Of the Circle Jerks, Zander Schloss, Repo Man, and 7 Seconds, with photos (and a story) from Bev Davies

The Circle Jerks on April 11, 1981 at 10th Street Hall, San Francisco, photo by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

DOA on April 11, 1981 at 10th Street Hall, San Francisco, photo by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

If you've seen the documentary American Hardcore, you'll know that early in the birth of hardcore, there were some very aggressive moshers coming out of the upper-middle-class community of Huntington Beach, Los Angeles. In the film, Henry Rollins characterizes the typical HB mosher as "the high school jock who found punk rock," but as he tells the story of seeing the Circle Jerks in San Francisco, opening for the Dead Kennedys at the Mabuhay Gardens, you can tell the aggression that the band's fans brought with them made an impression on him: "It sounds like someone's exaggerating when you tell them the story; it sounds like, 'Oh yeah, you're just making it up.'  No. I've never seen anything like it... the Circle Jerks started playing and all you saw was fists and San Francisco locals hitting the floor." 

That was probably the same 1980 gig that Ian MacKaye, in town with the Teen Idles, talks about here (Rollins mentions in the doc that MacKaye was present, though the Teen Idles ended up dropped from that particular bill). In the same film, Circle Jerks/ Bad Religion guitarist Greg Hetson remembers the gig well. It "was one of the very first times we went out of town at all," and they'd brought "20 or 30 kids from the scene from LA," Hetson explains. "They were still pogoing back then in San Francisco, so we came in with our people and we just fucked up the whole thing. The promoter was freaking out: 'What's this, you bring these crazy kids and they're destroying shit and they're fighting!' 'We're not fighting! It's the way we do it in LA!'"

Greg Hetson in American Hardcore

That promoter, we assume, was Mabuhay Gardens MC Dirk Dirksen. Vancouver photographer and cultural treasure Bev Davies, who was in San Francisco shooting DOA, recalls that the Circle Jerks were added to the bill of a DOA show on April 11th at 10th Street Hall, "because the Huntington Beach crowd were too much for Dirk and he had announced that the Circle Jerks will 'never play this town again.' So DOA added them to their 10th Street Hall gig April 11, 1981." ("That sounds about right," Joe Keithley confirms). 

Online evidence suggests that the Circle Jerks would again play the Mabuhay Gardens, even headlining gigs later that very year. But it's thanks to Dirk's momentary freakout (and those aggro HB-scene moshers) that we have Bev's pictures of the band in 1981 (that's a 20 year old Greg Hetson on the left, below).  

The Circle Jerks on April 11, 1981 at 10th Street Hall, San Francisco, photo by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

Current Circle Jerks bassist Zander Schloss - whom I've extensively interviewed, though only part one is presently online - was not in the band at that time. He would join the Circle Jerks in 1984, first appearing on record with them on their fourth album, Wonderful. 

Before that time, Schloss - who was already playing guitar when he moved from Missouri to Los Angeles as a young teenager - had been playing in a funk band called Juicy Bananas, of whom little evidence remains. though they would end up providing the music for the "Bad Man" track on the Repo Man soundtrack (voiced by "Lite" actor Sy Richardson). Schloss's involvement with the film, which was where he also first met the Circle Jerks, began with his getting work as a production assistant. 

Schloss' own telling of the story of how he landed the role of Kevin - ultimately beating out a young Chris Penn, who briefly actually had the part - will have to wait until Part Two of the Stereo Embers piece gets published (which I think will be after the Vancouver gig), but in (Repo Man director) Alex Cox's very entertaining memoir, X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker,  Cox offers that he had told Schloss he could have the role, "but the producers were less keen: Zander had never acted before. How could I give away a good part to our cigarette-butt-picker-upper when real actors were circling the picture?" 

Bowing to pressure, Cox told Schloss that he had changed his mind, setting Schloss - now an "aggrieved cigarette-butt-picker-upper," as Cox describes him - to complaining around the set. Then Penn had disagreements with the wardrobe department about a "silly hat" he wanted to wear, apropos of the film, which revealed, it turned out, a deeper misunderstanding of the role. "He'd been hired to act in what was supposed to be a teenage comedy," Cox explains. "So, to get into his 'comic' character, he had brought along this 'comic' hat. This was an immediate problem, because we weren't playing the film like a comedy. Our strategy was to make Repo Man as downbeat, dingy, and 'normal-looking' as possible, so if you saw a still from it, you'd think it was a contemporary thriller, not a comedy. Harry Dean had wanted to wear a fedora, and I'd had to dissuade him. The other actors understood this strategy." 

But Chris Penn, Cox writes, "had come late to the production, ready to do American comedy the way it was usually played: try to be funny, mug a bit, pause-for-the-laugh, Saturday Night Live style." 

