One of the original late ’80’s bands from Seattle that would later define the Grunge sound, Mudhoney may have never reached the superstar level of some of their contemporaries, but their influential role is simply undeniable. Despite being a little too fuzzed out and gritty for mainstream radio and arena tours, the band has been burning club stages around the world, much to the pleasure of their loyal fans. Loyalty is also found in their relationship with legendary label Sub Pop, which has released all but two of their numerous LPs, from a short stretch with major Reprise in the 90’s. While we wait for their 11th album, expected next year, we can revisit their landmark album Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, which just got the reissue treatment on its 30th anniversary, down to the day!
The expanded version includes the remastered original album, along with 15 bonus tracks, including 7 previously unreleased songs. Liner notes from Keith Cameron, as well as new cover art, archival band photos, and a full-color fold-out poster round up the great package, available on Sub Pop Records, of course!
We met with founding guitarist Steve Turner in his Portland, OR home via video conference.
What have you been listening to the most lately?
I listen to a lot of older music obviously, so I really love obscure reissues. Hang on, let me grab a few I just bought. I’ve got a thing called The STROKE BAND. It was a late 70’s, Georgia, private press record that Bruce Joyner, it was his first band. He went on to being quite popular in Europe. It’s got Don Fleming who produced a lot of records back in the 90’s, this is his first record as well. There’s great liner notes in it, and it’s kind of weird, oddball, small town stuff. Then, I bought this JOHN PRINE box set. It’s four album, live in 1975, just him and his acoustic guitar. He’s one of my all time favorite so I’m pretty excited about that.
Does that align with your favorite period of his?
Well, I like his first couple records the best, that’s kind of the case for a lot of artists, I think, but he was still great up to his death. There’s a few records he made in the late 70’s that I didn’t really like the production much, it was of its time, he did one that was almost rockabilly even then. I love rockabilly, but I don’t know, it didn’t really work. It was more like a bar band, I guess? I haven’t delved into all of his records from the 70’s and 80’s. What was cool about him is, he went totally indie. In ’81, he started putting his own records out, on his own label, and did that until he passed away. That’s pretty rad.
Was The Stroke Band a recent discovery or something that you’ve been tracking down for a long time?
This is a 2014 reissue. It just showed up at the used record store a couple days ago, and I was like, Oh! I think I saw Thurston (Moore, of SONIC YOUTH) post about it or something, years back, and well, that guy’s rad so I was like, alright.
So it was purely on reputation that you picked it up?
I recognized it, I was looking at it going, “Okay, I have a memory of this record. What is it? Oh, Don Fleming’s on this! Okay, I’ll get it.”
Obviously, it didn’t disappoint?
No, it’s cool. I like a lot of that weird oddball stuff in late 70’s, that is informed by punk rock and new wave, but isn’t really because it’s just a bunch of small town oddballs, doing whatever, you know?
Is that common for you to dig for new artists that way? Or actually, what’s your favorite way of discovering new music?
I’ve been selling records online for the last 17 years, I was a huge punk record collector, I’ve been digging through thrift stores, and record stores since I was 15. I still do that, not as much lately, I kind of got out of the habit with COVID. I’ve been going back a little bit but it’s harder now because more people like records, and there’s more people like me that know what they’re seeing. I still love digging through boxes of crap at record stores.
What is it that catches your eye typically? The visuals? Are you looking for liner notes, members?
