Gary Floyd interview: "Don't Tell Your Mother!" (from 2012 or possibly early 2013)

Screengrab from "Something on Your Mind" by Gary Floyd's Buddha Brothers

Hard to believe it has been ten years since I interviewed Gary Floyd, singer for legendary Texas punk band the Dicks, as well as Sister Double Happiness, Black Kali Ma, the Gary Floyd Band and the Buddha Brothers, pictured above, the latter two of which saw him using his powerful voice on country and folk songs. Gary's got one of the best voices in punk, but this tends to get overshadowed by some of his more confrontational antics, discussed below, when he used his stage presence to take a savage bite out of any homophobia present in the audience back in 1980s Texas - which can be best appreciated by listening to this astonishing tune, "Saturday Night at the Bookstore" but also expressed itself in costume and pranks (cf. the mayonnaise-filled condoms discussed below). 

I remember parts of this conversation quite well. Gary was in San Francisco at the time, while I was sitting in my Mom's bedroom, using a tape recorder hooked up to her landline to get around paying long distance on my cellphone, which would have been much more expensive. Mom - who has since passed on - was in the living room, watching The Price is Right on TV, and her presence, as well as that of Gary's late mother, came into the interview in a surprising - and surprisingly sweet - way. 

This interview got chopped up for a few different magazines, with parts of it running in Big Takeover, Ox Fanzine, and Xtra, but no-one to date has read the full transcript, presented below. I gather Gary's having some health issues - his friend Scott Ward posted a request on Facebook, that people "please send some positive healing vibes" to Gary. Gary himself has since reassured people that he is okay, but had a nasty fall, and is having some complications with his diabetes and his heart - which he'd been having problems with at the time of this interview, as well, which took place in 2012 or possibly early 2013. 

Send Gary lots of love, if you know him, and if you don't, here's a bit of an introduction (italics are me, the rest is Gary). 

[Part One - our first conversation]

So you’re in a garden?

Well, it’s outside of a doctor’s office/ hospital, but it’s in this beautiful part of the city, and there’s lots of trees and there’s a cool breeze, but it’s sunny. So it’s like the best weather in the world. The weather is the reason I moved from Austin to San Francisco, because it’s like 100  and some degrees (Fahrenheit) in Austin today, and it’s like 72 here.

I always had assumed it was because San Francisco has a more established and supportive gay scene, but Austin’s pretty open, too, right?

Austin is very open. It’s the great oasis in the middle of Texas. I mean, I first came to Austin in 1974, and it’s always been a very progressive city in the middle of a cesspool. Austin has a very supportive gay punk rock-and-all-sorts-of-music scene. South by Southwest should prove that!

Yeah! It baffles me that in the heart of Texas, the Dicks, the Big Boys, and MDC, three of the best punk bands to come out of Texas were all fronted by gay men (note: Dave Dictor no longer identifies as gay, but "gender fluid;" he would routinely perform in a dress back in Texas, though - sometimes with a beard!). How does that happen?

I’ll tell you what, it’s a good thing it happened then, because I sure as hell wouldn’t do it now! I’d be too scared. I don’t know why - I guess I wasn’t that damn young. I was, like, 25 or 26 - 24 when I started getting into the punk thing and 25/26 when the Dicks started. I don’t know how I had the guts to do that. A couple of things - more the progressive and liberal atmosphere of Austin - didn’t make me feel like I couldn’t do that. And my own sort of reasons - one of my friends says I have just enough redneck in me to make me not be afraid to be a big show off queen. I don’t know. And then another thing is, I had three guys in the band that were meaner than hell and ready to beat the shit out of anybody that did anything to me! And they’re all straight - for the most part. And those three elements made me very brave.  Biscuit and I from the Big Boys were walking around the city with crazy clothes and Mohawks and I always wore a big Chairman Mao pin. I’m surprised I didn’t get the shit beat out of me!

You never did?

I never did get beat up. Once there was a bit of a brawl - there were these frat-rats, who were the worst people in the world, they were very rich spoiled kids from the fraternities, and they were the ones that gave shit to the hippies and anybody that was alternative, the political people, and threw things at them. But there were a lot of tough people on the punk scene, too, so we held our own. But there was a bit of a brawl one night that I was forced to join in on, and immediately somebody hit me, and one of my girlfriends ran over and rescued me. I mean one of my “sister” girlfriends.

Was this at a club, or…?

We were leaving a party and going to our car and there was a little block-long park across from the street from where we were parked, and I guess they were out there drinking, and they yelled something, and one of the girls yelled something back. And then one of the boys went over there and they started hassling my friend and our girlfriends are going “Gary, you should go help him!” And I was like, “fuck that!” - but I did go over and sorta slugged at some guy who turned around and knocked me in the face. Then the girls ran over - “Gary, come with us, we’ll save you!” And then we jumped in the car and went back to the punk rock club and told everybody about the huge fight; but in the time between when it happened and when we got to the club, we embellished the story quite a bit. But you know - that was pretty natural…

So it wasn’t a gay bashing thing - it was just drunk assholes.

Drunk assholes. But I should clear up one thing - it’s really very lucky, but I never got a lot of shit from being gay there - I would get the occasional “faggot” yelled out the window, but I never got a lot of shit otherwise. I think it’s because I was in the very hardcore leftist political hippie scene, people probably didn’t know I was gay - they were yelling “hippie” at me or something like that - and then when the punk scene started, it didn’t take long before I was in the Dicks, and like you said  it was me and Biscuit - Dave was sort of back and forth between boyfriends and girlfriends and semi-boy/girlfriends - and those bands were pretty popular in town, and we had lots of friends in the clubs. So I never got a lot of the gay bashing thing. And then I moved out here, so I was very very lucky, because I was not just out, but I was politically out. And this was in 1980. I didn’t know it took a lot of guts back then - it was just natural. Now I look at it now and think, “damn, it did take a lot of guts!”

I was showing a photo of you in drag in 1980 to a couple of young punks at a bus stop the other day, saying, “look at this, this is Texas in 1980!” But I don’t really know what Austin was like. Maybe it’s not as brave as it seems - it seems like you’re lucky to be alive.

Well, you know what is so strange? There’s a picture of me that got sorta put on the internet, and I have a big old curly blonde wig on and a slip and I’ve got my tongue sticking out, and I’m making some big face. And that was on the internet a lot. So: skip to about a year ago, and I’m walking down the street in San Francisco and this young punk rock boy who looks about 20 comes  up, and he goes, “Gary Floyd?” “Yeah!” “Oh my God, I want to show you something.” And he pulls his sleeve and he’s got that picture tattooed on his arm. And I think I said something like, “You little motherfucker! What are you thinking!” - I was so shocked (laughs). And he was like, “Thank you for being a trailblazer for all of us.” And, I mean - I’m laughing, but it was actually very touching.

I bet.  

