WHAT WERE YOU EARLY EXPERIENCES WITH PUNK AND HARDCORE?
I was talking with Chris Lohman (guitarist of Blackspot) about this today and I think it had a lot to do with why we were all going to shows, doing bands, fanzines and all that kind of stuff. We had no thoughts in our minds that we might make money or make any kind of a living doing this stuff. I went to my first show in 1990 at the Reseda Country Club. The bill was Farside, Walk Proud, Carry Nation and Judge. My brother made me go to the show and through my neighbor Joe Nelson I met the guys in the Sloth Crew, Dan O'Mahony, Big Frank and others, all at that show. I just sort of kept coming back after that. Making more friends and then one thing led to another and I started doing a band so suddenly this thing I went to on a cursory basis became my whole life.
Favorite bands from that time are clearly the standard ones that everyone has... NO FOR AN ANSWER, CARRY NATION, FARSIDE, GAME FACE, BLACKSPOT, OUTSPOKEN, INSIDE OUT, MEAN SEASON, A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL, 108, DRIFT AGAIN, etc. I'm trying to name enough bands so that if any of my friends in those bands read this they won't feel left out!
I could go into stories and shows from that time... but I am currently making a hardcore documentary titled ORANGE COUNTY HARDCORE SCENESTER. It covers the scene from 1990-1997. Since I have been working on the voice over that pushes the narrative of the story, I have tons of anecdotes swimming around in my head. I have tried to put most of them in the documentary provided they are relevant. This documentary is going to be done much like Robert Evans' THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE. It follows a voice over track that has lots of stills, video footage and show footage. At the very least it should be entertaining and hopefully funny.
DID YOU HAVE ANY INTERESTING EXPERIENCES OR CONTACT WITH OC HARDCORE SCENE NOTABLES SUCH AS PAT DUBAR, ZACH DE LA ROCHA, DAN O'MAHONEY, THE OC SLOTH CREW, ETC?
Since that question falls within the scope of the ORANGE COUNTY HARDCORE SCENESTER documentary I will give you a quick blurb about each one of those guys.
Pat Dubar - My mom drove me to Peer Records in Fountain Valley and cut a check to Pat, who was working behind the counter, for the SCREAMING FOR CHANGE LP. I didn't even listen to it until 4 years later, I just wanted to buy the record off the guy who sang on it and Nelson told me Dubar was that man.
Zach De La Rocha - Sitting in the Spaghetti Factory in 1991 we talked about his new band RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. They had just started playing. He had been at Orange Coast College and I was starting up there the following fall. I told him he should return to OCC so we could be in school together. He told me he was hoping his new band took off and then he wouldn't have to go to school.
Dan O'Mahony - Sitting at a boxing match in Las Vegas, former WBC Heavyweight Champ Oliver McCall had just fought and was sitting in the audience near us. He had hurt his hand in a fight. Dan was a little tipsy and he asked McCall how "fucked up" his hand was. "It's not too fucked up to fuck up anybody that asks about it!" McCall yelled at him. I was scared but Dan just laughed.
OC Sloth Crew - Too much to name... those guys were always a lot of fun and they are still amazing friends today.
HOW DID ICE FORM? AT VARIOUS TIMES YOU FEATURED VADIM FROM HALF OFF, POPEYE FROM FARSIDE, AND JEFF FROM GAMEFACE. CAN YOU PROVIDE THE LINEUP THROUGH THE YEARS?
I was going to shows and playing in a band just seemed possible. The scene was very accessible in the early 1990s. As long as you could get 5 songs together you could play somewhere. We were lucky because Mike Kushner aka MC and myself were friends with Joe Nelson. Joe was INSTED's roadie and he was dialed into the scene. I mentioned to him that MC and I were doing a band and the next day he told me he had talked to Big Frank who did NEMESIS RECORDS and, provided we didn't suck, he wanted to sign us.
