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.

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

Exene Cervenka helped invent what Los Angeles is now and helped save the best of what it used to be. She releases a new solo album Somewhere Gone on Bloodshot in October and is moving back to California after years in a historic farmhouse in Missouri. She speaks now while camping on the beach. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

How do you feel America’s garbage has changed in the last thirty or forty years?
Ooh—interesting. It’s changed for the worse. The garbage that I used to find on the streets was a lot better because it was regional garbage and now it’s just national garbage.
What specifically have we lost in our garbage?
Flyers for fortunetellers. Candy wrappers that only exist in certain places.
Do you agree with Philip K. Dick that the symbols of the divine show up initially at the trash stratum?
Sure—I think that’s neat.
Lydia Lunch once said that you and her share a similar moral imperative—to tell the truth about injustices to the individual and to scream into the void. Do you think that’s true?
I think that’s something more strident than I would see myself as being. I definitely feel like I’m not giving a voice to the voiceless—now I’m giving myself a voice. I don’t know what imperative means. I understand what it means but I also think that—I don’t know, ‘moral’ is a weird word. I like it. I like the word ‘morality’ but that is a weird concept. I just try to be a compassionate human being. I’m trying to make myself a better person as I go along.
How hard has that been to learn how to do?
Easy once you get the hang of it.
Do you think that’s necessary in music to have that?
Yes. Is it necessary to treat people okay? It is for me. Maybe not for you.
Maybe for me.
Maybe not for the next guy but for you or me, yeah.
You said once that most of your songs are written about love but that’s not to say they aren’t political. The Monks have said that all songs are love songs at heart—what’s the overlap there?
I’m just trying to take that in. Every song is a love song? Yeah, I’d agree with that. Because you love what you’re writing about.
They also said love is the only way to get out of your own ego and connect with something bigger than yourself.
Yes, I agree with that.
What’s a moment in your own life when that became apparent?
Now. Now in the more general sense. I agree with that completely. When I got diagnosed with MS—that is when it became apparent to me.
Did that diagnosis change the way you write and work?
It doesn’t change that, unfortunately. You’d think it would make you more… Well, I work pretty hard as it is so I’m not gonna work harder—but it doesn’t really change that stuff because why should it? At some point it’ll bite me in the ass but right now I’m healthy.
There’s a line by the poet Anna Akhmatova…
Oh, I love her—she’s my favorite poet. She’s great, especially considering she wrote that stuff in the teens and the twenties. Well, not all of it—but the stuff she wrote in the teens and the twenties is so relevant and so good.
In one poem she asks, ‘Why is this century worse than those others?’
I think everyone thinks their century is worse than the others. I think that question can be answered. We don’t know if it’s the worst, or if things will get worse. I believe things will get worse in our culture and our economy and in the world in general—I think water shortages and things like that. I mean we’re dealing with a bad economy, but other people are dealing with much worse and that’s gonna continue.
How do you think things have changed in your lifetime?
It’s kind of a big perspective now. I thank the hippies for health food every day—I’m grateful to them every day I eat and I think that generation changed the world for the better. They didn’t change it completely but I definitely have a lot of respect and gratitude to that generation. The generation previous to mine. And the feminists for doing what they could in their times to try and make women somewhat equal, which will probably never happen.
What makes you say that?
Because it’s so hard. I’ve struggled my whole life and so has every woman and decent man I know—it’s so hard.
How do you reconcile yourself to the possibility that these kinds of things are going to take longer than maybe any person can imagine?
That depends on if you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing. If you’re doing the right thing then the outcome doesn’t really matter because your goal is to do the right thing, not to change the world.
Mike Watt says when he reads Ulysses now, it seems like a sad book to him—that it seems like the only victories we can have are the tiny victories between people.
No. I don’t agree with that. I think tiny victories are very valuable and personal relationships are very valuable but I think you can aspire to a lot more than that. I would not settle for that, no.