And there’s also a very widely-distributed picture of Biscuit and I, and we were at a Carnival in Austin, and we were both in drag, and we both looked REAL pretty. I had, like, a blonde crewcut, and sort of Divine-type makeup on, and they put it on the cover of a magazine in Austin, way back in ’81, and here in town, every once in awhile, somebody Xeroxes and makes big posters out of that picture, and they have written on it, “Who are your heroes?” I don’t have one of those, but a lot of my friends tell me they see them all the time. So those kind of things are wonderful. There were some assholes and some shit sometimes, but it makes all of that stuff worth it.

The thing about the early recordings of the Dicks, particularly “Saturday Night at the Bookstore” - that seems like there’s a lot of anger in it. But you don’t seem at all like an angry person, and it seems like you were in a really supportive scene, so was that anger coming from your experiences before you came to Austin, when you were in Arkansas and Palestine, Texas, or…

Well a lot of it was coming  from that, but a lot of it was coming from the general atmosphere. Because I personally wasn’t getting beat up, but I was constantly hearing things about people getting beat up. I worked for awhile in a hospital - it was actually known as being a hospital for the criminally insane, in Rusk, Texas. It was the same hospital while Roky Erickson was in - though I didn’t know him when he was in the hospital. But I worked there for six months - it was horrible. But because I was queer, I could spot queers, and I got to know some of the people who were in there, and they were, like, young people whose parents doing some queer stuff or dressing up like a girl, and they had put them in a mental hospital, and there was nothing wrong with these people! And they were being tortured: they would put electrodes on these kids, and then they would put girls’ clothes on them, and they would turn the electricity up, and as they took the girl’s clothing off, they would turn the electricity down. And when they didn’t have anymore girl’s clothes on, they weren’t being shocked anymore. This is the truth! This really, really was happening. I didn’t have to go through that to feel the fucking anger; all of those things were happening. Maybe because I was a bigger guy that carried myself in a way, like, “I don’t want to be fucked with,” that might have helped a lot, but other people weren’t as lucky. It’s the same thing with the anger I was feeling in all of those songs. Because they just got re-released, I was listening to some of them lately and I was thinking, “Yeah, I’m not sure I would have wanted to know me back then!”

But I’ve always been nice. I mean, I’ve always had a peaceful heart. But I’ve also been able to look into a mirror and see more than just me. [I could see] the police throwing Mexicans into the bayou and drowning them. I mean, this was something that was happening - the anger comes from an awareness of injustice to minorities of all kinds, and for poor people. That still makes me mad, but I handle it in a different way.

Even some of the Glitterhouse stuff, though - like “Spirit in the Wind” - is quite political. It stays in your music.

Yes, yes… I think that’s always with me, for 20 fuckin’ years now I’ve been practicing spiritual things now - I’m a Buddhist with, I guess you could say, Hindu overtones - but that never took away the anger at the injustice that happens, like some rich uncaring creep like the guy running for President - Romney - the way these people have the capacity to fool the poor into supporting them. Are you kidding me? They’re working directly against their self-interest. So I’m still mad, but I don’t take it into me anymore. I just look at it and think, you know, if there’s something I can do to make it better, I’ll do it, but if there’s not, then I can’t blow up inside because of it.

I wonder about the Black Kali Ma album - because it’s sort of an angry mode of music, compared to Sister Double Happiness or your acoustic stuff. Was that inspired by the wars in Iraq, or…? Where did the urge to make louder, angrier music come from?

Well, you know, all of that has always been there. I’m lucky I’ve never been stagnant. When I was doing punk bands, I was still listening to old blues music. Or like folk/ country type music. So when we started doing that kind of band - I was playing a lot in the Gary Floyd Band with Danny Roman, who had also been in Sister Double Happiness. And he and I, during the last Sister Double Happiness tour in Europe, we were writing a lot of those songs that were on the first Gary Floyd Band album, and we were happy when we got back… I thought, this is something that I want to express, it’s part of my influence and I feel like I could do it better this way. I was very happy to make those albums - I ended up making five of those kinds of albums. The last one was going more in the direction of rock - it was called In a Dark Room. That one headed back in the harder direction… Danny and I were playing some songs one day, and it was sort of soft, and I think it was I that said, “don’t you feel like tearing it up sometimes? I feel like playing some hard shit again.” Because I had ignored it for awhile, and it was raising its beastly head. So we said, “There’s nothing to stop us from putting together a hard band.” So I called my friend Matt Margolin, who played guitar on the record, and he was actually living in Minneapolis; but he was really excited about the idea, so he moved back, and we got Bruce (Ducheneaux) on drums, and we wrote some songs and recorded really quickly. It was one of my favourite bands - I really loved that band a whole lot. Unfortunately, we had one of those revolving-door bass player sorta things - we had about five bass players in a very short amount of time. And then people started getting in their own personal problems, and that kind of shit, so the band fell to the side; then Matt died, which was very very sad for me. He was a wonderful guy, a great guitar player, and he passed away. So there would be no chance of ever getting that band back together again. But all of these musics exist inside me: I’ve had the hardcore punk rockers go, “How can you make a song like ‘Spirit on the Wind?” You know what, it’s fuckin’ easy! If I worked in a gas station, I’d have to pump gas all day long and never do anything else. I’m a musician - I can do anything I want to do. All of it’s there, and none of it’s contrived. I’m not trying to write an opera or anything - I’m just singing what comes natural.

As I get older I’m finding myself revisiting to songs from when I was younger and younger. And I gather you had a Christian upbringing and were singing songs in Bible school - have any of those resurfaced? I gather you had been recording some Christian-themed stuff, as well.

Well, I’m gonna have to say it’s not Christian. I was raised to be a Christian, and the music I’m doing now has a lot of Christian roots, but I’ve changed the words enough, so… like, there’s a song that me and my sister used to sing, “we’ll understand Him better by and by,” and I’ve changed it to “we’ll understand IT better.” I’ve taken a lot of hardcore Christian things out, because I don’t want to alienate myself from the music. But I’ve always loved the old gospel stuff. It’s just the fundamentalist Christian atmosphere that it seems to carry along with it that I don’t like. But in the new stuff, I’ve gotten rid of the things that would hook in into the fundamentalist Christian stuff. But yes, I was raised Christian, and I was a good little Christian boy until I became a Communist!

How old were you when you made that change?

Well, you know, the Vietnam war was a wonderful teacher of people. We didn’t have the luxury to sit around and bitch about the war and do nothing, because people were getting drafted.

Including you!

I was drafted in 1972, but… this is the story: I had looked at what was going on in the news every night, and, y’know, there was this big huge war, and it was not just something 100,000 miles away, it was right there in the living room. And I was like, 14, and 15, and then I thought, at 16, “okay, in two years, I’m going to have to register for this shit!” And it was getting worse and worse. So I picked up a book called The Conscientious Objector’s Handbook, that was published by the Quakers, and it’s a question-and-answer thing with basically every question they’re going to ask you and every answer you’re going to give them. And I studied that book and I signed up when I had to register for the draft and I did two years of “alternative work.” Which means, they put me to work as a janitor at a charity hospital in Houston, Texas…

Is this Rusk? [The previously-mentioned hospital where Roky was held]

No, that was the last six months. The first year and a half I worked in Houston, and the last six months I finished it out at Rusk. And then I was free, and then I moved to Austin.

