Why Would Anyone Ever Take This Shirt To Goodwill?
I don’t know, I can’t even comprehend it, but that’s where I found it and it’s mine now. I think this safely seals 2013 as a great year.
The Ultimate Final This Music Leaves Stains F.A.Q. (For Now)
A compilation of queries from all the previous F.A.Q.s that people keep asking.
Q: The fudge yo’ book so expensive?
A: The hardcover of This Music Leaves Stains is something of a “limited edition” meant to be purchased in bulk by libraries and educators. As such, it boasts a rather steep price tag of $40-55 (don’t ask me why the Kindle price is also that high; it just is and I’m sorry, I had absolutely no say). I think I wrote a really great book, but certainly not one worth fifty bones to the average reader and/or Misfits fan. If you’re bursting at the seams to read this thing and wanna go to Amazon right now to pick a copy up, hey, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but please be aware a softcover version comes out in October via Taylor Trade that’ll retail for around $14-25. I encourage the majority of you to wait for what (if I were a record store in the 1980s) I’d call “the nice price.”
Q: The fudge are all the pictures?
A: Here. A budget was not in place to license all the photos I wanted to include (photographers like to get paid when you put their stuff in a book).
Q: But didn’t you get an advance or something with this book deal? Why didn’t you use that money, you greedy dollar-grubbing turd?
A: Don’t believe everything you see on all those glamorous prime time writer dramas. Scarecrow Press is an academic publisher; in lieu of some fat check upfront I got creative autonomy and later on I’ll get a piece of those sweet sweet royalties.
Q: If I buy the hardcover will you sign it?
A: If you see me somewhere, of course. I never ever thought I’d make something as cool as this book and I’m overjoyed that anyone would sink any kind of interest into it. If you buy it in any kinda format I’ll sign it! I’ll sign your e-reader, I don’t even care!
Q: When’s your book tour?
A: October-ish, when the softcover version is released. That’s the versh that’ll be in various fine book retailers for a regular book sum. Between now and then I’ll probably make sporadic appearances at libraries and colleges (if they’ll have me) to thump the hardcover, but the real “book tour” where I go to book stores, coffee shops, and Wal-Mart parking lots will happen in the fall.
Q: WHERE’S your book tour?
A: Definitely up and/or down the east coast. Further west to any major metropolitan area I can afford to reach.
Q: Can I find your book at my local library?
A: You might be able to find it at your local college/university library. According to all-knowing Internet biblioteca sources, This Music Leaves Stains is currently on the shelves at UMass Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library, U of Maryland’s Theodore R. McKeldin Library, NYU’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Library, Georgetown’s Lauinger Memorial Library, the library at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in beautiful downtown Cleveland, U of Texas’s Fine Arts Library, U of Iowa Libraries, and libraries at Pierce, Cornell, Columbia, U of Pennsylvania, Bowling Green State, Duke, UNC, and U of California Riverside. Book dumps at Brown, Trinity, Indiana U, and Texas A&M have all allegedly ordered it.
Internationally, I’m told TMLS has made it to three libraries in Australia: Melbourne’s Box Hill, Sydney’s Canterbury City Council, and New South Wales’s Sutherland Shire. York and McGill U in Canada also claim they’ve ordered it. Sorry, Europe. No penetration yet.
I’m sure more institutions of academia are requesting my awesome Misfits book every day. Check with your local college/uni lie-berry. If they don’t have it, ask them to order it. If they won’t order it, well, I don’t know. Rent your Dustin Hoffman VHS tapes somewhere else!
Q: James R. Greene Jr? What does the “R” stand for?
A: It stands for someone made an oopsie inputting my name into a database somewhere. I don’t use my middle initial on the professional tip. Keep that in mind, though, when you’re asking around about This Music Leaves Stains; some listings have the “R.” For the record, my middle initial is D, and it stands for DEFFEST EMCEE IN THE GAME (HOOOOOO!!!). No, it stands for Dennis.
Q: Will it be available as an audio book?
A: Only if I can get someone really cool to read it, like Bernie Casey. Bernie Casey’s into the Misfits, right?
