to leave these kids alone and it’s just horrible how we trash the youth. They can see this world and they can see we have a lot of problems. We need a way out and we can’t seem to do it because we’re too prejudiced and I’m saying the only thing I can see as an artist is to open up these doors and let these kids talk and leave them alone.
Does that connect to what Target was doing in the ‘70s?
Well, it does. I was in the ‘60s and the ‘60s was a very exciting time—we had a purpose. We had an army of people going in the same direction and I really think it accomplished a lot of good things but then things got real convoluted. Then in the ‘70s you had another rebirth of excitement—and personally I have to say that the ‘70s were one of the freshest and most creative times. Because not only music but visual art, the poetry and all the posters and John Denney designing clothes for the Weirdos. There were so many levels and it was a profound movement of time that never got the recognition because it was saleable enough right away. We might even see a revisit to that in a phony way.
What kind of practical things do you want to communicate to people now who are still working on these same kinds of things?
To be honest I don’t think this show is going to communicate all of it—I think this show is more like a primitive MTV. I talked to the people at the Cinefamily Theater and they want to give a good example of a lot of bands they’ve never seen before—but for me to try to cram 50 bands into two hours, for God’s sakes that’s not Target Video show! That’s cramming 50 bands into two hours and that’s more like a primitive MTV. So I’m saying this is not really the Target Video show. What I’m trying to do is make people happy because a lot of people are curious to this band or that band they’ve never heard of. But give me a chance—if I get more support, and I’m going to do it anyways, but if I get more support I’m trying to break into a new audience. I think there are a lot of young artists out there and I’m trying to pump up a bit more excitement. I might be moving to L.A. before all this is over—that’s the master plan. I don’t know where else to go. I have got this humongous library of material and to be honest, for the last 30 years I’ve lived in Paris, I’ve been in New York, all over the place, and to be quite honest L.A. is where it’s at. That’s the only place that I could see where this stuff could be put to good use and inspire more creativity.
Why do you say that?
Because there ain’t a goddamn thing going on anywhere else really. There’s all that bullshit going on in London, the French are sucking each other breasts, San Francisco is all involved with who’s got the most money—I mean, that’s not gonna work. Artists can’t survive in an environment where you can’t even rent a studio. But at least L.A., for some reason will hire people and put them to work and they can continue as a creative person and besides that, what can I say? Most of the people that I know in the punk rock scene—the older crowd—are living down there.
What do you want to happen to your archive? What’s the ideal future for everything you filmed?
Without sounding commercial or crass, the big dream at this point is to put together a downloadable website and an underground library of visual images of music that people can download and view when they want to in their home—a digital Internet library. I have a rough estimate of my library—I have over 300 tapes that are in ¾ format and I have another 75 or 80 of ½ inch reel-to-reel tape. Not all of those have been transferred over because of the format jump. A format jump to ¾ and a format jump to DV which I’m doing these days—basically what I’ve been doing over the past few years is transferring this stuff over to digital. By hook or by crook! Either I try to talk a museum curator into using their facility or the college where I work—whatever it takes. The thing about it is that no matter what, it does inspire fun and activity—it just does. The beauty about L.A. people to me is that you can put on some music and a video or whatever—get some people together and things happen. They talk and make things happen—they want to make things happen. It’s an enjoyable thing. It’s a part of life, business or whatever you want to call it—it’s just a good thing. You don’t have to be judgmental. We’re not anal-retentive like the New York scene, oh my God! L.A. people take care of themselves and it’s not a perfect world, but the point of it is that I still have fun there. I’ve been to enough events and I’m like a hound dog—if I smell something good, I go for it and this is where it’s at. Thank God I have Jackie Sharp down there. Look, I’m never going to be a perfect politician—not everyone is going to like my point of view, but at the same time I do love art and I do love music and I do love L.A. bands. There are so many bands that mean so much to me with what they’ve done. I want to stimulate—I want to be a part of it! I want to stimulate the arts scene and I can because I might be a bit of an old soldier but I’m still a pain in the ass.

JOE REES AND TARGET VIDEO PRESENT ‘RAW POWER’ ON THU., APR. 30, AT CINEFAMILY, 611 N. FAIRFAX AVE., LOS ANGELES. 7:30 PM / $12 / ALL AGES. CINEFAMILY.ORG. TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE. VISIT TARGET VIDEO AT TARGETVIDEO.BLOGSPOT.COM.