Did your sexuality come into it at all? I mean - I gather you could get out of the draft for being gay, but you never wanted to play that card?

Well, I hadn’t come out. From the very first sexualized thought I ever had, I certainly knew I was queer, but I moved very slowly on it, because I lived in Palestine, Texas, and my parents were there, and they’d already heard words like “communist” and “hippie” and all that shit, and the last thing I wanted to do was stick “queer” on top of it. And Palestine is a dangerous place to be queer. That was a pretty brutal place, although I must say I saw some people who were out - they weren’t fearing the danger very much. But once I got away from there, no, I didn’t want to use that card. It didn’t always work! Sometimes they would beat you down and make you say that you weren’t really queer, and then you’d go in and they’d give you an unbelievable amount of shit. And I was 17 and 18 and I wasn’t really ready to come out yet. But as soon as I moved to Houston, when I got drafted and I was around all the queers and stuff there, I came right out. Right out! But Houston had thousands of homosexuals....

[Part Two: conversation continues the next day]

I was curious about something - I'm here in my Mom's apartment; she had a stroke awhile back, so I look out for her...

That’s very sweet. Always loved my mother!

Your Mom's name was Garcia, right…?

That was her last name.

I was going to ask if you have any Mexican blood.

Oh, who knows. I’m an internationalist, as far as blood goes.

The cover of Broken Angels looks like it could be a Mexican bar.

You know what it was, it was a bar I used to hang out at - I did a stint in a bar that’s right on the corner of North Beach - you know San Francisco? North Beach was traditionally a big Italian part of town, but now it’s turned into a haven for tourists and restaurants. But there’s still some funky little corners. And North Beach runs right by Chinatown, and about twenty years ago, there was this funky, semi-scary little bar called Mr. Bing’s. It was near a seedy area where me and a friend used to hang out every day. And we would end our day of seediness by going and drinking at this little scary little Chinese bar called Mr. Bing’s. And we hung out there long enough that it became kind of a coolster-bar, mixed with traditional working-class Chinese guys. It was sort of a rough bar but it became a hang out point. I haven’t been there in years now, but I hung out there for two years. And that’s where that picture was taken. One of the bartenders was named Willy - he was a very big drinker! He would have these little shotglasses of some kind of liquor - they’d be all over the bar, and no matter where he was, he was able to reach and get a shotglass and drink it. So by the end of the day he was blabbering drunk.

Is this the guy on the cover?

Yeah, that’s him behind the bar there, Willy. We had to make this arrangement to go by early in the day when he first opened and he’d be sober. That’s where that was taken.

Knowing you’re from Texas, I figured he was a Mexican, but he’s Chinese, then!

He is Chinese! But I could have said it was taken in El Paso, in a little bar right on the other side of the border, twenty minutes before the cartel moved in and killed everybody but me. But that’s not really the truth.

You used to hang out at a place called The Lone Star in San Francisco, that was important to you.

Yes, it was important for awhile. It’s funny how bars, like lovers, can be so important and then they mean nothing after awhile. When… let’s see now. There was a period of time when I never went to gay bars at all, I only hung out at music bars. My best friend, Philip, who has since passed away, was always trying to get me to go to bars with him, but there was a period of time when most of those bars I hung out in, if you were overweight or looked alternative in any way, you weren’t really welcome, because most of the queens spent hours trying to groom and pump themselves into the most perfect example of what they felt “good looking” was. And I didn’t like that kind of look, and so I didn’t really go - I didn’t have much fun when I did. And then a friend said, “look, there’s a bar where they like big guys and the big guys hang out there and its more of a working-class type bar." So we went there, and it’s just wonderful. And this was a long time ago, when Sister Double Happiness was first getting together. And it was more working class guys, they weren’t into pretense, they were guys like me that were like, sick of the “spend-five-hours-getting-ready-to-go-to-the-bar” and all that kinda shit. It’s like - “I wanna go drink.” So that was the Lone Star - it was an early time in the sort of “bear” movement in the gay community. Traditionally a bear is a bigger or hairier guy, they’re not that traditional. And I loved that bar. 

And as Sister Double Happiness got more and more popular, we were on the cover of a lot of magazines and stuff, and people would see them and then they’d see me… It was very unusual for me to become popular in a gay bar! I had usually been NOT popular in a gay bar, but I made a lot of friends there and I met a lot of really cool people and I got a lot of support from that music community. But then like so many scenes it turned into a parody of itself - then they were spending hours getting ready to look like they weren’t ready - they would coif their beards and pluck their grey hairs. It became something I didn’t really like, but it was very important to my history that the Lone Star existed and came along in my life when it did. They were playing alternative music, and people were very accepting of alternative… you didn’t have to be a big fat hairy guy to go in there, everyone was very welcome. Now I find it a very alienating place, because like I said, it turned into a parody of itself. It happens, but it doesn’t make it any less important when it was going on.

There’s an interview with you with American Bear magazine online, and I think it was there I read a really funny story about someone being panicked about bikers coming to a Sister Double Happiness show…?

We did a live album - it got released after we broke up, but it was called A Stone's Throw from Love. It was recorded at a very beautiful venue called the American Music Hall. Yoko Ono’s performed there, and Johnny Cash. It’s not huge, but it’s a very well respected place here in town. And Sister Double Happiness did a show there and we recorded it and released it. It was an acoustic show, and it was sold out. We were really popular here in town and it was during the time that the Lone Star was where I was hanging out all the time, so people sort of knew me. They were excited that one of their own regular people was doing good enough to sell out the place that night. But they were sort of big, and they wore like, not all leather but - they looked sort of rough, if you knew them. A lot of them were working in beauty parlors and stuff, but they still looked mean. And a big bunch of them came, about thirty of them or something, and they were all sort of sitting there up front. And a roadie came back and said, “hey look, I don’t mean to freak you out, but there’s like, a whole bunch of bikers here. Like bikers.” And of course I said, “Bikers? Like, really? Like - mean?” And he went “Well, I don’t know - they’re right up front.” “Fuck, you’re kidding! God damn!” So I went and sort of peeked through the curtain and burst out laughing: “those aren’t bikers, those are bears!” I was a little freaked out, too - if we do anything wrong, they’re gonna like - and then I looked out there and I was very relieved: these are my brothers! And it was a great show, and they were a great audience.

 If I can ask, there’s a number of songs that reference sailors. There’s “The Sailor Song,” there’s “Off Duty Sailor,” and then on one of your solo albums, one of my favourite queer-themed songs is “A Better Man,” where it sounds like you’re giving head to a soldier…?

Well… it’s happened! All of those songs… well, use your fuckin’ imagination! (Laughs). The thing about it is, [they're about] sorta the opposites in our lives. I’ve always been sort of leftist-political and I’ve found, sorta “pleasure in the enemy” so to speak… uhhh…

Yeah, there's a painter up here, Attila Richard Lukacs, who has a kind of queer punk vibe - he once did this enormous painting with someone modelled on Henry Rollins, naked in a cage with a minotaur, or, like, naked skinheads with erections. But he's also done military series, lots of things with soldiers. 

