I'm just putting this up for posterity. I've never seen forecasts of anywhere near this much snow for Southern California mountains.
Yes, Southern California has some of the best overall weather in the country, most of the year. I've lived about half my life in SoCal, and I don't remember a storm like this. Forecasts of 3 to 5 feet of snow in the San Bernadino mountains, and 5 to 7 feet in the highest SoCal elevations. Meanwhile, in the valley's and basins, 2 to 7 inches of rain is expected, and has been falling for a few hours as I write this.
How much is it raining? I just saw a guy named Noah outside complaining about not finishing his ark because lumber prices went so high a while back. Crazy weather for everyone these days, even sunny SoCal. I'll probably add some cool snow videos here in a few days.
Cars stuck on Vineland, near Burbank Airport - This is literally 100 yards from the small business I worked at in 1991, when I first lived up in this area. There's a bank I used to ride my bike on right on the other side of all this water. I called it the Thorn Bank, because the wind would blow thorns there, and I'd get flats a lot. It was one of my better riding spots in The Valley BITD.
I looked it up, since I was sleeping homeless in the North Hollywood/Studio City area, we had about 3 inches of rain over the weekend, and Woodland Hills, across The Valley had 10 1/2 inches of rain. Wow. We don't get a lot of gnarly weather in Southern California, but when we do get it, we get it all at once. Teetoppling winds, double digit rainfall, hail, a little thunder and lightning, and a blizzard in the local mountains. Crazy weekend...
A few weeks ago I saw this video in a Facebook post by Alex Leech, over in the U.K.. He said he'd been up late the night before digging into this guy's music, after watching this video. So I watched the video. "Hi Ren" by Ren, U.K. rapper/songwriter/musician. This is an incredible piece of art. This video made me look at my own creative work, and start thinking about all the ideas I haven't done. It also got me writing poetry again, after 14 years of not writing.
I thought the video had 2.4 million views that night that I first watched it. It had 2.9 million the next morning. It has 5.7 million now, a month later. This isn't a major pop star singing bubble gum syrupy lyrics about her last boyfriend. This is a fucking intense video talking about deep, dark, hard subjects. I know Ren isn't about "numbers, statistics, or stats." But this amazing, deep, intense, music video was getting 100,000 views a day, just by word of mouth. He tried something really freakin' hard with "Hi Ren." And Ren and crew knocked it out of the park with this video.
Like Alex, I started digging into what else the guy has out. He suggested "The Ballad of Jenny and Screech." I looked up those, and "The Ballad of Violet," and somehow watched them in the right order, seperately. Mind blown sounds so cliche', but that's what it was. I was hooked.
I kept digging. Ren's got a whole bunch of music, a wide variety, going back years. He also has a crazy personal story, 10 years sick with Lyme disease, and stress-induced psychosis. There are a couple of really dark videos of him form years ago, in that struggle. This guy is brilliant, he's done a bunch of music, many different styles, and this got me re-thinking all my own creative work. While I'm down and out financially, I put out a lot of work, blogs and drawings, primarily. Ren's work got me thinking of the deeper, smarter, crazier ideas that I haven't done. His rhymes reminded me of some of my poems I wrote years ago. I started writing poems again, after not writing any rhymes for 14 years. This one song, and the other work backing it, really motivated me to step up my own work. No other artist has done this, since I discovered Matisyahu 17-18 years ago, and first seeing Kerry Getz play live at Triangle Square, 3 or 4 years before that.
For the last month, I've traveled down the Ren rabbit hole, and I still haven't watched it all. Ren's a gernius. Maybe his work is for you. Maybe it's not. This post is to introduce some of you to Ren, the musician, the way Alex Leech's Facebook post introduced his work to me. Here are some of my favorites of his...
Bridges, like most things humans make, are built to withstand much more stress than what they will endure on a day to day basis. Time wears down the steel, concrete, and components slowly. Accidents can damage to them. Extreme levels of wind and water can create higher levels of stress than usual. Still, by and large, bridges just stand there, most of us use one of more of them daily, but we never think of them. Bridges just stand there and do their job. Until they don't. Sometimes it's a visible event, a massive flood, high winds, or maybe a landslide nearby, that leads to a collapse. Other times, they look fine, but years of wear finally hit a breaking point, and they just collapse, unexpextedly. Everything I see in the economy points to a "bridge-style collapse" at some point this year, in 2023. Things look normal, and then some unseen event pushes it to the breaking point.
As I wrote in the last post, 2022 was a pretty easy year to make economic predictions for, there were big moves (inflation, interest rates, stock market, crypto, real estate) getting ready to happen. I could see the pressure building for these, as did several other people. Then they happened. Inflation was going up. After basically ignoring it for months, the Federal Reserve (aka The Fed) raised interest rates to slow down the economy, and eventually help lower inflation (that they caused by creating too much money in 2020-2021). The Fed also stopped buying "assets," which decreases the total money supply, which also helps slow down the economy. Stocks and crypto went down dramatically last summer and fall, and real estate topped out, and began its descent to slowing sales and lower prices in places. Investors didn't know where to put money, it seemed everything was losing ground. For a bunch of reasons I won't get into, we are now in a financial Never Never Land, unlike most any time in memory.
Now we are in the barrage of the ripple effects of the fastest interest rate increases in U.S. history. The thing about these kinds of actions, like The Fed raising interest rates, generally, they take 12-18 months to really show up in the everyday economy, and the economic data. The Fed dramatically increased the money supply, creating $5-$6 trillion out of thin air in 2020 and 2021. That money went to major banks first, then bailouts of the banking system, major corporations, cities and towns, and eventually us everyday people, through stimulus checks and PUA, PPP, and similar programs. We all got high on The Fed's supply... of free money.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal... about finding new uses for old, unused, and abandoned buildings, as well as the economy and commercial real estate in general. Check it out!
Then in March 2021, close to a year after the first wave of newly created money, inflation began to go up. That new money spread through the economy, and began to drive prices up. Increasing the money supply devalues every dollar (or euro, yen, kronor, yuan, etc.), making them worth less buying power. Eventually prices rise to compensate for the lower buying power of each dollar. But it happens in different places, bit by bit, unevenly, not all at once. So while stocks, crypto, and real estate values have gone down quite a bit, rebounding somewhat, overall, inflation is still high. It's officially over 6% per year. Unofficially, it's probably still around10% per year, overall.
The Fed started raising interest rates in March of 2022, to fight inflation. That began to affect new home loans very quickly. But most other effects happen under the radar, slowly. We should see the first big effects of the interest rate increases in May-June-July of 2023, about a year after the first large interest rate hikes. Those effects will keep getting stronger as the year goes on, as people, businesses, and local and state governments, start paying much higher interest rates, as they roll over, or refinance their debt. The big problem is, there is more debt than everat all levels... in human history. Paying back debt, all kinds, has been getting more expensive, for everyone, for almost a year. Interest rates are still being raised by The Fed, as of their last meeting. So lots of payments, at all levels, are being missed now, everyone's personal, business, and government debt is getting harder and harder to pay. The pressure is building, minute by minute, day by day, like the pressure on those bridges in the video above.
