The Rooster Chews Tobacco

He awoke in bed in a crucifix position. He always found himself waking in the crucifix position, arms spread out to the edges of the bed and his legs locked together pointing down and his head pointing up to the ceiling. His eyes blinked once, twice and then he bent himself up in the bed, ruffling his hair.

He slept fitfully that night; he heard a lot of hooting and hollering outside. Not unusual for a marina where all the swells got drunk in their yachts and made a lot of noise. It bothered him because it was his first night out of jail and he wanted to have a peaceful night’s sleep in his houseboat, but no. Big Jason Gulliver was pissed.

“Fucking, fucking, fucking assholes”, Big Jason grumbled. “Fuckin’ lifestylers. Ruining the bay with their rich kid bullshit”.

He woke up in his street clothes, a soiled t-shirt and baggy fatigue pants. He leaned over to put on his Doc Martens when he saw a rat scurrying across the bedroom door. He picked up a boot and threw it at the rat.

“Get the fuck off my boat!” he yelled.

The bedroom was as Spartan as it gets. There was his bed, barely big enough to fit his gigantic frame; a small dresser filling in as a hamper as it collected an unwashed load of clothes; a tiny nightstand with a lamp for his paperback reading, and that’s it. The room was completed by a window with a dirty curtain faded by the sun.

On top of the dresser sat a cassette player with dozens of cassettes strewn about, some buried under a few banged-out paperbacks like Sartre’s “Nausea” and Burroughs’ “Nova Express”.

He got up to face the music, face the world, face the city that paid to put him away, and above all else face his friends, even the ones he owed money to. He fetched back his boot and put them on and walked out the front of his boat.

He stepped up to the dock where a blonde man with a trimmed beard waited for him.

“Oh hey, Jason, I figured it was you. You’ve got a phone call”.
“Tell them I’m still in jail. It’s probably somebody calling about their money”.
“Well, okay. I didn’t know you got out already”.
“Well, the fuckin’ rats didn’t know either, goddammit”, Jason cussed. “Got any coffee?”
“No, dude”, he moped. “Sorry”.

Big Jason lumbered up the dock towards the exit spilling out into the city street, looking around at the cars parked nearby.

“No, fuck it, just got out for that”, he thought. “Can’t jump back into it. Besides, someone might be waiting for me to do it again”. Still, he couldn’t resist ogling at the flashier cars parked around the corner.

He squinted his eyes shut and walked uphill towards the main street to get a cheap breakfast. He felt like a recovering addict, only instead of swearing off drugs he was swearing off theft.

Jason walked like an exiled minotaur, legs stomping spread far apart in a gesture of assertion, funny in contrast to how close his arms were kept to his chest, in the way a boxer keeps his arms and fists close to his face to provide protection in the ring. It might even be said that Big Jason either boxed at some time or trained for boxing during some chapter in his life. This gait was topped off with him leaning forward as he walked, his head and shoulders behaving like antennae, behaving like curb feelers on the lookout for trouble.

Did you ever eat breakfast without even enjoying a single bite? Jason hammered away his meal without really concentrating on what he was tasting, just going through the motions. It wasn’t what you’d call being in a trance. He simply had his mind on everything else but what was in front of him. Sitting in stir will do that to you.

He caught his reflection in the mirror across the room and saw a large, wide piece of half-sculpted concrete. His chin was large, his lips turned down, his short spiky hair crowning his head. The only thing dispelling all this facial cruelty was a set of calm, almost tired eyes. There was peace there while the rest of his body looked hard. He cut an ominous figure but there was something downbeat in his demeanor.

All this soul transference felt harmful because he was too young for such divisions in his mind. While he acted dumb and simple on the outside it was a crowded theater on the inside, thousands of ideas and thoughts racing through his mind like an electrical storm.

He paid his bill and walked out of the café in a trance, slowly trotting down the hill back to the narrow street at the bottom of the hill. An endless line of parked cars showed themselves off to him as he walked by. His eyes flashed at the flashier cars and he felt the tingle, the irresistible urge building inside of him. It wasn’t fair; he was just released for stealing them and here they were heartlessly teasing him.

It was a veritable feast of automotive beauty, steel and chrome pulchritude igniting flames of vehicular lust, daring him to commit another theft. Jason slowed down his pace and turned around, then looked across the street, then craned his head to see if anyone was leering overhead somewhere.

It was a rare moment when there was just him and his urges left alone on the concrete midway. He began appraising his prospective choices: there was the tan Cadillac, “too fogie, no punk would be caught in this thing”; the red Firebird, “perfect looking sled, but red just screams out everybody look at me, I’d get picked up in less than five minutes”; the black Mercedes Benz, “yeah okay, graduation present from Dad, I won’t arouse suspicion pulling this one”.

He looked around one last time, leaned his hips against the driver’s side, reaching for his keys and then broke out chuckling. The window was rolled down.
“Fuckin’ rich people have the dumbest confidence”, he chortled. No need to jimmy the door.

He swung right in, plopped on the red leather upholstery, and quickly reached under the dashboard. He pulled down a few wires, cut off the casing and twisted the bare wires, connecting them, starting the engine quickly.

He popped in the cigarette lighter and grabbed a smoke from the pack on the dashboard, lighting it up. The radio blared out a Grateful Dead song loudly and he turned it off. He pulled out into the empty street and shifted it into a higher gear.

The Benz gave a slight jerk and Jason frowned. “This one’s got shitty transmission. You never can tell if these classy rides are in good shape or not. This one’s a turkey. Well, I’ll dump this in a little bit, but-Hello, who’s this?”

Jason saw a pretty Asian punk girl with spiky blonde hair in a black tee, leather miniskirt and fishnets hitching at the end of the corner. He rolled right up and leaned across the seat.

“Hey, hop in”, he bellowed. “I’m going your way”.
She stared at him for a second and asked, “Do you know where I’m going?”
“Doesn’t matter, babe, I’ll take you there”.
She stared at the inside of the car, appraising it. “Red bucket seats. Okay, but no funny stuff!”
He cranked the door open and she got in. He watched her beautiful legs slide into the front seat.

“So where are we going, gorgeous?”
“Telegraph Hill”.
“Okay, cool”. He let out the clutch and it gave a slight jerk. She chuckled, grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and lit up.
“Hey man, this car is pretty bomb”, she puffed.
“For real, you Japs know a lot about bombs, huh?”
“I’m no Jap, asshole, I’m Chinese”.
“I know, I was just testing you”.
“The fuck you were!” she puffed away like an angry dragon.

“I’m Big Jason”, he smiled at her. “You know, I’ve seen you around somewhere”.
“Yeah, you look familiar”, the girl calmed down. “I’m Suzy, Suzy Wrong. I think…I think I saw you at The Mab once”.
“The Nuns show, I was the one the bouncers tried to kick out but I put up a fight. I wore them out, though, so they let me stay in. Assholes”.
“Assholes!” she cackled.

The car jerked sporadically and Big Jason mumbled, “Smooth ride, huh?”
“Is this really your car?”
“Sure it is! Graduation present from Dad”.
“Where did you graduate?” she asked skeptically.
“University of Alcatraz, baby doll”.

Suzy stared at him for a second, and then laughed. “Yeah, you were the big guy the bouncers couldn’t take down. My friends watched that go down. It was more exciting than the show”.
“Should’ve charged people to watch”. Jason tossed his butt out the window.

“Big tough guys. You’re all a dime a dozen”, Suzy stared at him while her slender hand wandered down to his crotch, rubbing his thick tool against the fabric of his coarse jeans.
He glanced at her from the side and caught her licking her lips.

“Hey, baby, ever been in a houseboat? With beer and pizza?”
“Sounds like a date”, she caressed his unit tenderly. “Let’s make it”.

He dumped the Benz a block away from the docks and they walked down to his houseboat.

One hour later Suzy was in his bedroom wearing nothing but his t-shirt and drinking out of a large bottle of wine from the fridge. She spit some all over his tense, prodigious tool and went to work on him. She tasted the wine and he tasted freedom, among other things.

Punk Rock Retirement Home

This was a three-night engagement I played at The Whiskey A Go Go with my band Arthur J. and The Gold Cups, which was an all-star punk big band (I played saxophone), The band also featured the late Brendan Mullen on drums, Geza X on guitar, Paul Roessler on keyboards and a host of others.

