Poly Styrene, AKA Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, died yesterday after a struggle with spinal and breast cancers. And I wish I shared in her spiritual Hare Krishna ethic. I wish I believed, as her website declares, that she had “won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places,” because all I feel is the loss. The tragedy is that with her new album, she was still showing an ability to take a sarcastic, objective look at everything from race to gender to internet dating. Had she lived, we might have had a real elder punk stateswoman on our hands, the likes of which we sorely need.

Of all the punk rock influences of my childhood, I’d be hard pressed to think of one more formative than Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex. Sure, the Sex Pistols, Ramones, and the Cramps all showed me sides of punk rock that drew a line in the sand that meant I could NEVER be an investment banker. But it was X-Ray Spex, and particularly Poly Styrene’s vocals and lyrics, that showed me rebellion could be smart, poetic, both beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

In fact, I was inspired by X-Ray Spex before I could even HEAR them. Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I devoured the few Ramones and Stooges cassettes I could get, but I could only read about Poly Styrene’s braces and sheet-metal blasting voice in old rock magazines at the Central Library. I had to wait until a debate team excursion to Chicago to go to an actual record store and pick up Germ Free Adolescents—I still remember pulling out the cassette from its case and being excited that it was dayglo orange!

And that shit did not disappoint. I spent a couple years devouring and living these lyrics, even if I had a hard time figuring out what Weetabix was. I mean, driving “a polypropylene car on wheels of sponge?” And addressing not the cops, as Black Flag had done, or the Queen, as the Sex Pistols had done, but consumer culture directly? I probably wasn’t even ready for those lessons, and focused more on the personal identity confusion of a mind “like a switchboard, with crossed and tangled lines.” And of course, she name-checked Richard Hell in “Let’s Submerge,” which made my pogo-plumped brain quite pleased listening in my bedroom.

I thought I had placed X-Ray Spex into a healthy spot in my punk rock and musical canon, but looking back, clearly I was obsessed. I got a rather expensive saxophone, which I never fully learned to play. I carved the word “cliché” into my chest with a razorblade and took a bunch of photos, partially inspired by their song, “I Am a Cliche.” And this may be the reason I hung out so much with Marta Estirado, singer of Tulsa’s Lepers (who also died too soon), because she looked and acted just like Poly Styrene. Maybe she was obsessed too.

Anyway, like all things youthful, I moved on, and while I never stopped loving that band, I was skeptical of their latter-day reunion recordings, and anyway, I’m far less 77-era punk now than I was then (I even have a moustache). That’s why it’s so tragic that her new album, Generation Indigo, seems like it could have been just the thing to get me back on the Poly Styrene bus. Now that she’s gone, I’ll never get to see her live, never get to hear her new recordings, and never get to have the levity and wit of her talented mind. I hope she’s moved on to a better realm. Even in the short time she was here, she’s definitely made this realm better for me.

—Dan Collins

Second was the Tartans, whose name I’ve only bothered to look up now. I would say this band is contraindicated for anyone who likes things that are good. They had a naïve “let’s pass all the instruments around after every song” stage presence that not only wastes time but exudes the opposite of the confidence of militantly disciplined bands like the Ramones. When I see band members trading instruments between each song, what that says to me is that when a member of the band writes a song it comes with a bratty demand that, “This is my song so I wanna play lead guitar on it.” Everyone knows Dee Dee wrote all the best Ramones songs. Did he ever insist on stealing the mic from Joey and passing the bass off like it was inferior? No. He wrote great songs and let them be sung by the man who could do them the best and played the bass lines like pulsating kings I’d like to fuck if it was somehow possible to make love to a sonic frequency. Lesson learned.

In addition to playing musical chairs, their songs were just plain awful. After the third I walked down the block to the 7/11 and stared at plump Zeppelin-esque hot dogs as they turned ever so slowly inside the greasy weiner warmer. Honestly, that was more entertaining than the band playing inside the club. This 7/11 happened to have a greatest hits CD by thee Midniters on super-saver sale for only $10.99. I bought this and a jalapeño taquito. I ate out of a paper bag and made it back just in time for Dum Dum Girls.

I like the Dum Dum Girls. I own their first record. I listen to it regularly. I would even advise a friend to buy their records if either of the following two things were true:

1. The friend in question has a financial stability that allows them to buy records based purely on the counsel of others and nothing else.
2. The friend in question already favors several other bands that sound exactly like the Dum Dum Girls but, for whatever reason, does not know the Dum Dum Girls exist.