It’s probably coming from a same sort of thing. A lot of that was during the Gulf Wars, and San Francisco was sorta a big hub of military people hanging out here and part of that seedy area - Mr. Bing’s, that I was talking about earlier - was a center of the place where a lot of those people would hang out, and me and my buddy would end up getting drunk with a lot of them and disappearing into the walls, so to speak.

Uh-huh!

It was quite an interesting time! (Laughs). I’m glad it happened, and I’m glad it’s not happening now.

In terms of places, the song “San Diego” on Uncut - what’s that about? I don’t understand all the references in it.

It’s a continuation of that same theme, but it goes a little further than that. I used to be fascinated by the city because there were about 100 billion military people there, and I felt so weird there, because although I found them fascinating, they probably found me repellent, which is probably all for the best. But it’s also a city where you’d be driving around on the freeways, and there’d be these stick figure signs and it would have two adult stick figures on these signs and a little kid. And the whole thing was representing that people who were coming into the country illegally were apt to be running across the freeway. So you needed to watch for them - it would be like if you drive into a big national park and there’d be deer on a sign. And I found those things disturbing at the same time as being interesting. So that’s where the whole thing about the mom, dad, kids running across the freeway came from. “They had a dream that they could be part of it/ so they ran from the snake pit/ headed straight for the bullshit.” It’s like, these people were running across the freeways, to get at something better, when all there was was this continuation of the weirdness of their lives.

Right.

But also, because there were so many military people, the song has big references to how they’re all getting their hair cut off. 100 pounds of hair on a barber’s floor/ tomorrow there’s going to be a hundred more…

It’s a great song - thanks for clarifying it. Another song I don’t really understand is "Bobby Shannon." A dog named Bobby Shannon?

Well, that’s my Hindu roots. It’s sort of like - I don’t take LSD; I did when I was young, but - it’s sorta like, if I did, it would be like I was sitting in the corner and visualized that whole thing: a dog who is a devotee of Haruman, the monkey god, who is a great devotee of Rama, and he was [???] Swadhu the dog. This is, like, totally made up - I’m not making it up now, but it was how I made the song up. And he would hang out in the cremation grounds to do his meditation, where he could best find enlightenment through the parallel of life and death. That’s sort of what the song is about - it’s about a dog that was like a devotee of Haruman. And his meditations were always held where death was very near. It’s a long way from “Dicks Hate the Police,” I guess!

It’s a little less direct, yes.

As I said yesterday, I never felt that I had to sing one kind of song! I felt like my subjects AND my music could be about anything. And the name “Bobby Shannon” was nothing - it was just a name I made up.

How did you get into Hinduism?

Well, I had been a very religious kid. My parents weren’t super religious, but they were sort of religious, and they would take us to church - we went to a Baptist church. And this was in the south. And then we moved to another town and they told us, we will take you to church, but we don’t want to go anymore. So if you want to go to church, we’ll get up, and we’ll make you breakfast on Sunday, and we’ll take you and we’ll pick you up, and we’re not going. I always thought that was very wonderful of my parents to give us a choice. And I ended up becoming a Catholic, which sorta freaked them out a bit - I met some Catholic people and I started hanging out, and I loved the statues and the weird pictures - I thought they were so nice. And I also loved the devotion that they had to the feminine - they never said they “worshipped” Mary, but - come on, please! The adoration of Mary, I sort of liked that. And later on, I became very political and I didn’t pay any attention to that shit for a number of years.

Why not?

Well, during the whole Vietnam thing, as a teen, I was developing my political ideologies - that’s when I did the conscientious objector thing, and I felt that the war was so misguided. It was such a wake-up call for many Americans. We were not fighting against the Communists or against the democracy of Viet Nam, we were fighting completely for US interests in that part of the world. All of those things became very obvious to people and religion seemed to be in complete opposition to what I felt like was the correct way of handling the situation in Viet Nam, and at the same time, Chile happened, and if you did any real investigation, you found out that all these things were done by a very evil part of our government. And it didn’t give way to a lot of religious thought; as a matter of fact, the church supported the imperialist takeovers of these countries and destruction of their governments. That wasn’t always the case, but… after so many years, I found myself being disturbed by a spiritual hunger, because I never really wanted to knock spirituality out of my life; it just seemed to be knocked out by a very odd political system that I was living under. And so then I started thinking - and this is during the second part of the Dicks, with Lynn and Sebastian and Tim, and we were touring, and I was like, feeling so odd. So I started searching and I started finding Buddhist books and studying. And it led to a book by a great teacher named Paramahansa Yogananda, called Autobiography of a Yogi. And that was my first introduction to Hinduism. And Yogananda was very open, and very wonderful, but it led me to the Vedanta, and there are Vedanta societies all over the place. And I started getting involved with non-dogmatic Hindu-based philosophy, more than religion, but I like the Hindu mode of worship and thinking, and I spent a little time in India hanging out at the Ramakrishna monestary. This isn’t the Hare Krishnas, it’s Ramakrishna, who is a holy man who died many years ago. So I was there last year - I mean, I’ve been involved in it since 1988. And uh, it was just a hunger that I had, and I felt like that was a spiritual food that best fed me. I don’t denounce the Christian faith - I think there are many, many wonderful Christian people who do incredible things, but they’re not the norm. I think that unfortunately the majority are the people that are making fools and asses of themselves at the Republican National Convention, which is the most repellent thing, the very opposite of what religion is. So I got involved in it because it came naturally to me. And I don’t ignore those kinda things.

I’ve read some read some Vedic literature.

Well, thank God! You’ve got it.

I don’t know anything about to whether they’re open to open to alternative lifestyles.

Like gay people, you mean?

Well, yeah! I know Tibetan Buddhism is not very welcoming, I gather.

Yeah, well, you know what you do on things like that? You go: Fuck’em!

(Laughter).

If they’re not very tolerant, you go, oh, well, fuck you. That’s one way to do it, and that’s usually the way I deal with it. It’s like, people say, “well the Bible says -“ “I don’t care! What do you mean?” But however, they can be intolerant. You know who Christopher Isherwood is?

Oh yeah.

Well, Christopher Isherwood was part of the Vendanta society. He actually translated many of the Hindu scriptures, along with his guru, who was called Swami Prabhavananda. Who was in Los Angeles in the 40’s, I believe, is when he came over there. So the Vendanta is very tolerant of homos. The core of the religion believes that sex can be sort of dangerous if you really depend on that for all of your kicks. Whether it’s gay or straight, you need to put it into context, which just means, after awhile, soldier-fucking can be a deterrent to your spiritual life if you’re not careful. You need to keep things in control! But they believe the same thing about eating and driving fast cars - you need to drive careful, whether it’s sex your driving or a veggie burger in your mouth. Putting things in your mouth, you need to be thoughtful about it.