Unsolicited Thoughts On Marky Ramone’s Gelato Commercial
In the words of Michael Keaton, I tried to avoid all this but I can’t. Marky Ramone’s food empire has now expanded beyond pasta sauce to include gelato. He made a commercial for it, too. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a drill: Marky Ramone made a gelato commercial.
Gotta break this one down scene by scene as I occasionally do. What we’re looking at here is basically the Zapruda film of inane punk rock branding.
0:10 – Ten seconds in and already this seems pretty weighty for a dessert ad. Marky Ramone lurks in the shadows before a gig. Yes, he is a legend, and “the legacy” advertised on his jacket has brought him here. Will he uphold the brilliance of his work on such classic albums as Road to Ruin and Pleasant Dreams or will this affair crumple into a madness akin to that Jesse Camp video where Marky played the filthy janitor?
0:20 – As usual, the crowd gathered at this rock concert is waiting patiently in relative silence until each member of the band has made his or her way to the stage. Finally, Mark strolls out, women start screeching his name, and just as the mood reaches a fever pitch Big Bad Mark Ramone & His Non-Union All Stars launch into that beloved Ramones chestnut “Gimme Gimme Mah Ice Cream.” When I say “beloved Ramones chestnut” I of course mean “song Mark probably wrote in his head years ago assuming he’d one day star in a gelato commercial.”
0:45 – You know, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Prince has his own gelato guy for mid-concert refreshment. That seems par for the course with his high-falutin’ ass. The only place I can imagine a Ramone even looking at gelato is in a paid advertisement.
0:50 – “So, what did you bring home from the concert? Did you manage to catch one of Marky’s drumsticks?” “No, but he did hand me this gelato thing he’d been eating. I ate the rest of it already, but it had a fuckin’ Oreo in it!”
1:04 – “Iz eazeeta fawlin love wit a legen.” I’d kill to get my hands on any ADR this guy recorded for Rock n’ Roll High School.
1:06 – The Marky Ramone Cookies Gelato logo seems really busy. Did they need so much detail on the Ramones shirt? “Doug, make sure we know that’s an officially licensed Ramones shirt. Also, if you put a crash cymbal on those drums you have to include the ride, it’s just common sense!”
The remainder of the ad is the ice cream song (can you believe Cookies recorded more than thirty seconds of that thing?) behind images of various Cookies products. My issue is the stuff looks yummy enough without the endorsement of the guy who played on “Zero Zero UFO.” Like, can I see these foodstuffs without some punk rock icon pretending his entire career’s been leading to this “Gimme Gimme Mah Ice Cream!” jingle?
Lookout! Larry Livermore: The JG2Land Interview
This is how it all went down: I got one or two of my facts twist turned upside down in the obituary I wrote for Lookout! Records (exclamation point optional), so Lookout founder Lawrence “Larry Livermore” Hayes swooped in to correct me. Thankful and not one to look a gift punk in the mouth, I asked Larry if I could shoot him few questions RE: Lookout’s problems, its legacy, where his feelings are today regarding the whole deal, blah blah. He said yes, and below you’ll find our delicious exchange.
JG2: Prior to the episode in 1996 or ’97 where Screeching Weasel decided they weren’t happy with their contract and demanded a new one, what was the most challenging or aggravating thing you had to deal with at Lookout? Had it been pretty smooth sailing up to that point in terms of artist/label relations?
LARRY LIVERMORE: For the most part, things had gone smoothly up to that point. By the way, before I go further, I’d like to clear up one thing—while it’s often referred to as a “Screeching Weasel” dispute, that’s really not accurate. It was, from start to finish, a Ben Weasel dispute. I never had a problem with other members of the band. In fact, some of them privately expressed frustration and even disgust with the way that Ben compulsively turned a good relationship into a poisonous one. That being said, the contract dispute I had with Ben, while unpleasant and destructive, was only the most extreme example of a problem that began to emerge in the year or two following Green Day’s breakthrough to major label success. A byproduct of that success was that Lookout got a great deal of attention from the mainstream media, and both our sales—of all our releases, not just Green Day’s—and income increased massively. “More money, more problems” may be a cliché, but clichés usually contain a kernel of truth. While the problems were mostly manageable, the most difficult aspect was that certain bands, or individuals, in Ben Weasel’s case, began feeling that we should be spending more of that money promoting them, on the theory that if we did, they’d be achieving the kind of success Green Day was.