I did not enjoy seeing the Dum Dum Girls live whatsoever. No one in the crowed moved at all. No one on stage moved at all. It was sickening. It was a blogger’s dream. All those little Internet babies could get right up front with their fancy cameras and take all the little pictures they wanted without anybody bumping into them so they could perfectly frame shots of a band whose members stayed so impeccably still. I think rock n’ roll clubs should instate an across-the-board ban on any and all cameras either larger than a cigarette pack or more expensive than a DVD player. Some may argue that blogs are breathing life into rock journalism, but as far as I’m concerned they’re ruining rock shows.

But I digress. The Girls played their wonderful fuzz-pop hooks while flash bulbs flickered and I yawned myself into a coma. I appreciate it if a band even manages to smile while playing live—something that shows they’re even enjoying the show themselves. Nope, sorry, we’re the Dum Dum Girls, and it’s best we stay as stoic as the vocals of the phenomenal Iggy Pop album from which we swiped our name. Sister Midnight is back, and she brings us girls in too-short dresses and black tights, and it was stupid. And I quit. Good night.

P.S. Two girls got in a fist-fight during the second to last song.

—Nicholas Katzban

Singer Eddie Vedder voiced his displeasure with the first night crowd’s lack of energy.  “It’s clear to us you guys are already better than last night,” Vedder said after the fifth song of the set, “Dissident.”  Whether it was lead guitarist Mike McCready hopping up and down to bassist Jeff Ament’s wild leaps, you could really tell that the band was having a great time and feeding off the crowd.

The 2 hour and 10 minute set featured songs that ranged from their oldest (“Alive,” “Jeremy”) to newest (“The Fixer,” “Got Some”), the band’s carefully crafted set had a tight flow to it and never a dull moment. They definitely brought their ‘A’ game, sounding as crisp as they’ve ever been throughout their 19 year career.

It wouldn’t be a Pearl Jam show without hearing at least one cover.  Tonight’s featured the Ramones’ “I Believe in Miracles” (which was dedicated to longtime Vedder pal, Johnny Ramone), and the Police’s “Driven to Tears.”  Before they played the song, Vedder thanked the crowd for making the band look good in front of their heroes, namely John Doe of X and Mike Watt.

Longtime friend Ben Harper was the opener along with his new band, Relentless 7.  Harper later joined Pearl Jam on ‘Red Mosquito,’ adding a slide guitar, which made the song sound more complete and full.

After hearing the band live and armed with a new number one album at their disposal, Pearl Jam proves yet again why they are continuously one of the most popular draws in rock.  Vedder put it best when he said “There are laws in this state against things like gay marriage, but there isn’t a law in California that says you can’t lose your shit at a rock ‘n’ roll concert.”  On this night, he was correct.

—Daniel Kohn

(from Rent Party on Sympathy For The Record Industry)

Walter Lure was with the Heartbreakers during everything that would later become history—L.A.M.F., the Anarchy tour with the Sex Pistols and Live At Max’s and whatever else it says in Please Kill Me, which he hasn’t read. He speaks now before performing at the Knitting Factory with his band the Waldos. This interview by Daniel Clodfelter.