That makes perfect sense.

Yes. The thing is, the little bit that you probably feel like you know me - which isn’t much, but - I wouldn’t be involved in something that is a big, dogmatic, weird, “you-can’t-do-this” finger shaking in the face - that’s not my shtick, I don’t play that. So it’s a wonderful, freeing philosophy. It’s sort of self-strengthening, without being so stupid.

I gather you’re a vegan. Did that come from your spiritual practice, or…?

Well, the vegetarian part did. I’ve been a vegetarian since 88. My father was a big hunter, and we always had a lot of trouble with that, because he would want me as a little boy to go hunting with him, because he loved to do that. He had been a big hunter with his family, because they were very poor, very poor during the Depression in the United States, and he would go out and kill animals and bring them home and they’d eat them! I mean - they were hungry. But by the time we came along (the children), we weren’t poor; we weren’t rich, we weren’t rich at all, we were probably more poor than rich, but we certainly didn’t have to hunt for our food. But it’d become a sport to him, and it was a little disappointing to him. One of the first times with me he shot a squirrel - he killed a bunch of squirrels; it was a squirrel nest. I don’t know if you know, but squirrels have little nests, and all these baby squirrels fell on the ground. And of course I became hysterical crying, and he had to take me home, and I had to have a funeral for the baby squirrels. A big bunch of shit. But I was never into the killing of animals, I always hated it, and at some point I put together in my mind that “ohh, all these burgers and hotdogs actually used to walk around and look at stuff and smell and have babies and live lives. And in between that and us eating them is this big ugly thing called a hideous factory where they cut them up. So - I don’t preach that in people’s faces, and if people want to eat meat, they want to do that, that’s fine. But don’t start kidding me or joking with me about being a vegetarian, and I won’t tell you that you’re a blood-hungry sonofabitch. That’s what you choose to be, and I choose to be a pious, big-headed vegetarian. It’s a big joke: how can you tell if a person is a vegan?

Uh -

Wait about thirty seconds and they’ll tell you. (Laughs). And it’s the truth. The only thing I like less than people eating meat is a big-headed vegetarian in my face! However, that being said, I do choose that for myself, and it did start for spiritual reasons. I just don’t think you’re going to get a lot of good out of killing stuff and eating it. But you know what? That’s me, I’m not judging people - shit like that, I don’t give a shit. It’s only a few years ago that I started really trying to do the vegan thing, and I found that much harder than being a vegetarian, because I like stuff like yoghurt and stuff like that. But if I lived on a farm, I would certainly not be a vegan - I would milk the cows and have my own little sweet chickens and eat the eggs and stuff like that. But the way most of that stuff comes to me, the way I’m able to get it, is through very ugly ways. The way that cows are milked and treated in those dairies, it’s horrible. And those people who love a good glass of milk and yoghurt and cottage cheese and such - they don’t really know that, or else they don’t want to see that. And it’s hideous, it’s horrible the way they’re treated, and then after they’re crippled and beaten and all that kinda shit, then we’ll put’em in the slaughterhouse and make a nice big burger out of them. So that’s why I’m a vegetarian, and that’s why I’m vegan. But again - you asked me, I wouldn’t have brought it up otherwise, because I don’t want people to preach. People come to these things on their own, and I don’t think it makes you a bad or evil person if you don’t eat like me, y’know? I don’t like people to judge people for that kinda thing. Now, I’ll judge you for something else, but…

(laughs)

But for that, people should do what they wanna do. 

Do you think part of what you’re talking about deals with the denial of death in our culture? We’ve really sanitized any awareness of death out of western culture, and there’s a lot of songs in your later catalogue, like “Waiting for Anyone” or “The Loss” about AIDS, that deal with death…

I don’t know… maybe I haven’t thought about my reasons for writing about all those songs. When the AIDS thing hit one of the first songs I heard about it was my own song, “On the Beach.” [note: it's a song that predicts the use of internment camps for AIDS patients. “Just ask the Japanese about the internment camps/ and if you’re sick my friend they’re gonna open up again.”

And then “Waiting for Anyone…” It’s sort of putting yourself - I think I’ve said this earlier. I’m lucky that I didn’t get AIDS and die, I’m lucky that I didn’t get HIV, I was lucky. But it doesn’t mean that I can’t sit down and imagine how hideous it is. Especially when it first started spreading, it was a death sentence. Of course now it’s much better, and it’s not - it still exists, and people still should be really careful, and people still do die from it - but it’s better. And yes, this sorta goes back into the factory that’s ripping the guts out of cows and pigs - you don’t see that, you see a nice package with a piece of something in it, that’s all wrapped up really nice, and you’re missing something… and I dunno, maybe if a lot of people had to go and pick their meat up in the factory, maybe they wouldn’t do it. But it’s almost like I’m starting to preach about the vegetarian thing, and I don’t want to do that.

Okay. well, let's move on - I was going to ask about the name Black Kali Ma, because that also sort of seems to deal with destructive energies, but I don’t really understand Kali.

Well, forget everything you know about her and think about her as the most loving mother! All those things that look hideous, when you look at the image of Kali, those are things that she’s protecting you from, not things that she’s threatening you with. But you definitely want her on your side! She’s got the big sword she’s swinging, with a belt of arms and a necklace of heads, all of those things are like portraying ego and lust and attachment and jealousy and those are things that she’s taking away from us if we give them to her. And yes, there’s a whole sect of people who study her - I’ve been studying Kali for years; I worship the Divine Mother Kali, that aspect of her… (I was someplace and a woman said something about), “Kali, the goddess of horror and death,” and I just flippantly - I should have kept my mouth shut, but that’s not really the way I work - I said, “well, also, she’s the brightest light and as surely as she destroys, she also creates.” And she said, “that’s not true.” And I said well, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” But then I stopped, because I didn’t want to get into an argument about the whole thing. I’m not trying to come across as a saint - I’ll argue all day long - but the older I get the less I want to.

Yeah. There’s better things to do.

Like I really give a shit what anybody believes. But anyhow, most of the aspects of Kali that look quite terrifying are actually for the protection of her devotees.

Why “Black” Kali Ma, then?

Well, most of the pictures I’ve seen of the mother, she’s black! The skin is black. Sri Ramakrishna describes it as, if you see a raincloud from a distance, the more intense the raincloud, before the rain comes, the darker the cloud is. And it’s the aspect of the mother that she’s dark like a raincloud.

Very interesting...  but let's move on. I’d like to go back to the early Dicks stuff, if I could! I wanted to ask - you saw the Sex Pistols in their last show?