ICE spent almost 2 years having false starts because MC and I were involved with the scene, but none of the other members we would get were. Things really got going when we got Vadim in the band because he had been INSIDE OUT's first drummer. He played in HALF OFF. He was originally in 411. I got a friend from high school named Mark Wirthlin to play bass and that was the line-up until about the summer of 1992. Then Vadim got too busy but by that time MC and I had become tight with Popeye. I knew he wanted to play drums so we asked him, he said "Yes" and things were good. Then in 1993 Mark left the band and we all knew Jeff Caudill, he and I had been hanging out pretty regularly, and he wanted to do it so then he was in the band.
TALK ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES FRONTING ICE. NOTABLE SHOWS? WHAT WAS THE OC SCENE'S REACTION TO ICE IN GENERAL? DID PEOPLE TAKE IT SERIOUSLY? WERE YOU FROWNED UPON? BOTH?
Being the frontman for ICE was (and currently is) awesome. The band is just fun. Sure, I don't think any of us wanted to go on stage and look stupid, but at the end of the day we just wanted to have a good time. MC's comment once was "We're the kind of band where people can leave the X's at home." That wasn't a slam against straight-edge because we both were at the time. Rather, so much about hardcore is being serious and... hard. We were two guys from the suburbs of Orange County... most of the members of the scene were, what did we know about being hard?
My favorite show was when we played with GAME FACE, SAMIAM, and STRIFE at the Elks Lodge in Anaheim, CA. The place was at the top of a hill and it seemed pretty big. There were a lot of people there and we were practicing a lot because we were about the record the "L'Chaim" EP. We were really tight as a band and it was really cool to be playing with those bands. We were friends with all those guys and it just made the whole thing that much more fun. I also think it's funny that we played a show at Goldenwest College with Sublime.
I think people enjoyed ICE when they got what we were doing. I know that for a lot of people we were a joke band. We sang about haircuts and dinosaurs for crying out loud, how could we not be comical in some way? I also think were a little too early with the '80s thing. By that I mean covering Tommy Tutone's “8675309/Jenny”. I remember when we first covered that song, it took people a while to get what it was. However, that might've been more a case of them not knowing what we were playing.
All in all, I think people liked us. I don't think we were anybody's favorite band or anything, but we were just out to provide people with a good time.
WHAT BANDS DID ICE CONSIDER ITS CONTEMPORARIES? IF THE ANSWER IS "ICE WAS IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN", WHAT BANDS DID ICE REGULARLY SHARE THE STAGE WITH? ARE THERE ANY BANDS YOU WISH YOU HAD PLAYED WITH?
ICE was certainly not in a league of it's own. GAME FACE, FARSIDE, TRIGGERMAN, BLACKSPOT, OUTSPOKEN, DRIFT AGAIN, STRIFE, LIFETIME and certainly others were definitely contemporaries. If we could have played with any bands I would have loved to have shared the stage with SICK OF IT ALL and THE DESCENDENTS. I had a chance tour with those guys for 5 weeks in the summer of 1997 on the Warped Tour. They were just awesome people. THE DESCENDENTS inspired ICE to be the band that we were. They showed you that you could be completely funny but also totally serious at the same time.
DID ICE EVER TOUR? WHAT'S THE FURTHEST YOU EVER PLAYED, GEOGRAPHICALLY?
ICE never did. We talked about doing a one or two week thing here and there but it never happened. With half your band doing the biggest bands in the scene at that time, and the other member away at school in San Diego we played as much as we could. The furthest ICE ever would've played was probably RUSTY'S GARAGE out off the 15 in the Hemet area, I think. We and a bunch of other bands never played because the show got shut down.
ARE YOU AWARE OF OTHER JEWISH-INFLUENCED OR JEWISH-THEMED HC BANDS? WERE YOU THE FIRST AS FAR AS YOU KNOW?