Something, somewhere in the system, will reach the breaking point, and that collapse, of some major corporation, some non-bank lender (mortgage or auto loan companies), a foreign bank (Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are being watched closely by many investors), the junk bond market, or perhaps a small country, will not be able to pay its debt. Something big will go bankrupt. That collapse will seem to come out of nowhere, it will be in something we don't expect, and it will spread quickly. At this point, there's far too much debt to be paid back in tough times, and now too much pressure, for a collapse not to happen. Something big, economically, will break this year. Then we won't be wondering "are we in a recession?" It will be obvious.
When that happens, we will see big drops in stocks, crypto, and lower quality bonds, very quickly. Gold and treasury bonds will be where major investors head for safety, for a while, during the turmoil. Central banks and smart investors have been buying up a lot of gold in the last few years. When there's a big enough collapse, The Fed will have to pivot, and begin to lower interest rates again. That's what they usually do when we are heading into a recession. Raising rates into a likely recession, like they've doing for almost a year, is very unusual, and part of why we're in a Financial Never Never Land, unlike previous downturns.
The Fed has said several times in recent months that it plans to keep interest rates high, and not lower them at all, in 2023. If there's one thing we can count on these days, it's The Fed changing its mind.
I believe they will pivot, and begin to lower interest rates, in 2023. If it's a really extreme crisis that makes this necessary, they will soon begin to create more new money, to bailout the banking system and corporate America. Since we have a Decomcratic White House, and a Republican House and Senate, they probably won't pass major stimulus money for us regular people. They'll throw money at Banks and Big Business, but don't expect stimulus checks this time around. They'll argue about it, but it won't happen, most likely.
Then the real, gnarly part of this recession hits us, and it hits hard. There tens of thousands of more layoffs, more small, medium, and large business bankruptcies, and some major troubles for many countries (already struggling in many cases, because of a strong dollar), and local and state governments across the U.S., particularly in rural, small town, and small city America. It will probably be something like the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, but worse, overall, in the beginnings.
So everything, investment-wise, should tank, right? Not necessarily. The stock markets are looking for any reason to rise, yearning for another late 2020/2021 boom to happen again. I think we will see a big stock drop, in mid to late 2023. But the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq may not go lower than last years lows. The Dow might drop lower than the 2022, but it's a tough call. Because the coming bailout will mean more money in the financial system, and lowering interest rates. Stocks will drop, but they will want to rise back up very quickly afterwards, because the bailouts will mean more new money into the economy. This will push inflation to begin rising again, before long. Then we will have a crazy recession, and a rising stock market, like after March 2009. Except, there will be much more new oney being created, and inflation already, so stocks will go up much faster than in 2009. It will be choppy, but when The Fed begins creating new money, stocks will start climbing, overall. This could be late 2023, or early 2024.
I think crypto has seen its bottoms, in late 2022, the major cryptos, anyhow, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the top 10 or so most popular coins. Unlike the stock market, crypto is a major new technology realm, and it is innovating, and has incredbile organic growth potential, while most large, major corporations are now either low growth, or full on "zombie corporations" at this point. I think the big gains in the next 2-5 years will be in the blockchain/crypto/Web 3/DeFi/NFT world. We're heading into recession right now, but crypto and NFT's are innovating, and trending up again. This current trend will stall, but there will be a solid rebound after the big crash.
Normally, in a major recession/depression, people flock to gold and silver. Gold has kept its value over pretty damn steady for over 5,000 years. It's said that an ounce of gold would buy a top quality men's suit of clothes in ancient Rome, and in 1800 or 1900, and that's true today. But the ancient world, or even in the 1930's Great Depression, didn't have Millennials and Gen Z digital natives, and we didn't have crypto and MMORP games and multiple emerging metaverses.
Here's what the economists, policy makers, and big players in today's economy don't see. Digital assets DO HAVE INTRINSIC V ALUEto people under about 30-35 years old. Millennials and Gen Z adults and teens won't buy a bunch of gold when the recession hits, they'll be betting on crypto, mem stocks, NFT's and online gaming, and cool metaverses. Like I said in the last post, we are heading into the Information Age people, these technolgies are today, in 2023, what the internet was in 2001.
Today's younger adults grew up playing video games, often huge, online multi-player ones. Building on The Sims, games like World of Warcraft, and Grand Theft Auto, and Minecraft and Roblox, and Fortnite, are the first metaverses. Younger people, now up into their 30's and even 40's, are used to wandering those cyber universes, buying skins, in game weapons, and attributes. So even in the depths of the recession, I think there will be some growth in the blackchain/crypto space, online gaming, and the emerging metaverses, like Sandbox, Decentraland, Minecraft, and Yuga Labs Otherside. Mark Zuckerberg/Meta's metaverse looks like a fucking cyber shopping malls, and shooping malls have been dying in the real world for 20 years. I wouldn't bet on that one, personally. My point here, the Millennials are the largest U.S. generation ever, they're in their high earning years of life, tech savvy, and 72 million strong, edging out the Boomers by 2 1/2 million people, or so. The Millennials, Gen Z, today's smartphone, social media tech, and blockchain/crypto will make this recession much different than previous ones, including the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
Yeah, the governments want to outlaw crypto. They won't be able to, it's already a major part of society, worldwide. When The Fed puts new money into the system, a lot will find its way into crypto, because that's where the huge returns will soon be. There will be lots of losers in crypto, like all other investments, those who ape in and don't do their due diligence. But there will be huge wins as well.
Another thing the older generations haven't figured out about Millennials and Gen Z. They grew up in a world where working traditional jobs for 40 years isn't even a thing, and jobs under $80-$100K a year don't make you a good living. If you're not in tech, making at least $100K+ a year, you're struggling, if not actually poor. These 72 million+ young people are gamblers, the rise in Gamestop, AMC, and other meme stocks in 2020, 2021, showed us that. Lots of young stock and crypto "traders" (gamblers) made a year's income at their old job, in a month or two, from stocks or crypto, in 2021. They remember that. As the economy goes down, millions and millions of people under about 35 will go looking for big scores, like in 2020 and 2021.
If The Fed begins to create new money again, those opportunities will come back. Fed money creation is THE THING that leads to stock market increases (like October 2019- Repo Market "liquidity" led to stocks rising, then the stimulus money later in 2020-2021).
This will be a recession like no other. Real estate will be tanking, new cars and higher value used cars will still be out of price range, because that whole industry got fucked by easy credit and people buying cars they knew they couldn't afford. But the big collapse will lead to a Fed bailout, which will lead to rising stocks (The top Ten of Tech should lead the way), and soaring crypto, soon after stocks take off. NFT's are already rebounding, and it will lead to millions of low wage jobs STILL not being filled. There are millions of jobs in the U.S. that are simply not worth working anymore, even in a recession, because the compensation just won't pay rent and bills. In the 2020 shutdowns, millions of people learned alternative ways to make money. They haven't forgot those, even if they are harder during a big recession.