JG2: So how do you navigate that kind of thing? What do you say, or what did you say to those complaining?
LL: When I pointed out that Green Day and Operation Ivy and, ironically, Screeching Weasel, who were our third best-selling band, accomplished what they did with little to no promotion, [the other artists] would just get mad. I’d say things like, “You can’t buy popularity. If you want to be as rich and famous as Green Day, try working and touring as hard as Green Day, and writing songs as good as Green Day.” Needless to say, that didn’t always go over so well, especially with Ben Weasel. The funny thing is that Ben was always very happy with Lookout and the amount of money he was making there, and for years told everybody just that. Then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t. To be fair, there were other bands who asked for more money and more promo, and who wanted Lookout to change the way we did things and act more like a major label. It’s just that with most of them it wasn’t such a big deal, just more of a point of discussion, where with Ben it became a very big deal indeed.
JG2: When Lookout started having more serious problems after your departure in 1997, how did that affect you? Were you already too removed to care?
LL: I was not anxious to jump back into the record business, but I had made it clear [to the new owners] that I was available as a resource, to answer questions, negotiate with bands, or even step in on a short term basis and manage some projects, but I wasn’t ever asked for help. Quite the contrary, in fact; most often I would find out about Lookout’s problems from other sources—usually the bands who weren’t getting paid. I think there was a feeling on the new owners’ part that they wanted to do it their own way, or maybe they were afraid I’d be all “I told you so” if they admitted they were having problems. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t have been like that, and also that if I’d been approached early enough, I might have been able to help them sort things out, but I have no way of knowing whether that’s true. Certainly my own management practices, even in Lookout’s heyday, weren’t perfect, but when everything is going your way and all the records are selling well, mistakes and poor planning can be glossed over more easily than when things are starting to go downhill.
JG2: But you had no moment where you were utterly compelled to try and take command back, to right the ship?
LL: Well, because of the way we’d arranged my departure—I handed over full ownership of the company—there was no way I could [do that] unless I was asked to. That made it pretty frustrating when Lookout began getting a reputation for not paying its bands, because even though there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, many people blamed me for it. Which is understandable; you can’t expect the general public to keep up with who owns or controls which record label, and for the first 10 years of Lookout’s existence, it had been me more than any other person who was identified with Lookout in the public’s mind.
JG2: Did the carryover from that hurt your own personal state of mind?
LL: Yeah, it was hard on me to watch what was happening. It was like seeing a loved one suffer and die from a long, lingering illness, knowing all the while there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
JG2: Is there one record you can point to in Lookout’s catalog and say, “Yes, this is the prime example of what we were trying to do or put forth?”
LL: Oh man, there are so many. Operation Ivy, of course, and both Green Day records, but in terms of our less well-known releases, I’d have to point to Nuisance and Brent’s TV, both of whom were kind of niche bands who came from Northern California, from the more rural part of the state where I was living when Lookout started. Each band captured, in their own way, something extremely specific to the local culture they emerged from. Neither band was, strictly speaking, punk in the normal sense of the word, but they expressed to me everything that was best and most important about the DIY punk scene. And it’s entirely possible that one or both of those bands never would have gotten the kind of exposure they did, or have left the recorded legacy they did, if there hadn’t been a label like Lookout. That’s the sort of thing I’m proudest of.
JG2: Is there any band Lookout never got hold of that you wish you had?
LL: If you mean in terms of making lots more money, it would have been nice if we’d managed to put out albums by Rancid, the Offspring, AFI, and Jawbreaker, all of whom I halfheartedly tried to get on Lookout. Maybe [we] could have if I’d tried a little harder. But the first three of those bands all did great for themselves, maybe better than they could have done on Lookout, so it’s probably just as well they ended up where they did. Jawbreaker, I think, might have done better on Lookout, so even though I’m not the world’s hugest Jawbreaker fan—I like them, but I’m not a crazed obsessive like, um, certain people I know—I would have liked to put out their albums for them. Another place I missed the boat was when I told Crimpshrine that they weren’t ready to release a full-length album, so they put out what is now the incredibly rare Lame Gig Contest on a couple small labels. Boy, was I wrong about that.