Oh yes, I did. I was living in San Francisco. I had moved out there to get away from an ugly love affair. I’m thinking it was before I even left, I saw the Ramones… I’m not really sure, I get confused - y’see, I drank a little bit back then (laughs). That’s how it seems - the bigger the punk you are, the more you drink, and the more you drink, the less you fuckin’ know about what was going on. But I was living in Paolo Alto, which is about an hour out of San Francisco, and I was getting into punk rock music very much, but then, you know, the almighty Sex Pistols were going to be playing at Winterland here in San Francisco. And me and my friend drove into town and there was a guy, not even scalping tickets, he just had tickets in the parking lot. You know what? They were like, five bucks apiece. And we paid five bucks apiece and went inside, and it was crowded; when I went inside it was the Nuns playing, and Penelope Houston - the Avengers were playing. And then the Sex Pistols came on, and yeah, it was completely fascinating. It was almost one of those things that when you saw it, even though when you’re young, things like that, you probably don’t think - “this is probably pretty heavy.” But I remember watching it and thinking, “This is something. This is not just like an everyday affair.” And there’s Sid with a big cut on his arm… I actually knew people who lived in the Haight and after the show Sid went over there and O.D.’ed. It was quite the night. It was quite the night. So yes, I did see them there.

I think you had said that the guy who turned you on to the Sex Pistols was actually on death row.

Yes, he’s been executed. He was in Austin - his name was David Lee Powell. And he was the first one that had the Sex Pistols’ 45’s that a friend of his in England had sent him, and he was very much into the Runaways, I remember, and - he listened to a lot of those bands back then, Jonathan Richman’s band… He was the one who turned me on to all that. He was an odd character, and he got way off into speed, and he was one of those people who said, “well, this stuff is really good; instead of buying it, why don’t I make it.” And that was a big problem, and we all sort of watched him go crazy in front of our eyes, and then he somehow got ahold of an AK47 and a cop stopped him and he shot him and killed him. So he spent the last 25, 30 years in jail and then they executed him, about a year or so ago. Yep.

Wow.

This is the real shit, brother. We’re not fuckin’ around here!

So what were you listening to before you became aware of punk? You were in your mid-20’s already, so what were your tastes?

Around about that time, I had gone back and was listening to a lot of the old blues guys like John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins. I think Johnny Winter had just come out with a Johnny Winter and Lightnin’ Hopkins album.

I love your cover of Johnny Winter’s “Dallas,” by the way. I thought that was awesome.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty good. But I always loved that song, and I thought, “well, I could probably do it a lot different, or just try to like, pay a little tribute to the way he did it.” Later on, I heard him, he actually did it with a whole band, as well as just him and the guitar… but… I think the first time I ever heard that song I made a little mental note: “I’d like to do a cover of this before I die.”

Yeah, it’s great. Did you ever - like, that song is about packing weapons. Did you ever…?

(Laughs). I was a pacifist, no I didn’t. I was a pacifist AND a sissy, so those two sort of went together. It would have been hell to be a pacifist AND a tough guy! I have actually heard of pistol packin’ sissies, though. That would be a good name for a band, actually!

(Laughter).Speaking of weapons, what about throwing stuff into the audience, like condoms filled with mayonnaise?

(Laughs) Who would do that? Who would do that?

Where did that start? What was your inspiration?

The thing about it - I think I saw a porn movie onetime where somebody - well, maybe it’s best not to get into that. But I wasn’t all that offended by it, semen and a rubber; it’s the most natural thing in the world. Though back in those days, most people didn’t use them, and they weren’t around - they were something you saw in a gas station, sometimes; so when you were actually wielding a rubber, people were quite fascinated. And so I thought one night I’d wear this pretty little stretch knit dress onstage, and I thought, “well, it’s pretty plain; how can I decorate it?” Why - rubbers, with mayonnaise in them, of course. So I put a little watered-down mayonnaise in each one of them, and it looked, lo and behold, like sperm. And I just pinned about thirty of them on the front of the dress.

(Laughing): I love it, man.

And I saw people in the audience and I thought, “gee, I’m being so selfish not to share it with them…” So I was tearing them off and throwing at them. And of course they didn’t know that it wasn’t real - and they probably wouldn’t have wanted mayonnaise on them, I don’t know; but I know they certainly didn’t want anything else on them. And the people that would look the most shocked, I would throw several at them. I really think I only did that once, and it’s funny that 35 years later we’re still talking about it - but it did go over pretty good!

Well I’ve heard of a few things - a cow’s tongue, chunks of liver in your panties, enema bags filled with beer.  

Yeah, yeah… all of’em. But you know, it was like - the enema bag was new. I had my limits; I wasn’t just going to find an enema bag on the side of the road. I went to a drug store and bought a new one! And I didn’t want, like, grandma’s peepee bag. And somebody actually handed me the cow’s tongue - this is obviously my pre-Hindu days! And I had the liver - I just thought that would be pretty weird. I think I actually had a pair of underwear on, and then I put a pair of panties on with a liver inside of those. And I didn’t really realize what was going on: I had a really short skirt, and I thought, at the right moment, I will dig into these panties and pull the liver out. But the liver, so to speak, had a mind of its own, and it started sort of hanging out and I kinda bent over backwards to pick a beer up and everybody was going “Beaghhhh!” Because the liver was sorta hanging out from under the short skirt and it was creating quite a little scene of its own. And then when I realized this, I thought - “I better give it to’em.” But it’s not like GG Allin - that poor doll was throwing shit at people! I was just giving them liver.

Right.

He certainly was a tougher guy than I was, I’ll give him that. I never wanted to throw shit at people - never wanted to do that. We put frosting in the pants, and that way I could dig it out from the panties and put it on our bass player’s face, without him taking the bass and beating me to death, because he actually knew what was going on. I was fine on doing those theatrical things, but I have to tell you, when I thought people were starting to depend on those as a reason to come and see us, I would stop doing them. I always wanted to be able to go up there and just be dressed normal and play the music and have that be, like, enough. And when I felt like that was the case, then I would add the antics and the extra stuff. If you start “putting on shows,” then you’re always going to have to up the ante a little bit.

Did you bring out any props for the 2004-2005 reunion shows?

Absolutely not. Not a thing. If I hadn’t had, like, a beard, I probably would have, but I never liked the drag-with-a-beard. And at that point I would just look like an old woman! (Laughs).

I was watching American Hardcore last night, because I thought Dave Dictor talked about the Bad Brains in there, and he doesn’t, but he does talk about performing in drag when he needed a shave - like, he seemed to enjoy the contradiction.

Well, everybody to your own, you know - said the old woman when she kissed the cow’s butt! My grandmother used to say that - that’s how I got some of my humour, was my grandma. Yes, yes. Between Biscuit and me and David would do some things sometimes - Austin was funky, that it had that kinda shit going on.

Let me ask you about “Saturday Night at the Bookstore.” The one that’s on record is from the first ever Dicks gig, right?

That’s right, 1980, May 16^th,  Armadillo World Headquarters.

I have a dozen questions about that. Did you have stuff written down? Because so much of that song, as you’re performing it there, sounds like an extemporaneous live rant. Did you actually have a lyric written?

No, absolutely not, it was all off the top of my head. We had practiced it a couple of times, but we had only been together two weeks, as far as the four of us actually being in a room, putting the songs together. So Glen just had that kinda funky guitar beat going on, and Pat (laughs) had drugs, and he was the drummer, so… Glen had the guitar and Pat had other things! So the whole song was a little bit made-up-on-the-spot. We did have the beat, and we had the guitar part, and like I said, we’d gone through it a couple of times. I did have some words, but who could say those words off a piece of paper? So it did come fairly natural.