Because it was a three night engagement we had a different band open the show each night, and as you can see X opened one night and The Alleycats opened another. The Avengers headlined and were absolutely amazing. I think Penelope Houston is the best punk rock singer I've ever heard, bar none.

Brendan designed the poster and organized the show.

In September of 1978 I was asked to play sax with The Screamers at The Whisky A Go Go. Pat Delaney from The Deadbeats and I joined them for their exciting encore of The Germs' Sex Boy, re-titled Sax Boy as a tribute to us.

Lead singer Tomata Du Plenty and synthesizer man Tommy Gear prowled the stage like a pair of wild leopards singing the Darby classic while Pat and I honked away. At one point I was given a short sax break and I tooted the riff to Punish Or Be Damned. Tommy winced painfully. Good times.

My friend Lisa Brenneis joined Richard Meltzer's new band Vom as the bass guitarist. Meltzer just moved to Los Angeles from New York, which was a big deal because he was one of the most idiosyncratically New York rock writers around that time. He put together a pretty interesting band, which besides Lisa also included Metal Mike Saunders and Gregg Turner. I may have missed one or two other guys; it was a long time ago.

Vom played their first show at the Whiskey A Go-Go and Lisa invited me. What I didn't count on was being recruited during sound check to act as their official "bodyguard". In order to distinguish me at this dubious job they gave me one of their custom made shirts (seen in the photo). This meant keeping the crowd from killing them, because Meltzer made a few disparaging remarks about Hollywood punks being phony and plastic. He wasn't being serious about it; in fact he was method acting like a locker room wrestler trying to rile the local kids up, and it worked. A little too well!

The club was filled with all the usual local punks ready to boo and heckle the band to death. The entire staff of Slash magazine was there heckling the band to death, as well. Vom went into all their killer numbers like I'm In Love With Your Mom, Electrocute Your Cock, and Broads Is Equal. Kids were picking up anything in sight and flinging it at the band, and it was my job to admonish these twerps from throwing things, like a stodgy old school teacher. Nobody listened to me. I hated it.

Meltzer even chided me from the stage. "Hey, do your job, Tall Guy in the Vom Shirt. You're supposed to be protecting us. By the way, the fat punk chick in the front, you look like a piece of shit with lipstick!" Try defending someone who talks like that.

Not content to merely piss off the audience, they now incurred the ire of the club itself, when they went into their intense rendition of The Doors' My Eyes Have Seen You, which featured Meltzer and Turner pulled out a pickled jar of cows' eyeballs and bursting them on stage and throwing them out into the dance floor at all the heckling punks. The floor was sticky and slippery from formaldehyde goo with crushed eyeballs all over the place.

Well, after this Vom-itous bit of show business the sound man, like the voice of Zeus, thundered over the PA, "OKAY, ASSHOLES, GET OFF MY STAGE! NOW!!!" Of course, this made all the punks cheer as if God himself stepped in and sent the band to Purgatory.

There's a happy ending to some of this, of course. Meltzer shortly after got a hot radio show on KPFK-FM where he invited every punk band he previously insulted and they all played phony kissy face with each other, and then my picture showed up in a crummy fake "New Wave" magazine. Of course, all the idiot Hollywood punks chastised for posing wearing a Vom shirt. Never mind that these were the same people that couldn't kiss Meltzer's ass hard enough to get on his show.

Come to think of it, Richard Meltzer was probably right the first time. Hollywood punks are a bunch of phony assholes, after all.

(I've Got) The Tinnitus Touch

I love music. I love playing it and I love listening to it. I can't really go out and enjoy it anymore, though. In fact, I've only been to two shows last year and paid dearly for it. You see, I have this terrible problem. I have tinnitus.

Tinnitus is a condition where your ears are always ringing, the end result of too many loud bands, records, etc. creating permanent damage to your ear drums. After playing in bands for over 22 years and attending concerts for longer than that, my hearing is pretty blown out. I'm not alone, either. Pete Townsend, Neil Young and Barbara Streisand, among others, suffer from the same syndrome.

How did I get tinnitus? It comes from years of giving and receiving. Receiving means over 45 years of standing in front of the stage at shows by The Sex Pistols, Roxy Music, Patti Smith, Captain Beefheart, Queen and thousands of other noise addicts. Half these shows had me standing right by the speakers, and if I had to do it all over again, I would.

Giving means playing free jazz sax squall over a bed of not one, not two, but three distorted guitars turned all the way up to 10 and beyond. Wearing earplugs was never an option. I had to feel the vibrations shaking through my bones and tearing out my heart. I wasn’t some Adam Levine careerist dickhead, I was on a suicide mission to get my noise music played.

There are times when I can phase out the ringing, and then there are times when I can't. Sometimes I'll wake up at 3:30 in the morning and the ringing will be in full blast, like I just stepped out of a nightclub. It's pretty strange. My ears are ringing loudly as I’m sitting here writing,. But as I said, I can also ignore it, just as you would any annoying bit of sound.

I've been to the doctor and he said there's nothing wrong with my hearing. “That’ll be $three hundred dollars, thank you". All Western medical solutions are out. I may consider acupuncture if it works, but otherwise it's going to be this high pitched ring for a long time.

So, all you Facebook die-hard rockers, don't get pissed if I pass on invitations to your shows. And by the way, buy my books. Support is a two-way street.

The ability to hear is highly overrated, anyway. I was at the neighborhood laundromat, and it’s a reasonably small, modest one. It has the questionable perk of having not one, but two television sets. Both televisions were turned to the same program with the volume turned up very, very loud.

The television show that night was one of those Real Housewives programs where the women scream and bitch-slap each other for the better part of half an hour. It seemed longer than thirty minutes; quite frankly it felt like an eternity. It’s very hard to concentrate on folding your newly dried wash while both your ear canals are being pummeled by the shrill fighting of overly made-up women screaming their heads off.

I quickened the pace of my folding as I heard two, no, maybe three women shrieking and ruining their nails by raking them over each other’s faces, realizing that if I were truly deaf this would just look like inmates from a mental institution having it out. I would just move along, nothing to see here.

Well, the gals were still going at it like a vaginal demolition derby as I marched with my clothes out of the place, making a mental note to never go to the laundromat on a Wednesday night. Wednesday night’s not alright for fighting.

For more information about tinnitus, go to the American Tinnitus Association site at http://www.ata.org/

Volume War (1993)

The year was 1993 and that behemoth called grunge rock was going strong, bands with punk backgrounds playing sludgy spluzz with lots of guitar and little else added. Bands like Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana and many, many, too many others.

I had just completed a tour of the United States with my band Trash Can School and it was largely a success considering many people didn't have any idea who we were. With the momentum of the band gaining its new-found popularity, our record company SFTRI wanted us to go in and record a new album.

Cutting a new album was easier said than done, because A: our previous engineer got a fat head and wanted a hefty producer's fee in addition to getting paid studio time, and B: the album budget was something like $3-5,000, pretty minuscule even by early Nineties standards. To put it in plain English we had to look for a new engineer, studio and they had to be nothing short of amazing.

A fan and friend of the band told us Geza X was in between big jobs and was interested in recording any crazy indie bands. When I said I was interested I asked her to remind Geza that we were in Arthur J. and The Gold Cups together. Geza accepted immediately and he was nice enough to take our poverty row budget like a mensch.

Half the album was not only written in advance but was road tested on our national tour - DT's, TV Blues, Dog Town Girl, Powershred and Steel Purse, to name a few. The other half hadn't been written yet so I had to cobble together at least seven new numbers. The newer songs were Steroid Shock, Big Time Full-On Cop Out, Taxidermist, Volume War and a couple of others.

Geza X's studio was called City Lab and was situated in a house above the Sunset Strip, high above the Comedy Store. In fact, Pauly Shore, Mitzi Shore's son lived next door with his purple jeep parked out in front. Across the street lived Peter Weller, who had a huge, resplendent villa-style home. Not bad for the guy who played William Burroughs and Robocop.

Having Geza as producer was important to me, because by this time the band had fallen heavily under the influence of the Great Pacific Northwest and the Sub-Pop sound, and to me Geza was a kindred soul in the pursuit of strange and unusual sounds, and encouraged me to go farther out than I ever had before.

With the band becoming more musically conservative in their musical tastes it was important to assert my influence on the band by emphasizing even more bizarre sounds than was previously displayed on the first album.