How to you get asked to play guitar for the Heartbreakers?
[My earlier band] the Demons were the lucky contact for me. You see, the singer of the Demons—Elliot—was a friend of the Dolls. I think he was actually their drug dealer! Elliot was looking for a band and it just turned out that we wound up sharing the Dolls’ rehearsal space. I would run into the Dolls from time to time—I had sort of known the Dolls, not personally, but since they were playing New York a lot I knew who they were. But then we started chatting, and Johnny came down to one of the Demons shows—I think it was our first gig at the 82 Club. You see, Johnny was always a sneaky little fuck—he pulls me over to the side and asked me if I wanted to join the band and my eyes just lit up! And I said, ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’ But that was Johnny—he was probably out of his mind or whatever. Just putting the bug out there. Then a few months passed and I hadn’t heard anything until that gig the Demons played with them at the pub in Queens. There was hardly anyone there and we were just sitting around and Jerry pulled me aside and asked, ‘Do you like any of the Heartbreaker songs at all?’ ‘Yeah, I love ‘em.’ ‘Well, I think we want you to play.’ And that was it. I didn’t even know they were even thinking about me since it had been months. Soon after we started rehearsing and I was in the band.
How was it working with Johnny, Jerry, and Richard with their drug habits and conflicting egos? I know it led to Richard Hell leaving the band somewhat early on.
Richard leaving the band had more to do with ego than drugs. It was definitely challenging, since I was the new kid on the block. Johnny and Jerry were from the Dolls and they had the credibility—‘street cred,’ if you want—from that, and Richard had also been around. He already had the one song ‘Blank Generation.’ It was a great combination but they just needed another guitar player to hold it all together. And that’s what I was there for. I didn’t have any musical credentials like they all did. The ego battle was mostly Johnny versus Richard, with Jerry sort of playing the middle but mostly staying on Johnny’s side. Hell was sort of funny in the beginning because he all these wacky lyrics that made everyone laugh—you know, they were all junkies so they all had the same sort of humor—but that changed as time went on. It was a good combination. It was rock—the Hell songs were just sort of wimpy without a rock band behind him, and he added that sort of ‘Blank Generation’ element to the Heartbreakers stuff. A lot of people already had an idea of Johnny and Jerry, since they had already been around in the Dolls. It’s funny since there was only like a two- or three-year difference between the older generation and us, and there was a sort of a credibility gap. So the combination of Hell, who was sort of the newer wave, with Johnny and Jerry, who were more part of the tail end of glam, worked well. As much as I loved the Dolls—they wore some fucked-up clothes!—they were more of a transition between the glam and what became the punk scene. The actually brought the rock ‘n’ roll back to the forefront as opposed to the orchestral shit that was consuming everything before. I guess for that you could call them the godfathers of punk. That’s where the whole scene started—from them—but they weren’t really afforded the recognition.
You mentioned that Richard Hell was better when backed by a rock ‘n’ roll band—what was your impression of the Voidoids and his albums with them?
Let me start by saying that I remained good friends with them over the years and we still are friends. So I’m not going to say that I didn’t like it, but it didn’t have the same edge. For my own personal taste I tend to like rock more than clanky noises. They just didn’t have the same punch to it compared to with the Heartbreakers. For instance, ‘Love Comes in Spurts’ doesn’t even come close to ‘One Track Mind,’ which I wrote the music to and Hell added the lyrics over it—and once he left I just changed up the lyrics. [The Voidoids] didn’t have the same feel, but I’m sure he didn’t want it to be the same. They didn’t play the music like we did—which was more rock—but Hell didn’t necessarily want that. He had it with the Heartbreakers but he didn’t have to have it. He tried to do it on his own terms, but I don’t think that any of those songs have any sort of lasting power compared to what we had with the Heartbreakers.
After Hell left, you and Johnny Thunders were the main songwriters of the Heartbreakers—what was it like writing with him?
I didn’t really write anything with Johnny. Johnny would just show up to the rehearsal studio with a song and we’d just work on it. He was always running around really high. It was hard to hold a conversation with him—same with Dee Dee Ramone. You couldn’t really get a word in—at least that was my experience. However, I did write a few with Jerry. Jerry would have a guitar riff or chord progression and we’d play along and I would finish off the words or what not. With John, the only song we actually worked together on was ‘London Boys.’ I deliberately structured the music to sound like a Sex Pistols song and Johnny wanted to write the lyrics. The other ones, like ‘(Too Much) Junkie Business’—Johnny would just stick his name on it years later because he liked it so much and he wished he’d wrote it, even though I actually had.
