The Ultimate Weekend Story 5: Grandma's got a Mohawk and The Stain

Today's behind the scenes look at my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, is about the short section from 9:53 to 10:37.  Then we'll look at The Stain, the Toledo punk rock band and studio musicians that provided the entire soundtrack for this video.  You can see them in the video's credits, beginning at 46:07.

On the north end of Huntington Beach, California, there's a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant right on the beach.  To the north are the three story high houses, shaped much like the old Mississippi River steamboats of Mark Twain's day, built right onto the sand of Sunset Beach.  To the south is 8 miles of beach, the first four of which don't have a single house or condo on the sand.  There are parking lots for beach goers and a big, wide bike and walking path.  On the inland side of the first big stretch of beach south of Jack-in-the-Box is Bolsa Chica wetlands, which contains an amazing diversity of wildlife for an area surrounded by civilization.  This section of my video was shot on the inland side of Bolsa Chica wetlands.

If you drive inland on Warner from that Jack-in-the-Box, through the S curve, past Bolsa Chica road, and take a right on Graham Street, you'll cross over a canal right before Slater.  If you park your car or truck there, where only the cinder block walls and canal are in sight, you'll see a blocked, but paved service road heading back towards the ocean along the canal.  If you ride your bike about 300 yards along that service road, you'll see a pump house on your right, across the canal, and a place next to it where a truck can drive down into the canal when it's dry.  That little drive-in spot was known as the Slater Ditch to the guys who showed it to me in 1988 or so, and as Cancer Ditch by some of the younger guys.  They called it Cancer Ditch because the water next to the pump house was so nasty that the joke was you'd get cancer immediately if you fell in it.

The weird way the truck roll-in was built formed concrete banks on both sides, which were loved by skateboarders for years.  So the city built some concrete speed bumps to disrupt the skating.  For the most part, it worked.  Skaters found other spots.  But it was still ridable on BMX bikes, and us locals had many late night sessions there.  Occasionally, we'd hit it up on a Sunday, fairly certain no city workers would show up, because we had to jump a small fence to get there.  I could never manage much more than footplants on the wall off the bank.  But it was still a fun place to goof around.

In this short clip, local flatlander Sean Johnson asks to see a move, and Andy Mulcahy and another guy, whose name I never knew, watch as Randy Lawrence (white sleeveless shirt) and Keith Treanor, thrash the spot.  Finally, after all the guitar music during the mini ramp and flatland segments, we get into a little punk rock and street riding to rev up the video a little.  The song is, you guessed it, "My Grandma's Got a Mohawk," by The Stain.

When Randy crashes on the fakie at the end, you hear someone say, "That's the Boner."  Guess I should explain that.  In late 1988, I think it was, the Godfather of BMX himself, Scot Breithaupt, had become a TV producer, and sold a bike show series to ESPN.  Scot's production company was called L.M. Productions, which stood for "Last Minute."  His logo was a clock set at two minutes til midnight.  Typical Scot.  He was renting our edit bay at Unreel at night to edit his shows, and I got the job of staying there all night as representative from Unreel.  Babysitter, basically.  My main job was to make sure he didn't steal anything, either equipment or, more likely, video footage to use in one of his shows.  Scot was an amazing guy in many ways, but could be shady as a maple tree as well.

As Scot and his editor were finishing a show one Sunday night, he said he didn't know what to do for the next week.  He had to have the next finished show done and shipped to ESPN in two weeks.  In the TV world, that's simply impossible.  But Scot wasn't phased by that.  I said, "How about street riding?"  He didn't know what I was talking about.  BMX racers had always ridden the streets and jumped curbs, but he didn't realize that BMX street riding was becoming its own thing.  Ron Wilkerson's 2-Hip Meet the Street contest in Santee earlier that year exploded the interest in street riding.  It took me 20 minutes, but I talked Scot into having a street contest and shooting it for his next show. 

We held the contest one week later in the Huntington Beach Surf Theater parking lot downtown, right behind Wimpi's, and he had the show edited (with much input from me) and it aired a week after that.  That happened to be the best ranking show, by far, in his bike series.  It also happened to be the first made-for-TV bike street contest EVER.  That was about 6 1/2 years before the X-Games.  Unfortunately, the Huntington Beach Street Scene, as he called it, it not on YouTube.

While I was on a late night run to In-N-Out, Scot and his editor completed a section of the show featuring then bike shop mechanic, and H.B. local freestyler, Randy Lawrence.  For some fucking reason, Scot gave Randy the nickname, "The Boner."  He even typed it up on the screen.  Randy wasn't happy, but he shrugged it off, and  the name mostly faded in a year or so.  But on our night session to the Cancer Ditch in 1990, that guy brought it up. 

So who is The Stain?

On The Ultimate Weekend video box, with the amazing (just kidding) black and white graphics I did myself, it says, "Killer soundtrack by The Stain."  But virtually none of the punkers in Orange County had heard of The Stain.  The story starts with this guy, skateboard legend Mark Gonzales, on a trip to Vinyl Solution record shop in about 1987.  He found a punk album from a band he never heard of, and bought it because he liked the cover.  That band was a Toledo, Ohio based punk band called The Stain.  Mark skated for Vision then.  Since we were always looking for music at Unreel Productions, Mark brought the album in one day and showed it to Don Hoffman, head of Unreel, to see if they could use a song in some video.