If it’s a record I haven’t seen before, and it’s a private press, self released thing of any genre, country, folk, you know, I’m curious about it, especially if it gets into the rock territory, because those can be worth a lot of money! *Haha* That’s what I do with a lot of them. But yeah, it’s random. Basically, back in the mid 80’s, I started obsessively hunting down rare punk records, because they were still easy to find relatively, and there was no internet. It was this rarefied knowledge that a handful of us had. On tour, I could go into a small town record store and find really rare records for a dollar. I’d joke, I’d buy anything for a dollar. I ended up with a storage unit full of records! *Haha* I’ve been selling through the years, when I need money. I like to hunt, and I like finding things that I don’t know what it is, the more obscure, sometimes the better. It doesn’t always translate to the best music but, I really love reissue labels that are finding the best of the obscure things of different genres. Light In The Attic, out of Seattle is a great label for reissuing obscure stuff, The Numero Group is a really cool reissue label. I get turned on to things that I would never have run across. For a while, maybe 12 years ago, I was selling a lot of Christian records. There’s a whole genre of the hippies that found God, the Jesus freaks in the late 60’s, early 70’s, a lot of them put out records, and a lot of them are really cool, a lot of them are really terrible. I think that the psychedelic collectors were running out of good records to pay good money for, so they started buying these weird Christian hippie records, but there were some that were really great. There are a few compilations of that stuff that kind of covers the genre for me, they find the best one track on that weird indie record and I’m fine with that.
What’s a recent example of a total score that you found? Either in the sense of something cheap that’s worth a lot of money or, in the sense of something obscure that you’ve never heard of and it just blew you away musically?
I hadn’t really been going to record stores much lately. It’s usually a reissue of something that someone sends my way or tells me about. I really like getting things like this…*digs for a record*…Bloodstains Across Canada. It’s a collection of the best tracks on seven inch records that came out in the late 70’s, early 80’s. There’s always things on here that I’ve never heard of. Well, to be fair, a lot of these I actually have heard of, I even reissued the BRAIN EATERS seven inch on my record label back in the 90’s. I guess I like finding reissues of obscure music basically, because it’s a lot harder to find actual valuable records in thrift stores and record stores now, because everybody has the access to the information about it. Like the SKIP SPENCE album -he was a member of MOBY GRAPE, which was one of my favorite bands- I used to find that record in thrift store and record stores back in the 90’s even because it wasn’t in the price guide, and that’s all the record store owners were going on, was the old record price guide books, and it wasn’t in there, for whatever reason. It was considered one of the rarest major label records that came out in the 60’s and you could still find it for like, 5 or 10 bucks, because no one knew what it was. I like those days, I missed that.
Do you have a long wish list these days, or it’s mostly covered?
Well, here’s my thing, I kind of killed my record collecting addiction by starting to sell records. I had some really obscure records. I had this one punk single that, as far as we all knew, because this is back when we would trade and we would send letters and want list and cassettes to friends that were also collectors around the country. I had this thing called JACKIE SHARK AND THE BEACH BUTCHERS, 2nd Generation Rising. It was from 1978, no pictures sleeve, no information on the label, really. It was great but theoretically, I had the only copy of it so these collectors were kind of freaking out about it. Then they started thinking it was actually me that I’d recorded it and made a fake punk record. But then a second copy showed up in Italy, a collector over there that had it. It seemed more legit, so I was offered $1,000 for it. This is probably 1999 and Mudhoney wasn’t doing anything because Matt Lucan had quit and everything was kind of up in the air, and I said no. But $1,000 for a record at that time, seemed insane. My girlfriend was like, “Do you know how many hours I have to work to make $1,000?” I was like, “That’s a good point.” *Haha* But it could be argued that it was the crown jewel of my collection of rare punk records. I accepted the $1,000 for it and it kind of killed the whole collector vibe because then, I’ve literally looked around my house, and there was nothing that I owned, that I wouldn’t have sold for $1,000, except the house itself and my car. Even my guitars, nothing was worth 1000 bucks. I was like, “I guess that’s my price. I’ll take 1000 bucks for anything.” It kind of killed the collector thing, it didn’t have that urgency that, when you’re a real collector, you dream about finding rare records and stuff. It was actually freeing.
The funny thing is, Jackie Shark was then discovered living out in the desert, in California, and he had a box of the records, and he started playing shows again! So he sent me a copy of the record and kind of thanked me for having him rediscovered. I was like, “I got the record back!” *Hahaha*
And now it’s probably nowhere close to being worth $1000!