JG2: Hey man, it happens.
LL: But what most people don’t fully get about me is that I was never mainly concerned about bands that would sell records. If I was, I could have signed up a lot of those baggy shorts bands before Fat Wreck even got going. It wasn’t worth it to me to have to deal with bands that I didn’t enjoy listening to and hanging out with just for the sake of making money. If I’d wanted to do that, I could have just gotten a job at a record company instead of starting my own label. Labels that are successful, not just in terms of sales, but that leave a lasting legacy, generally tend to reflect the values and aesthetics of the person or people who ran them. That’s as true for labels like Fat or Epitaph or Kill Rock Stars or K as it was for Lookout. Conversely, I think it’s where Lookout went astray after I left: they no longer had a sound that was distinctly a Lookout sound. It was more like they were just throwing all sorts of things up against the wall to see if anything would stick.
JG2: It’s been over a year since Lookout ceased operation. How do you look back on it all? Is it still some huge part of your life, do you feel, or have you let go and let it be in the past?
LL: It was a huge part of my life, and to many people, it’s the only part of my life that they know or care about. Obviously I have other interests and goals, but that’s the one that most folks know, and it’s usually one of the first things they ask me about. In fact, lately I seem to be getting almost as many requests for interviews as I was back in the glory days. Don’t ask me why. I guess maybe this is what it’s like being part of history. I can’t complain. It was an amazing adventure, and though it didn’t end as well as it began, we had a pretty good run, and I think we did our part to change—and hopefully improve—the kind and quality of music that reaches the ears of the public. More importantly, I hope we set an example for how other bands and other labels can make their way in the world without having to make compromises or crappy deals with the traditional music industry. There’s a whole network of touring bands and clubs and performance spaces and distribution channels that didn’t exist when we started out, and I’d like to think we played at least some part in helping that to develop.
JG2: So it turns out you’re kind of a woodsy guy. You ever see any of those brown recluse spiders while you’ve been livin’ up there on Spy Rock?
LL: Brown recluse spiders don’t live in that part of California. We had plenty of black widows, but they never gave me any problems. Scorpions turned up pretty often, too, often in the woodpile, but once I found one—don’t ask me how it got there—waggling its stinger tail at me in the kitchen sink. Our bass player from [the band] the Lookouts, Kain Kong, his mom stepped on [a scorpion] in her kitchen and it stung her in the foot…she got a little sick, there was no real harm done. Our scorpions weren’t as poisonous as the ones farther south. We also had quite a few rattlesnakes, but the cats usually killed and ate them if they got too close to the house. However, one bit my dog, and she nearly died from that. And of course there’s bobcats and mountain lions. I never even saw a mountain lion myself, but a girl I knew came face to face with one when she was climbing up a cliff. She just let go and dropped back down the cliff in a hurry.
JG2: What’s the most dangerous animal you’ve personally encountered out in that wilderness?
LL: My biggest adventure was with a bear. I mean, there were lots of bears up there, but for the first ten years or so I never saw one near my house. But then one decided he liked the looks of my place, and ended up smashing my kitchen to pieces. We had a scary showdown, which you can read about in my book Spy Rock Memories, coming out on Don Giovanni this June. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but I can reveal that I ended up not getting eaten.
JG2: Oh Larry, you old huckleberry.
Unsolicited Thoughts On This Video Of Flag Performing At A Moose Lodge In Redondo Beach
[Flag, the more name-heavy of the Black Flag reunions, treating Moose Lodge 1873 in Redondo Beach, CA to a secret show, 4/19/13]
- thank you, Chuck Dukowski, for bringing a splash of color to this shindig
- I’m surprised the band didn’t institute a “no cell phone” rule to prevent the tangled mess of arms rising up from the crowd; on the other hand, when’s the next time most of Black Flag’s gonna be at your local moose lodge?