It’s an amazing performance. We were talking about how brave some of this sounds. I always wonder, there’s a point in the recording where you say, “hey, motherfucker, I want to suck your cock after the show,” or something like that. I have to keep my voice down… my 82 year old Mom is watching TV in the other room…

(Laughs) No, she doesn’t need to hear it.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking gay sex, straight sex - I don’t want to explain to her what a gloryhole is.

(laughs) You know, I’d like to say: please don’t. Please don’t do that to your Mom! She’s better than that. My mother - I remember when Sister Double Happiness first put a record out, and my mother, and she was listening to it; because she always would play the Dicks stuff. And she said, “Oh I’m so happy that you don’t have all those nasty cuss words, because anytime I would play the Dicks when my friends would come over, they would always look at me so funny!” And I looked at her and I said, “you would play that shit when your friends came over?” And she would go, “Well, I was proud of you!” “Mama, you’re kidding me! Don’t do that! Just tell them your son is in a band, don’t play anything.” “No, you just make some songs that don’t have all those nasty words.” And I was like you - I was thinking like, the GLORYHOLE? You’re really singing WHAT? It was weird enough for me to play it but for HER to play it to her friends, it was like…

(Much laughter).

My mother came one night to a show that we did. I mean, she stood off-stage one night when the Dicks were playing with Black Flag. I mean, she could take it - she could take all that. But she was in the audience one night when Sister Double Happiness were playing, and she was visiting, and a bunch of my friends were with her, and she’d had a drink or two - she wasn’t drunk. Then I thought, “I’m going to introduce my mother, and she’ll probably be very embarrassed and, like shy.” And so I said, “And now I’m going to introduce my best friend, and it happens to be my mother.” And my mother stood up in front of the whole group and screamed, “MAH BABY!” And it was sorta - I mean, I’ll cry thinking about it, because my mother died - but I got almost teary-eyed onstage. And we had to break into something like “Cry Like A Baby,” the Sister Double Happiness song. So I do understand - there’s no reason to explain.

Alright, good! 

So - that was an odd song. And it was at this big hippie club, Armadillo World Headquarters, and it was a big place; it was very very famous. Frank Zappa had recorded a live album there, the Clash had played there, so it was big. And I do think about - this is what I was saying yesterday. It was such an odd time: it was 1980 in Austin and the hippies - the hippies didn’t love the punks, either. And since I had been sort of a hippie, I certainly was always real rude to the hippies after I became a punk, because I knew how easy it was - how you could offend them so easily. And it was fun. But I mean - it did take a lot of guts to do that. I guess I felt that since I was onstage I was immune to anything happening offstage because of it. And it didn’t. People never said anything - like, they were going to kill me, or…

Like, the guy that you were singling out, saying you were going to suck his cock, was this someone who was looking like he was INTO it, or someone who was looking like he was NOT into it? Do you remember?

It was 1980, buddy. I don’t really remember, and I’d probably had about sixty beers! So… but it was funny, when I was doing that kind of stuff onstage back then, if people looked like they hated me, I didn’t mind throwing a rubber or singing a little lullaby really. So I don’t remember. I do remember that someone through a chair onstage, and I threw it back, and it hit some poor old girl that I didn’t even know. She weighed about thirty pounds, and the chair knocked her down and I felt horrible. But afterwards I went up to her and I apologized and she said, “oh, I was happy you hit me.” You poor drunk doll you! But we became friendly afterwards. What a time…

The other song I have to ask you about is “Little Boys Feet.”

Well, that was mainly done just as a shocking number. There was a thing in a newspaper about somebody that worked in a shoestore, and - I don’t know, they weren’t after kids, but they got arrested for doing some kind of footlicking or something like that. I don’t know - “let me measure your feet with my tongue” or something. And you know me - always one to be influenced by the news. I just sort of made a song out of it. Later on I ended up working with runaway kids and stuff, and I probably wouldn’t have used that kind of shocking image if I had realized all the shit that happens with kids. I probably wouldn’t have used it. But you know what, I did. And I’ve never worked in a shoe store, and I’ve never wanted to lick any kids’ feet.

Okay.

But it’s a pretty good image.

The audacity is there. But gays get so much shit for this sort of thing -  the Boy Scout thing, or, I mean, Bill O’Reilly was saying the other night that “pedophilia is a homosexual problem” that it seems almost borderline irresponsible. I could see a gay listener of that song going “What are you doing?”

Well, but you know, I did say, “give me your sister, I want her feet too!” So it’s sorta like a little fair play for everybody. And once again, if I had a chance to do it over again, I would not have evoked the children thing. I would have said - “give me grandma’s feet,” or something. Which would have been probably more offensive in a long run. I don’t really apologize, except to say that I probably would have done it different now. That being said, in 1980, it was extremely offensive, it shocked everybody.

It’s a great song, I’m not against it, believe me.

I didn’t even want to put it on the Dicks 1980-1986 compilation, but Biafra sort of made me. He loves that song.

Is that on there? I don’t think its on there.

Oh, God! I guess I won that argument then. Well, all I can say is - fuck everybody.

It’s on Hungry Butt though. One thing that occurs to me - it was not obvious from the early Dicks records that you knew how to sing as well as you do. And then you really, really came into your voice with Sister Double Happiness, I thought… so was it tough to go back to singing Dicks songs? Did you have to unlearn anything, or…

(Laughter). No-one has been so brutally honest! You might as well say “you sound as bad then as you did earlier.”

No, no, no, I don’t mean that! I LOVE the Dicks, I love how you sound, the early style is very ROUGH, and I mean… just was it difficult to sing Dicks songs again, you know what I mean!

No, because - it was really weird, because we hadn’t played together in about eighteen years, and there was a time we didn’t talk that much. Then we slowly - because we loved each other so much - started getting in touch with each other again. And Glen (Taylor) died, and we started getting back in touch; me and Buxf and Pat are very, very close. It was hard to NOT say, “maybe we could do a show.” So then I guess it was Shooting Pains (featuring former Dicks Buxf Parrot and Pat Deason), I’m not sure, were going to come out and play, and I said, “of course, you can stay with me.” And so as long as they were going to be out there, why don’t we do some Dicks songs? And slowly but surely it turned into a full reunion thing, and then we started doing them. We did them for about five years - I’m not going to do anymore. But we did them for awhile. So those guys came out here, and we advertised it, and it was obviously going to be a big deal; so we got a practice space out here, and we went in there and like I said, Glen had passed away, but these other two guys (Mark Kenyon and Davy Jones) played guitar. And we just fuckin’ made a song list and we went through the songs, and they sounded incredible, they sounded just like we had the last time we practiced, eighteen years earlier. And so we said to each other - we’re obviously happy that they all worked so well, and that there was the same sort of intensity, and we all felt really cool. And we said, “Well, should we play’em again,” and everybody went, “Nahh, let’s go drink!” So we went through the songs once, but the same feeling was there. And I have to say, because we wrote them during the time that we were so into what we were saying - everything from the shock value of “Little Boys Feet” to “Pigs Run Wild,” which we were writing directly out of stuff that was happening around us - and it’s not like that much has changed really. So many things are the same, that can still invoke feelings that bring up the honesty in that music. And so I guess my voice sounding a lot the same was just the honesty of what I was singing and how I was singing it. Because I think if I was singing “Wayfaring Stranger” or “Better Man,” I would sing them like I sung them on the record, I wasn’t trying to perpetrate something besides myself. So I guess that I didn’t plan it… Also, I was drunk when we recorded that album!