No! *Haha* It’s still a $400 record probably, but the prices of records have skyrocketed for the rare punk stuff. Man, that was some great karma somehow. I don’t think I’m the guy that got him playing shows again, I was just the first guy that found his record. It was still pretty great getting a letter from Jackie Shark!
Is there any artists that only put out one fantastic release, either a seven inch, demo, or LP, that was truly great, and you really wish that they would have kept going?
There’s a lot of that in the punk world, same with 60’s Garage. One of the best 60’s garage example is The ALARM CLOCKS, the song Yeah. Both sides are two of the greatest 60’s teenage garage tracks ever. They did end up getting back together as grown men somewhere in the 90’s and recorded some stuff but I mean, in their day, they did this one two-song seven inch, and it’s one of the greatest singles to me. I would have loved to have seen what they could have done at that point still. There’s lots of them from that era. With the punk stuff a lot of times, there’s lots of records or bands, their first seven inch is the best thing they did, and there’s a lot of bands, that’s all they did. I would guess that a lot of them would have put out a not very great record, you know?
In Seattle, we have SOLGER who put out one seven inch, and it was one of the worst recorded seven inches ever, but it’s still absolutely classic. That’s all they did and that’s pretty priceless. I mean, there’s a lot of that from Seattle actually. Most 70’s punk bands out of Seattle only did one seven inch if they were lucky.
Yeah, it’s somewhat of a cliché for punk bands to say, “Oh, I’m only into the demo or the early stuff” but, I mean, there is a reason for it. It’s a genre based on energy and that’s what you get with the early material, just a burst of energy.
I always I used to argue back in the 80’s, I can’t think of a single band that lasted more than three or four years and was still putting out good records, you know? You could argue the ROLLING STONES, but most bands didn’t last long or they just sucked, especially with the punk bands, they all went new wave and really soft or something. The UNDERTONES, for example, STIFF LITTLE FINGERS, that was just diminishing returns on each record. So I argued with Mudhoney, ’cause I wanted to go back to college anyway, that’s why I was saying, “Man, I’m going back. If we quit, we quit, but we’re approaching three years right now, that might be the cut-off date for me.” But so ironically, here we are, over 30 years later, still limping along! I’ve changed my point of view, apparently! *Hahaha* I think what’s different about our generation of musicians is that we weren’t beholden to the trends of the day as much. The 60’s guys, by the time the 80’s rolled around, their record sounded like crap, because they were using the 80’s production values. If I think of the 80’s, our fellow travelers like DINOSAUR JR, all the SONIC YOUTH people, we keep going, like many thousands of us that are from kind of that underground, coming out of punk rock and hardcore. The trends of the day didn’t matter to us in the beginning, so why would they now, you know? I think that’s why we can keep making music that I feel is valid as we approach our doddering old age! *Hahaha*
That’s a good point. I never looked at it from that angle but it’s true that sounds that came out of punk, for the most part, is perhaps the most lasting of sounds, where there wasn’t any gap when it didn’t make sense anymore. Even classic rock, it’s still possible, but a classic rock band probably took a turn for the worst in the 80’s.
Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite bands in the 60’s, The KINKS, they had some good songs in the 80’s but it’s like Dave Davies forgot how to play guitar the way he used to. His solos in the 60’s are some of the greatest rock and roll guitar solos ever and by the 80’s, he was just kind of a proto wanna be heavy metal wank fest dude. What happened? Not to go out to beat him up, because I love The Kinks, but it got harder and harder to listen to some of those guys. Now, it’s kind of charming, some of the 80’s production stuff to me. My girlfriend’s really into RUSH, and I never really listened to much Rush before. I watched that documentary and I thought, “okay, these guys are awesome people.” Then, I’ve had to listen to a lot more Rush in the last year and a half and I appreciate it. I love how terrible some of their record sounded in the mid to late 80’s, when Giddy Lee got obsessed with the synthesizer and stuff. Music is kind of terrible, but kind of awesome terrible.
What’s an example of an artist or band who had a very long career and where you can pick from any part of it and find it interesting?