What do you still aspire to? I found a quote where you said you felt you’ve done everything you wanted to do in your life.
Do the same things again better.
How?
Well, that’s the question. That’s my problem, isn’t it?
What do you miss most about the past?
Architecture. The architecture in Los Angeles used to be quite amazing. Architecture everywhere in America used to be amazing—I miss that a lot.
Why do you think that changed?
Because of progress. Yes, that’s what they call it. Because of the economy. Because you have to keep stimulating the economy by tearing down and building again—and sprawl and fear. Los Angeles used to be a really amazing city in the ‘70s, but I miss all that. I wish men wore hats.
And never shorts, either. For decorum.
Yeah—for decorum’s sake.
Can you identify anything in your lifetime that was a tipping point? Where things went the left way and not the right way?
I have those all the time.
Can you identify them as they happen?
No. Immediately after. I’m pretty good at knowing what’s happening. The tipping point is a good thing because it makes you get up and do something about whatever it was that you couldn’t do anything about. It forces your hand.
You once said, ‘I want to be worthwhile in this world, I want to give something—otherwise that’d be selfish.’ Is that the way you feel you have to live?
Yes. Because that’s the way it is. That’s the way it works—because if you don’t do that then it doesn’t work. Society falls apart. Civility is lost. Which may be a good thing. But that’s just the way I choose to live. If somebody came to my door and wanted help, I would help them.
I heard runaways used to show up on your doorstep in the middle of the night.
Well, let me put it this way—if someone needed help, I would help them.
What’s a time when somebody really helped you exactly when you needed it?
You’d be amazed. I have a list of the things since I was diagnosed—I am really, really grateful because I had so many people come to me with advice and help and prayers and thoughts and presents and things. So I think that when that happens, it transforms you.
How does it feel to be living in California again?
Not as strange as you’d think. I haven’t decided yet where I’m moving.
What’s your favorite scene in one of Raymond Chandler’s books?
Oh gee, I read those books so long ago. I can’t really remember. I should re-read those and I should read John Fante while I’m at it. Now that I’m back here I should reacquaint myself with where I am. John Fante—he’s my favorite L.A. writer. Because he just did it the best. I love Raymond Chandler too. And Charles Bukowski and other people. When I moved to L.A. in ’76 there were people just coming back from Vietnam who were hippies when they went that were dropping acid a week before they landed in Vietnam. They still had chops and acid and hippies—it was really neat. And there were still those detective doors in some of the office buildings—you know. The glass doors with the lettering. And the architecture was much more detective-y—much more Marlowe.
When you first moved here, who was the person who taught you about L.A.?
I didn’t have one. It was me and John Doe struggling to find our own way. Everything from the ground up. I came from Florida and he came from Baltimore and we didn’t know anything about California or Los Angeles—we were just trying to figure it out. We’d go to shows, he’d talk our way in—he’d talk the doorman into letting us get in for free to go see the Runaways and Tom Petty and Blondie.
You were talking about punk once and said, ‘We were ghosts then and we’re ghosts now and we’ll haunt your malls and catwalks forever.’
That’s definitely true. Because we thought of stuff that other people didn’t think of and it’s just now starting to disseminate into society—or has been for a while but is kind of starting.
Do you remember the first time you saw the Eagles play?
The Eagles? I saw the Eagles play in Las Vegas about 15 years ago. I was at the Hard Rock Café the night they opened. I wanted to see who they were because I heard so much about them.
Did they live up to everything you’d been told?
Exactly. Hit the nail on the head. They are good musicians—very competent at what they do, very good at what they do.
What a carefully chosen adjective.
Yup. They were very good at what they do.
You use ‘we’ really effectively in your lyrics.
I use ‘I’ too much. I think about myself too much.
Are there any of your songs that you feel have come true?
No. Sometimes they do. ‘New World’ is like that. That comes true every year.
How did you feel on election night last year?
Pretty darn good.
Did you cry at all?
No I didn’t. I had a nice celebration though—we played in Seattle and Eddie Vedder sang ‘The New World’ with us on election night. It was fun. And he slow danced with me.
Did he step on your toes?
No—he’s a great dancer. Are you kidding?
Who’s the best dancer?
John Doe.
Have you ever cried on an election night?
No. I don’t cry for those people. I save my tears for my friends.