I have not heard of other jewish-influenced HC bands but I remember seeing the band VITAMIN L at the Quality Hotel in Anaheim and the singer opened their set with a prayer in Hebrew. ICE obviously wasn't a "jewish" band. We just had members who were although when things ended I was the only jew to speak of. The main reason for the "L'CHAIM" 7" had more to do with MC and I having this fascination with delicatessens. MC isn't jewish but we used to love to go this place in Huntington Beach and get corn beef sandwiches. Thematically ICE never touched on topics of judaism mainly because with me writing the lyrics, I wasn't smart enough.
HOW'D THE 2X7" ICE DISCOGRAPHY ON SLOWGUN COME ABOUT?
Ryan, who does or did SlowGun Records, came to me and wanted to put out the ICE stuff. I figured if he was willing than we would do it. The rest of band didn't understand why I was letting this guy re-release our EPs when everybody was well into CDs at that point, but for me it sort of touched on what made ICE so funny. Why wouldn't we do vinyl when it was clear that CDs were the dominant music format? Also, it was great to be label mates with the GAYRILLA BISCUITS.
RINGSIDE RECORDS --- DISCUSS THE IMPETUS, THE GOAL, ANY NOTEWORTHY OCCURRENCES IN RUNNING THE LABEL.
RINGSIDE RECORDS came about because nobody would put out the ICE stuff. My friend Drew Traulsen was doing the label Jester Records and he was just cranking out releases by SMILE and DOWNER. Drew was a one a man show and he made it seem easy. So I asked him what I need to do, in 10 minutes he told me and I was off and running.
My initial plan was just to release the first ICE 7". After I did that I realized how easy it was and we just did another one. Since I was friends with Jordan, Mike and Dennis, I had my distribution set up through REVELATION and NETWORK SOUND. Then bands like TRIGGERMAN and IGNITE saw that I was dedicated to doing this and they had nothing to lose so they put out EPs with me. After that bands started to call me here and there and one of my proudest moments was when Dan Gump, he was singing for the band EXCESSIVE FORCE at the time, came home from a summer tour and told me he had seen "RINGSIDE RECORDS all over the country."
DO YOU HAVE INFORMATION ON THE RINGSIDE DISCOGRAPHY?
The ICE - MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME 7" was pressed at 300 copies. After that, everything was done at 500 copies. The exception would be IGNITE who did 1000 copies (on multiple colors of vinyl). However, I was merely the distribution machine on that release. That band was filled with hardcore guys who had done some bigger bands before IGNITE. They were sort of out of the scene when they came to me and being on RINGSIDE was a way for them to get something quickly and cheaply.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE RINGSIDE RELEASE, IF YOU HAVE ONE?
Probably the L'CHAIM 7" only because ICE was starting to progress at that point. We were actually becoming a decent band. I was starting to sing a little better, MC was really getting good on guitar so of course we had to break up, right?
The funnest to make was clearly the ENSWELL / PICOLO PETES split 7". We had myself, Hartsfield, Enright, PT, Quintin and Hampton in a recording studio for 5 hours. All in all we did almost 10 songs, I think. RINGSIDE RECORDS covered all the costs and it was just a great time. The PICOLO PETES songs were so short that Virgil, the engineer, never knew if they were done or not. It was a great day.
SPEAKING OF ENSWELL, PLEASE GIVE A QUICK HISTORY. WITHOUT THE RECORD IN FRONT OF ME, I BELIEVE IT WAS YOU, HARTSFIELD AND ENRIGHT ON THE RECORDING? WERE THERE OTHER MEMBERS AT ANY POINT? WHAT WAS THE IDEA BEHIND THE BAND? WERE YOU FEELING CREATIVELY CONSTRAINED BY ICE? HOW MANY SHOWS DID YOU PLAY? ANY STORIES OF NOTE?
ENSWELL came about because I was spending a lot of time around Popeye and Jeff. They just made playing guitar and singing look like something that I could possibly do. I knew that Hartsfield played drums and he an Enright were hanging out a lot back then so it was just a good situation. Then I asked Todd Trout (guitarist of GAME FACE) to be in the band and we started sounding pretty good. It really helped me because I am literally awful at playing guitar and singing. Then Enright left to do Eleven Thirty-Four, we got Jason Hampton, then Straight Ed McKirdy and then we ended with Paul Miner.