I think NEIL YOUNG’s one. I think he wasn’t as beholden to times either, because he just wanted to record at home, for so many of those records in the 70’s and 80’s. He was also fairly experimental and open minded to different things. Think about how much he loved DEVO and made that movie with Devo in it, Human Highway. I think he’s one. There’s more obscure people like DEAD MOON, Fred Cole, here from Portland. The times didn’t really matter to him, either. He started making records in 1964 up to his death a few years back, and there’s a continuum through it all. It’s fairly lo-fi, but heartfelt and great. I think Thurston Moore is a good example. He’s fairly wildly experimental, obviously, but sometimes he makes really amazing pop tunes as well. I think Dinosaur, they’ve been around even longer than we have and they’re still putting out some pretty great records and are just awesome live. You know, I hope we are! *Haha* We like what we do and I think we do all right, for 32 years old or whatever it is.
Going back to the Rush documentaries, I can really relate. I wasn’t into the band, I watched it, I really fell in love with the guys, I gave them a try again, and it failed.
Yeah, the early stuff is kind of cool, but it’s so trying to be LED ZEPPELIN, the first record or two. That’s all right. I don’t dislike them the way I used to, but I didn’t grow up with classic rock. I’m old enough that I should have, but my older brother was gay and literally only into showtunes, so I didn’t have an older brother playing BLACK SABBATH in the 70’s. I didn’t like a lot of it either, I thought KISS was retarded. I had buddies that were into it and I was like, “this is really stupid music.” I preferred Irish folk songs and things like that as a kid, until punk rock. Then punk rock made sense to me. It was simple, they were young people. I saw SOLGER when I was 15 and they were my age, on stage. I didn’t know that was even a possibility.
Is that your first encounter with the genre?
Uh, they were opening for BLACK FLAG and that was my second rock concert. I saw DEVO a week before that, and that’s only because I was a skateboarder and Devo used skateboarders in some of their videos. They wore skateboard kneepads and stuff so all of us skaters went to see Devo. Then a few days later is Black Flag and I’d already heard Black Flag, because they were featured in the skateboard magazines. It was this kind of new up and coming hardcore punk scene in California. So, yeah, that was the first two concepts I saw, and then I was totally into it. Then I got really into punk rock, that led me to 60’s garage stuff and the Northwest stuff like the SONICS and PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS and The KINGSMEN.
Everything piling on top of one another, nothing ever falling by the wayside?
Not really, because again, I got really into folk music as well. I’ve always had a real love of folk music and the singer songwriter kind of genre. You know, I’m not supposed to like some of that stuff! *Haha* I love JACKSON BROWNE!
We kind of sidetracked with Rush there but I was going to ask about documentaries. What are some of your favorite music documentaries or even bio pics?
I don’t really like the bio pic thing for musicians because it’s always wrong. It gets the looks wrong. Like that DOORS movie to me was just awful. The clothes fit wrong. I think nowadays, at least for some of the period pics, they’re getting it right because it’s people my age that are doing the costuming. I’ve been an obsessive thrift store guy and vintage clothing, all that kind of shit, and that really pisses me off. Most period movies, it’s supposed to be the 60’s or 70’s, and nothing’s fitting the way it used to fit. The pants are too loose, shirts are too big. You need to get some ball hugging pants, you know?
But for documentaries, man, let me think. I’ve watched so many through the pandemic, it was like, what do you got for me tonight? Oh, the one on Bobby Liebling, PENTAGRAM! Whoa! *Haha*
It’s one of those great documentaries that start with something and then shoots off in unexpected directions.
Yeah, that’s definitely in mind the entire time. I was like, “What!?!”
Did you ever watch the ANVIL one?
Yeah, that was really fun. But that was almost like, this feels too much like this can be our story! *Hahaha* It’s kind of like The Decline Of Western Civilization-The Metal Years when Ozzy was like, “There’s nothing funny about Spinal Tap, that’s my life!” The Anvil movie was like, “That’s a little too close for comfort for me.” *Hahaha*
During the pandemic, did you also find yourself watching more live videos and live streaming as well?