So... in review. There's a big crash, a "bridge collapse" moment coming. Late Spring to mid Fall 2023, is the most likely timing, in my opinion. There will be a big crash, stocks and crypto will drop. Real estate continue to drop more, and keep dropping. This is starting in the West, Florida, and some Southern cities. Other parts of the country will see smaller drops, or a long period of stagnation.
Then comes the banking and corporate bailout, and lowering interest rates and new money being created by year end, 2023. Stocks will probably be near where they are now by year end, after a big drop, but it's tough to make a solid call. Gold will rise, but I don't think it will spike like in 1980 and 2011. I could see $2,000 or $2,100 an ounce gold, and maybe $35-$40 an ounce silver. But not $3,000 gold and $100 silver. Soon after the crash (2-4 months) stocks begin to seriously rally, after the crash, and then crypto will really take off. Old School investors will dive into Treasury bonds, like Titanic passengers into lifeboats. So bond prices go up, driving yeilds down, early in the crash. All of this will be going on around the later months of 2023, or into early 2024. That's the best call I can make. It'll be nuts, but a different kind of nuts than 2020, 2021, and 2022.
OK, no hard numbers this year, there are too many effects of last years big moves rippling back and forth around the economy. But these thoughts are my best educated guess as to how the economic world will play out for the rest of 2023, and into early 2024. We'll see what happens. Thanks for reading.
Here's a 90 second look at the evolution of the telephone, from two cups and a string, to the supercomputer in your pocket smartphone you now carry everywhere. The part of this video from the 1960's-1970's rotary dial and touchtone phones, to today's smartphones, shows the change in technology from the late Industrial Age landlines to the Information Age smartphones that are phones, cameras, video cameras, music collection, TV, and publishing machine for nearly every person now . This type of change is happening in every industry and is continuing to change how we live, work, shop, and interact at all levels of society.
I've been harping on about "The next big recession" in my blogs, since late 2017 or early 2018. This is it, we're heading into the biggest recession right now, in my opinion. After 2020-2021, it was pretty easy to figure out the big trends for 2022. Inflation was heading up, which meant The Fed would eventually raise interest rates, which would send stocks, crypto, and real estate down. I made last year's financial predictions in this blog. Here's the post with my economic predictions for 2022, from March 22, 2022. In March I called the bottom of the S&P 500 within 9 points. Getting that close was luck, the Nasdaq call was close, missed on the Dow. Good calls on interest rates and real estate.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, abandoned, and unused buildings, as well as the economy, and commerical real estate in general. Check it out!
Predicting 2023 is something much different. This post is about the Big Picture I see happening, and why I thought five years ago that this recession (or depression/great depression?) would be such a big deal. I've written a ton about this, so I'm going to try and make it as simple and short as possible here.
The Big Transition- I have a concept I call The Big Transition, which is really an extension of The Third Wave idea, from futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffler. The concept is simple. We ARE NOT IN the Industrial Age. We ARE NOT IN the Information Age. We are in the later part of an 80-90 year transition period between the two ages. That's the concept, at its core.
This transition period started about 1956, according to the Tofflers. I estimate it will end around 2035-2045. The rate of change from Industrial businesses to full blown Information Age businesses (and all types of institutions) started very slow. Each new invention and social change built upon others before it, so the rate of change keeps increasing. I think the 2020's will be the tipping point, where most of society that hasn't shifted over, will shift. Everything seems crazy in our world because it is. Every business, industry, and institution will die off and be replaced by an Information Age version, or will evolve into one. After the technology shifts, new ways of communication, working, socializing, shopping, and life are possible. Then it takes many more years for our social norms and attitudes to shift to the new way of doing things. Humans don't like change, we say we do, but mostly we don't.
This is a huge, global shift. In the Toffler's thinking, The First Wave was the shift from hunter/gatherer, tribal life, to the Agricultural Age. Humans planted crops, settled in one place, and becsme farmers, hat took thousands of years. The Second Wave was the shift from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age. New machines made big factories, cities, and all kinds of new changes in life possible. That transition took 200 years or so to work around most of the world. The Third Wave shift, is happening in a single human lifetime. This hasn't happened before, that's why it seems so crazy, because it is.
Think of the type of life that went with each of those phones in the video above. As phone innovation went on, how we all could communicate changed, which led to changes throughout society. That's just telecommunications. EVERY other industry must also switch over, and then society, social organization and norms, have to shift as well. This is an incredible amount of change, and it's happening faster than ever in human history.
In addition to The Big Transition/Third Wave conept, there's another economic cycle that forecast a major recession, and likely economic depression (10% drop in GDP or 3 year downturn) or great depression (5 year economic downturn) in 2020. So there was a reason to believe we would have a major recession, possibly a full on great depression, and The Big Transition is happening, it's about 2/3 over. My thinking is simple. Economic downturns force more change and innovation. So a major economic crisis would speed up the already fast rate of change in industries and insitutions, and other social change. So putting these two ideas together, even back in 2017-2018, when I did, it looked like the 2020's would be a really crazy time of major recession and dramatic change in technology, businesses, industries, and socially, adapting to those other changes.
So that's why I've been saying, for five years now, this is going to be a serious recession/depression, and a period of change like none of us has ever seen.
Wealthion founder Adam Taggart interviews Nick Gerli from Reventure Consulting in January of 2023, about the state of U.S. real estate in 2023. I think Nick has, by far, the best overall grasp on U.S. real estate these days. I've been following his YouTube channel since last Spring, and he's been calling where things are going incredibly well that whole time.
If you follow my blog(s), you know I have a geeky interest in economics, and consider myself an amateur futurist. Since I was a little kid, I've been trying to predict where society would be in the future. The late futurists Alvin Toffler, and his wife Heidi, are the people I look up to the most, in that repect. I've written quite a bit about my idea of The Big Transition, which is basically an extension of the Toffler's Third Wave theory, extended into our current time period.
I have a new blog called Adaptive Reuse SoCal, about finding new uses for old, abandoned, and unused buildings, as well as the economy and commerical real estate in general. Check it out!
I'll go more into my Big Picture concept of where I believe society is in the next post. I began writing this post two days ago, and the original version is now a 1,000 word+ behemoth. I realized I needed to turn this into three or four posts, so here's the first. These are the main people I look at to get more detailed info on different aspects of the economy, to fill in the Big Picture concept I have. Check out any that seem interesting to you.
New meme. This is kind of a sarcastic middle finger to all the lawyers in society who help shady people make screwing Americans legal, or more legal. 1913 is when the Federal Reserve was created, who blessed us with high inflation, and then this current recession that's just getting going, to fight their inflation. Uh... yeah... thanks guys.