These miscues worked in Schloss' favour - and watching dailies with Penn in the role of Kevin, Cox and producer Michael Nesmith came to the agreement that in fact, Schloss was the better man for the job, which enabled Cox to go with his first instinct and set in motion a long and storied career for Schloss. 

Zander Schloss with the Circle Jerks, courtesy of Zander Schloss

Besides acting in other films - most delightfully in Cox's later film Straight to Hell, which I spoke with the director about here -  Schloss ended up touring and recording with Joe Strummer, collaborating with him on the Walker, Permanent Record, and Straight to Hell soundtracks, and serving as musical director and guitarist on Strummer's first post-Clash solo record Earthquake Weather. He's also played with Thelonious Monster, the Weirdos, Die Hunns, Stan Ridgway, and Pray for Rain - among others. And Zander has a new, acoustic solo album, Song About Songs, which he's made several delightful videos to support, including "I Have Loved the Story of My Life" (with marionettes representing various phases of his career), "Dead Friend Letter," in which he plays a suicidal biker, and the title track. We talked about the album in terms of "musical comfort food," with Schloss explaining that his intention

was to write things that have an influence that goes beyond a short period of time... I generally gravitate – as far as, like, trying to write a song – to songs that would potentially have a place in the American songbook. You know what I mean? I’m literally thinking of songs like, “Oh, My Darling Clementine” and “Camptown Races” – stuff like that where it’s just like, unmistakably a melody that belongs in the American songbook. And the influences that I was using... were, I guess, gospel and Appalachian in origin. If you go beyond that, those sort of influences are coming from English and Scottish and Irish folk music. Archetypes exist in melody, in musical styles as well. So I want to give people something that’s familiar, to sit them down at the table and make them feel welcome to sort of participate and listen to the song and digest it, basically like sitting them down and serving some turkey and some gravy and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. You don’t send out the exotic dishes first, that are too spicy to eat and unfamiliar to them.

There's more to come from Schloss when part two of that Stereo Embers piece hits; I'm probably going to hold off on it until after the Circle Jerks' Vancouver gig, so we can run fresh photos (Bev will be there, too - I love the idea of having pictures of a band 40 years apart, taken by the same photographer). We're also in the process of setting up an in-store performance/ signing for  Schloss at Neptoon Records, when he's in town for the July 3rd Circle Jerks gig at the Commodore. [It is now confirmed for 4:30 PM Sunday, at Neptoon, totally free! Bring your Repo Man stuff, your Walker soundtrack,your Straight to Hell poster - whatever you want him to scribble on!]. Zander will have copies of the album - not currently being stocked in any Vancouver record stores that I've noticed - with him. Highly recommend checking it out. 

Meantime, for people excited about the Circle Jerks' upcoming Vancouver show, note that - while there is no word yet as to the local opener will be, the out-of-town support has been confirmed: American hardcore legends 7 Seconds will be on the bill. {I believe that Adolescents had been scheduled to support them originally for one of the dates that got postponed due to COVID, but they will not be playing). If, like me, 7 Seconds are not a band you've seen before, you might do well to check out The Crew or some of their classics, like "We're Gonna Fight" and "Young Til I Die" (recent setlists do not suggest they will actually be playing my favourite song of theirs, "Fuck Your Amerika," which I'm kinda sad about, but it does seem like we might hear their cover of "99 Red Balloons," so I will take consolation there).

Calling Bev about her Circle Jerks photos, it occurred to me to ask her if she'd ever shot 7 Seconds. In honesty, I expected she might come up with a black and white photo from the 1980s, which is usually what happens when requests like that turn fruitful. Instead, it turns out that 7 Seconds were in Vancouver, playing the Fortune Sound Club back in 2015. Not only wasn't I present for that, I have utterly no recollection of having heard about it... 

7 Seconds at Fortune Sound Club, June 15, 2015, by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

One last photo: while Bev was at Fortune Sound Club, a notable local punk approached her and asked her to come to the back room with him for a photograph with 7 Seconds lead singer Kevin Seconds. Here's Mr. Chi Pig of SNFU with Kevin. (Circle Jerks fans might note that SNFU covered "Operation" as the final bonus cut of their album In the Meantime and In-Between Time, starting at 42:29 here.) It's not quite as fun as those photos that got taken of Tesco Vee, Dave Gregg, Willy Jak, and Chi at the Meatmen show at the same location - which I've yet to see anyone post, weirdly - but it's still pretty fuckin' special.  

RIP Chi; I'll miss not seeing you in the audience at the Commodore on the 3rd. 

                           Mr. Chi Pig and Kevin Seconds by bev davies, June 15, 2015, not to be reused without permission

Tickets are still available to see Circle Jerks with 7 Seconds (and yet-to-be-revealed local support; I can't begin to speculate as to who) at the Commodore here. See other tour dates here. Thanks to bev davies, Ben Frith, Zander Schloss and undisclosed Deep Throat sources involved in the putting on of this show. I always wanted my very own Deep Throat...