I like finding my favorite folk singers and stuff. I always check YouTube for TOWNES VAN ZANDT videos I haven’t seen, they keep showing up like more and more. Things like that, JOHN PRINE, GUY CLARK, all my favorite kind of crooners, GENE CLARK, The BYRDS. I’m always looking for that stuff. I was joking that I’ll find an hour long video of one of my favorite folk singer types, turn it on and fall asleep to it. I wake up like four hours later, and YouTube is still going in some completely random, bizarre way. “Jesus Christ, how did we get to a murder mystery?”
Going back to records, what’s the most flawless sequence of three records in a row ever produced by an artist?
Oh, man. Some of my favorite bands in the 60’s would be The ROLLING STONES, The BYRDS and The KINKS, and they all had runs of three or four albums that were just amazing. I might opt for The Byrds, just because I love them so much. You got their first two records into Fifth Dimension, then Younger Than Yesterday, then The Notorious Byrd Brothers. That’s a heck of a run right there. I’m not even getting to Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, which most people think is the best Byrds record, which I disagree with. I think it’s all right but everything they did before Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, to me is almost flawless.
What’s an unpopular music opinion that you find yourself defending? Something that you truly love but can hardly find anyone to agree with you?
There’s so many obscure weird things. If I was gonna do one, there’s an old punk band called the CRUCIFUCKS. They put out two albums in the mid 80’s, they were from like Wisconsin. The singer, Doc Dart was notoriously mentally ill, but he made this solo record called Patricia in the late 80’s, that Jello Biafra put out on Alternative Tentacles. It’s one of the weirder records I have. So far, I found two people that love it. *Haha* Everyone’s like, “Argh, no way.” He was trying to do this kind of big production prog rock record, but he sings like the Mickey Mouse version of Jello Biafra. *Mimicking his sound* These were heartbreaking songs, all written about this woman, Patricia, that he was in love with that, and hopefully had a restraining order against him. Some of the songs are really affecting and really great, but his voice on top of this really smooth synth prog stuff is just like, wow, that is just a really weird one. But I love it, I treasure that record. It’s really a sad story, his life. He’s still alive, I think. A lot of arrests. He was a rich kid, so he had a little bit of money, but after 9-11, he covered his house with all these things saying like, the Talibans didn’t kill enough Americans and things like that. He was off a little bit.
Is there any example that comes to mind of bands that you didn’t really like at first, but at some point in their career, they took a turn that you now enjoyed?
The general rule is, I like the band’s first stuff, and then they take turns that I don’t really follow. There’s got to be some stuff like that…
It also could be as simple as something that you didn’t like at first and then rediscovered, and now it clicked with you?
That happens a lot. The BAND, Up On Cripple Creek and stuff. I didn’t really get that band until one day, I got it and I was like, “Oh, crap. They’re really good.” I guess I kind of understood somehow the interplay of the musicians. It’s subtle. Certain bands like The Band and The BYRDS too, they’re kind of subtle, but it’s all about the interplay. They’re not bombastic necessarily, and I always liked more bombastic things, even if they were arguably not very good. I used to always argue, I like BLUE CHEER more than JIMI HENDRIX, because Blue Cheer was trying to be Jimi Hendrix, and weren’t very good. I like the simplified version of the suburban white kids doing Hendrix’s genius music. That’s an oversimplification but I like kind of dumb music, a lot of shitty music. Like the MENTALLY ILL song Gacy’s place is one of the greatest songs ever, and possibly one of the worst songs. One of my favorite modern punk bands out of Seattle was The SPITS because they just dumbed everything down, like geniuses. They were like, the retarded version of The RAMONES, who weren’t the brightest.*Haha* It’s like, “Wow, The Spits are the dumbest band I’ve ever seen. So they might be the best.” But they’re playing with that, too.
There’s other contenders. Punk rock is full of contenders in that department!
