Entrevista a Poison Idea (1990)

[Barney Bronson]

Os pego una entrevista de un fanzine americano a Poison Idea en 1990 (en inglés). Hablan desde por qué eso de rajarse el cuerpo en los conciertos, lo de la portada del EP de Ian MacKaye, hasta de otros grupos o qué esperan de la vida en general... Por si alguien se aburre o le interesa. De las mejores entrevistas que he leído, no tiene desperdicio.

Not always agreeing with "the kings of punk," interviewing them was something I could not run from. I guess you could even say I was looking foward to their show and finally getting to meet these rock-n-roll giants. Poison Idea are bold; the only thing larger than them is their infamy. As distorted as their views might be, they stand tall to them, and that's ok with me.

Dec 22... Al and myself caught up to these guys at the country club.

Mavrik: So, what kind of chemicals...

Jerry: Chemicals? Well, first I take some kind of speed, then I get kinda nervous, so then I take some kind of downer, and then I start drinking and stuff, and then I go, yeah, gimme a beer, gimme a beer...do you know what that is that I just fucking recited? That's from goddamn "Decline......"

Kye: (GBH drummer) Hey, I like your make-up. (Jerry's face is still bloodied from an "X" he carved in his forehead during their set about an hour earlier).

Jerry: Do you have any drugs?

Kye: Nope....

Al: For guys your size, what kind of dose do you guys have to do?

Jerry: Dose of what?

Al: Anything, drugs, alcohol......

Jerry: Well, I drank two fifths of bourbon tonight before we played....

Steve: Usually a case of wine, bastard cheap wine! Nighttrain, Thunderbird, that's our mainstay-usually just a fifth or two.

Jerry: When we were playing, I was looking for the Eugene kid with the skinhead; the one from "The Decline." Is he still around, or is he working for Faster Pussycat now?

Al: He's still around. I didn't see him here tonight...Was this early L.A. thing a big influence for you guys?

Steve: No way, we hate L.A. punk! DI suck! (DI were playing downstairs)

Jerry: Fuck yeah. L.A. punk. I lived in Eugene, Oregon with my father and I just got out of Junior High and the first show I ever saw was the Ramones and the Runaways opening for them. I was like 13 then, and right away I knew I was gonna be a punk. So, I moved up to Portland with my mother and all of a sudden here comes the fuckin' Avengers, the Weirdos, Crime, fuckin' Bags- I saw the Bags two shows, the real Bags with Patricia playing, not the other Bags, the Dickies, 999 came... I think it was just as good back in those days as it must have been down here. I used to suck just every little piece of shit I could get my hands on: Slash, Search & Destroy, Flipside of course...

Al: Did you get to see the Germs?

Jerry: No, they made it as far as Frisco.

Al: Oh, they were the best, Darby was good at cutting himself up.

Jerry: Oh, of course, the Germs were a completely big influence. That's what made us name it the "Darby Crash Rides Again" single because Darb was really into Nietzchie and stuff. He was really ahead of his time, and really smart. He pretty much summed it up without saying much...

Mavrik: If the bottle is an influence from Darby, where do the flames come from?

Steve/Jerry: KISS! K...I...S...S We love Kiss!

Jerry: No more Kiss than being a fucking child watching fucking Vietnam on TV and stuff. And probably that band GISM from Japan... I like the things that are really dangerous, you know? I remember seeing the Cramps and the guy is swinging the mic and bashing me, and the first time I saw DOA, they were a 3 piece and Joey Shithead was like "SMACK!" and he cracked me with his guitar. That was my way of being baptized ya know! I thought that was great! That's what it's all about. I've grabbed people before, wrapped the mic cord around their neck and picked them up, and actually choked -hung them in the air! Afterwards they're all like, "Thanks a lot!" They were having like an out of body experience floating there! (laughter) Seriously , people say if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen, the problem is, I'm in the oven!

Al: We've all heard about you doing stage dives and squashing people. I thought you would do that tonight.

Jerry: Yeah, I didn't know if they'd let me back up or not. Last time I jumped into the crowd they wouldn't let me back up on stage! One time me and Blaine (from the Fartz and the Accused) were up on stage singing with DOA and we like held hands and we both did a flip into the crowd and I had these boots on and I kicked this girl and hit her in the face and split her face open. I didn't know nothing about it until they told me that they took her away, that she's in the hospital. I had to get ther address and I called her and said I was sorry. I sent her flowers and stuff. And she said, "Oh, that's ok, I told my dad I was hit by a car door!" I mean, to her, that was like being baptized too. You can't really go to a punk show and not expect... I have people come up to me, "Hey, are you the singer of Poison Idea?"... You know, cute little blond girls, and I go, "Yeah"... "You fucker, you crushed my foot, broke three bones in it the other night!"