The Heartbreakers—along with the Sex Pistols and the Clash—became part of the British Anarchy tour in 1976 that introduced the masses to punk rock. What are your most vivid memories from that tour?
The lack of gigs! It might have exposed British kids to our New York punk, but they already had their own type of punk before we got there. We didn’t realize until we got there how big it actually was—it was much bigger over there than in New York and the States. It was already mainstream over there, as opposed to still being underground here. And it was a different version as well. I thought the Sex Pistols were the best band I had seen in ages, and being on tour with them—it was great! And the Clash! The Damned didn’t really tour with us—they maybe played one or two shows. We all got along pretty well and everyone was still pretty innocent to a point—less egos involved. They were all in awe of Johnny and Jerry since the Dolls were basically their inspiration. Those were some of the best times! I’ve told this story about a hundred times—about being outside a theatre in Wales and the local priest and a bunch of parents were in a parking lot across the street with loud speakers and megaphones saying, ‘Tell your kids not to go into the theatre because the devil’s inside!’ while praying and waving bibles at us. We were all looking at the people like it was hilarious, and there were still all these kids inside the theatre.
On your website it says that after the Heartbreakers you worked the Ramones for a little bit—on Subterranean Jungle and Too Tough to Die. What was your role on those albums?
If you look at those albums on the record sleeves, hidden some place buried in a corner it says ‘special thanks to Walter Lure.’ I played the solos and guitar work on a lot of the stuff. On Subterranean Jungle, I played on every song. The next one, which I was think was Too Tough to Die, I played on like half of that. The one after that, Animal Boy, I played on like two or three songs. They were looking for something—a different sound—trying to get a hit record. They were popular but they weren’t making a lot of money—they made most their money touring and stuff. So they tried to do other things. Phil Spector and so on. Then they decided to get another guitar player and they asked me.
Did you ever play live with them or was it strictly studio stuff?
Just studio stuff. Johnny [Ramone] didn’t want people to know that he didn’t play all the songs—that’s why they didn’t really give me credit on the albums. Even live, they’d have their roadie do all the solos playing backstage on a milk crate. Johnny didn’t really want people to know that he couldn’t play that kind of guitar. He played his own thing but he had some sort of image issue. Not that it really made any difference because he had his own style.
What was your reaction to the passing of Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan in the early 1990s?
It was weird. It’s always a shock when you hear it, but Johnny was due for years—he was just going deeper and deeper. He just couldn’t get out of that whole drug syndrome. I remember when we were doing the Heartbreakers reunion in I guess November 1990. We had done a couple of rehearsals and it was Jerry, Johnny, myself and this guy Tony on bass. We’d be rehearsing, and Jerry’s calm now—he’d been on methadone for like 20 years. But Johnny was still running off every twenty minutes to do a shot or whatever. We had all gotten past the whole drug thing but Johnny was still going. When I heard it, it was still a shock, but I can’t say it was unexpected. With Jerry, he had a stroke and was in the hospital and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to come out of it. I went to visit him at one point and he was just a body lying on a bed with tubes running though him. They’re buried about twenty feet from each other in a cemetery in Queens.
You’re now playing with the Waldos—a band named after yourself which you’ve been doing for the past 20 years or so.
It was just me playing around New York getting people to play together with. There have been several incarnations as several people have died over the years. We did the CD in 1993, then Tony got sick and died in 1995 and I was ready to give it up because too many people were dying on me. Then we got asked to do a couple of shows at the Continental—a few nights as the Waldos and then a few as the Lures, and then there were these Japanese kids who were fans and came over with their own band and set up some shows. Then also the guitar player from Sonic Youth set up a few shows with us, and then it has become what it is now—with the two Japanese kids and Joe on drums. This has actually been the longest standing version, since like 1996 or 1995. It hasn’t changed much since—no one’s dropped dead on me for a while.