I made concessions toward the trendy grunge sound by writing songs like Taunt, the Ballad of Peter Green and Big Time Full-On Cop Out, but even the latter composition had a quirky Voidoids-style bridge that broke up whatever Mudhoney vibe ran throughout the song. And then there was that atonal saxophone break.

In spite of these concessions I still created walls of discordant noise with a free-form jazz ending to Taxidermist with a wall of guitar feedback. Then there was Powershred, featuring a sample of Sun Ra playing white noise on his synthesizer while a scratch vocal imitating a sax solo made the final mix, bringing some Yoko Ono good cheer to the proceedings.

Steel Purse had a stop and go pulse all through the song, like a demented roller coaster, and for good reason: it was about the Long Beach Pike, a busted-up amusement park where sailors got rolled and gangs got into knife fights and tranny hookers flashed steel, as well.

I also incorporated a great 12-string guitar that Rebecca made for TV Blues and Dog Town Girl. It added a very light touch to the band sound, which we needed badly. DT's had a backwards saxophone track to add to the menacing voodoo drone the band was laying down. I don't think we're in Seattle any more, Toto.

And perhaps that was the big problem in a lot of the fan's eyes (and ears). The album received unanimously bad reviews and even earned the enmity of Papa Bear at SFTRI. He felt he got gypped out of his money because instead of getting Nevermind Part II he got Andy's Wild Years. He'll never realize he got the most original album ever released on his label.

Making a bad grunge album would have been the easiest task in the world but that's not my calling. I made in abundantly clear to everyone that I was dedicated to making the most unusual rock music of its time, and people kept nodding their heads like I was talking drunk again.

Needless to say, the accompanying tour in support of the album was an unqualified disaster, leading up to the breakup of the band. I still listen to Volume War (named after the three guitarists turning up their amps over each other throughout rehearsal until one couldn't even hear themselves anymore) and am amazed at what a great piece of work I created with these guys. One day Volume War will have its day because all maverick works get the recognition they're due.

I Thought It I Said It I Did It So There

As a general rule I don't make a habit of attending punk rock reunion shows. So many of them have the air of a high school reunion, people checking out each other to see who's still carrying off their punk rock moxie and who isn't; Who's held up through the years and who hasn't, and even worse, people who were never friends in the past blowing kisses to each other like phonies. But all those anti-reunion sentiments were blown out of the water when I heard about the Dangerhouse Records Show at The Echoplex on November 9, 2014.

The lineup, which featured The Alleycats, Rhino 39, The Deadbeats, The Avengers and The Weirdos, couldn't be beat. The show was amazing on several levels. Not only were all the performances top-notch but the bands stuck pretty close to the script: each set was a brilliant approximation of what it was like seeing any of those bands at the peak of their musical power in 1978. Every set was a perfect replication of what each band sounded and looked like back in the day.

The Alleycats played a locomotively charged set that was high on energy and low on frills, just like the old days. Randy Stodola was reliable as usual, although I thought his guitar could have used better grounding and a reunion with his signature Big Muff from the past. A lot of people were asking about former bassist Diane Chai, but like all punk legends she's just a ghost in the ethereal ozone.

Rhino 39 were pretty clever by doing a batch of Dangerhouse covers, like The Randoms' classic "Let's Get Rid Of New York" and Black Randy & The Metro Squad's "I Slept In An Arcade", so even if you weren't a fan of the band they still had your attention with their cool choice of covers.

The Deadbeats mixed their weird theater with atonal jazzisms and it was great to hear "Muggsy" and "I Just Shot A Girl Called Maria" again after all these years. Scott Guerin's voice is still pretty dynamic and it was great to see Geza X playing his awesomely warped guitar. I wish I caught their previous reunion show with my pal Pat Delaney on sax but there's always You Tube to catch some of that wildness.

The Avengers came on and played everything I remembered from the shows we used to play with them at The Whiskey in 1978. It was so close to the old days I was stricken with an overwhelming case of melancholy, and I don't even drink anymore. One great song followed another: covers of Paint It Black, Money, and the classics: Car Crash, The American In Me and White Nigger. The only blemish was Greg's overly chorus-laden guitar, a little too BritGoth for my taste, but there was no question that Penelope Houston is the queen of West Coast Punk and one of the first (I did a show with her at Mabuhay Gardens in the summer of 1977).

The nostalgia flashback got to be too much and we decided to leave The Echoplex - no Weirdos tonight but I'm sure they were great. Watching Dix Denney walk around the club in septuagenarian Keith Richards drag was disturbing enough! The show was sold out even at a ticket price of $22 - I remember when these shows were a quarter of that price, but nevertheless it was a priceless night watching old friends play and simply enjoying the fact that you can't go home again but every once in a while it doesn't hurt to pretend.

*****************

If there's anything I like it's a band that doesn't take themselves too seriously and Status Quo are all that. I discovered a terrific collection by them of their songs played "unplugged" (they call aQUOstic) including their cover of The Everly Brothers' "Price of Love" as well as their classic "Paper Plane", sounding surprisingly less like the metal heads they once were and more like Nick Lowe's Rockpile. There's some great stuff going on here!

By no stretch of the imagination am I a big Everly Brothers fan but I'm loving this strange album they recorded around 1967 time called "The Everly Brothers Sing". Their arrangements take a more psych-pop approach to the great Everly's vocals, and there are several cool drug songs on here, too, like Talking To The Flowers, Mary Jane (MURRRRAAAY JANE!!!!!) and A Voice Within, which was the B-side to the equally great Love Of The Common People. Also check out their awesome cover of the Buffalo Springfield classic "Mr. Soul", which features slide guitar and mandolin from Ry Cooder, the premier session demon at Warner Bros. during the psych era. You can find Mr. Soul on You Tube - you won't believe your ears.

***************

Rebecca recently played at the Steve Allen Theater in Los Feliz on November 5, 2014 with her pop-up band Cat Sabbath. In addition to Rebecca from Frightwig, Cat Sabbath included the great Sara Landeau from Julie Ruin,

Marissa DeMeglio from Wolf Prize and a mystery singer. Rebecca's growling and crackling guitar was as menacing sounding as ever! It was quite a spectacle: four witches dressed like cats playing Black Sabbath songs like "The Wizard" and "N.I.B.", 21st Century variations on the "Double Bubble Toil and Trouble" incantation from Macbeth. Yeth!

By the way, if you're really into wimmyn rockers or Riot Grrl music you might want to check out my latest eBay auction: The Courtney Love & Hole cover issue of Flipside Magazine, which also includes Bulimia Banquet and Mudhoney. Here's the link, folks:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/171562661930?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

***************

Lately I've been feeling pretty nostalgic for the good old days of rock brought to you by Circus Magazine, the gnarliest and ugliest rock magazine of all time. Although Circus was big in the late Sixties they really hit their stride in the mid-Seventies when they ran some of the most unflattering photos of rock stars performing. We're talking about live photos of Freddie Mercury coated in sweat with his hair getting nappy, Bryan Ferry singing with boogers hanging out of his nose or Ian Hunter from Mott The Hoople emoting with spinach leaves or stale pussy hair sticking in his teeth. You couldn't beat Circus Magazine in the disgusting factor.

Yes, hard-working musicians were shot at angles aimed right under their nostrils or luckily capturing their double chins, and there was always plenty of angles getting all those hairy chests just holding up all that valuable rock star sweat. Yum! Who couldn't resist dynamic snapshots of Ian Gillian's sweaty armpits with arms raised in the air? It's like that Junior High School newspaper covering the latest sports event.

The very pages of Circus just dripped ooze no matter how you sliced it and it was two steps away from being Scratch & Sniff. Why, Hit Parader Magazine almost turned green with envy. They tried to compete with their own brand of sweaty, smelly looking rock stars but they were no match for the true herpes festival that was Circus Magazine! Excelsior!

Every Bitch For Himself - Punk Rock Crime Novel OUT NOW!!!!

It's 1978, and Hollywood Boulevard is burning with punk rock energy and with it the advent of career criminal Big Jason Gulliver, an amoral monster in silver hair, torn t-shirt and army fatigues. Big Jason plans to knock over Rocket USA, the most popular punk club in town, using his friends who all work on the inside of the club.