Mavrik: How do you make up for an incident like that?

Al: Next time crush her head!

Jerry: Naw, get them in a show for free!

Steve: Give her a kiss.

Al: Why is it that you guys don't get down here more often? This is your second show in L.A. in like 5 years.

Jerry: No one will book us. Because we're not fucking Sub Pop, we're not fucking Mudhoney or fuck... we're not trying to be some Sub Pop band that everyone loves or some speedcore band trying to be on Metalblade and stuff. We are our own thing. We don't care. We've had offers to be on these labels, but they want us to sign away our rights for a lifetime. These songs that we write, that we put our feelings and emotions into, that we write from our personal experiences-they say, "Alright, we'll give you this money and you'll be on our label and we'll take care of you."--but they want those songs for a lifetime.

Steve: After that you feel like you've been raped!

Jerry: And I've been raped enough times in this life, that is not my idea of fun.

Steve: That's why we do all of our own records and tours, everything. American Leather records is our own label. Just like Black Flag did with SST, just like the Dead Kennedys... We hope to someday sign Bob Moulds Hemorrhoids! (laughter)

Al: Is the label working out so far...

Steve: Well, you have to deal with distributors and they're kinda fucked, but some of them are really nice. We're selling some--but not many!

Mavrik: What instigated such an idea as the "Ian MacKaye" cover?

Jerry: It's not ...um someone said it should have been called "Ray Cappo" but um, we just went to the source. It's not that malicious really, he should take it a little lighter. It does say something, if you can't figure out what we're saying then...

Mavrik: Is there a direct reason for his name?

Jerry: Yeah, look what it's done to the scene--too much straight edge.

Steve: Minor Threat were a great band musically but God...

(Pig Champion walks in...)

Pig: All I can say about that is I knew when I heard the second 7 Seconds EP "Committed For Life," I knew we were in trouble. Then "Second Wind" came along and now there's mountains of records that all sound like "Screaming at a Wall," "Bottled Violence"--it"s all really contrived. It"s just divided up the scene and made it all really dumb and stupid.

Al: I don"t think Ian likes that aspect of it any more than you guys.

Jerry: (mimicking Ian) "Well vegetarianism is a logical step for straight edge..."

(General all-out slagging of straight edge goes on for some time...)

Pig: One thing I do like about Ian is that he still shaves his head and sometimes he wears a funny hat!

Mavrik: Do you guys think you are doing the same thing but in reverse with all the pro-alcohol attitude...

Pig: We"re just keeping up the tradition of rock and roll.

Jerry: We don"t want to make some sweeping statement like that, that"s bullshit, we just do what we want to do.

Pig: Rock and Roll, what is it? Duh... bitches, alcohol, cars, loud guitars...

Jerry: We"re doing everything pretty much the opposite, we're preaching "do whatever the fuck you want to do, and do as much of it as you want to do and not set yourself up with all these rules and shit." Rock and roll is about freedom, not organizing all the do's and don'ts of straight edge.

Pig: Fascism shit...

Jerry: The best straight edge band of all time was Crucial Youth; those guys knew it was a fucking joke.

Merle: Drink positive.

Al: Is there a national tour in the works for you guys?

Pig: Yeah, in the spring. It's the first time in 9 years that we've had a manager and a good line-up.

Jerry: The other guys that were in the band were good players but they weren't all there enough to deal with the things that come up with this band. Now we have a manager and he does most of the shit, we just have to tell him what to do.

Steve: He just takes us to detox or some of us to the hospital all the time!

Jerry: Merle has benefited the most from getting to the hospital on time! He's been beaten three times in the last two years! Dude smile!

Merle: (smiles and has missing teeth) The last time a sercurity guard in a Safeway parking lot...

Pig: The time before that a 250 lb. Cuban body-builder used his heel to try to grind his left eyeball out of its socket!

Merle: The doctor had to put my eye back in its socket and sew my eyelid back on (general hysterical laughter).

(From there we went into yet another long discussion of early L.A. punk rock, Poison Idea are amazingly up on everything L.A.)

Mavrik: You talk a lot about the old music, but is there anything new that excites you right now?