Yeah. Oh, here’s a good example of a band I didn’t like it first, The MISFITS. Walk Among Us came out in ’82, and to me, it was a punk version of KISS. It was kind of clownish to me. Then a few years later, Legacy Of Brutality came out, which had a bunch of their earlier, unreleased recordings in the late 70’s and stuff and it’s like, “Oh, this is the greatest record I’ve ever heard. Now I get it.” They’re kind of dumb, but the dude can write a song and he can sing, you know? Suddenly, I had to get all the early Misfits stuff, but I still don’t really like Walk Among Us very much.
So it actually confirms your pattern of liking the early stuff though.
It does. *Hahaha* ‘Cause then, after Danzig was out, they reformed the Misfits it’s like “No, that’s just not a thing.” I’m glad they got paid, the other guys, the brothers, I’m fine with that, but I didn’t like what I heard.
Connecting Kiss and the Misfits is a hard truth that I never realized but it’s pretty spot on.
I guess I couldn’t get with it at first, this is not what I like. But as a hardcore kid, I was straight edge, MINOR THREAT blew my mind and to me, that self righteous teenage anger, that’s what I was into at the time. I didn’t like the older punks in the scene that were getting drunk and wrecked halls and stuff. It didn’t make any sense to me. Minor Threat and some of those DC bands made a lot of sense to me at the time. I think I was an irritating kid.
What would be your top five of hardcore seven inches?
Well, I think you’d have to get both Minor Threat singles in there. Welcome To Reality by The ADOLESCENTS. The ZERO BOYS Livin’ In The 80’s.
A truly unsung band, Zero Boys.
Yeah, that Vicious Circle album is possibly the greatest hardcore record. That record is like, “Whoa, how did that even happen?” I didn’t hear that for years after the fact either. I would say, for seven inches, DIE KREUZEN, Cows And Beer. They put out several records on Touch And Go, getting a little bit more arty through the years, but their first seven inch was just classic Midwest aggression. Same with NEGATIVE APPROACH. I mean, you know, you got to hit that one. BAD BRAINS, Pay To Cum. I wish they’d had another seven inch that was a year later or something. That would have been cool. But I mean, you got to give them all the props in the world. BLACK FLAG, their first single, Nervous Breakdown. The BIG BOYS and JFA were pretty great. Because I was a skateboarder, I loved it when bands actually came out that were skaters. That was kind of a big deal to me at age 16 when I discovered those guys.
Did you keep up with skateboarding for a long time?
To this day. I’ve got a 16 year old son that’s a total ripper. He gets me out to the skate parks, we try to go once a week. I still ride the bowls and stuff. I’m old and I don’t try to do any tricks anymore but it’s still really fun. I’m not getting rad, I’m a cautious dad!
Skateboarding and music have a strong relationship and of course, you discovered it at a time when there was a strong relationship with hardcore and punk, but what’s your take on the evolution that skateboarding videos soundtrack had over the years? At some point, it was hip hop, then indie rock, etc, What’s your appreciation of different genres mixed with skateboarding?
I like it. I’ve been turned on to songs from skate videos. Sometimes a skater will use some old song and I don’t know what it is. “What the heck is this song? This is awesome.” Ben Raybourn, this Texas skater -I think he’s not skating anymore-, he used that Australian band The ANGELS, -or Angel City. They went by both named in different countries, depending on trademarks- they used one of their earliest songs, I think it was their first seven inch, Am I ever gonna see your face again? I’d never heard the song and our drummer Dan loves Angel City, and what I’d heard, I hadn’t really cared much for it. Then the song was on this skate video, and I was like, “Man, that’s really frickin good.” It’s a perfect power pop song, from 1976 I think? But anyway, he was one of my favorite skaters 10 years ago, and I’m like, “God, what is this song? It is the coolest video ever, and the song is just ripping.” So I had to go find it, and I ended up buying a bunch of Angel City records.
That’s a great feeling when the part is great, and the music is great, and you can’t wait to get to the end of the video to see the credit, right?
