Gimme Something Better (60 page)

Sham Saenz:
I consider punk music art. It’s not pop music, it’s art. It’s being creative. There’s punk bands that reference other things like reggae, ska. That to me is what makes art. When you take something as a reference, and you make it contemporary by putting your own twist on it. Green Day isn’t a punk band. They’re a rock ’n’ roll band that references punk. A lot of these bands today that call themselves this or that are actually rock bands or pop bands referencing punk, instead of punk bands referencing something else.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
I could never live in Los Angeles or move into the [Hollywood] Hills. I grew up in the East Bay. That’s where I’m from and that’s what I’m used to. I think it’s got a lot to offer.

Bill Schneider:
It’s always in retrospect that things seem huge. When you’re on tour you do the exact same thing every day with the same people, the same faces. It’s all the same. All that changes is the building you’re doing it in. It’s still the same jokes, the same dumb movie that you watch every day. It’s the same food that you get served at catering.

You go to a Gilman gig, the band walks off the stage and they’re standing there with their best friends and patting each other on the back. Everybody’s sweaty, hugging each other, yelling, screaming, running down to go do whatever it is after the show, get a beer, hang out, have a party, whatever the plan is that night. Or it’s Green Day coming off the stage at a stadium, and you go to a room backstage where it’s all your best friends and the same people you’ve known for 20 years, and drink a beer and have a party and go off to do something. It’s the same. It doesn’t change for the people involved.

Anna Brown:
It makes a lot of sense, now. Why wouldn’t you get paid to play music and travel the world? There was some anxiety and animosity from some people about people getting rich and famous, but you can’t deny that it is kind of thrilling to see your friends turn into humongous rock stars.

Bill Schneider:
When you first join a band you think the biggest thing in the world is gonna be, “We’re gonna write a song.” And then after you write a song you say, “Well, we’re gonna play a show.” And you play that show and you say, “Well, we played that show. Let’s try to do a 7-inch.” And then you record a 7-inch and you’re all, “Well, that’s pretty cool. Let’s try to do a tour.” Then you go on tour and you’re like, “Well, touring’s pretty cool but how ’bout we try to put out a CD or an LP—put a full record out.” Then you put the full record out and you’re all, “Wow, that was pretty cool. But you know what would be really cool . . .”

It’s just these steps that lead to steps—and then at this point, standing on the side of the stage when Green Day’s playing to the stadium shows at the end of
American Idiot
, 60, 70,000 people. And you’re just sittin’ there going, “Okay, this is pretty crazy. But you know what’s gonna be
really
crazy . . .” It’s funny, it really is, watching your friends do really well. But being along for the ride, it all becomes incredibly normal.

Dallas Denery:
I remember there was a documentary on Green Day—it might have been
Behind the Music
or whatever. I was watching it with my wife and I was just thinking, “God, I’m so proud of them.” Because you do sort of feel like, that was our thing. It’s really great that out of that little room in the Berkeley industrial wasteland comes these great bands.

Ralph Spight:
I never really resented Green Day for getting huge. Because they’re a hot band. Nobody fucking cared. Now they’re international. I make my living teaching guitar and I teach Green Day songs all day long. So whatever, it pays good.

Dennis Kernohan:
I was at this Oakland warehouse party in the late ’80s. They were hilarious. Just little snots, hassling everybody. I had long hair then, so they were calling me an old hippie. I didn’t even know they were Green Day. Later on I saw their picture and recognized them as those kids that were giving me so much grief that night. It made me laugh so hard. I was all for ’em, you know? I think it’s great that they’ve adopted the same makeup artist as the Damned. I think that’s genius.

Danny Furious:
I love Green Day. I love Rancid, too. It ain’t 1977 anymore, and obviously punk is here to stay. I prefer to think positive about it. And I’m glad the Avengers and others can be cited as influences.

Bruce Loose:
To me, that’s not a Bay Area punk band. They weren’t there in ’77, they weren’t there in ’78, they weren’t there in ’79. If you weren’t there in the ’70s, you weren’t a punk band. You were an aftereffect in the punk movement. But I think Flipper was an aftereffect in the punk movement. We’ve been able to emulate it. I may be only speaking for myself.