EXENE CERVENKA WITH JOHN DOE, AMBER FOX AND DAVID J. CARPENTER ON FRI., SEPT. 11, AT A BENEFIT FOR ANDREA FOLMER AT ALEX’S BAR, 2913 E. ANAHEIM ST., LONG BEACH. 8PM / $10 / 21+. ALEXSBAR.COM. AND WITH JOHN DOE AND KID CONGO POWERS ON FRI., OCT. 9, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 8PM / $25-$27 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. EXENE CERVENKA’S SOMEWHERE GONE RELEASES TUE., OCT. 6, ON BLOODSHOT. VIST EXENE CERVENKA AT EXENECERVENKA.COM OR AT MYSPACE.COM/EXENECERVENKA.

Download: David Serby “Don’t Even Try”

(from Honky Tonk and Vine out now on Harbor Grove)

David Serby was a punk kid in Orange County and then an insurance adjuster in L.A. and took a long time and a lot of lumps to become the country singer he is now. He performs monthly at dark bars with old photos on the walls and he has just released his third album Honky Tonk And Vine. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

If you wrote a song called ‘Blues For An Insurance Adjuster,’ what would it be like?
Oh good Lord. That would pretty much be if I wrote a musical for the movie Office Space. When I was doing insurance I had the back of my cubicle backed up to a big window and I went to my boss and said, ‘Can I take this back thing off because its got this big beautiful window here?’ He said no, so a friend of mine who was next to me brought his little Leatherman tool kit in and hung around ‘til everybody was gone and we took it off and put the back of the cubicle in the storage facility bin back behind a big crate and nobody ever said anything. I don’t think they ever noticed.
What was the most productive creative work you ever got out of those experiences?
I think that you figure out who you are by figuring out who you’re not. You put these clothes on and go, ‘This doesn’t feel right on me.’ When I started working there, my life was completely upside down and that job was really the only thing I had to hold on to. I was probably about six months into that job and my friend who I met there was quitting to go to graduate school back in New York—he said, ‘You hate this job—why don’t you just quit right now and we’ll take three months off and we’ll drive around the country? You can bring a guitar.’ I said, ‘I can’t do it—my life has been a mess for so long. I can’t.’ I was still hanging on to that cliff—I hung on to that cliff for another six years before I actually let go.
Are you more of a risk taker now?
Definitely. It’s a completely different world. I let go of that cliff and I just said, ‘You know what? The game is rigged.’ I don’t want to turn into an anarchist or anything but this whole capitalist system is not really set up to encourage freedom of thought and art. And if that’s what you want to do, as soon as you realize that the system is not set up to really help you or encourage you and that you’re going to have to figure out your own path and make your own rules—as soon as you accept those things, life becomes a hell of a lot easier.
Are these the same sentiments you were talking about in your old punk band?
Kind of. The things I was railing against then—being a cog in a machine and all those teenage things you’re pissed about, like having a number on a social security card and all that bullshit. But you do come full circle. You rail against it and then you graduate from high school—I remember feeling instantly ancient. Just old. And thinking, ‘How did this happen?’ And then it was another 10 or 15 years of realizing that just because I was older doesn’t mean I had to be older. I went to high school in Orange County so that was like in ‘78 and in ‘82 I graduated—there was a lot of great punk rock going on in Orange County at that time. I used to see Mike Ness hanging around. I saw Agent Orange more times than I can count! And the Adolescents and TSOL and all those bands—I saw them in high school gyms, I saw them in Elks Clubs, I saw them at the Lodge in Fullerton—I saw them everywhere. There was a lot of great art happening down there and all of that stuff was cool. But my family had country records and I remember I would play the Johnny Cash Live From San Quentin record all the time and I would listen to a band like X—I remember getting that first X record. I got the first X record and the first Blasters record on the same day and I went to my friend’s house and I put it on her record player and listened to it and just stared at the artwork and was completely blown away by that stuff. That stuff is completely folk music. It’s folk music like it’s people talking about what’s going on in their life and on the street. They’re talking about people who are making it day to day. They’re kind of like historians—especially a band like X, they were just brilliant historians. I love that band.
Guy Clark says you have to leave a space in the song for the guy who’s listening to be like, ‘Hey that’s me…’ Is that something you try to do?
One of the things that I love most about country music is that people identify with it. It’s very common language—a very conversational art form and I think people connect with it because they do see themselves in those songs. If you’ve done that and somebody can listen to a song and recognize themselves in it, then I think you’ve really managed to do something special. That is kind of what I try to do. The thing with country music is that people make fun of it because country music talks about ‘my girlfriend left me, my wife left me, my dog died, my pick-up truck’s broken down…’ But you know what? That shit happens to people! It sounds simple, but it’s not simple—it’s not easy to do that. I remember reading an interview with either Jakob Dylan or Tom Petty—a reviewer wrote about how the songs were all three chords and they were all conversational and how the songs were too simple and he said, ‘Look, if being simple were easy everyone would do it.’ Except for the ones about being in prison—although I’ve been in plenty of metaphorical prisons—I don’t think I’ve ever heard a country song that I haven’t identified with. That’s the brilliance about it.
What’s hard about writing a simple song for you?