Music is a nightmare for video producers, because you're supposed to have the rights to use the music in your videos, on contract from the musician or group.  Unreel got really stung by this by getting a verbal agreement to use music from guitarist Joe Satriani, from his "Surfing With the Alien" album, for $300 a song.  They had a legit verbal agreement, and edited a show TV show with his music.  While that was happening, the album was released, and became a huge hit.  When Unreel went to pay, Satriani's people said, "$300 a song?  Uh, no, now we want $3,000 a song."  So we had to rush to find new audio for a whole, one hour show.

We had this bombshell of a woman, who seemed to pretty much be a professional groupie, who found us music to use from Hollywood, local Orange County,  and up-and-coming bands.  She had left by the time I started working full time there.  But they had several bands they used.   Don knew Agent Orange, and used them in Skatevisions in 1986.  But local bands were sketchy by nature, and it was hard to find good music that could be used cheap on a regular basis.  It was a continual battle.

So one day, Don Hoffman called up the guy from The Stain in Toledo, using info on the album that Gonz brought in.  He finally tracked down Jon Stainbrook, the drummer, and main force behind The Stain.  As it turned out, Jon was a legit dude, and had friends who were good studio musicians, including one, Mark Mickel, whose well-off dad had built him a good studio.  Jon was cool, easy to work with, actually came through with good music when asked, and charged a reasonable $100 a song, because they had to actually rent Mark's studio to record.  Jon Stainbrook and friends became Unreel's main go to guys for music.

So when I decided to make a video in 1990, bootlegging your favorite punk bands wasn't the thing to do yet.  Having worked at Unreel, and being anal about getting sued, I bought my music from Jon.  Most of it anyhow.  I think I used 14 tracks, so I owed him $1400, which came out of my pocket.  I paid him $1,000, as I recall, and shaded on the rest.  I still owe Jon Stainbrook $400.  The check's in the mail, Jon.

Anyhow, in late July, 1990, I flew myself to Indianapolis for a 2-Hip contest to shoot video, and then drove to Chicago to shoot the vert session with Bob Kohl, an injured Brian Dahl, and new kid  John Peacy.  Kevin Martin and Ron Wilkerson crashed at Bob's house that night, too.  So Kevin's in the video in that segment, as well.  Ron was off doing business somewhere.

After shooting that session, I made a made dash across the Midwest, hitting 107 mph, in the rain, on the Ohio turnpike in my rented Mazda 323, and spent a day at my Grandma's apartment in Wadsworth, just outside of Akron, Ohio.  Then I headed back west, and met up with Jon Stainbrook, in Toledo.  I'd never met Jon in person, and, being a motel for traveling punk bands for years, he said I could crash at his house for a couple of nights.  As luck would have it, The Stain, among other things, was the stage band for comedian Howie Mandel when he was in that area, who was a top comic and still had hair then.  They had a show to do in Ann Arbor that next day at the University of Michigan, and I tagged along as a roadie.

So in the credits at 46:01, you see Jon out in front of the theater, and I pan up to the marquis with Howie Mandel's name.  I forget what was wrong with the audio there, a camera problem, I think.  Then you see Mark, backstage, warming up on his bass.  After that, is guitarist Jeff Kollman, smoking a hot series of riffs to warm up.  All three of these guys had totally different taste in music, which is why there's a weird mix in my video.  Mark was a huge fan of The Beatles, a consummate musician who played several instruments well, and made cool, pop-type songs.  Jeff was (and still is) a serious guitarist, and all the long guitar solo tracks are his.  And Jon had the punk band, and was the business guy who got them together to make music for Unreel and others.

So, I wound up watching Howie Mandel live from backstage that day, which was a cool bonus.  About 20 minutes into the show, Jon, who was sitting at his drum set, center stage, behind Howie as he performed, started signaling to me.  I finally figured out that John wanted me to take photos with a disposable camera he brought.  But he wanted me to take flash photos of Howie, from behind, while Howie was doing his show.  I was way too much of a chicken for that.  So then Jon wanted me to slide him the camera across the stage, to the drum set, so he could take photos.  So I did that.  And Jon took photos from the drum kit.  And Howie saw the flash and was like, "What the fuck?"  He worked it into his routine, and was pretty cool with it.

After the show, I got to meet Howie backstage, and went to shake hands with him, but he wouldn't shake my hand.  I didn't know what was up.  Being a "germaphobe" was a pretty unknown thing back then.  Jon explained it to me later.  No Howie's famous for his fist bumps.

Jon Stainbrook is now one of the most prominent people in Toledo's Republican politics. I have no idea what Mark is up to these days, that day in Arbor was the only time I met him.  And as for guitarist Jeff Kollman, here is he a couple of years ago in a pedal demo video.  He's still shredding.