The first rider-owned BMX bike company was SE Racing, founded by Scot Breithaupt in the late 1970's. Scot, the "Old Man" of BMX, was a great racer, and a great promoter. But the day to days, nuts and bolts business work was not his strong suit. In came businessman Mike Devitt, who had already sold bikes under the brands Dirt Master, and Dan Gurney All American, licensed from the champion auto racer. For around 30 years, Mike Devitt was in the office, behind the scenes, building SE Racing, and helping design and sell some of the classic bikes that helped build BMX itself. That's Scot Breithaupt in the racing pic in the drawing. Old School racer, Sean Ewing asked me to draw this tribute to Mike, who died in 2020. #sharpiescribblestyle
If you've seen Mark Eaton's great documenatry about BMX, Joe Kid on a Stingray, then you know that BMX racing started way back in 1970, in Southern California. Nobody is sure exactly which track held races first, but two or three started that year, and the number of kids racing on Schwinn Stingray's and similar 20 inch bikes began to multiply. Mike Devitt was there in the really early days. He ran a business called Bikette, which made bike racks. His kids heard about BMX, and they started seeking out these bicycle motocross races in places like Long Beach and Malibu. Seeing business potential in this brand new sport, in the early 1970's, Mike sold bikes under the name Dirt Master, and later licensed the name Dan Gurney American Eagle from the champion race car driver's business in Santa Ana. He made those BMX bikes while spending weekends driving his kids and their friends to races all over SoCal.
Early on, he met former motocross rider turned BMX racer, and young entrepreneur, Scot Berithaupt. This video below, a tribute to Scot from Joe Kid on a Stingray, after his tragic death a few years ago, tells a quick history of SE Racing.
Around the same time, Mike was also running Makaha skateboards, selling tens of thousands of skateboards through mainstream stores, while also being a BMX dad, and running BMX businesses. Mike was one of the skilled businessmen who was getting bikes built, sold, and shipped, day after day, to help build and progress the actual BMX bikes, and the components themselves, starting in the early 1970's.
When Scot Breithaupt decided to put out a bike under his promotional business, Scot Enterprises, Mike soon saw the chance to really build something big. Scot was already well known as a rider and racing tour promoter, and was immediately back ordered after the launch of the now legendary PK Ripper model, which was the Perry Kramer por model. It's now about 45 years later, and the current SE Bikes company (different owners) still sells multiple new versions of the PK Ripper. Mike came in as business manager, and used his considerably business expertise to get the day to day operations under control, and running as smooth as possible. BMX racing was blowing up in its first big wave of popularity in the late 1970's, and with the PK Ripper, the weird but cool Quadangle, Landing Gear forks, and the Floval Flyer and OM (Old Man) Flyer cruisers, SE Racing blasted off as a leader in the industry.
As you hear in the clip above, Scot Breithaupt was a force of nature, full of energy and ideas, and an incredible promoter and salesman. But with the hard racing and hard work, Scot was also prone to hard partying, and in the early 80's, veered off track into the dark side, taking much of SE's success with him. Mike hung in there, keeping SE Racing going through the hard times, as other companies like Redline, GT, and a few more rose to prominence.
As luck would have it, my original BMX freestyle teammate in Idaho, Justin Bickel, got co-sponsored by SE Racing. When his parents brought us down in the summer of 1985 to the Venice Beach AFA contest, our first stop was at SE the day before the contest. Mike Devitt was the first BMX industry guy I ever met, followed by Scot Breithaupt and Perry Kramer. I had no idea who they were at the time, but Justin and I got to ride the two, big, 8 foot quarterpipes they built in the back of the warehouse for ramp rider Todd Anderson. They also sponsored Craig Grasso, and pro roller skater turned flatland rider, Fred Blood. They were really cool to us, and it was a great way to start out my journey into the real BMX world.
As a business manager, Mike Devitt was one of those men who was there behind the scenes, from the earliest days, and did a huge amount to help build the foundation of this thing that BMX has become in 52+ years. But most riders knew little about him. Luckily for us, Mark Eaton did a big long interview with him for Joe Kid on a Stingray, and put it up on his YouTube channel. So here's Mike himself, in the raw footage of that one hour interview, talking about his whole path through the BMX business, from Bikette and the first races, to working with Gary Turner on Alliant Bikes in the early 2000's.
Mike Devitt interview for Joe Kid on a Stingray, with Mark Eaton, in 2004.
While I knew who Mike was when Sean Ewing asked me to draw him a a couple of months ago, I knew very little about his whole career. Sean sent me the link for this interview above, and also for a written interview by BMX Products in 2001. My large Sharpie scribble style drawings take me 40 to 45 hours each to draw, on average. When I do them, I dive into the life of the person I'm drawing, as much as possible. I've drawn mostly musicians, so there are usually interviews, their music, and documentaries I can listen to while drawing, which helps me get a feel for their life and thoughts, and sometimes leads to ideas while I'm drawing. I listened to the "Joe Kid" interview two or three times while I was drawing this picture. I always learn things in the process of my drawings, and it was really cool to hear more background on the earliest days of BMX racing, while doing this drawing.
I've done four drawings for Sean now, and he is donating three of those to different groups of people, related to the person in the drawing. We recently found out that the Malcom Smith drawing I did was actually taken home by Malcom, and is on a wall of his house, to the best of our knowledge. That was mind blowing for me, as an artist. The Dan Gurney drawing I did is heading to Dan's shop. He, too, has passed away, but it will hopefullt wind up in a cool spot in their collection. Sean has really cool plans for this drawing of Mike Devitt, but I'm going to keep those quiet until the drawing gets to its final destination. I want to thank Sean for hiring me to draw these drawings, they've all been really interesting projects from my perspective, and I'm even more stoked he's donating them as a tribute to people who have really inspired him in his life. Thanks again Sean for leading me into some great new territory artistically.
Country, BlueGrass, Blues... That's what CBGB's acronym name stood for. When you create something new, like opening a small club for music acts, things take on a life of their own. This great little video just popped up on my YouTube feed, and begged for a blog post. And let's face it, if CBGB's is legendary in your mind, you still wonder what OMFUG means. This video will tell you. 12 epic shows at the legendary tiny NYC club, CBGB's, that changed music forever, analyzed in this great little video. And what's a Gormandizer?
Everyone who found their way into punk rock and alternative music came by a different path. Those bands who played epic shows at CBGB's and other tiny clubs in the mid 1970's, in New York City, started something that is still rippling through society nearly 50 years later. Most of you probably had one or two friends that initially turned you on to the punk scene, and probably quite a few bands of that era. For me, it was a long journey to get into punk rock, and I bounced around a lot, and had a wide range of people, and even some jobs, where I was turned on to different aspects of punk rock music and culture. BMX freestyler and walking punk rock encyclopedia, Mike Sarrail, is the guy who dragged me slowly into punk, and got me hooked, in 1987-1988. A huge thanks to Mike for that. But that was a decade after I first heard of this weird thing called punk rock.