You have to pick out the little things. My friend said, ‘My husband is always on the street—he’s always working on his car and he should be in the house working on other stuff, if you know what I mean.’ And I thought, ‘That’s like a universal man-woman experience.’ And I came home and wrote this song ‘Better With My Hands’ about a couple that is falling apart—which I know something about—and a guy who doesn’t know how to talk about what he’s feeling—which I know something about. The fact that I was talking to this woman and she was saying the same thing was happening to her—well, you know, there’s something that I haven’t written about and if it’s happening to me and it’s happening to her then it’s happening to millions of people all over the world. The key is to try and tell it in a fresh original way—it’s tough to be simple when you’re trying to be different.
Harlan Howard would do the same thing—just listen to people talking in a bar.
There’s a song on the record called ‘I Only Smoke When I’m Drinking’ and twice in a week somebody tried to bum a cigarette off of me and both times I said I only smoke when I’m drinking. And the song ‘Permanent Position’—I was talking to my friend at the Cinema Bar about how great it would be if Rod—the guy who owns the Cinema Bar—would pay us to drink beer because that’s pretty much one of our favorite things to do. I’m not the only one who wants to sit in a bar and get paid to drink beer, I’m sure.
What’s the big story you want to tell? What’s on your mind that you want in a song?
That’s a good question. I’m in a good place in my own personal life so I’m kind of looking outward more. The first record had its own story, but for the last two records I kind of moved away from that—what I really want to do is look at other people and their lives. The world needs good art right now—it needs good stories.
What makes you say that?
Well, I don’t know—this place is a wreck. The middle class is disappearing and people are so hypnotized by pop culture that they don’t see it. I look at my sister and her husband who have gone through tough times. I watch people struggle and it seems that it’s people who shouldn’t be struggling. It’s people whose families that for generations, their lot in life has improved—and now this generation, everything has gone backwards for them. There’s a movie called The Interpreter with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman and there’s a line in that movie—‘There are no more countries, only corporations.’ And it’s that. The corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about the people in this country. It’s the death of the middle class, the Wal-Mart economic model—it’s all that stuff and it’s the effect that stuff is having in people’s lives. That’s what’s interesting to me.
What do you think about that strange kind of split in country? That part of it is so stand-up-for-the-little-guy and yet it’s used to market Wal-Mart and expensive trucks?
I know—I agree with that and I don’t think that it even registers with people. I really don’t and I think it’s the hypnotic effect of pop culture. I went off to Stagecoach a couple weeks ago and there was the Palomino stage and it had some big acts that drew some people over from the main area—the bands had a more independent aesthetic and were more country-based like Dale Watson and Jim Lauderdale. And there were sadly not big crowds for them. I spent almost the whole weekend in front of that stage. Late on Sunday night, the wind kicked up and it was kind of cool and I walked back through the main stage area in the middle of Kid Rock’s set and he was playing a Queen song—I think it was either ‘We Are the Champions’ or ‘We Will Rock You’ and there was supposed to have been 50,000 people in attendance but there wasn’t more than 250 people over at the Palomino stage. At that time I think it was Jim Lauderdale and Dale Watson headlining, who I think are just brilliant contemporary country song writers and the other 49,999 people were over in front of that main stage and it was like a drunken spring break over there. I’m not making a value judgement but it’s completely different from old school country and how that art form was historically approached. It’s more like arena rock and pop music and those two fan bases don’t really cross-pollinate.
Is ‘Get It In Gear’ really about helping a girl get naked photos of herself back from a drug dealer? What happened?
I have no idea what happened to that girl. I knew her many years ago and kinda had a thing for her—kind of like the moth to the flame thing. I met her in junior college. You see those things happening and the signs are not good, but there’s a fascination there and you get to a certain point where you either jump off the cliff or walk back to your car right away.
What’s something you walked away from that you’re glad you left behind?
There was a whole bunch like ten years ago. I chose to go a different way professionally—I chose to go a different way in my relationships and I chose not to wallow in self-pity and depression and to try and use that. There is a tendency to kind of wallow in your bad luck—I think as an artist you probably should do a little of that because that’s how you connect with things, but the key is not getting so destroyed that you can’t do anything. I read an interview with Oliver Stone and he talks about going through a period in his life when he was having substance abuse problems—he said even when he was his drunkest or his most drugged-out or whatever, he got up every day and he wrote. There is a real saving grace in creating art. If you can force yourself to do it when you’re down, it will lead you to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Whenever Harlan Howard went into a bar, he’d always take the barstool closest to the front door—what is your preferred barstool and why?
I would take the farthest barstool from the door—but the one that had the view. I like my bars as dark as possible but I also like to be able to see people come and go. I like to watch people when they don’t know they’re being watched—you get an honest read on what people are doing and how they’re reacting to folks. I love to do that. I told somebody recently that I love to sit in airports when the flight is delayed. I just like to watch people. I might sit by the door but then you gotta turn around—if you’re over there in the back of the bar where you can see the whole deal, that would be my place.