Standing in his way are three psychopaths who run Rocket USA: Jack Sterling, owner of the club, a has-been television star with severe OCD; Chuck Steakhouse, punk surfer thug with a capacity for rape and torture; and Miggy Sanchez, a thug every inch the equal of Big Jason in amorality.

Every Bitch For Himself captures all the energy of the 1978 Hollywood punk scene with episodes of violent rock & roll, perverse cult rituals, and nightmarish parties. Just as punk rock bands twisted old songs to fit its explosive style, Every Bitch For Himself corrupts old film noir scenes culled from The Killing, The Asphalt Jungle, Born To Kill and The Killers, to name a few, to create a new punk rock crime novel.

Andy Seven’s previous novel Every Good Boy Dies First captured the fervent pace of the Nineties music scene, drawing on experiences from his music career to craft a chilling novel. Once again Andy draws on his memories of the 1977 Hollywood punk scene to create Every Bitch For Himself.

How and why did punk happen? Popular music split into two factions following the demise of glam rock in the late Seventies: disco and punk. There was disco for the club kids who wanted to keep all the glamour, danceability and sexual decadence of glam alive, and on the other side there was punk, which continued all the outrage and drama of glam. Like two unruly siblings both styles of music hated each other.

In addition to playing in numerous punk bands on the '77 Hollywood scene Andy Seven can also be read discussing the history of 1977 Hollywood Punk in books like We’ve Got The Neutron Bomb by Brendan Mullen and Marc Spitz; Improvisation, Identity and Tradition by Charles Michael Sharp, and Lexicon Devil by Brendan Mullen and Adam Parfrey.

Every Bitch For Himself, after all is said and done, is still a crime novel. It follows the tradition of the standard heist gone wrong story, but how it goes wrong and the disaster that follows it is an exercise in severe karmic payback that needs to be read to be believed. Who gets away with crime and who doesn’t is the real kick of the story. Are there double crosses or are there consequences to everyone’s actions? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Ten things you can count on reading in my latest novel:
1. Drunken punks playing Bologna-Toss on loaded chicks.
2. Has-been TV Western cowboy stars.
3. Mods vs. Punks battle it out on the beach.
4. Squeamish Los Angeles police detectives.
5. Discotheque chase scenes.
6. Blood-drenched performance art rituals.
7. Beauty products weaponry.
8. King Kong scales the Capitol Records building.
9. Miracle Mile shopping sprees, and:
10. The world's greatest shithouse fist fight.
Yep, if it hasn't been written yet, you can count on me to write it for you. May God and Ringo Starr forgive me!

Every Bitch For Himself, Andy Seven’s second punk crime novel is available for $4.99 at all popular eBook retailers, including:

Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Every-Bitch-Himself-Andy-Seven-ebook/dp/B00MIBTIAC/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407503272&sr=1-2
iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/every-bitch-for-himself/id906954217?mt=11
Nook (Barnes & Noble):
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/every-bitch-for-himself-andy-seven/1120084022?ean=9781483533902
Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/book/236143482/Every-Bitch-For-Himself

Each website provides a short sample of the novel for previewing before purchase so you can see what deviltry is brewing on each page.

Every Bitch For Himself combines two violent art forms, punk rock and film noir to create an exciting new hybrid of crime writing. Check out the new novel and experience it for yourself.

The Pickpocket In The Slam Pit

11:45 PM. Skipjack's. Long Beach, California. Skipjack's was a hardcore punk club in the South Bay area. The club was an old wrestling-cum-roller derby auditorium framed in stucco and neon lights with a lot of rotting wood inside. The auditorium itself seemed to be slowly decaying from the salty sea air that wafted northward from the harbor a few miles away.

Punks from all over the hoods of Wilmington, Lomita, and Pedro all converged every Friday and Saturday nights at Skipjack's. Stew Rat Nickson was no exception, a miserable specimen of lowlife punk rock, a skeletal, gangly youth with clammy white skin housing a relentless network of freckles and pimples. He had so many freckles and pimples nobody knew where one began and the other one ended.

His head of short hair was dyed a sickly orange with bald patches that had other colors dyed in there, and dyed so badly that some of the dye stained his neck and ears. Mr. Stew Rat simply didn't care.

Tonight was the night of Stew Rat's big score. It was simple: his tartan bondage pants had a long zipper running down the length of his right leg with a cargo pocket running from upper thigh to his ankle for hiding things...like wallets.

The plan was to get into the slam pit and find himself the better, aka well-fed, suburban punks and pull their wallets and cram it down his secret pocket. The club was so booked with moshers he would easily score, and no one would be the wiser. The quickest smash and grab ever.

Crank Call were on stage and tearing it up, playing a mile a minute and roaring as ferociously as a jet plane taking off. The lead singer, a beefy sunburned monster in a crewcut stepped up to the mike and bellowed, "HOW MANY OF YOU DICKS CAME HERE TONIGHT TO FUCK SHIT UP? YEAH!"

The audience roared and Stew Rat pushed and jostled his way through the crowd, knocking over a few beers in the process.

"THIS FUCKIN' TUNE'S CALLED 'BOMBS AWAY'. 1-2-3-4!!!!"
Crank Call pounded into the song, drums beating machine like rhythms like runaway oil pumps and guitars stuttering like the screaming factory noises straight outta Long Beach.

Stew Rat shoved his way further towards the pit, bodies parting further and further away from the chaotic dance of destruction, a sausage fest of tribal brutality. Young men careening and bashing into each other like wayward steel balls hitting bumpers and flippers in some god-forsaken pinball machine.

Stew Rat grinned with his decaying orange teeth glowing in the darkness. An occasional mosher would bump into him, some smiling and saying, "SORRY, DUDE!".
Stew Rat didn't care, they were fair game to him.

He pulled the zipper halfway down the long cargo pocket, readying himself for the big steal. He was about to hit his first victim when the song ended abruptly as all hardcore songs go.

"FUCK YOU, DUDE! THIS ONE'S CALLED 'PIT BULL NUMBSKULL'! 1-2-3-4!!!!"
Crank Call's bassist played a rumbling groove, shaking the walls like a 10.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. The guitar flew right in like a Space Shuttle gone berserk.
"PIT BULL...NUMBSKULL! PIT BULL...NUMBSKULL! YOUR BRAIN'S HALF EMPTY, YOUR BRAIN'S HALF FULL! PIT BULL...NUMBSKULL!"

Stew Rat licked his lips and chortled.
"Come to Poppa, fucker!" He angled his way in to a clutch of young punkers all collapsing in a heap. He half-humped the cleanest looking one from behind and quickly slipped his fingers into his back pocket and slipped the fancy crocodile skin wallet down the cargo pocket.
"Score!"

He moved over to another clutch of guys ready to collapse in a heap and dog piled underneath, pulling one wallet, then another out of the range of anyone's vision. Both wallets went straight down the cargo pocket.

As soon as he got up on his feet he saw a big fat dude crowd surfing, the kids around him holding up the surfer with their arms suspended above their heads.
"This is too easy!" Stew Rat chuckled. "Easy pickings to be sure!"

He spotted a wholesome looking punk and leaned in on him, slipping his fingers effortlessly into his rear pocket. He didn't have a wallet in there because he pulled out a lump of snot rags.
"YUCK! He probably keeps his wallet in the front. That sucks".

Stew Rat saw another clean-looking punker hoisting the fat surfer with both arms up and rubbed up against him. Sliding with the agility of a ferret, he slipped his fingers into the back pocket and quickly pulled out a wallet with punk rock stickers all over it and tossed it down the now bulging cargo pocket. He finished his steal just in time as Crank Call finished their song.

"Ho, ho, ho, this rules! This might be my best night ever! Long Beach is the greatest!" He laughed to himself. He looked around feeling mighty smug about himself until he caught a huge, dark Latino dude in a wife beater staring at him across the pit with sheer hatred.

"Shit, is this asshole onto me? He looks like he saw something. Maybe everything", Stew Rat got nervous.
The Latino dude was about to cross the pit and attack Stew Rat.
"What does this fuck face want? Does he want a split, is he gonna narc on me or is he gonna pound me for all my shit?"