I remember seeing a TV show, 60 minutes, I think, or one like it, with a segment on the punk rock scene in New York City, in about 1977 or 1978. The old reporter was talking to punk kids outside some club, and they showed a little footage of a show. At the time, I was a super dorky Ohio kid, around 11 or 12, and listened mostly to Canadian soft rock station CKLW, from Windsor. I remember that interview with the punk kids, because while they were shooting it, some kid suddenly yelped, and everyon turned. While he was standing there, someone had cut his forearm with a knife. Not a bad cut, but you could see it bleeding on camera. I just thought, "Those kids are CRAZY!" That was my first taste of this thing called punk rock.
A guy named Phil in high school would read me Dead Kennedys lyrics in American government class in 1983-84. Phil was a really cool guy, super smart, and the "head punker," of the 7 or 8 punkers, in Boise High School. He let me listen to the DK's on his Walkman a couple of times, and it just sounded so thrashy, I couldn't understand it. But then he read me some lyrics, and let me read a lyric sheet of Jello Biafra's writing, and that floored me. "This guy's really smart," I said, totally surprised. Phil, most likely wearing his Holiday Inn Cambodia T-shirt, agreed. So we talked about punk a little now and then. And we'd draw weird doodles in class, and show them to each other.
One day I drew a sort of desert landscape, kind of like monument valley, with rock spires, with a black sun in the sky, and all the shadows were on the wrong side, falling towards the sun. The idea was sparked by something Phil had said, or some DK lyrics, I can't remember. He thought that one was really cool. Phil also had the single coolest piercing, long before the piercing trend began. He came to school one day with about a three inch long, rusty, bent nail through his ear. And he wore it for a month or so. It never got infected. He was the first person who helped me understand that there was intelligence, and really something being said in punk rock, or at least some of it. But I still didn't like the music at all. And the punkers didn't stand for anything, it was just "do your own thing." I was way to uptight and conflicted for that message in high school.
My senior year of high school, 1983-1984, was when I was getting really serious about BMX. I was racing regularly that summer, and then indoor winter races over in Caldwell. But I also ran cross country, and actually got a varsity letter. So technically I was a jock, though a cross country letter makes it an iffy case. I was a back of the pack runner. But at the same time, I was getting serious about BMX trick riding, it wasn't really called "freestyle" yet. So I was just beginning to swerve off of the mainstream track, and into the alternative subculture world, but not in music. When my trick teammate Jay Bickel and I practiced, in late spring and on in 1984, we usually had The Cars self-titled album blasting.
But it was BMX freestyle that took over my life in 1984 in Boise, and I spent my high school graduation money, about $400, on my first serious bike, a Skyway T/A. My parents weren't happy about that. But I didn't have near enough money to go to college anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal. I joined the only BMX trick team in Idaho, and we did a few shows, and rode in parades, which Jay's mom promoted for us. We also had the first two freestyle contests in Idaho. So I was careening away from mainstream, though my main group of friends were typical Idaho outdoorsy guys. I'd hang out with them most nights, and then I'd go practice tricks at Jay's house a couple days a week, and on my own in the afternoons.
Life took my family to San Jose, California in 1985, where I started my first BMX freestyle zine, and got to know the Golden Gate Park freestyle guys, particularly the already legendary Curb Dogs, led by the character Dave Vanderspek. I heard a bit more punk, but other than riding two or three times a month with those guys, I didn't hang out enough to hear much of the music they were into. But Vander was the pioneer, leading the punk rock and skater influence into the small, fledgling, BMX freestyle world. He was totally ahead of his time in many ways, including music and wild clothes, as well as riding progression. That was another way the punk rock world seeped a bit more into my consciousness, but that was still before I got into the music itself.
My zine, as I've written about many times in my blogs, landed me a job at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines in August of 1986. Suddenly one of my bosses, Andy Jenkins, and my co-worker/roommate, Mark "Lew" Lewman, were totally into punk music. My other boss/roommate, Craig, "Gork" Barrette was a hardcore metalhead, turning me onto to other bands I'd never heard of, like Metallica, Saxon, and then new band, Guns n' Roses. My first night sleeping on their couch, they scanned my two little crates of cassette tapes, shook their heads, and said something like, "We need to get you listening to some good music."
Andy and Lew tried to baptise me into punk rock and industrial music in 1986, and, along with Gork, took me to my first punk gig, Tex and the Horseheads, opening for Andy's indsutrial band, Factory, in the fall of 1986. This gig was on the roof of an art colony in the L.A. arts district, back when artists actually lived there. The police and police helicopter shut down the show before Factory played, which added to the underground hype of the band. I did see Factory actually play a few weeks later. While I got exposed to Siouxsie and the Banshees, Black Flag, Skinny Puppy,Joy Division, Bauhaus, D.R.I., and Marginal Man, from them, and The Cureand Gene Loves Jezebelfrom Redondo Beach freestyler, Craig Grasso, who we sessioned with at The Spot, every night.I heard a lot more music from the punk world, butit still didn't seem to be for me. The joke at FREESTYLIN' magazine was that they laid me off because I didn't like Skinny Puppy, Andy's favorite industrial band. I just didn't get industrial music, and it was a running joke, every time I screwed up. "You didn't do this right... and you don't like Skinny Puppy," and we'd all laugh. My musical horizons were widening, but I still listened to my Bruce Springsteen and Night Ranger cassettes all the time, much to their dismay. Meanwhile, the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill came out, and Lew played that about 17 times a day, every day from then on. My musical tastes probably doomed my job at Wizard Publications as much as my exceptional dorkiness. It's a tough call. But it's cool, they hired this guy a couple of months later, after I got laid off, and he worked out well there.
Then I moved to Huntington Beach to work Bob Morales at the American Freestyle Association (AFA), editing their newsletter, in late January of 1987. I went from hearing Gork's KNAC (hard rock/metal station) and Lew's nono-stop Beastie Boys, at work, to having KROQ, SoCal's widely known new wave/alternative rock station, on at work all day. They played the Dead Kennedys once in a while, Oingo Boingo, the Violent Femmes, a bunch of other New Wave, and lots of non-top 40 music, with songs like this and this, andthis. I think it was Bob Morales who turned me on to 7 Seconds, as well. Or maybe it was one of the skinheads we used as ramp roadies occasionally. Hey, just put on some good music, and take the skinheads bowling. I can't remember. Sometime around then is when I remember hearing of a guy named Mike who just wanted a Pepsi, but his mom wouldn't give him one. Jeeez... it was just one Pepsi.
Within a couple of weeks, I became a local BMX freestyler at the Huntington Beach Pier, where I met Mike Sarrail. He was a tall skinny guy who was great at doing Miami hop-hops and undertakers, and other solid freestyle tricks of the day. We started riding every weekend, and hanging out. When driving around to go get a burger or get a new tube at a bike shop, Mike started playing all kinds of music I'd never heard of.