Jerry: Yeah, if you look in my bag, the tapes I'm listening to right now are: the Creamers new LP which I love, the Hard-Ons of course I love, Naked Raygun...

Steve: Sloppy Seconds! Those guys rule!

Jerry: We love Sloppy Seconds.

Al: What keeps you guys true to the roots?

Jerry: Because we're boring. Because Portland is boring.

Pig: Unemployability.

Steve: We're all unemployable.

Jerry: In the old days we decided to change our lives and I'm gonna stick with it till I die. I really got off on it, that's the only youth movement I've been through and that's the the only one that mattered. We've been Poison Idea for 10 fucking years. We started when I was 16 and I'm 26 right now. 10 fucking years.

Al: In 10 years you've had no desire to lighten the pace at all?

Jerry: No way!

Pig: Fuck, you've got to be able to listen to it.

Jerry: Look at the shit coming out now. Extreme Noise Terror, that stuff! When I listen to that I get a boner, man. I go, "Yeah! Damn! Why didn't we think of doing this!" So we try to up the dose you know, get the shit rockin'.

Pig: As long as it sounds good to us, that's all I have to make happy is myself. I don't care about anyone else. True to the music, man.

Jerry: If you get a dictionary and look under "Poison Idea" it says, "the people's band."

Pig: It says, "punk."

Mavrik: The Kings of Punk, yeah! Whose stomach was that?

Pig: His! Show it to him Jerry.

Jerry: Too many stretch marks! You can't read it now. It looks like a fucking road map.

Al: How much do you guys weigh now?

Jerry: Oh, I weigh about 175! Pig weighs maybe 5... No, I weigh about 375.

Pig: 475, close to 500 lbs.

Steve: The guitarist in Sloppy Sesconds weighs 440 lbs.

Jerry: Pig dwarfs him! He's not built right, he got one huge leg, and the other leg is like hers!

Mavrik: Are you on any special diet?

Steve: Yeah, booze, booze, booze, drink and eat.

Al: What about Al and Merle will you fatten them up?

Steve: Well once you hang around us you can only what we do.

Mavrik: You"re not gonna become like Gang Green and be sponsered by Budweiser?

Jerry: I don't want to be sponsored by nobody! I want to die poor and bitter and pissed off like the way I was born! I liked that interview with the Nihilistics you did in Flipside because that's just the way I feel. I'm a fucking dishwasher, right. I live in poverty and that's all I want- to be drunk and pissed and then every once in a while I might go see a show and have some fun, maybe cock a smile. Everything sucks, it really does. All this bullshit that's going on. We screamed "no future" a thousand years ago, but the fucking shit seems to keep on keeping on.

Mavrik: Where does the cutting yourself thing come from, I know you have influences but...

Jerry: That happened a long time... I guess it was in Junior High, I used to cut myself just being a fucked up kid. I cut myself as a child, always slashing myself and stuff, carving stuff into my body.

Steve: Scarification.

Jerry: I had a few stitches before. I cut myself really bad here (chest), I went deeper than I thought and had to go have stitches.

Mavrik: Do you think the band is still a poison idea?

Jerry: Yeah, now more than ever. We have some real fucking troopers with us now. I talk to these guys and they are right on. I ask them what their idea of the band is and they are right on. It's cool.

Mavrik: So you guys are good friends with MRR?

Jerry: Well, Tim tries because he doesn't want us to burn his house down! I guess... I mean they're the first ones to point and go "Nazi, Nazi!" I"m going, "What?" That's no big deal, I mean we fight, get beat up, get into fights whatever, but like where I live I have like a fucking warrant on my head by about 100 fucking skinheads! They want to fucking kill me because I speak out against them on stage. I tell them what shit they are, they used to be my friends and stuff. That's fucked, that's bullshit, everything they stand for is shit! Skinheads, Metzgers, War Skins, that's all shit!

Steve: We don't want to be involved in that kind of shit...

Printed in Flipside #64 (1990).

http://www.operationphoenixrecords.com/ ... nidea.html

[Pinche_pendejo]

Los verdaderos "kings of punk"

[Barney Bronson]

Ya te digo shurhand. Por cierto, he colgado dos paisanos tuyos en el blog y esta semana caerán también los Waken!

[King Mob]

Juas, no sabía lo de Ian Mackaye Por un lado poco sentido del humor del señor Mackaye, aunque por el otro lado, no comparto ese tipo de "provocación" o humor o como lo quieran llamar. Vaya cracks xD

[Barney Bronson]

Hombre, es que que llamen a un EP con tu nombre y pongan una foto de un culo de portada no creo que le haga gracia a nadie jajajaajja.