Stew Rat began walking away backwards, but it wasn't necessary. Crank Call's singer stomped up to the microphone and barked.
"YOU JAGOFFS ARE WEAK!!!! I WANNA SEE SOME SERIOUS MOSHING, DICK FACES! THIS SHIT'S CALLED 'BREAK, BROKEN, BROKE'! 1-2-3-4!"
The band busted out a stormy wail of radioactive waste, guitars feeding back and spitting out electric noise and the singer howling like a witch doctor fished out of the Pacific Ocean.

The guys in the slam pit were now doing the circular chicken dance like demented Navajo warriors, stomping their feet and pumping their arms like a circular locomotive around the dance floor.

The Latino quickened his pace towards Stew Rat, dodging the slam pit circle and getting closer and closer to catching up with him. Stew Rat began to panic, wet himself, whimpered and broke out in a nasty sweat. A musky odor filled the air.

Just when his pursuer was about to catch up with him a stage diver leaped off the stage and landed feet first on the big, dark man's head, kicking him unconscious. The slam pit opened up and bouncers pushed their way in to take away the unconscious Latino. They grabbed him by his legs and pulled him across the club like a limp wheelbarrow.

"OFFICER DOWN, OFFICER DOWN. NO SERIOUSLY, LET'S DO ANOTHER SONG, THIS ONE'S CALLED 'PISSPOT PRINCESS'". The band ripped into their newest number with a vengeance.
Stew Rat calmed down in the knowledge that his pursuer was knocked out cold and put out of the way.

He spied his next victim, a beefy well-fed punk rock jock. Everyone in the pit pressed up against his body so his pressing up against him wouldn't look conspicuous at all. This was too perfect. He shoved and slammed his way towards the jock, ricocheting with the rest of the guys in the pit.

"CLOSER, CLOSER, ALMOST...THERE!" Stew Rat practically humped the jock with his torso, quickly slipping his fingers into the back pocket and pulling out the wallet. Just as he was about to toss it down the secret pocket, he heard someone yell, "LOOK OUT!"

The bondage strap that ran across his trousers was caught in the jock's left leg and he was stuck to him and couldn't extricate himself, meaning he was stuck when he saw Crank Call's guitarist jump off the stage and land on top of him with the guitar's head stock impaling him deep into his skull, the stainless steel machine heads knifing into his cranium, thus ending the short lived crimes of Stew Rat Nickson.

Copyright 2014, Andy Seven.

Top Illustration by Rebecca Seven. Lower Illustration by Jaime Hernandez.

The Legend of Arthur J. and The Gold Cups

Describing a punk band from the deep, dark past has always been hard work but when there's precious little documentation on the band then it's well near impossible. I played in a first wave Hollywood punk band (1977-1978) called Arthur J. and The Gold Cups and although we played with every huge band of the era (Avengers, X, Germs, etc.) we never recorded, so there's almost nothing to go by, but that's never stopped me before.

Arthur J. and The Gold Cups was named after two Hollywood coffee shops that catered to gays; Arthur J.'s was on the corner of Santa Monica and Highland - it's now a strip mall. The Gold Cup was on the corner of Hollywood and Las Palmas and it's now a trendy tourist trap tattoo parlor. Both establishments provided late night hustlers and Quaaludes.

One block away from the The Gold Cup was a tiny alley off Cherokee Avenue with a huge steel doorway that took you down to a basement that held several rehearsal rooms; a long, cavernous room with a stage; and tons more space for anyone to do whatever they liked. This was The Masque, leased and operated by Brendan Mullen, founder and drummer of Arthur J. and The Gold Cups.

In Charles Martin Sharp's brilliant book on the Los Angeles avant garde music scene, "Improvisation, Identity and Tradition: Experimental Music Communities in Los Angeles", he described The Gold Cups as "attracting and bringing together people who were already interested in experimental aesthetics by merely advertising for members at The Masque".

In Mullen's book "We Got The Neutron Bomb" I am quoted as saying, "When I saw the bulletin at The Masque for Arthur J. and The Gold Cups, everything that was listed in that ad was right up my alley. I said 'this is the band of my dreams' cause it mentioned Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, James Brown, The Soft Machine, T. Rex, The NY Dolls, and The Sex Pistols all in the same band. I couldn't believe it. This in some bombed-out punk basement? A pretty sick concept. Then I found out it was Brendan and Spazz (Attack, Gold Cups vocalist) and Geza (X, Gold Cups guitarist) and a bunch of other people who worked at The Masque who jammed there all the time for fun, so I rushed home to get my horn".

When The Gold Cups first performed it was on a Sunday night at The Masque. I passed on playing the first show because rehearsals were a shambling mess with no direction all, and I lived to regret not playing that night because the band was simply amazing. On stage there were three Deadbeats (Geza, Pat and Scott), The Moreland Brothers from The Skulls, Hal & Kelly (Weirdos roadies), and Brendan on drums.

Center stage on vocals was Spazz Attack, so named for simulating a full blown twitching and drooling seizure and performing eye-popping back flips - he always landed on his feet, brilliant. In addition to being a brilliant acrobat Spazz also designed his own punk-bondage fashions. He had a crazy habit of dyeing his hair - two, sometimes even thrice a week. Ouch! He's notorious for his strait jacket seizure in Devo's classic "Satisfaction" video. It's right after Booji Boy sticks a knife into a toaster.

The band sounded like they were combining The Standells with John Coltrane's "Ascension", furthering the punk big band sound with a dense wall of sound: two guitars, two keyboards, a horn section and drums that played whatever the fuck it wanted to. The band always returned to Earth by drifting into The Soft Machine's "We Did It Again", which sounded more like "You Really Got Me" than the hoary psych classic, but that's the point. Musical anarchy made reality, and not just sloganeering about anarchy from the musically structured punk bands.

To further elaborate on Charles Michael Sharp's profile on the band, Arthur J. and The Gold Cups went beyond the joke band tag for something more exploratory (click on images for better reading):

Although they only played for half an hour it was the greatest drag noise band of all time, Brendan, Geza and Scott wearing makeup and dresses serving up some Albert Ayler realness. I couldn't kick myself hard enough for boguing out on this awesome punk display!

I finally pulled the stick out of my ass and returned to the band a week later and toughed out the rehearsals - try getting nine mentally disturbed musicians to show up to rehearsal at the same time. Mission impossible! We ended up learning a few ridiculous covers, like The Beach Boys' awful "Long Tall Texan", the Cal Worthington used car ads commercial jingle, The Challengers' surf classic "Out of Limits" and we also did "Miserlou" (aka the Pulp Fiction theme song). "We Did It Again" always got played every six minutes.

I wore a mask on stage every time in honor of the now departed Marc Moreland, who wore a mask that fateful night on stage, to maintain the tradition of masked musicians. This not only got me attention when we played but I even scored a pic in Slash Magazine when our show got reviewed. Unfortunately nobody knew it was me on stage. I was always in disguise!

Reviews for the band were always hateful - the LA Times said our "joke wore thin" and even Slash Magazine said we were "annoying". I've met both reviewers in person since those reviews and I assure you these are the two most pompous, humorless people I've ever met, so the reviews weren't terribly shocking.

Since Brendan promoted the band he'd package three-day weekend shows at The Whisky A Go Go with us playing every night and a revolving door of punk bands supporting us. We played with The Avengers, X, The Alleycats, The Dils, Negative Trend, Black Randy & The Metro Squad, The Plugz and The Germs.

The band had one particular fan at the time: running down to LA after his band's legendary show at Winterland in 1978, Malcolm Maclaren saw the band perform at The Whisky and enjoying our penchant for shambling punk covers, he returned to England to produce "The Great Rock 'N Roll Swindle" featuring, you name it, shambling punk covers of songs like "My Way" and "You Need Hands". Oh well, it was cool seeing him laugh his ass off at our show.

With the band's advancing notoriety new members joined: Paul Roessler (Screamers, Nina Hagen) on keyboards, Hector Penalosa of The Zeros on bass, Steve Berlin of The Blasters on sax, Jeff Jourard of The Motels (!) on guitar, KIra Roessler of Black Flag on bass. It was a busy rehearsal studio.

The usual humbug broke the band up: a side project called Hal Negro & The Satintones featuring half the band doing awful lounge music covers, combined with a more polished and ordinary set of covers (Love Potion Number Nine, Let's Get Together from the movie The Trouble With Angels). The drag and the noise disappeared, no fun. Plus some of the members took the band way too seriously.