The goal for doing ENSWELL was just to do a band where I could play more. This is also why it went back and forth from being a 3-4 piece band. The toughest part about ICE was that I was the only person either A) not in another, bigger band or B) not going to a 4 year school (I was in OCC at the time). The thing about doing bands is that it's very hard not to do a band with someone who isn't already in 3-4 bands. I think we played around 15 shows total.
Our most notable show was when we played the ICE HOUSE in Anaheim with SUBLIME and VITAMIN L. The place was packed and we got up on stage, started our first song and I broke a string. I didn't have another string or guitar and Hartsfield looked at Enright and I and said, "Lets get the fuck out of here." And we did.
The show where we were the tightest was at this nice seafood restaurant in Anaheim by Disneyland. The line-up was myself, Hampton and Hartsfield.
ANYTHING YOU WISHED YOU HAD RELEASED ON RINGSIDE BUT DIDN'T? WHAT WERE SOME IDEAL RINGSIDE PROJECTS, BOTH REALISTIC AND PIPE-DREAMS?
I think if I would have hung around longer I could have done an ELEVEN THIRTY-FOUR ep. I would like to have done one because I really liked that band a lot. I wish I could have done the second TRIGGERMAN CD, the second 411 CD and I wish ICE had done a full length CD. I also always wished ENSWELL would have done a full length CD.
YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY INTO BOXING, AS NOTED BY THE LABEL NAME, THE COVER OF THE ICE "MAKING UP..." EP, AND THE NAME OF YOUR 'OTHER' BAND, ENSWELL. I SEEM TO REMEMBER YOU BEING A BOXING WRITER FOR A WHILE AS WELL. CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR ATTRACTION TO BOXING? WHEN WERE YOU INTRODUCED TO IT? DO YOU STILL FOLLOW IT CLOSELY?
I love boxing because it gives us a chance to see people in their truest form. So much of boxing is psychological. There is so much strategy at work. There's nothing like seeing a fighter enter the ring and knock the other fighter out in one round. Conversely, there's nothing like seeing two evenly matched guys go twelve rounds. They can be brawling or in a chess match and it's no less exciting to me. It's just always been something that I have respected. This idea of knowing you have to perform in front of other people. Going back to Oliver McCall, I remember seeing how he would come out for fights. He looked very intense. Almost to the point of crying. He'd pace back and forth and with scowl on his face. Believe it or not, I always tried to channel that before I played in any of my bands or before I went on stage as an actor. The idea that you have to "leave it all on the field" has always been very powerful to me.
I started following the sport when I was 14. I bought a KO MAGAZINE that featured George Foreman talking about his comeback when he was 40. I started watching more fights on TV, buying more magazines, and before I knew it I was able to talk about the sport in a more in-depth way than most adults. I then started my own boxing website, eventually I started writing for FIGHTNEWS.COM, and doing all that got me too close to it. I got a taste of the world of delusion that surrounds the sport. From there I pulled back immensely. I didn't watch the fights that much but I always kept on it through FIGHTNEWS. I have started watching it again but not to the level that I was. I wouldn't mind starting a blog but I'd need to up my game again. Also, at the time I got out I was gambling on the sport a little bit. I never lost or made a ton of money, but watching a fight when I had money on it always made me uneasy for some reason.
ANHENDENIA FILMS. WHAT INTRODUCED YOU TO FILM MAKING? WAS IT A SELF-TAUGHT ART OR HAVE YOU HAD FORMAL TRAINING? HOW MANY FILMS HAVE YOU PRODUCED?
My parents are the main reason I got into filmmaking. They were always taking me to the movies, to plays, they always had books around the house and this just encouraged me a great deal. However, my involvement in the punk/hardcore scene gave me the ability to create things myself and put them out in the world. I went to film school as a film studies major. I just wanted to get a degree and I literally got one watching and writing about movies. All of my hands-on film training came from doing it myself and, as my past (and maybe present) movies can attest, I really didn't know what I was doing. However, to paraphrase John Cassavetes, "Why would I be afraid of something I don't understand?"