Dave Chavez:
I really wish the Buzzcocks would have never formed. Then we would have never had Green Day and all this garbage.

Hank Rank:
I definitely felt that the groundwork had been laid, but that’s usually the way things work. The popularizers are not the innovators. They’re the people who just fine-tune it and put the elements together. They’re all young and cute, and the singer definitely had a very dynamic, recognizable style. And they played great, and they wrote songs with plenty of hooks, and more power to ’em.

Aaron Cometbus:
All the old washed-up punks from ’77 came crying for royalties, wanting credit for creating Green Day. Fuck them. We kept the scene going for 30 years that they abandoned after two. Just like deadbeat dads.

Ruth Schwartz:
When my kids’ favorite band is Green Day, I’m kind of grateful. It could be Britney Spears. I took the whole family to see Green Day. There’s just a whole dynamic with this generation. They’re not like us. I’ve had a lot more time to reflect on it, but the fact of the matter is that everything that we stood for in 1980, they don’t give a crap about.

Lenny Filth:
Kamala was my first girlfriend. I used to have to sit there and listen to her booking bands, while I was watching TV, waiting to hang out with her. The women in this scene played as much a part of the scene as the men did, without any shadow of a doubt.

Adrienne Droogas:
Kamala was on top, in terms of shows. Kamala had her fingers right on the pulse of every single venue, house, garage, somebody’s basement in their parents’ house. She had this list, she had phone numbers, she had addresses, she had directions. You would go to Kamala’s house, open up a map, and go, “We wanna do this.” And she’d go, “Okay, here’s the numbers, here’s everyone you’d call.” You’d call one person and they’d go, “My parents won’t let me do shows anymore, but Joey’s doing shows, or Susan’s doing shows, so here’s their number.” And you’d call that Susan and Susan would be like, “Yeah, when do you wanna play? Cool.”

Ben Sizemore:
Kamala gave me numbers of places all over the country, and so I would book the tour. Econochrist even went to Europe twice.

Kamala Parks:
I had booked Clown Alley on tour, and so that led to people calling me and wondering if there was a place to play in the Bay Area. There were always different people doing things, so it wasn’t just me, it was a bunch of people. DMR was booking shows at this time,
Maximum RocknRoll
would sometimes organize a show.

Bill Schneider:
All the bands shared. Phone numbers of people who didn’t have a club or anything, you’d call them and go, “We need somewhere to play.” And they’d go, “Oh, lemme go check the pizza place.” Or, “Let me go check the VFW hall.”

Chicken John:
People like me and George Tabb made a network in North America. A touring network that later became the
MRR
book
Book Your Own Fucking Life
. I had these different colored notebooks, four regions in four different colored notebooks. I was calling everybody and collecting numbers.

There was a guy Ted, from Shreveport, Louisiana, and he set up shows in his toolshed. He called it Theodore’s Shed. Which is funny, ’cause you’d want to call it Ted’s Shed. But if I wanted to play a show in Shreveport, I’d have to find the fucking show. So I’d call up Peaches, which is a major-label record store. I’d say, “Hello, is there anybody there with dyed hair?” “Uh, yeah, Brian’s got dyed—” “Can I talk to him?” “Hold on . . . Brian! Some guy wants to talk to someone with dyed hair.” “Hello?” “Yeah, hi, I’m from New York and we’re in a band and we’re traveling through. Who’s having punk shows?” And Brian with the dyed hair is like, “Oh, well, this guy Theodore . . .” There it is.

Davey Havok:
Book Your Own Fucking Life
came out I think once a year. It was invaluable, because there was no Internet. There was no way that a band like us at that time was gonna get booked at regular clubs. It was getting booked at the Pill Hills and the garages and the Gilman Streets around the world. Basically it was a compilation of: here are the bands in this area, here are the labels in this area, and here are the promoters in this area, and here are the places to play.

Chicken John:
Book Your Own Fucking Life
outlived its usefulness the instant it was published. It fucked all of us. Now this is a bold statement—the reason why punk rock became Top 40 is because of
Book Your Own Fucking Life
. It was the first step. Ted in Shreveport went from talking to me and four other people to getting like 50 tapes a week. Professional, glossy fucking press kits. And he was like, “I can’t let all these people play.” So people became club owners, started graphic design businesses, booking businesses. And it’s like, bleh. Is that what all this is for?