Analyzing my musical taste, or lack thereof, Mike asked one day, "You like acoustic guitar stuff, right?" I replied, "Yeah." Mike put on Jane's Addiction's "Jane Says." I liked it. Then he played "Mountain Song," and that was pretty cool, too. I didn't have a car then, so whenever we went somewhere to ride, Mike introduced me to some new music, slowly leading me into the underground world of punk and indie music in general. Mike also had a great leather jacket, and on the back he had hand painted a bunch fo the lyrics from Crass' "Big A Little A." Not only was it a cool jacket, it was a conversation starter at every club. People would walk up behind Mike, and start reading the back of his jacket, often grabbing his arm when he started to walk away, so they could finish reading it.
He didn't shove music at me, saying "How can you NOT like this!" He'd say, "Check this out." He also made me a great bootleg mix tape of Guns n' Roses, in 1987, from other bootlegs. He called it "Boot by Boot." I told him he should have called it "Second hand boots." Either way, it had, "Mama Kin," "Patience," "Used to Love Her," songs that later came out on the Lies EP. There was also an interview with the band talking about when they all lived in a one room apartment together.
Mike's favorite band was The Ramones, which he introduced me to after breaking me in on mellower bands. Ramones Mania soon became a go to cassette for me when out riding my freestyle bike, night after night. When I think of 1989, I think of sessioning the Huntington Pier Bank almost every night, with whatever skaters showed up, and Ramones Mania in my Walkman. Night after night after night, that whole spring and summer, after someone cut down the chain blocking the bank, that was my thing. Learning new bank tricks to The Ramones. Mike also introduced me to a bunch of punk classics like The Misfits, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, Sham 69, FEAR, The Zeros, and this uplifting little ditty.
Mike also started taking me to his favorite punk venue, Scream, in L.A. The funny thing is that it's the building that's in this Journey video. I totally recognized the big staircase from this video, the first time I went there. This happened in late 1987 or early 1988. Jane's Addiciton was basically the house band, playing regularly, and the deal on Saturday nights was "10 bands for $10." Hard to beat that. My first time there, I remember a band called Pygmy Love Circusplayed, the singer was wearing a kilt, and holding a stuffed boar's head on stage, with a big knife, I think. I just went, "What the fuck is going on here?" I won't lie, I went home with a headache. The second trip was a little better, but I still left with a headache.
The third trip up to Scream, one of the bands played the Johnny Cash song "Ring of Fire" at the end of their set. I grew up with my mom's country music radio stations playing in the background my whole childhood, and while I didn't like much country music, I was a big fan of Johnny Cash. That punk band, of course, was Social Distortion, and they played several of the songs that later came out on the Social Distortion album in those shows at Scream. I think Mike made me a tape of some of their songs, and I bought Social Distortion, the album, on cassette when it came out. I was hooked, and went to a bunch more shows with Mike over the next 3-4 years, a few at Scream , and several other places. At Scream I discovered bands like The Dickies, Human Drama, and Junkyard, as well as seeing Jane's Addiction and Social Distortion a few times each.
In late 1987, I went to work for Unreel Productions, Vision Skateboard's video company. Part of my job was tape librarian, and I soon found a video of JFA (Jodie Foster's Army) that some skater had taped, and they dubbed to betacam. That was one of the first skate punk bands. The main part of my job was making dubs of videos for everyone in the Vision empire, which consisted of several companies. When I made copies of the 1987 Vision video Skatevisions, I discovered Agent Orange, whose music is the entire soundtrack. In this interview with Moby, street artist Shephard Fairey says Skatevisions is what first turned him on to punk rock. I liked the Agent Orange music immediately. So I would put on that tape in the background, and just listen to it at work, in my little dub room.
Another favorite song I found at Unreel was this one song in Sims snowboard video, Snow Shredders, which turned out to be "Coolidge" by The Descendents. That's probably the first punk song I really connected to. I still play it all the time in the mornings, all these years later, to get me going. "I looked up one day and saw, it was up to me, you can only be a victim if you admit defeat." That line has helped keep me going through a lot of tough times (as has Social Distortion's "Don't Drag Me Down"). I would just play Skatevisions or Snow Shredders videos over and over, just for the music. I eventually made VHS dubs of those tapes, realizing I shouldn't be playing the master tapes just to listen to the music in my little dub room.
Between the Vision skaters bringing in music, and a knockout of a woman who was our "freelance music finder chick" at Unreel, I heard of a lot of up-and coming bands working at Unreel. I first heard The Offspring, Yello, Uniform Choice, JFA, TSOL, Big Drill Car, All, guitarist Joe Satriani, and The Vandals, and several other bands, because of working at Unreel Productions. That's when my music taste really began to change, between Mike Sarrail introducing me to new music on the weekends, and finding bands at work, at Unreel, during the week, I slipped into the punk rock world between 1987 and 1990.
One day street skating pioneer Mark Gonzales, yes, "The Gonz" himself, walked into Unreel with a weird vinyl album that he gave to Unreel head producer Don Hoffman. Mark was a Vision skater in the mid-late 1980's, before defecting and starting Blind under Steve Rocco's World Industries fledgling empire. Mark found the album at Vinyl Solution record shop in Huntington Beach, I think, and bought it just because he liked the cover. There was a song Mark wanted to use for his next video part, I think. That album was The Stain, a punk band from Toledo, Ohio. Don contacted the main guy, Jon Stainbrook, and Jon turned out to be a great source of music for Vision and Unreel, for the next couple of years. We used a several of The Stain's songs, and other music from the talented trio, who all did their own individual music as well.
For any of you that watched or bought my 1990 BMX video, The Ultimate Weekend, on the front of the box it said, "Killer soundtrack by The Stain." When making my video, I called up Jon, and bought a bunch of music for the video. I still owe him for 4 songs, I think. I did pay him for the other 8. The check's in the mail Jon... I was particularly proud of the little music video I made using his skate song "Pool Party," for the Nude Bowl section in the video (26:54 in the link above). While I still listened to several other types of music, mostly classic rock then (can't knock some Boston now and then), punk became my main day to day music by that time. Also in 1990, I worked for a surf and skate video distributor in Gardena. At a trade show that winter, we went to the premiere of Snowboarders in Exile. I scored a free copy of Snowboarder's in Exile, which has one of the greatest soundtracks ever, and watched it dozens of times over the next couple of years. This video turned me on to Husker Du, and Firehose, among other bands.
In the early 1990's, I started hanging out more with the Huntington Beach BMX racer/jumper scene. Editing this video in 1991 led to sleeping on the floor of Chris Moeller's tiny "Winnebago" apartment, when S&M Bikes was being run out of a single car garage. A big part of that Huntington Beach area BMX crew was the P.O.W.'s, (Pros Of Westminster). I later lived in that house, and was also roommates with Chris Moeller, and Jason "Timmy" Ball in another apartment later on. Timmy was always finding new music, and introduced us to bands like Propaghandi and Nashville Pussy. By then I was a fan of The Descendents and All, as was Chris. Chris turned me on to a bunch of new music, late 80's and early 90's power punk or pop punk, and some 80's hardcore, as well. I first heard of Green Day, Pegboy, and NoFX from Chris, and first heard Nirvana on a mix tape that Will Smyth, from the U.K., made for Chris. He also had a great compilation cassette from Flipside Records, called The Big One, that he played all the time. It had Green Day, The Offspring, Big Drill Car, and several other bands on it, which were all pretty unknown at the time. Chris also introduced me to Operation Ivy, the epic ska band that was only around a couple of years, but had enormous influence in the punk world. Green Day covered their song, "Knowledge" in live shows for years.