Geza left to pursue his own band Geza X & The Mommy Men and became one of the foremost producers in the industry, Spazz joined Toni Basil's dance troupe, Pat Delaney became a college professor and Brendan wrote several successful rock biographies. Everyone left and did better, anyway, even me.

Slash Magazine ultimately delivered the best eulogy for The Gold Cups. It went something like this: "One of the most lunatic outfits to hit the scene, but unfortunately one of the flakiest. Made up of various outcasts from other bands, The Gold Cups also featured some inspired fringe cult figures. In limbo at the present, but if everyone involved (all 250 of them) ever learns to show up at rehearsals at the same time their long promised comeback may add a welcome touch of madness to concert nights. Probably forever unrecordable".

To read more about Spazz, Geza and Brendan pick up "We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk" by Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen, available on Three Rivers Press.

"Improvisation, Identity and Tradition: Experimental Music Communities in Los Angeles" by Charles Martin Sharp can be read via Google Books.

"Every Good Boy Dies First" - the Electric Crime Novel is Out Now!!!!

"I can tell Electric Stories
Electric Stories that will surely blow your mind
People find that I can tell
Electric Stories very well"

-Electric Stories, The Four Seasons

"Every Good Boy Dies First", the bi-weekly serial run on my blog Out Demons Out has finally been published in compiled, full-length form for your reading enjoyment. The tale of a young musician's dream of playing in a band only to watch it degenerate into a nightmare of greed, power, and deception, just like any sleazy non-artistic corporation. It's the bitter pill no one wants to swallow: rock bands don't have more fun, and here are the reasons why.

"Every Good Boy Dies First" is the story of Griff (Sam Fuller's generic name for every hero featured in his films from Forty Guns to The Naked Kiss), Hollywood trumpet player who falls under the spell of both free jazz and punk rock and staking an original sound as well as a name for himself with his band Garbage Truck.

While Griff trudges around Hollywood setting up Garbage Truck shows his former music teacher, now homeless and destitute hovers around the old music haunts like a ghost. My novel basically sets the tone of story by presenting two different ends of the musical spectrum: a hip, promising young jazz player playing punk rock and creating new, exciting sounds; and the old guard, a failed big band jazzer, rotting on the streets of Hollywood after spending his life making traditional music. Did the ends justify the means?

The questions all through the book becomes: how far is Griff from becoming just like his teacher, Jeffrey Chandler, roaming from apartment building to apartment building like a vagabond, trying to keep hi home life together while maintaining his artistic muse? Will he eventually end up homeless like his sensei? Griff has to keep his head together while dealing with clueless radio DJs, parasitic fanzine writers and devious scenesters. All to a breakneck hardcore beat.

Garbage Truck play the hot clubs all over town but feel a degree of peer pressure to play a more accessible, alternative-friendly sound just to go with the flow. Because our story takes place during the grunge-fueled Nineties, the boys in the band plot to wrest Griff's ownership of the band and forego a less cacophonic punk for a more sludgy stoner metal sound. Griff's vision of exploring new sounds is viewed as a commercial threat to the more careerist rockers in the band.

Egging his band to foil Griff is an arrogant booking agent, played by Moish Wilson of Varmint Booking as well as shallow all-girl band Kitten Claws. While Griff feels the pressure to cave in to commercial vapidity - remember when Punk bands went New Wave in 1979? - he holds on strong to his creative muse, finally giving into a climax of extreme violence.

Because "Every Good Boy Dies First" is a punk rock noir novel first and foremost, there's a dead body in there somewhere, there always has to be, a sadistic nightclub bouncer with the IQ of a sack of rotting meat. When Griff discovers the stiff's carcass in a parking lot in the dead of night it's similar to Antonioni's Blow Up, a murder no one wants to believe, much less care about.

There are a couple of people who have groused about my novel being too depressing. I don't get this remark at all. I didn't set out to write a trite load of shit like Almost Famous or Rock 'N Roll High School. If the world of rock is so sweet and jam-packed with fun why do so many bands break up? Very few rock fiction novels ever delve into the struggle, bitterness and futility of playing music. "Every Good Boy Dies First" completely demolishes the false premise that every show's a party. If only they were!

The cover art was designed by Rebecca Seven, who's designed albums and tees for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, L7, Faith No More, and Frightwig, she was featured in the anthology of female lowbrow artists, "Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious".

"Every Good Boy Dies First" is first and foremost a story about artistic freedom and the battle to defend it even in a forum as self-deceptive as the alternative music scene. Dressed in noir clothes, you'll feel the throbbing feedback guitars humming through your brain and smell the beer and blood-stained walls closing in on you because Griff plays trumpet like Gabriel, summoning up doomsday with every blast. Read and believe!

Links to get "Every Good Boy Dies First":

Amazon Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/Every-Good-Dies-First-ebook/dp/B00EPQ074O/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377373472&sr=1-1&keywords=every+good+boy+dies+first

Nook
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/every-good-boy-dies-first-andy-seven/1116757678?ean=9781483505794&itm=1&usri=9781483505794

Kobo
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/every-good-boy-dies-first

Sony Reader
https://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/andy-seven/every-good-boy-dies-first/_/R-400000000000001104091

Scribd
http://www.scribd.com/doc/162212935/Every-Good-Boy-Dies-First

iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/every-good-boy-dies-first/id691805561?mt=11

Sold at Punk Rock prices - $2.99!

Cockfight - For Those Who Missed It

Cockfight was a four-piece band in the early to late Nineties that combined acid-rock metal guitar with jazz white-noise saxophone to an industrial machine punk rock beat, all dressed up in glittery glam clothes. You got a little Cramps, a little GBH, a little Sun Ra, and even some Sunset Strip metal. Like most of my music projects it was a little too much for the average rock crowd. We always did well outside of Hollywood and our only fans in Hollywood were mostly gay music fans, adopting us to play their clubs and rock showcases at The Abbey and The Garage.

I formed Cockfight as my regular band Trash Can School began falling apart, due to widely divergent musical and personal differences. One night I swung by to Rebecca's rehearsal studio to pick her up after her band Bitchcraft's rehearsal. As I sat by the front door waiting for her to finish I was getting increasingly more and ore blown away by her effortless facility to alternate between lead and rhythm guitar and sing at the same time. Her abrasive guitar tone was so incendiary it reminded me of Jimi Hendrix playing on "Manic Depression" and "Fire". I didn't need three guitarists any more because she sounded like three guitarists playing at once.

The first Cockfight rhythm section featured Rita D'Albert from the Pandoras and pre-Lucha Va Voom on bass guitar. She was a good, solid player and totally fit in with our space invaders glam rock style. She even smoked silver cigarettes. On drums was Erick Blitz who looked like he belonged in The Makers, eschewing a garage rock meets glam style.

After playing a few amazing shows with drag queens like Vaginal Creme Davis, Jackie Beat and Glen Meadmore. Cockfight guest starred on Sofia Coppola's pop-up TV show "Hi-Octane", shown on Comedy Central. We played against a dragstrip hellfire backdrop painted by Rebecca and me, and the great TV segment was directed by punk film director David Markey.

More offers for TV and recording followed: Cockfight recorded "The Stoner and The Stripper" for the Flipside Records compilation "The Devil You Know, The Devil You Don't", and Rebecca even got an illustration on the CD sleeve, too. Her style production friend Elizabeth Tobias filmed a video of the song with us performing on a huge Ed Sullivan-show type stage with guest star Ron Jeremy doing a Chippendales male stripper routine for an unruly crowd of funny money wielding grandmas. Erick Blitz left the band by this point so our friend, film director Roman Coppola sat in on drums.

Cockfight took a short break for two years and with a new rhythm section recorded a seven-song CD. Bo Kjaer played bass and surf documentary filmmaker Fran Battaglia played drums. The CD featured songs that ranged from punk blasts like "Liquor Store" to psychedelic ballads like "Lil' Albino Boy" and even drummed up a propulsive cover of The Plasmatics' "Sometimes I".

Unfortunately, in spite of all the breaks Cockfight was a tough sell given the tempo of the music scene was largely driven by jangly guitar sounding college pop bands, mostly headed by bookish looking snobs with thick horn rimmed glasses and drab Science Fair Geek clothes. Cockfight's brand of atonal glam-o-rama was too rock & roll and out of step with Seattlemania.