WALTER LURE AND THE WALDOS WITH THE STITCHES AND KEVIN K AND THE HITZ ON THU., AUG. 27, AT THE KNITTING FACTORY, 7021 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8PM / $10-$12 / ALL AGES. LA.KNITTINGFACTORY.COM. VISIT WALTER LURE AT MYSPACE.COM/LUREWALTER.

Download: The Sonics “Strychnine”

(from Here Are The Sonics! available now on Norton)

The Sonics weren’t pioneers so much as cavemen—the first humans to discover tools, fire and the absolute rudiments of chemistry. Their original ‘60s songs still sound wild and feral today, and their debut Here Are The Sonics! devours most of the million punk rock records that timidly followed it. This will be their first Los Angeles-area show ever. This interview by Dan Collins.

When was the last time you guys played the Los Angeles area?
Larry Parypa (guitar/vocals): I don’t think we ever did. We recorded down there a bunch. We went to the Whisky a Go Go and the Turtles and the Doors were there, before they got really popular.
Gerry Roslie (vocals/organ): We saw Ike and Tina Turner! It was extremely happening down there. We were like wide-eyed country boys.
A lot of L.A. bands really emulated the Beatles. But you guys didn’t seem to be Anglophiles.
LP: We loved the Beatles, and we even played some of their songs, but in no way did we try to emulate the Beatles. We were a very minor, dark sounding group for those days.
GR: We’d try to do a pretty song, and it’d just end up getting ‘nice and rough!’
Rob Lind (sax/harmonica/vocals): We loved the Kinks. We actually traveled with them and opened a number of shows for them.
LP: We played the way that we played, which was without a whole lot of technique, and real hard. A live performance—I mean, the room would almost breathe because it was so powerful. Knowing that we weren’t masterful musicians or anything, knowing that we weren’t a vocal group, we were there to pound it out. It was our style. Nobody was doing 1-3-4 progressions, real minor progressions. And they weren’t singing about the topics we sang about. And nobody was screaming!
You both had brothers in the band. Did Larry and Andy ever fight like Ray and Dave Davies did?
GR: When didn’t they? They had some real sessions. We were heading down around the Portland area, and Larry had a brand new Buick, and had his radio on real loud, and me and Andy were in the back seat. Andy was like, ‘Turn that volume down back here at least!’ And finally Andy had enough getting Larry to do it, and he was drinking a bottle of grape pop, and he poured it down Larry’s speakers while the car was going down the freeway, and the speakers go ‘bloooblublublublublublublu!’ And he pulled over, and I think they were just about ready to go to blows right there on the side of the freeway. Andy was always on Larry’s case for playing too loud.
Why did you decide to scream about things like drinking strychnine? It seems like that would kill you.
GR: Well, I’m kind of crazy by nature. I do crazy things and think of crazy things. But I’m not dangerous—heh heh. Honest, judge!
RL: The PA systems were normally pretty bad. Sometimes we just had metal horns. And so Gerry started screaming so he could hear himself.
GR: It’s a wonder I’ve got a voice left! I screamed myself silly. I was inspired by the voices of Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis of course. I liked their energy, but I don’t remember anybody doing witchy stuff. It’s just a crazy, psychotic thing. After we got going, there did start to be crazy, witchy things, like Ozzy. Everything was kind of like, ‘love and marriage, la la la la la,’ and I went ‘Nah! That’s not dirty enough! That’s not the way I feel!’
A lot of your songs seem to be about revenge—particularly upon some girl! Was there a particular relationship in your life where you’re like ‘I’m going to get even with her and write a song about it?’
GR: Do you have a couple hours, my friend? Who hasn’t been screwed over—guys or girls?
Do you secretly hope to yourself that some day, that girl is going to walk into a record store and see a Sonics poster and think to herself, ‘I blew it!’?
GR: Oh, yeah, I do hope that happens! That would be sweet!
You guys are often cited as the original punk band. Did you feel a kinship with bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols?
RL: The Clash, I thought they were hard-rocking gods. The Sex Pistols, I didn’t like a whole lot of the stuff they did, but I liked their attitude, and every once in a while I’d hear one of their songs and go ‘Whoa, that’s good. Way to go, guys!’
LP: After the late ‘60s, I didn’t listen to music much. If I did, it was probably more country.
RL: Yeah, more the Seattle guys—that’s really where garage rock started with us, and it was like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees, and Alice and Chains—it was kind of like those guys were our sons! We were real proud of them.
Let’s talk about the earlier Northwest scene. It seems like the first breakout bands were instrumental combos like the Ventures and the Frantics.
RL: The Frantics and the Ventures and Paul Revere kind of predated us. I think one of the first rock songs I ever heard was ‘Walk, Don’t Run,’ and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
LP: God, the Frantics were just a fantastic group! Even today, they really stand up. The first interest I ever had in guitar was Duane Eddy—actually it was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray, but then Duane Eddy had a song out that was all instrumental, and just really got me stimulated to want to play guitar. Not long after that, the Ventures came out with their stuff, and I tried to learn every song on the Ventures album. Another band that was more regional was the Wailers. They came out with instrumentals that had much harder rhythms than what the Ventures were doing, but then they got Rockin’ Roberts, and Gail Harris, and they would do vocals.