In 1992, and again in 1993, I lived for several months in the P.O.W. House in Westminster, with BMXers like Dave Clymer, Alan Foster, Todd Lyons, John Paul Rogers, Lawan Cunningham, Chris Sales, Jason Lonergan, and later Brian Foster, among others. Every night the House members, and former house guys, and a few others, congregated in the living room, and looked for cheap punk shows to go see, if possible. I saw a lot of good shows in those days. Bands like Pegboy and photographer O's band Olivelawn are two that stand out in my mind. That was also the era where several female punk bands came onto my radar. L7 was a favorite for us at the house, we went to several of their shows. But there was also Hole, The Muffs, Babes in Toyland, Japanese band Shonen Knife, and local Orange County female punkers The Red Aunts. In addition to seeing some of those, I remember multiple shows of All, Big Drill Car, and Chemical People, together, and going to see Jawbreaker, along with a bunch of other bands I saw and forgot.
As the early 90's progressed, Nirvana broke big, much to their dismay. The Grunge explosion helped launch several other underground bands into the mainstream, ready or not. Orange County ska band, No Doubt, blasted to the stratosphere, with Gewn Stefani lamenting the troubles of girlhood. That coincided with another SoCal ska band, Save Ferris, breaking, and then South Bay's bad boys, Pennywise. Rage Against the Machine played their first gig in a Huntington Beach living room, the city where slam dancing was born (really). And straight out of action sports hub, Huntington Beach, came The Offspring, blowing up huge and surprising everyone, themselves included. Somewhere in that time period I first heard Face to Face, probably "Disconnected" on KROQ. I think "Disconnected" is the single greatest song of the 1990's. For real. Also in the early 90's, New Jersey BMX street riding powerhouse, and star of my 1990 video, Keith Treanor, was the guy who said, "You're smart Sluggy, you'd totally like Bad Religion, they talk about smart shit." Keith was right, and showed me that truth is stranger than fiction. A bit later on came the Props BMX videos which turned the BMX world onto an up coming band named Blink-182, and others.
In the P.O.W. House, with 8 to 12 BMX guys living in the four bedroom house in Westminster, California, rent was only $90 to $120 month. That was a good thing during the early 1990's long recession. Often we would get to the middle of the month with no job, and then look through the want ads in the newspaper, to find a job to work for two weeks, to come up with rent money by the first of the next month. Seriously, a few of us did that at times, getting a shitty telemarketing job, or something, just to pay rent, by some ramen and beer, and then we'd quit, ride our bikes hard for two weeks, then find another one.
In this period, I ran into two jobs that I wound up working over and over for several years. One of those jobs was in the box office for the first Cirque du Soleil show to come to Orange County, Saltimbanco. Working there was so cool, I worked in the box office the next four times they came to Orange County, until 2003. Cirque was the coolest and best run company I ever worked for. The other job I applied to on a dare from one of the guys in the House. There was always a want ad for an "adult book store" in the newspaper. We'd joke about it with each other. One day, one of the guys dared me to go apply. There was another construction job close to it, so I headed out to apply for both. I went and applied at the porn store first, and I got hired on the spot. I never even made it to the other job site. Suddenly I was a real life smut peddler, selling magazines, vibrators, lubes, and leather goods to the bondage folks. It was actually much more boring than people imagine, but the pay was pretty good since I got an hourly wage, plus a commission on everything but magazines.
The guys I worked with at the porn store were cool, and after about six months of working there, I went in one day and a co-worker, Bryan, asked if I had done anything interesting lately. I said I went to a punk show the night before, Social Distortion, I think. Bryan was this really small, skinny guy, and he got a weird smirk on his face. "I used to be in a punk band, you know," he told me. "Really?" I had no idea, we had never really talked about music at work. "Which band?" I asked, expecting him to say some obscure Orange County punk band I'd never heard of. And here's where I bring this crazy long post about punk rock full circle, to the crazy 1970's music and art scenes that sparked punk rock in New York City, in clubs like CBGB's and others.
Bryan's smile grew, "I was the original rhythmn guitarist in The Cramps." I didn't believe him at first. Alan, the manager said, "Yep, he was." The Cramps, one of those handful bands that nearly every punker had a patch or pin of on their jacket or backpack then, and even now. How legendary are The Cramps? Here's Henry Rollins talking about The Cramps. A couple of days later, my porn store co-worker, Bryan Gregory, brought in an album with him on the cover. "I invented the 'halfhead' look," Bryan said proudly. The Bryan I worked with in the 90's had jet black hair, usually pulled straight back in a ponytail. On the Gravest Hits album cover his hair in front was died blonde, and it hung over one side of his face. He said he started that look, in 1975or 1976, something like that. Then people started copying it. He'd tell them, "Don't copy me, come up with your own style." But some of them kept copying him. Bryan's half head look morphed into the New Wave flop (guitarist) made famous a decade later, by guys like vert skater Tony Hawk, and many others in the 1980's.
Bryan, in general, hated new guys at work. Before that day talking about punk, we got along, but didn't talk all that much. After that day, we started talking about punk, music in general, creativity, art, and a lot more. Not long after, he turned me on to a great, but little known movie, called Mindwalk. He was in a band called Pollen then (1994-95?) which changed their name to The Dials, because of another, more established band, called Pollen in Europe. I wound up being a roadie for Bryan and The Dials at a couple of club gigs. Bryan and I were talking about some music video ideas, after I told him I made low budget BMX videos, but never ended up making any of them happen.
Bryan, the store manager Alan, and I, talked about what it would be like to open a cool porn store, since we worked in a sketchy old school one, with no style, that was pretty hospitable to women. We knew it wasn't going to happen, but we all had cool ideas for it. Not long after Condom Revolution opened up in Orange County, which was pretty much what we all had imagined, a fun, cool adult store that was welcoming to women and couples, not like the traditional, creepy, old porn shops. Good idea, because that was a new trend a few years later, before the internet took over most of the adult business.
Starting in 1992, I worked on TV show crews, like American Gladiators, in the summer, and then came back to Orange County in late summer. Some times I worked as a furniture mover the rest of the year, but if couldn't find another job, they'd hire me back at the ol' porn shop, since I was a good worker and an honest guy. I worked at the porn store (Hip Pocket Books in Garden Grove) about 4 times over the next several years.
By the late 1990's, Bryan had become the area supervisor of a few porn stores in the area. Something about porn stores attracted musicians, we had four serious musicians work at that one store while I was there. You could work in those shops with tattoos, which was unusual at the time, and we could easily switch shifts, like in restaurants, so they could get nights off to play gigs. The money was decent, the work was easy, and you could get your girlfriends 15% off on toys, as well as condoms, and lubes, and videos. Maybe that was it.
