Gimme Something Better (6 page)

Rozz Rezabek:
I ended up on a bunch of Percodan and stuff. I was 17 years old. Drinking beer for the first time. I’m taking all these pills, and my arm is all screwed up. Then I started having epileptic seizures. I’d put my head through walls, and waking up with blood in my hair. I didn’t think I was too long for this world if I stayed in the band.

Bruce Loose:
They were looking for another singer. I went to the Negative Trend singer tryout. Jon Binell was there. Jello Biafra was there. And they did not take him. Because he went, “Oooooohh-hhaahhhahh!” I got up and I went, “Idon’tknowwhattosing Idon’tknowwhattosing.” So I didn’t get the job either.

Jello Biafra:
It was a cattle call, so I auditioned, Bruce auditioned, a woman named Stephanie Krieschock. She and I bumped into each other 20 years later at a (Sc)Avengers show. We looked at each other and said, wow, cool—a reunion of the singers rejected by Negative Trend!

Al Ennis:
The Mutants had their own scene. As a lot of these bands did. Especially the Avengers and the Mutants and the Offs, they were in San Francisco for a long time, and they knew a lot of people. The Mutants had a lot of really good fun songs.

Danny Furious:
I liked the Mutants. Everyone did. They were the B-52s without the catchy tunes. Very charming bunch.

Joe Rees:
The Mutants were like the scene band. They were always with the Avengers, always with the Dils. They seemed to be on every bill. It was such a big group of people. You not only get the Mutants, you get everyone.

Sheriff Mike Hennessey:
I remember seeing the Mutants on Thanksgiving, and they actually dressed up as turkeys and pumpkins. They were kooky and fun and more sort of hard rock than punk rock, maybe, but quite edgy, and good harmonies.

Fritz Fox:
The very first show we did, we threw dead fish out into the audience. Each show had a different theme. You know when you see somebody walking down the street with paper sticking to their feet? We thought, “Oh man, that’s cool, we gotta do that.” So we had a show where we put newspapers all over the stage, and then sprayed the bottom of our feet with adhesive. And then I saw these big appliance boxes for refrigerators. I said, if the singers got into these boxes, and the audience couldn’t see us, and the band’s playing, and we’re singing from within the boxes, it’ll drive the audience nuts. So we did that. And then we did one where we had lights taped on sticks, and mounted these photographic lights and reflectors, and put those on our backs. And had lights shining over our heads. I smashed televisions, and I smashed record players.

Dirk Dirksen:
I used to tease both the Mutants and Crime about timing their drugs. If we kept them waiting too long, if the sound engineer couldn’t get the stuff together, or the drum kit couldn’t get set up, then catastrophe would strike. Because the drugs would kick in just at the wrong moment, and they’d collapse on you in the middle of the song.

Fritz Fox:
No matter what we played, we left the stage in shambles. So no one really wanted to follow us. Not because we were the better band or we put on the better show. If we played our music well and we sang right, and didn’t get too drunk or fucked up on drugs, we put in a damn good performance. There’s a lot of them that were just like total washes. You’d be like, “This is a failure.”

Fun Terminal: The Mutants (really) on fire

Fritz Fox:
We all drove out there in a big yellow school bus. I think the Cramps had their own bus. They were standing right on the edge of being launched into superstardom at that time. This is the way I felt about it: “Oh, what the hell are they doing here? They’re trying to cash in on our gimmick, our idea.” The gig was offered to us. I think that they just wanted to get in on it.

Joe Rees:
Napa State Mental Hospital. Those people were so excited that someone was interested enough to put on a free show that they didn’t do any preparation, other than, “Yeah, come on down.” These days, you’d have to go through a security clearance, and have to wait a month to get tested for some kind of disease. There’d be all kinds of lawyers running around.

Fritz Fox:
We didn’t know what to think, actually. We were outside on a raised part of a quadrangle, that was adjacent to their dining area. We had an audience of very uninhibited participants. Like, they would imitate what they thought we looked like. It was very strange. Our music is neurotic, or schizophrenic, it’s sort of mental anyway. Inmates were just going bananas. Having little episodes of something that was cloistered in their brains for a long time. And some of the participants, we triggered them. It was very intense.