I have made a total of 8 movies under my film company Anhedenia Films. They are:
WALKING BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS
SAFETY IN NUMBERS
THE TOLL COLLECTOR
WATCHING A MOVIE
CURSE OF INSTINCT: 108's FINAL TOUR
SCHUSTERMAN LEVINE: A BOXING FABLE
ANGELA'S HOME MOVIE
1985-1986
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON FILM-WISE?
I recently completed an animated TV show based on the characters from my feature length, animated film 1985-1986. I am submitting that around right now and have actually had interesting degrees of success with it as far as getting me in the door to work with people who have done movies and other projects on much higher budgets. I am currently rewriting a new script with my writing partner Andrea McQuade titled CAMEAGE (after THE DESCENDENTS song). It's a buddy comedy.
I am searching for a distributor for my animated film 1985-1986. It's tough because my animation is simple but the subject matter isn't straight up funny, but it isn't really vulgar either. I tell people that what I am doing is a cross between Charles Schulz and Larry Clark.
I KNOW YOU HAVE SOME OTHER PROJECTS OUT, IN THE WORKS, OR BEING PLANNED. TELL US ABOUT YOUR VARIOUS CURRENT ENDEAVOURS.
I recently self released a young adult fiction book about a hardcore band in Orange County that gets sucked into the White Power movement. It's called MY SUMMER OF HATE and is available through AMAZON.
I have a horror script called INSECT that is a little like PHANTASM. That script needs to be rewritten then I plan to make it very quickly. It is live-action. After that, I have a screenplay titled THE SENSORY KID that needs rewriting. It's a boxing movie but it has an interesting twist. There's also some other scripts that Andrea and I need to get to. The trick is finding the time.
THE UPCOMING REUNION SHOW -- TELL OUR READERS ABOUT THE CAUSE IT IS SUPPORTING. DID ICE HESITATE WHEN ASKED TO PLAY OR WAS IT A NO-BRAINER? WHAT'S THE ICE 2009 LINEUP? WHAT CAN WE EXPECT ON STAGE THAT EVENING?
In the 1990s there was fighter that fought a lot around the west coast. His name is Gernaro Hernandez. He wasn't a brawler but rather a very skilled, technical fighter. I saw him fight once for 48 seconds. I was with Jeff Banks (guitarist of A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL). Hernandez and his opponent, Raul Perez, butted heads and the fight was called. "Go to the cards!" Banks laughed. I later got to meet Hernandez again when I shot some footage of him (that I didn't use) for my boxing movie. Basically, this guy is a class act and his body has been afflicted by a fast moving, rare form of cancer. All the money that is hopefully generated will go toward caring for this man who was really a great champion both in and out of the ring.
Initially, Dan O'Mahony called me to tell me that he was interested in playing music again. He then mentioned his idea of NO FOR AN ANSWER doing a cancer benefit. I told him that I thought it was a great idea. He lost his mother to that disease and so did I so the idea of playing the show seemed great.
The show is on March 22nd, which is a Sunday. MC wasn't able to do the show because of this. Originally, ICE wasn't going to play. Meanwhile, I had sung HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA by THE DEAD KENNEDY'S at the CHRISMESS benefit that Chris Lisk put on at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. The house band that night was Brian Balchack (ELEVEN THIRTY-FOUR, IGNITE), Timmy Lunsford (HONEYSLIDE, WILLOUGHBY) and John Barry Smith (CALIFORNIA UNITED). We had such a good time doing that one song, that when the opportunity came to do ICE again for the NO FOR AN ANSWER show, I just made the decision to do it.
There is now talk of ICE possibly recording again and releasing all our stuff... however, we will be including the 2009 members and doing it as a 7 piece.
As for what people can expect...
I am not kidding when I say costumes, DVD giveaways, bad jokes, movie impersonations, and something else that you will have to see to believe...