DAVID SERBY ON THUR., JUN. 18, AT THE PIKE, 1836 E. 4TH ST., LONG BEACH. 9 PM / FREE / 21+. PIKELONGBEACH.COM.DAVID SERBY’S HONKY TONK AND VINE IS OUT NOW ON HARBOR GROVE. VISIT DAVID SERBY AT DAVIDSERBY.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DAVIDSERBY.

STATEMENT FROM EXENE CERVENKA OF X:

After some months of not feeling 100% healthy, I recently had some medical tests run and the prognosis is that I am suffering from Multiple Sclerosis. Apparently, it has been affecting me for quite some time.

Although this is obviously unfortunate news, I am choosing to see the positive in it. I, and X as a band, have supported the Sweet Relief charity since the mid-1990’s; the irony of this is not lost on any of us. Sweet Relief was started as an aide to uninsured artists by musician Victoria Williams when she herself was diagnosed with MS in 1992.

While this diagnosis will most certainly mean some changes for me, personally, it will not affect my commitments to the current X U.S. tour, nor will it affect my solo album that is slated for release this fall on Bloodshot Records.

My focus will certainly be on maintaining my health–many people remain strong and continue to live their lives as productively as they had before an MS diagnosis and I plan to be one of those people.

To find out more about Sweet Relief please visit: www.sweetrelief.org
To find out more about X please visit: www.xtheband.com

All I’ve got to show from Coachella is a sunburn, a pimple, and a busted bottom lip. While there, I enjoyed: half-assed ass shaking to Crystal Castles, Ting Tings, and Girl Talk; Morrissey looking bloated but still croonin’ like a pro; Paul McCartney singing me to sleep as I lay in my tent; worrying that Ariel Pink was either going to melt or collapse into a pile of dust when exposed to daylight; watching Liars (featuring Alex Myrvold of Pizza!) squirm through my favorite songs while I wondered whether their presence signified a new direction for Coachella (towards an aesthetic I find much more attractive and interesting than that of, say, the stupid Killers) or simply reaffirmed my aforementioned belief that some music is best kept in dark places where sweat is produced via dancing hard as fuck rather than by standing in the fucking sun thinking, “I would be dancing right now if I weren’t sweating my balls off!”

And: I guess I do like that one TV on the Radio song; how gross but totally radical it is that M.I.A. can hop and squat and shimmy and slam like that so soon after popping a baby human out of her vagina? I mean, I hate it when people talk about their babies and how their babies are waiting for them so they can only sing seven songs but I’ll take seven songs and some dumb-ass baby banter if it means I also get amazing glow in the dark costumes and hammer-dancing in front of footage of impoverished Sri Lankan militia men while M.I.A performs effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat—unlike Gwen Stefani who looked like a sweaty bag of shit for several performances after birthing Kingston.

And: the Vivian Girls looking too shampooed to have all that hair in their face and doing absolutely nothing new but making me like them anyway—also a case of No One Dancing until my buddy Jack and I started a water-spitting war and got at least 12 too-skinny kids in short shorts to move, although they were mostly just scurrying away from us but really where’s the line between that and the way hipsters dance, anyway? Plus the Vivian Girls really know how to harmonize and they swapped instruments during a coda without any awkwardness at all, a well-choreographed gimmick that reminded me of how cool I felt the first time I switched drivers going 80 on the freeway but then also how I wondered immediately after, “Why did we just do that?” But then I thought immediately after that: “Sometimes it’s good to do something just for fun, even if it could kill you.” Not that the Vivian Girls switching instruments during a song could kill anyone—the analogy really lies in the doing something just for fun part, because you are young so maybe it’s enough that you are new even if what you’re doing is not.

Also—how No Age has really gotten their shit together. They are now a professional act complete with Scott their very own sound guy (ex-drummer for the Soft Boiled Eggies) and Jim Smith who coolly orchestrated the tech guys to get it all just right so that this show actually did get people bouncing up and down and shoving each other a bit. Plus Chloe Sevigny, one of my first female crushes, was there looking like a fancy rancher’s daughter wearing a white dress that was sort of see through if you stared at it long enough and with her golden locks in a tidy French twist. And: how I can’t help but hum along to that goddamned whistly song by Peter, Bjorn and John.

Finally: how watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you? But I guess that’s how culture propagates itself and blah-blah-blah babies are gross, even when they are not babies but musical movements.

I didn’t get to see Public Enemy because I was busy almost getting arrested. Then I was not allowed back in so I didn’t get to see the Cure either. Lame.

—Drew Denny

Venetian Snares @ The Knitting Factory
Bobb Bruno @ Echo Curio
X @ HOB Anaheim