I used to have their album Live at the Castle. Did you ever play at the Castle in Tacoma?
LP: Yeah! In fact, we turned down Jimi Hendrix there, before he was the Jimi Hendix. He came and wanted to sit in, and we told him to get lost! It was a big club—a big dance spot for the Seattle area. You’d maybe get a thousand kids in there. There was a place called the Crescent Ballroom in Tacoma, where the Wailers played a lot. It’s like the first time I ever played there—I was 14 or 15, and probably didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. Lesley Gore came through town and for some reason, my brother [Andy] and I were part of the backup group for her. We did that with the Shangri-Las also, and we just ruined them! We knew we were going to back them up, but we didn’t learn their songs! Their songs had a lot of breaks in them, and we’d play right through them.
RL: The lead singer of the Shangri-Las said something snarky about us. So next time we played with them, we made fun of them. They were doing ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and Gerry was riding his piano like a motorcycle, and I was down on my knees, being like, ‘No, Danny, please please don’t go!’ We just humiliated them. You don’t come to Seattle and trash the Sonics! So they said they’d never play with us again.
We interviewed Mary Weiss last year. Do you want to tell her publicly that you’re sorry?
LP: We’re sorry! We played in Barcelona last year, and she was also on the bill. And she remembered! Oh, yeah!
RL: We smoothed things over. She’s playing with the guy from the Smithereens, Dennis, and we drank a lot of Scotch in the hotel in Barcelona, and we sat and chatted with Mary and her husband. Things are fine now.
How about Paul Revere and the Raiders? Any bad grudges there you want to settle? Like, who played ‘Louie Louie’ better?
RL: Oh, I think we did! I don’t think there’s any question!
Did you get just a little pissed off when the Raiders got to be on TV and in Teen Beat and you guys didn’t?
RL: Not at the time. I used to know Paul Revere, and Paul is the epitome of a businessman. The problem with Northwest rock ‘n’ roll bands—with the exception of the Ventures who broke out and became worldwide—was that us and the Wailers got trapped in the Northwest.
LP: We didn’t even think too much about what we were doing musically or where we were going. We’d hardly ever practice or anything. We would throw our instruments in the van maybe Sunday night after doing some weekend stuff, and wouldn’t pull them out again until we’d play again. We were more interested in whether we could get girls into the motel rooms that night.
It was kind of the cusp of the Summer of Love! Did you guys get to have drug orgies?
LP: We’d have the bathtub full of beer and stuff—to try to ply them with liquor. That really was a key objective. The music was just a vehicle to get us in some parties! You’d hit the road in summers, just playing one-night-stands all over the place. That was an exciting way to spend your teenage life!
The Meters recorded a live album on the Queen Mary—are you guys planning on recording one there too?
RL: No, we’re not doing that. We’re actually planning on going back into the studio in July. All new material. We need to get new stuff out.
LP: We don’t know what’s going to happen because we don’t practice. We go months and don’t touch our instruments. For this show we’re going to get together for an hour and a half at my house before going to L.A. and run through the songs again just so we can make sure we remember them. And sometimes we don’t!
I’ve heard a couple cuts from your previous 1972 reunion, which Norton added as a bonus on the Sonics Boom album. It sounds even more hard than your sixties recordings. How did you guys resist the urge to get all bluesy like Foghat?
RL: We never sat there and scratched our heads and said ‘What could our gimmick be?’ We always played real hard. Larry played guitar as hard as he could. Bob Bennett played drums as hard as he could. Jerry screamed and banged on the piano. I tried to play sax the way Larry played guitar. I tried to play as hard-dirty-nasty as I could. We used to play dances in armories or big roller rinks, where we’d have three-four-five thousand people. And we didn’t want people standing around with their arms folded staring at us. We wanted people to start dancing immediately. What a lot of bands would do is blow two or three songs and get the level right and then get into it. We wanted to get into it as soon as we hit the stage, so we came out blasting from the get-go! And that’s exactly what we do now. We are going to come out blastin’ and attempt to blow the place up.
GR: We don’t tone it down! We don’t try to blow people’s heads off, but… well, yeah, we might try to blow people’s heads off. What the heck?
Ar the end of your career, suddenly a basketball team starts up in your own town and calls itself the ‘Supersonics.’ Did you feel your name had been usurped?
LP: We thought it would be good publicity to sue them, even though we’d lose—just to say, ‘Hey, the Sonics are suing the Sonics!’
GR: It was kind of a shock! But we were out of the business. But now they’re gone, and we’re back!

THE SONICS WITH THE FUZZTONES, THE WOGGLES, THE VOODUO, GIZELLE, THE NEW FIDELITY AND MANY MORE ON SAT., JUNE 6, AT THE INK-N-IRON FESTIVAL AT THE QUEEN MARY, 1126 QUEENS HWY., LONG BEACH. DOORS AT 11 AM / BANDS AT NOON / SONICS AT 10 PM / $35-$70 / 7+. COMPLETE FESTIVAL LINE-UP AND MORE INFO AT INK-N-IRON.COM. THE SONICS’ RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE NOW ON NORTON. VISIT THE SONICS AT MYSPACE.COM/THESONICSBOOM.

— Daniel Clodfelter