- feel like maybe they hung those antlers up for effect
- in a surprise to no one, this reunion performs with a degree of excellence, probably because no robots in sombreros are involved
- the person recording this made some weird cuts, such as editing down the tension-fraught bass/drum opening of “No More” (WHICH IS KIND OF THE WHOLE POINT OF THAT SONG BUT W/E)
- Egerton nails Greg Ginn’s guitar tone; again, not a surprise as he seems like something of a Ginn disciple, but still, I didn’t assume he’d be this on target
- this has no relevance to anything but I met Egerton after an ALL show in 1997 and he was really nice
- Flag hits it out of the park on “My War”
- am I on drugs or does the band look “professionally lit?”
- “My kids are out there!” Chuck says at one point in reference to the crowd, seemingly amused that his children even exist
- I think “White Minority” has always kinda spoken for itself and doesn’t necessarily need further defense, yet Keith offers one any way (something about his grandma sexing Native Americans)
- when Dez Cadena takes over on vox for a few songs his stage patter makes him seem like a “down to Earth bro” I’d “like to have a beer with” (I’m actually being sincere)
- Dez gets a little Vegasy in “Thirsty & Miserable” and I ain’t mad at that!
- closing with “Louie Louie” hit this brother hard in the heart for some reason, maybe because that seems like a true Black Flag move, in the true spirit of the orig band
- DUDE NO “TV PARTY” WHAT THE FUCK THAT’S A “FALSE FLAG” IF I EVER HEARD IT LOL LOL LOL
More F.A.Q.s RE: Misfits Book
Q: When’s your book tour?
A: October-ish, when the softcover version is released. That’s the versh that’ll be in various fine book retailers for a regular book sum. Between now and then I will probably make sporadic appearances at libraries and colleges (if they’ll have me) to thump the hardcover, but the real “book tour” where I go to book stores, coffee shops, and Wal-Mart parking lots will happen in the fall.
Q: WHERE’S your book tour?
A: Definitely up and/or down the east coast. Further west to any major metropolitan area I can afford to reach.
Q: Is your book on the Kindle or the Nook yet?
A: No, but I’m trying to find out this week when that’ll happen. Something in those veins is apparently in the works. Nothing else can be confirmed at this time, unfortunately.
Q: Can I find your book at my local library?
A: You might be able to find it at your local college/university library. According to all-knowing Internet biblioteca sources, This Music Leaves Stains is currently on the shelves at UMass Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library, U of Maryland’s Theodore R. McKeldin Library, the library at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in beautiful downtown Cleveland, U of Texas’s Fine Arts Library, U of Iowa Libraries, and U of California Riverside. Book repositories at Brown, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Indiana U, and Texas A&M have all allegedly ordered it.
Internationally, I’m told TMLS has made it to three libraries in Australia: Melbourne’s Box Hill, Sydney’s Canterbury City Council, and New South Wales’s Sutherland Shire. McGill U in Canada also claims they’ve ordered it. Sorry, Europe. No penetration yet.
I’m sure more institutions of academia are requesting my awesome Misfits book every day. Check with your local college/uni lie-berry. If they don’t have it, ask them to order it. If they won’t order it, well, I don’t know. Rent your Dustin Hoffman VHS tapes somewhere else!
Q: James R. Greene Jr? What does the “R” stand for?
A: It stands for someone made an oopsie inputting my name into a database somewhere. I don’t use my middle initial on the professional tip. Keep that in mind, though, when you’re asking around about This Music Leaves Stains; some listings have the “R.” For the record, my middle initial is D, and it stands for DEFFEST EMCEE IN THE GAME. No, it stands for Dennis.
Q: If I buy the hardcover will you sign it?
A: If you see me somewhere, of course. I never ever thought I’d make something as cool as this book and I’m overjoyed that anyone would sink any kind of interest into it. If you buy it in any kinda format I’ll sign it! I’ll sign your e-reader, I don’t even care!
OMG BUY MY F’N BOOK
This Music Leaves Stains: The Complete Story of The Misfits is now available in hardcover; buy it if u like expensive, firm things about punk bands! Also look at the corresponding photography tumblr and official TMLS F.A.Q.