In about 1998, I think, I interviewed Bryan for a zine I was doing called Huevos. The zine was a combination of action sports (still called Extreme Sports by most people, thanks to ESPN, which we hated), and art and some music. Bryan and I sat in the back office of the porn store, I turned on my old school cassette recorder, and I asked him about the earliest days of punk rock, the time leading up to the rise of CBGB's as a legendary club for the New York punk scene. Bryan was totally open, and it was immediately apparent he had done a lot of interviews before. As a zine, newsletter, and magazine guy at times, I had interviewed maybe two or three dozen people, and written long, solid interviews. Interviewing Bryan was like interviewing a major rock star on one hand, but we were co-workers and friends, and both sarastic as could be, so it was a fun chat. The interview filled up both sides of a 90 minute cassette, talking about his life, from a "sissy boy in Detroit" (his term), as a bisexual kid in that rough city in the 1960's, to the present time (the late 1990's). He was totally open, and the converation wandered through a whole bunch of topics, and stories from his life as a musician and artist, and anything else that came up.
On Detroit he said, "Even the girls would kick your ass there when I was a kid.". He told me about the early days in New York City, sleeping in hollows under the sidewalks in the winter with Cramps members Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. He talked about moving to New York, about meeting Lux and Ivy and forming The Cramps. He went through his time with them, leaving The Cramps, working other jobs, and playing in other bands.
We talked all the way into the late 1990's, where he wanted to play accordion in his current band, The Dials, and bring some Zydeco influence into it some day. Yep, Bryan Gregory, the guy that scared the crap out of young Henry Rollins (in the funny story linked above) played accordion as a kid, and had a really wide range of musical influences. His life stories surprised me several times. And the accordion bit threw me, I totally didn't expect that. The Dials had homemade cassette tape out, which he gave me a copy of. I don't know if they ever made an album /CD. But I was clueless to Zydeco music, and he explained where he first heard it, and why he wanted to blend it into the band's music.
Was there a common theme to this crazy character, Bryan Gregory, who was one of those early msucians and characters that helped spawn what we now call punk rock? Yes. Bryan said he always wanted to try something new. He loved to break new ground, try things no one had ever done before, and liked shocking people with the unexpected. He was still doing that with his music and art, in his late 40's, at the time of the interview. Once something had been done, and the newness had faded, he liked to move on to other ideas. Like so many creative people, he had more ideas than he knew what to do with, and he liked to keep trying them, see where they went, and then try something else.
As a guy who didn't know much about punk history, despite Mike Sarrail's expert tutelage years earlier, I got to ask the one question I'd always had about the early days of punk in New York City. I asked Bryan Gregory, original member of The Cramps, sitting in the back office of the porn store, "OK, who would you say really started punk rock?" I expected him to say The Ramones, or one of those known early bands, maybe a short-lived band I had never heard of. His answer surprised me, "I'd have to say that street urchin, Patti Smith, with her poetry." He thought she had the attitude in her poetry readings and music that really lit the fire of what became eventually became punk rock. So for every punker out there who has ever wondered where punk really started, that's the answer from one of the people that was there when it all got going.
One more thing about that interview, which was probably the last in-depth interview anyone ever did with Bryan. He was largely forgotten by the media at that point. He died in early 2001, about a month short of his 51st birthday. Bryan brought a custom guitar to the interview to show me. By custom, I mean he had hand carved the body of what I believe was a Fender Telecaster. He carved a penis each in the top and bottom horns, by the neck, and two penises, touching heads, in the rounded part of the body, so there was a hole in the body inside of them. Bryan called it the Fender Phallicaster. He said his bandmates in The Dials wouldn't let him play it on stage, but he wanted to at some point, again, just to fuck with people.
I don't think I had a camera that day, I used photos of him from albums, and from a recent art show of his I went to, when I made the zine. So I don't think I actually took a photo of the one and only Bryan Gregory, hand-carved Fender Phallicaster. I honestly don't remember. Bummer. I've looked it up online, now, 25 years after the interview, with all the good years of the internet since, and I can find no mention of that guitar. I have no idea what happened to it. It's probably in a closet or storage unit in Orange County, packed away and forgotten, that'd be my guess. But who knows?
The funny thing about Bryan was that he was this crazy character and musician on stage, particularly in The Cramps. But I knew him as a funny, sarcastic co-worker, who was pretty low key. I asked him one day at work what he did the night before, I think we were talking about some new TV show or something. Bryan said, "I watched a couple of TV shows and darned socks." I just started laughing, "Nobody has darned socks in like fifty years! Are you kidding me?" Bryan snapped back, "Hey, I have good socks, those fuckers are expensive." Then I went to an art show of these 3D collage things he made, which he called "dream boxes." They were something I'd never seen before, and really freaking cool. If I wasn't so broke then, I would have bought one. Or two. His day to day life then was pretty normal, but he was still playing music and breaking new ground with his artwork. In fact, my title in my zine interview with him was, "If it hasn't been done yet, Bryan Gregory might just be the guy to do it first."
So that's my story of transition from a teenage dork who listened to Night Ranger and Billy Squier, to a middle aged, Has Been, Old School BMX freestyle dork, turned Sharpie artist and blogger, who likes punk rock. I have never been to CBGB's, and I have never even owned an album by The Cramps. But with my odd life path, I brought this epic blog post full circle in my own weird way. I hope this was interesting to a few of you out there, and reminded you of some music you've forgotten about.
In the course of writing blog posts, I often run into things I don't expect. Bryan Gregory seems to have gained a small cult following after he died. That's really cool. I last talked to him about a year before he died, in 2000, I think, when KROQ had him as the answer to a trivia question one night. I called him up and told him, and he found that amusing. I went on with my life, lost track of Bryan, and didn't hear about his death until a couple of years later.
That story about The Cramps, told by Henry Rollins (link above) is epic. I also really dig this song I just found. "The Day Bryan Gregory Died."There's even a book about about Bryan and The Cramps, as well. His legacy as a pioneering musician lives on, 50 years after punk rock began, and 22 years after Bryan's death. That's cool. For anyone wondering, the 90 minute audio cassette with my interview of Bryan was in the storage unit I lost in my move to North Carolina in 2008. It, and all my stuff, got sold in a storage unit auction. Yeah, that's a bummer. Any last words Bryan?Heh, heh, heh... Sarcastic 'til the end...
Oh yeah, I googled it. Turns out I'm a Gormandizer. You learn something every day. And yes, this post makes me seem cooler than I really am. Most of these bands were being played somewhere in my periphery. and a small number are the ones I listened to a lot, and the ones I saw live at some point. The harcdcore punk fans have been to far more gigs than I have. I'm still a dork, I'm just a dork who listens to better music than I did 37-38 years ago, that's all. If you want to hate on me for all the bands I didn't mention, write your own damn post.