You don’t drink anymore, right? You had to stop?

Uhh… Probably I could drink if I wanted to; I couldn’t drink as much. But I haven’t drank for two and a half years. Which is almost makes my tongue fall out of my mouth to even say that. I was never a big horrible drunk, but I was drinking a lot. I would drink two to four times a week, and I would drink a lot of beer when I drank. So, like, I’m a very bad diabetic, and I have heart problems and all this shit, so… It would be pretty stupid if I continued to try to do that.

Let me ask about the Dicks remasters... did the Kill From the Heart masters surface?

I don’t think that the masters surfaced, but I distanced myself from that. All I wanted to do was put out, on CD, These People, because it had never been released on CD, which always pissed me off, so I was talking to Alternative Tentacles, and Biafra really wanted to release Kill From the Heart, and I said - you deal with the other people on KFTH, because I don’t really want to have anything to do with that, but I do want you to release These People. And so - everybody got their way.

Everyone I talk to likes Kill From the Heart more, and I feel kind of alone in the world, because I really love These People.

I was very glad to hear you say that, because I also really liked it a lot. I thought it was a big transition, the most perfect transition between the Dicks and the Sister Double Happiness first album. I thought some of those songs like “George Jackson” and “Off Duty Sailor” - sailor, sailor! - could have been on the first Sister Double Happiness album - probably a little different. But I was getting really sick of having to live up to writing songs and keeping the punk ethic in my mind. I never really did that too seriously, but by the time that we were going to record These People - well, first off, it was three different people and me, it was Lynn, Tim and Sebastian - and they were looking more to me then, to sort of lead the music, because I was “the Dick,” and - I mean, the other guys didn’t do that, they did whatever the fuck they wanted to; I always wanted to be leader but they’d never let me - but with These People my influence was a bit more there, and I didn’t want to just do the hardcore stuff, I wanted to expand it. And yeah, I mean - it was getting to a point where people were saying, “Play louder! Play faster!” and I was like, “fuck you, I don’t want to play faster! I want to play slower…”

That’s the stuff I love - the slower songs, your voice has more room to flourish.

Well I was, like, not afraid to sing! If I actually sung in tune on some of the others - I remember not wanting to do “Dead in a Motel Room” and also “Sidewalk Begging.” I mean, I did want to do them, but I didn’t know if I wanted to put them on the album - “all of these people are going to hate these songs!” But of course I’m glad I did. I mean, “Sidewalk Begging” I think is still a great song. If I do say so myself, which of course I will. Um. But I do like the album, I like the album a lot. But I know, everybody likes the other one better. Remember what I say to those people!

What do you say to those people?

…Fuck you!

(Laughter).

Remember? I’m not ashamed of the first album, I’m not afraid of it - I thought that was a pretty good album, too. And it just so happened that some guy that I thought was really nice - Steve, he owns 1-2-3-4-Go! Records over in Oakland - had gotten in touch with me on Facebook and saying “so many people are bootlegging ‘Dicks Hate the Police,’ and I have a record company, and, y’know, you guys should put it out again, and talk to me about it. And I was just sorta in the right mood at the right time and I just sorta trusted the way he sounded. And I said, “Well, let me get in touch with the other guys!” Everybody was for it. It just all happened at the same time. So they’re all out there again. It’s interesting that I’ve done so many other kinds of music and the oldest one is the one people still talk about.

I love it all, it’s all great. It’s too bad the Glitterhouse stuff is so hard to find. And even the American compilation of that, Back Door Preacher Man, is out of print.

Well, the guy that put it out, Pat Thomas, now has written a book - Listen, Whitey! - have you seen that? It’s a very - it’s getting to be a very famous book, and it’s about the music of the black panthers and the black scene that was happening from 68 to 73, or something. And he wrote about it and the music that was influencing the scene and it has an accompanying CD with it. And he’s the one who co-owned the company that put out Back Door Preacher Man, because I’d like to talk to them - I don’t think they exist anymore - that if they can’t do it, *I’d* like to put it out again. The funny thing about that album is, he and the people at Glitterhouse had this bizarre notion that they didn’t want it to come across as a compilation, and I was going, “Well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, the way it’s laid out doesn’t really make sense unless people know that it comes from a group of different albums. One of the criticisms that people have of the record is that it really doesn’t have a cohesion to it; you’ve got all these - I remember the first time somebody said that, I just wanted to slap the shit out of everybody! I was thinking, you know - you have all these different songs flowing together, and if it had been advertised as a comp, it would have made more sense. That being said, I think the songs are great.

Yeah! 

Did you ever see or hear In A Dark Room? None of those songs are on there - it was done with a different label, it was done with Rough Trade Germany, and as soon as we put the fucking record out, they sorta changed their format, and dropped us and dropped all these other people, because I think they had signed one of these groups like the Backstreet Boys, or somebody like that, and they were going to go in that direction. And I think they all just dissolved and went out of business. So I’ve got about three of those left. I’ve got a friend in Germany who, everytime he finds one, he buys it and sends it to me, because I don’t have any! And I would like to just release that again. I mean, I know it wouldn’t make much sense, because I’m not doing anything to support it, but just so it’s there. I think In a Dark Room is a really good album.

And it has some really notable guests on it, too, doesn’t it? Penelope Houston is on it?

Penelope Houston is on it, and I’ve had Chris Isaak’s drummer play on a few of my things, and Jimmy Pugh, who is the keyboard player for Robert Cray, and he played with John Lee Hooker - he plays the keyboards on some of those songs.

And Lynn {Perko, of the Dicks] is on it.

Yes, yes, Lynn is on it. And that guy’s back around again, Jonathan Burnside, who was the producer, and he also owned the recording studio where I recorded all those GFB things. He and I didn’t hang out for a long time - he moved. But he’s back around now, so there’s a chance we might do some things again.

What about this album you were talking about self-releasing?

I’d hoping that will come out sometime around Christmas. A lot of it is recorded, but about half of it is recorded, and I have a lot of ideas for the rest of it.

We never did talk about the episode with the Bad Brains. 

Well, I mean, I lived in Austin then, and I was one of Biscuit’s really good friends, and we all knew what was happening, but I’m feeling pretty Buddha today, so I forgive them.

Ha. Okay. Well, let's keep in touch. 

Yes. And don’t, whatever you do, tell your mother what a gloryhole is!