Cockfight, for me, was the last hurrah in playing music. Our last show was at Headline Records on Melrose (thank you, Jean-Luc!). After playing in bands for over two decades I thought it was time to find other avenues to artistically express myself, with writing providing a lot more gratification than anything. With occasional guest shots sitting in with Pressurehead, Pygmy Love Circus and The Anubian Lights it was time to simply call it a day. Cockfight, the legend and the legacy: To keep it noisy and look amazing doing so, Glam Noise forever!

Cockfight CDs and downloads can be purchased here: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/cockfightmusic

The File On Trixie Andersson

After the final, legendary show Garbage Truck played at The Glitter House the disappearance of Griff, leader of the band has been fraught with weird rumors. Many have said that he simply vanished from the punk rock scene after that last show along with his girl friend, the equally legendary Trixie Andersson. We sat down and talked to her about life after Garbage Truck.

Ms. Andersson looked happier than usual and was dressed in her favorite outfit of leather jacket, GBH t-shirt, leather mini skirt and black patent Doc Martens boots. She also had a button on her jacket that said, "Hell No I'm Not Rosario Dawson".

I: “Thanks for sitting down with us, Trixie. How’s life, or more importantly, what’s that bright, shiny stone doing sitting on your finger?”

TRIXIE: “Well! Andy, I thought you’d never ask. My hot boy Griff and I married about a week after the show and we’re both now living in semi-agoraphobic seclusion. Of course, this hasn’t prevented idiot scenesters, assholes like the guys in his band and that tired, old queen Dead End Kyle from spreading slanderous bullshit to sully MY GRIFF’S reputation”.

I: “Wow! Whatever happened to those guys in his band? Did they stay together after he supposedly disappeared?”

TRIXIE: “Ugh! Lady Godiva’s Operation, the sub-Sub-SUB-standard flop band run by dumb Bradley, Bert and ugly Bobby went on a tour of small-town colleges under the name of Garbage Truck. Can you believe that shit? Obviously a last-ditch attempt to cash in on Griff’s reputation, loyal fans demanded their money back when they realized Griff wasn’t performing - and those jerks only played two Garbage Truck songs, anyway. When Fritz-Franz Klein complained about the band’s lame decision to tour under a bogus name they coldly kicked him out of the tour van, dumping him and his drum set in the middle of the Mojave Desert. What a bunch of assholes!”

I: “Let’s talk about something far more interesting, like your career”.

TRIXIE: “It’s high time, Mister! Thanks for asking!!!! I’m now a pretty damn successful clothes designer in Hollywood, employing my hot new husband Griff as my assistant. Together we design cutting edge fashions we sell on Melrose, we’ve been on German and Italian TV and, and, AND, we’ve put on high-profile fashion shows on the fetish circuit, much to the ignorance of stupid fuzz guitar lovers”.

I: “I heard Dead End Kyle of Paint It Black Records badmouthed Griff saying that he’s living out on the street like a homeless bum”.

TRIXIE: “Yeah, did you ever hear anything so stupid in your life? If my Griff is homeless that what am I doing living in a nice apartment with a working, constantly ringing phone? The scary thing is that there’s people retarded enough to believe that moron”.

I: “Well, life hasn’t been the same since his wife divorced him after catching him having sex in a Jacuzzi with one of his garage band discoveries”.

TRIXIE: “And it wasn’t one of those untalented Japanese girls he’s always hawking, just some garage rock boy with pimples. HAW!”

I: "Can you give me a brief rundown on where you guys live and what it's like?"

TRIXIE: "We live in a one bedroom apartment in the Miracle Mile District, so very black career girl-type area. The so-called living room has my sewing machines, power tools, art supplies, so on and so forth stuff. The bedroom's more like Griff's laboratory with guitars, a synthesizer, amplifiers and his cool-ass trumpet. And of course, our comfy sofa bed, TV, videos, toys and crap. I have my own vanity alcove for make-up and glam fashions. Not bad for an allegedly homeless guy, huh?"

I: “Some people said you guys wouldn’t last. What do you say to that?”

TRIXIE: “What do I say to that? Those wrinkled old hookers Kitten Claws broke up last year,okay? Java The Hut closed down after the owners had a drug-dealing hissy fit but Griff and I are still together, maaaan. Add it up, folks!”

I: “Well, the bigger the hype the harder the fall. Didn’t Dale Cryer become a big star for five minutes?”

TRIXIE: “Andy, it was the most boring five minutes of all time! After he burned everybody in Hollywood and then weeped like a baby for having Hepatitis-C the whole town dropped him like a smelly, rotten potato!”

I: “He wasn’t much of a singer anyway”.

TRIXIE:“No, he’s just a thief and a born liar. He told everybody in town Griff was homophobic. Talk about sour grapes! Go steal somebody else’s small change, Cryer. There’s a 12-pack of beer with your name on it, if they make beer called LOSER-BRAU”.

I: "What's with the Rosario Dawson button on your jacket?"

TRIXIE: "I was at a club minding my own business, i.e. drinking a beer and listening to some raging hardcore when these two white heshers with tattoos and piercings, a Henry Rollins crush couple, came up to me and sheepishly told me I looked like Rosario Dawson. Before I could say anything they ran off like a pair of scared rabbits. What the fuck?"

I: “Thanks, Trixie, it’s been great talking to you. You’re still the coolest punk rock girl I know”.

TRIXIE: “Thanks right back, Andy doll. I made this rad studded belt for you, and Griff made this blue patent leather bracelet. Hope you enjoy them. Loyalty has its privileges and you’re the best friend we ever had! Our pals are the best and fuck the rest”.

Andy's Rockin' Internet Pals

If people want to spend their time watching the tired Foo Fighters play Who covers on television, that's their prerogative. Me, I'd rather check out new bands on the Garage Punk Hideout, a website that's the punk version of mySpace, a global smörgåsbord of grease and filth and full of rockin' good music. Here's my three most rockinest pals from that site:

The Raws: From Istanbul, Turkey(!) these guys play some of the most vicious punk rock I've heard in years with a guitar sound that'll rip your ears off and feed them to the dogs! They wear bug glasses, burglar masks and play in their panties. They also seem to think I'm a girl, but that's another story! One of the band members is called B-Man and they have a raunchy song about him called "BMen". Who knew Turkey was such a punk hotbed?

Les BOF!: It only gets weirder, folks! It's common knowledge that the French and the British hate each other like cats and dogs, so imagine a band from Scotland who play snotty garage blues fronted by a French dandy who looks like he belongs in a Jacques Brel musical:) Les BOF! call themselves "UK Premier French Garage Rockers" and they walk the walk = they play a killer tune called "J'ai Perdu Mon Mojo" ("I've Lost My Mojo"). Every song in their repertoire is sung in French, like Jacques Dutronc, their hero. Alors, marveilleux!

The Torpedo Monkeys: Saving the best (and weirdest) for last, The Torpedo Monkeys from parts unknown play greeaaasy garage punk squawk in cool rockabilly/glam clothes with "Planet of the Apes" masks. These sleazy chimps will give you chills when they tear through "Hanky Panky" and other mind-melting tunes. They also have a badass collection of pawnshop gear to rock yr. panties off! Charlton Heston must be spinning in his grave.

The Alleycats

Well, it seems like 100 years ago, but I’ll try to remember. I was putting together a show at Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco and I needed to talk to the Berlin Brats. I didn’t have anyone’s number but they were playing the Whisky A Go-Go on a Tuesday night. As I walked into the club I heard what was the most incendiary guitar playing I’ve ever heard, abrasive acidic tones with the most fluid lines ripping out of a small Fender Twin-Reverb amplifier.

Looking up, I saw the strangest trio on the elevated stage. The bass guitarist looked like a Chinese-American Ronnie Spector, and the drummer looked very wholesome, a Shakey’s pizza delivery boy who just stopped by to play drums; he really, really liked his roto-toms. He had many of them set up and used them quite a bit. The guitarist looked like an emaciated Martin Sheen, and when he opened his mouth to sing he had the voice of a pissed-off Popeye. He sounded exactly like Popeye. The band was called The Alleycats.

I quickly forgot about the Berlin Brats and gave these guys my total attention. I liked the way they didn’t acknowledge current musical styles yet exuded it completely. The true sign of cool is when you exude your own style without being a slave to whatever’s current or mandatory. They had it. At the end of their set they handed out flyers to their next show, the Fleetwood in Long Beach.