Joe Rees:
He looked pretty silly. But he always did anyway. How could you ever tell whether he is tripping on acid?

Hef:
I didn’t know about the high on acid part. Why would you need to be high? I mean, just doing that should be enough of a high.

Al Ennis:
I’d stop by the newsstand, and you could follow it week by week. Sex Pistols sign with this record company. Next week, Sex Pistols get kicked off. Next week, Sex Pistols get signed again.

Rozz Rezabek:
People thought it was gonna be like the whole counterculture ’60s thing. People were really threatened and scared.

Jello Biafra:
A Denver store called Wax Trax claimed to have had the first Sex Pistols record in the United States, possibly the day it was released. I went to check it out. Right on the front door of Wax Trax was
John Denver’s Greatest Hits
, with nails through his eyes and blood coming out.

Dave Dictor:
I lived in Austin and I picked up Gary Floyd hitchhiking. He was going to see the Sex Pistols in Dallas. He asked if I was gonna go. I was like, what? That was the first time I ever heard of the Sex Pistols.

Ruth Schwartz:
I was going to Santa Rosa to JC and we saw them on the news: “They’re in Texas, oh my god, this band’s in Texas! We have to go see them when they come to San Francisco.”

Sammytown:
When I was 12 we were living in Wales, that’s when I first heard the Sex Pistols. It was awesome. When I got back to the States, my dad was like, “Hey, the Sex Pistols are playing in San Francisco.” It was on the news, and he called me in to watch. He’s like, “Isn’t that that band that you were telling me about?”

Sheriff Mike Hennessey:
I heard that they were coming to Winterland, and dragged my girlfriend—who’s now my wife—to see that show.

Danny Furious:
I received a phone call in early December from a Mr. Howie Klein, asking if the Avengers were interested in opening for the upcoming Sex Pistols show. Naturally I said, “Yes!” He went on to say we’d only be paid 100 bucks and that if that wasn’t okay, there were literally hundreds of bands who would play for nada. That didn’t sit well with me but we accepted, of course. Johnny Strike: I got a call from Bill Graham’s people. “Do you want to open for the Sex Pistols?” I said, “Yes, absolutely. We’ll take it.” Everybody was excited. About two weeks later we got another call. “Well, something happened. It turns out that the Avengers met Malcolm [McLaren] and so they’ve got that slot, but we still want you guys on the bill. You’ll have the third slot.” So I went back and talked with the band. It was unanimous. We’re not playing.

Hank Rank:
We wouldn’t open for the Avengers. The Avengers always opened for us. We were the senior band ’cause we formed a good two months before they did. It was a little longer than that. But that was our thinking.

Johnny Strike:
Not only did we not play, we didn’t go. We completely boycotted the show.

Steve Tupper:
Whatever was going on in their brains, I never knew. Crime totally shot themselves in the foot.

Penelope Houston:
The Nuns, who did open for us, called me up and said, “Do you want to switch places?” And I was like, “No.” We’d only been together six months, and I think that the other established San Francisco punk bands really thought they should be on the bill.

Jennifer Miro:
We almost didn’t get it. Bill Graham just hated us, but Jerry Pompili was kind of managing us, and he was Bill’s righthand man. And he really liked us.

Howie Klein:
This is terrible and I don’t know if this has ever been written before. I feel bad about saying this, but I’m gonna tell it. Malcolm McLaren came over to me and goes, “Who’s the worst band in the scene?” And I said, “Well, Negative Trend.” He said, “They’re godawful?” I said, “They’re absolutely godawful.” He said, “Can they play?” I said, “No, not at all.” He said, “Okay, can you find them for me?”

Rozz Rezabek:
We were excited because it’s true, we
were
the worst band in San Francisco! And all of a sudden we’re at the scene of this big swirling controversy 48 hours before the show, where the headline act, the Sex Pistols, is not gonna play unless Negative Trend is on the bill.