Bill Schneider:
Everybody in the East Bay scene had stolen military exchange calling card numbers. Every single band used the same numbers. You’d dial this number, and then from there it was another beep and then you could dial a number. They worked I’d say up until ’93.

Fat Mike:
Book all the tours from a public phone booth, ’cause you couldn’t do it from your house.

Chicken John:
Booking a tour would cost like 800 green dollars. So if you couldn’t freak the phone, then it wasn’t going to work out. People can’t even imagine it ’cause everybody has cell phones now.

Ryan Mattos:
Me and Eric Ozenne did booking. He had a job—I later had the same job—installing phone and data lines in office buildings. So he would spend a lot of time up in the ceilings of office buildings, using their phones, calling people to try to get shows.

Bill Schneider:
In my band it was me. In Green Day it was Tré. Every band had the one guy in the band who did it. Everybody else was trying to pick up on chicks or get food, or meet people. You’d be sitting there in a phone booth next to the van with your notebook, calling—I’m not even joking—100 people. Every evening, trying to get these people to answer the phone, and leaving messages. You’d hopefully have somebody at home who would take messages for you, because there was no voice mail.

Richard the Roadie:
Kamala changed it for a lot of people. And she’s never given credit. She was the most organized person at the time. Everybody else was just chaos. She absolutely paved the way for East Bay bands to tour. A few of them did before, but as far as networking before the Internet, she was absolutely the person to go to. Amazing resource. She was the first one to grow up.

Chicken John:
I remember Kamala Parks. Oh yeah. Fucking bitch, fucking wouldn’t share. Not one fucking ounce of information, nothing. I used to fucking mail her fucking lists, mimeographs, where I used to have to write in marker, big, so that it would mimeograph, ’cause if you wrote in pencil too small it couldn’t copy. Fucking bitch, man! Fucking wouldn’t share! I was just like, you cannot be serious. You’re gonna try to profit off this? It was just disgusting.

Ben Sizemore:
You’d meet people who would put you on a pedestal because you were from the Bay. We would say, “Yeah, come visit, man, come stay with us.” One time when we came back from tour there were a couple kids already on our couch. We had met ’em in Michigan.

Bill Schneider:
People were so excited to have people from out of town, especially from California. They were drooling, waiting for us so they could show us all of the fun stuff to do in their town. You’d pull into somewhere and they were like, “Okay, first we’re taking you to the place where we do the rope swing down into the creek, then later we’re gonna go cut down as many Wall Drug signs as we can and throw ’em in the back of the truck, with an ax.” They kept you so busy that you couldn’t even sleep. There was always something fun to do.

Adrienne Droogas:
“We’re gonna go dumpster-dive, we’re gonna go to underground lakes and ride in a boat.”

Dale Flattum:
You’re suddenly on acid and on the bayou in Louisiana: “How did we get here?”

Bill Schneider:
Someone took us mud-bogging at Three Mile Island. You could jump off cliffs into this weird mud pit, and you’d slide like 50 yards. Or you’d be in Seattle and they’d take you to the unfinished freeway that went halfway out on Lake Washington, then ended. And you could jump off, and you had to climb a ladder back up. Every city you went to had something weird like that. In Lincoln, Nebraska, they were like, “Hey, you guys wanna go where all the weed they planted during World War II to grow hemp is?” And you’re all, “What?!” There’s fields and fields and fields of marijuana growing. They would bring everybody from out of town there and watch people smoke tons of it, and then laugh their asses off when you’re puking and have a headache. ’Cause it’s like ditch weed.

Mike K:
Relying on the people you meet to save your ass, and help you out and give you a place to stay. Getting to experience that was definitely eye-opening.

Davey Havok:
We showed up to this kid’s house in I don’t know what city in the middle of nowhere. We were playing in his basement. But his basement had a carpeted stage and a sound system, and his parents were letting us stay there, and all the kids from this town were showing up and Mom was cooking us food. Amazing. Moms across the country have taken care of punk rockers for years. You know, taking care of their boys.