Totally. Me and my son, we’ve watched a lot of skate videos through the years. We were just watching the Olympics the other night, the street. Unfortunately, I was gone last night so I missed the park competition. I like that it’s fairly diverse now. I mean, skateboarding in the 90’s kind of sucked, as far as I’m concerned, cuz I was a vert skater and I wasn’t a street guy. The 90’s was the little tiny wheels and all that stuff, I didn’t understand. When I started skating again, I hadn’t skated for like, a decade, but they started building some parks in the Northwest here. Me and my buddies were like, “We probably still got a couple years left now, let’s get boards again to ride.” Young kids were really confused by what we were doing, because we were just carving around the bowls and getting some grinds and stuff. They’d stop and watch sometimes, and they really didn’t understand what we were doing, because all they were trying to do is doing a kickflip, you know? This one kid came over to me and my buddy like, “So what do you guys trying to do? You guys trying to see how fast you can go around the park?” We’re like, “Pretty much!” Here in the Northwest is kind of the home of the modern version of skate parks, and a lot of my buddies build skate parks. Basically, you build it, and they will come so now, the new generation of skaters are the best ever. They’re just fully well rounded. They do all sorts of street stuff, and just the craziest modern adaptations of old school skateboarding.
That goes back to my point, though, that our generation, age isn’t really as much of an issue. Like, my dad was fairly sporty and then, he wasn’t. Once he got a job and a family, he stopped doing the stuff that he liked doing. It didn’t really make any sense to me. He lived and studied at a piano conservatory, and he never touched the piano in the house. I was like, “Why don’t you ever play the piano?” He’s like, “Nahhh.” He didn’t really do any activities that he used to like, and conversely, me and most of the people I’m friends with now, we just keep doing the same shit we did as teenagers. I started playing guitar in a punk rock band at age 17, and skateboarding, and I still do both. It just keeps going. You add things to your life, like I’m a single dad, both my kids live with me, and things like that, you have jobs and careers or whatever you want to call it, but I’m not gonna quit doing what I like doing until I can’t do it anymore. I still ride an antique bike, I still skateboard as often as I can, I play guitar, I go searching for records.
What are some of the most memorable shows that you remember seeing?
When I saw BLACK FLAG, that was pretty huge, because it was with Dez Cadera singing, it was kind of the perfect time to see them, Dez still had short hair even. He was my favorite voice out of all the Black Flag singers. So that was awesome. But he was also terrified, he was just this skinny kid and the crowd is pretty crazy. I was scared, I was hanging out in the back. I found this gray haired older guy that I just kind of stood next to. There was this fight going on, chairs were flying through the air and stuff and Dez looked terrified at a certain point. That was a memorable show.
I love DEAD MOON and seeing Dead Moon for the first time was really exciting. We met them and stuff. It was 1987, I think. There’s so many. TALES OF TERROR, when they came through town in like, ’84, that was amazing. The first couple times I saw the BUTTHOLE SURFERS would have been probably the wildest shows I’ve ever seen, because that was when they had the two drummers, and if they weren’t all on acid, they sure acted like they were all on acid. Lots of great stuff. Seeing SONIC YOUTH. I was a huge fan of the first two Sonic Youth records and when they came to town in like ’85, I was still in Green River, and we open for them. That was amazing to get to see them. I think there was a lot of great local bands in the Seattle scene in the in the 80’s. A lot of them didn’t ever get a record out, like TEN MINUTE WARNING was always amazing. The U-MEN who got some records out were just phenomenal live. Seeing NEIL YOUNG for the first couple times, being such a fan. I didn’t expect it to be as good as it was, just because, like I said, a lot of times, people from the 60’s just didn’t sound very good in the 80’s. I think maybe ’89 I saw him for the first time, when he was being the godfather of grunge. He took Sonic Youth out on tour with him, and that was at his noisiest when he did that. Thurston edited a CD of all the endings of songs, like all the feedback, explosion stuff, you know? (Note: The Arc album) I think Thurston did that, or maybe he just told Neil Young to do it, I can’t remember now. But it was at his urging. That’s when every frickin’ Neil Young song was 12 minutes long with three minutes of feedback at the end.