I went to the Fleetwood the following week and missed their set. I saw Randy, the guitarist and his bassist Diane in the parking lot. They stood in front of their 1970 Chevy Suburban talking to some fans. The first thing that struck me about them both is that off the elevated stage they were incredibly short, at least 5’2” both of them.

“Hey”, I said, “You guys are The Alleycats. I saw you play the Whisky in Hollywood. Great show! What time are you guys going on?”

Randy’s eyes got really big, “Oh, we already played, you missed us”, he said in his Popeye voice.
“That’s a drag”, Diane said with a cigarette in her hand. She reached in the trunk of the car and pulled out a box of Vanilla Wafers. “Want some Vanilla Wafers?”
“Diane, do we still have coffee? Get the thermos, I want some coffee”.
While Diane was hunting for the thermos with the cigarette now hanging from her lips, I told Randy, “Hey, do you guys play Hollywood much?”
“No, that was a last minute thing, we don’t get too many jobs down there”.
“Well, I’ve been getting some shows together at the Masque, this punk rock club in Hollywood. I’ll bet you guys would go over great there”.
“Do we have to do a lot of covers?” Diane asked, handing Randy the thermos she finally found.
“Oh”, I laughed, “that’s right, you guys play a lot of covers. Uh, no, it’s not important if you do”. Their taste in covers was pretty conservative: I remember a lot of Elvis (Jailhouse Rock sung by Randy, Hound Dog sung by Diane), Rolling Stones (Under My Thumb sang by both of them, Satisfaction sang by Diane), etc.
“I’ll set it up for you, it’s not a pay-to-play gig, either. Here’s my number…”
“Andy…from…Hollywood….Two…one…three…six…five..seven..” Randy very slowly wrote it down.

From that point on whenever I’d phone I was called “Andy from Hollywood”. Weird, I’m so not Hollywood, but to a weird rock couple from Lomita I was absolute Hollywood. That’s another thing, Randy and Diane lived in a weather-beaten house with some of the tallest weeds I’ve ever seen in funky Lomita, California. There was a crapped-out speed boat in the back yard, long gone from any Hemingway-like nautical expeditions. I’d come over for guitar lessons (I think I paid Randy $10 per lesson) and he taught me how to play badass guitar like him. They were the best music lessons I’ve ever had, and I’ve been to LACC and the Dick Grove School of Music. Of course there was coffee, Vanilla Wafers and Top Ramen. Lots of Top Ramen.

So, I got them into the Masque, but first they had to play 3 grueling nights at Gazzarri’s. They only played two, and actually got paid to not play the last night after the club saw how weird and “un-cool” they looked. Once they played the Masque everybody took them as their favorite band. Shows with tons of punk bands like X and The Last soon followed, including an attempt by the Go-Gos to steal Diane from the group to join them (she declined), and they even played the legendary Elks Lodge riot, where the LAPD brutally attacked hundreds of innocent punks from inside the dance hall. They even had a shot at a punk concert movie called “Urgh! A Music War”, which also starred Gary Numan, Devo, and The Police.

What went wrong? Well, they signed with Ratt’s manager, Diane moved in with him, they changed their name to something forgettable called The Zarkons, and made a couple of turgid records for MCA and Atlantic. Drugs got bigger and bigger in their lives until they stepped into the darkness and disappeared, and maybe if Andy from Hollywood hadn’t walked in and changed their lives they’d still be chugging coffee and playing Elvis covers in a Wilmington bar somenites.

Battlin' Bitches

Aaagghh...what a fuckin’ day its been. Full moon time. Asshole time. People walking with a lit firecracker jammed up their assholes. People acting crazy, people getting violent over nothing, Blackie thought, who’s minding the fuckin’ store?
Blackie walked down the sidewalk in a daze. Funny, it was dimly lit, but it was jammed with these punk rock kids. He felt a nudge in the ribs.
“Hey”, he turned to see a punk chick with spiky hair staring at him strangely. “I asked you if you had any spare change”.
“If I have a dollar...” he scratched towards his crotch, missing his left pocket, barely sustaining his consciousness.
“Dude, are you alright?”
“Uh, I just had my appendix taken out. Hurts like shit. They wanted me to stay in bed for a few days...I had to get out of there”, he finally pulled out a twenty dollar bill. A police car slowed down, and a bull shone a spotlight from the car window into the faces of the punks milling around on the sidewalk. The light hit Blackie in the eyes.
“Aw, shit”, the girl groaned, “I just bailed home, an-”
The policeman glanced down at a photo and nudged his partner. “I think that’s him. The Supermarket Shredder”.
“-sixteen. I’m not going back-”
“-maybe we should take him in. C’mon, partner”.
The bulls leaped out of the car, hands at their holsters like in a cowboy movie, ready for action. The punk girl grabbed Blackie’s hand and tugged him around the corner. “Hey!” the cops yelled and broke into a run. The girl slapped the twenty on the ticket counter in front of the nightclub.
“Salt Lake fuckin’ City. Rather eat a year’s supply of cat turds before I go back to that pisspot. Fuckin’ pigs”. Blackie turned around. The cops were gaining on them. She tugged him further into the club. The club was packed with kids, and the band on stage was Beehive 2000, guitars ping-ponging and ricocheting against each other, pre-recorded tapes screeching at ear splitting volume while the rhythm section pounded away like a freight train crashing into a house. The singer turned on a chainsaw, hung it around the microphone stand, and then turned on a steamhammer.


The punk runaway yelled over the noise, “Ah, dude, I can sure use a drink”.
“Twenty dollars is all I had”, Blackie groaned. “Here, try this”. He pulled out a large bottle of industrial strength cough syrup from his leather jacket.
“Ooh, baby”, she hooted, “I can sure pick ‘em!” She took a pull from the bottle. “Yeah!”
The singer on stage now had a sledgehammer in his hands and was beating on a loose car hood with it. The crowd cheered him on. Blackie took a pull on the hooch.
“Well, well, what the fuck is this? Blood hasn’t even dried yet and you’re already robbing the cradle!” a tall-assed blonde glared at Blackie.
“Barbara!” It was his ex-wife.
“This is what you leave me for? This Romper Room slag?” Barbara sneered. “Say, honey, you must be using my old man’s dirty rubbers for a pacifier!”
“Fuck you, bitch! Start trotting or I’ll stomp your cunt into cold cuts!” punk baby shook her fist at Blackie’s ex.
“You sawed-off gash, I’ll-” Barbara grabbed Punk Jailbait by the neck. Punk Missy retaliated by pulling Barbara by the hair. They struggled and Blackie just stood there guzzling on the sticky sweet syrup watching the melee. Something else grabbed his eye. The two policemen were walking through the crowd under the front of the stage. The singer on stage swung his sledgehammer and accidentally knocked over the mike stand with the chainsaw on it, flying off the stage, instantly decapitating the policeman, his headless body shaking with blood spurting out his neck like Old Faithful.
“Yay!” the audience cheered. They thought it was part of the show. The policeman’s head was tossed around the crowd like a beach ball.
“It looks so real!” one kid gushed.
The steamhammer flipped off the stage and kicked the other cop in the head, knocking him unconscious.
“Yay!” the audience roared, stamped their feet and whistled loudly.
“They’re even better than their records!“ another kid gushed.
“You fuckin’ cock holster, I’ll-” Barbara smacked the punk girl with a loud crack.
“Dykewhoreshitgobblinsow”, Punk Cupcake kneed Barbara between her legs real hard. Barbara slid down on a pool of spilled beer. Blackie tugged on his bottle giggling at the scene and briefly glanced at two bouncers tossing a punker out the back door. What caught his eye was outside a line of helmeted riot cops were approaching the club. They were well choreographed, just like the Rockettes, swinging billy clubs left and right in unison, legs doing the same.


Ah, Busby Berkeley would’ve shot a load in his shorts. A bottle flew from a crowd of punks and hit a cop in the head. All at once the chorus line broke up and cops were running towards the nightclub.
“Jesus!” Blackie sobered up and grabbed the punk girl. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”
“Not yet! I wanna finish her off!”
“Fuck it! We gotta move!” He yanked her arm and pulled her out a side door as the cops burst in through the back door. They ran down the alley. A few explosions erupted behind them. Gas seeped from the nightclub, floating up into the nighttime sky. Full moon time. Asshole time.