A mí tampoco termina de acabarme lo de pagarla con el MacKaye (no creo que haya hecho nada malo), pero a ver quien es el guapo que se lo dice a ellos



Aquí habla MacKaye sobre lo que pensó al ver su nombre en un culo gigante en la portada de un disco de unos tíos que no conocía de nada:

They at one point released a 12" EP, and the cover of this was a close-up of a giant spread asshole, and the record was called "The Ian MacKaye EP." I don't know those guys. I've never met those guys, or I had not met them at the time; I may have met one of them since then. I didn't have any problem with them. I didn't know anything about them. But that was, you know, "Hey! What did I do!? What did I do to deserve THAT?" And at some point I read an interview with them where they said, "Well, you know -" Or no, actually I think the guy that was distributing it contacted me and sent me a copy of it. And he said, "We just wanted to let you know that we weren't going to hide this from you. We did this and we're not trying to hurt your feelings; it's really aimed at the people who think you're a God." And I can't say that it hurt my feelings, because I just thought, "This is so ridiculous!" But it does actually make me feel bad, because it's just such a pointless exercise. You know, fight crime; don't fight nice guys! What the fuck did I do? Furthermore, they did not understand -- and I think that people who often do this sort of tactic like "Well, it's not really about you; it's about the people who worship you," this sort of thing -- what they don't understand is that by assailing me, by throwing stones at me or my name, if they don't think that they are injuring me, then they must think I'm impervious. They must think I'm a God! So in fact they are reinforcing the notion that I am not a human being, because they are taking shots of me and expecting me to not fall. Do you follow?

http://www.markprindle.com/mackaye-i.htm

[Pinche_pendejo]

Kye: Hey, I like your make-up.

Jerry: Do you have any drugs?

[Pinche_pendejo]

Ya te digo shurhand. Por cierto, he colgado dos paisanos tuyos en el blog y esta semana caerán también los Waken!

jajja guay!! joder los stranjis guajes!! vaya mitiquez!!

de intolerance no digo na que no se haya dicho ya...

waken son unos mataos!!

[Fix Me]

ke grandes ke son joder!

yo tengo un video-documental de ellos con imagenes en directos y tal ke es la polla! probablemente el "feel the dakness" sea uno de los discos ke mas veces haya escuchado en mi vida.

[King Mob]

Jajajaja, pobre Mackaye
Barney, en mi testamento te lego el 7" de Intolerance, mereces tenerlo original xD Mola el i[especial[/i] grupos asturianos, la verdad que por aquí se mueven bastante grupos en la "escena" hardcore, hay conciertos a menudo y también se trae a gente de fuera por cuatro duros.

[Barney Bronson]

Jajajaja, pobre Mackaye
Barney, en mi testamento te lego el 7" de Intolerance, mereces tenerlo original xD Mola el i[especial[/i] grupos asturianos, la verdad que por aquí se mueven bastante grupos en la "escena" hardcore, hay conciertos a menudo y también se trae a gente de fuera por cuatro duros.

Jajajaja, si también me incluyes el otro split que tienes por ahí tampoco me quejaré, eh... jajajajja.

Pues por el blog tampoco hay mucho grupo de por allí a parte de estos, están los Daggers, The Awake, TBPP y poco más. Si tienes algo de ruido asturiano y quieres que lo cuelge, ya sabes mi mail

[King Mob]

Jajajaja, pobre Mackaye
Barney, en mi testamento te lego el 7" de Intolerance, mereces tenerlo original xD Mola el i[especial[/i] grupos asturianos, la verdad que por aquí se mueven bastante grupos en la "escena" hardcore, hay conciertos a menudo y también se trae a gente de fuera por cuatro duros.

Jajajaja, si también me incluyes el otro split que tienes por ahí tampoco me quejaré, eh... jajajajja.

Pues por el blog tampoco hay mucho grupo de por allí a parte de estos, están los Daggers, The Awake, TBPP y poco más. Si tienes algo de ruido asturiano y quieres que lo cuelge, ya sabes mi mail

Eso te iba a comentar, que tengo por el disco duro algún disco de grupillos de aquí de hardcore/punk que igual te molan, Acid Mess, Gobierno Militar, The Baseball Furies... a ver si recopilo unos cuantos y los cuelga aquí para deleite de todos xD