Even now, he remains so heavy live. It’s amazing how he maintained that.
Yeah, he’s an artist of integrity. I love his soft solo acoustic shows as well. I’ve been lucky to see a few of those. That young band that he’s made a couple of records with recently, which has Willie Nelson’s son, PROMISE OF THE REAL, I saw that show with him. That was amazing because he dug deep into his 70’s records that he doesn’t really play much because they were the records he didn’t make with Crazy Horse. That was really great seeing stuff from Long May You Run and things like that. That was a really great Neil Young show, and that was maybe five years ago.
Did you see that movie he did with Promise Of The Real, Paradox? It’s super strange, with acted parts, impressive art parts and music performances. It was interesting.
No, haven’t seen it but that’s kind of like what he did with DEVO on Human Highway, back in the late 70’s. You know, it can be argued he’s a great musician, not a great movie maker. Same with BOB DYLAN. He always wants to act but he’s like the worst actor ever.
You mentioned not having seen Bob Dylan earlier, that’s the one I wouldn’t advise going.
No, that’s why I haven’t. I’ve had opportunities in the last 20 years. I think his time has passed. I like some of his recent songs, that song he did last year, Murder Most Foul. It’s a 17 minute song and it’s amazing, holy crap. It’s this really long song about Kennedy’s assassination. It’s so long, I swear to God, he mentions Don Henley at some point in the song! *Haha*
I have a few examples of my own of artists, mainly from the 60’s-70’s, that I just decided not to see them. Black Sabbath is one. I had the chance to see some of the later tours and I was like, “You know what? I’ll just go back and watch that Paris 1970 video.”
I saw them in the late 90’s, the first tour they did with the original members, it was great. Bill could still drum well, and it was really fun. It was at the dome here, I barely ever go see big shows like that but I thought it was awesome. I was really glad I saw that.
That was probably the last great window.
Yeah, I think so. They did great. They didn’t have to have like, three other guitar players or anything backing them up. It was just the four of them and they were killing it.
What’s the band that you’ve toured with that impressed you the most? The one that you had to watch their set night after night?
I think we all agree that there’s this Australian tour we did in 1993, Big Day Out, which is kind of their Lollapalooza. It was IGGY POP, SONIC YOUTH, NICK CAVE, The BEAST OF BOURBON, us…The HARD-ONS, a really great Australian punk band and they had Jerry A from POISON IDEA guest singing some songs with them. I had to watch everybody every night, because I was like, “I can’t believe we’re on this tour with all these people.” Iggy Pop, it was before he reformed the STOOGES but he had a pretty good band behind them. L.A. session dudes, but they were good. That was a really fun trip. All the bands got on really well and it was a really fun, greatest tour of our lives, basically.
Is there any up and coming bands that you’d like to give a shout out to?
Um, what have I heard lately? I’ve barely been to any shows or anything lately. I really like the band The (Aussi???), I think they live in Milwaukee. Cool garage three piece thing that I think is really good. There’s a folk singer here in Portland named ANNA TIVEL, that puts out records on my friends label Fluff And Gravy Records. I’d never heard of her before, but the three records of hers I’ve heard are just amazing. Really great stuff. I worked at a record pressing plant for a couple of years, so I brought home a lot of records that were not very good, mostly, but sometimes, I’d get surprised like, “Oh my God, this record’s really good.” Anna Tivel was one of those.
I play in another band here in Portland, called SUNDAY STATE. We’re actually playing tomorrow night. We’ve played a couple of very small outdoor shows recently. I’m kind of an adjunct member, sometimes I’m on the record, sometimes I’m not. But I love what they do, so I’m happy to be helping them do it right now.
In closing, is there any projects that you’d like to promote? Of course, there’s the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge Reissue.
We’re working on new songs, and we’ll get some stuff recorded early next year, we’re going to record in November and January. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get a record out at the end of next year, or something like that.
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