JOE BUCK YOURSELF
The once anti-Nashville based Joe Buck gained notoriety as the guitarist of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers. As Hank III’s villainous sideman onstage, the snarling upright bass player became infamously recognizable. Joe Buck Yourself is now a bona fide evil, one man band. This unique blend of hellbilly punk rock ain’t your grandma’s hillbilly music. Joe Buck yourself!
THE BOARDLORDS
The Boardlords began in 2000 in Port Chester, NY at a local watering hole and pool hall known as The Radillac, owned by singer Steve Moy and its neighboring Studio/Clubhouse owned by Guitarist Dan Walsh. Since then the band has recorded 3 full length albums: “The Boardlords”, “Ride Again” and “Wax Museum”; produced several music videos and “MOCumentaries” which can been seen on Youtube and Facebook, and has performed over 200 shows with such legendary acts as Agent Orange, DI, McRad, Big World, Gang Green, Killing Time, Valient Thorr and Sub Zero. They have played at a variety of places and events such as Skatopia, Summer and Winter X-Games, the US Open of Snowboarding, various skate ramps and Chinese restaurants (or insert weirdest place you’ve ever seen a band here) all across the country. Check Facebook for local listings near you!
THE MEAT PUPPETS
Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona. The group’s original lineup was Curt Kirkwood (guitar/vocals), his brother Cris Kirkwood (bass guitar), and Derrick Bostrom (drums). The Kirkwood brothers met Bostrom while attending Brophy Prep High School in Phoenix. The three then moved to Tempe, Arizona (a Phoenix suburb and home to Arizona State University) where the Kirkwood brothers purchased two adjacent homes, one of which had a “shed” in the back where they regularly practiced.
One of the more notable groups on the roster of SST Records (who released most of their albums), the Meat Puppets started as a punk rock band, but like most of their SST peers, the Meat Puppets established their own unique style, blending punk with country and psychedelic rock, and featuring Curt’s warbling vocals. The Meat Puppets later gained significant exposure when the Kirkwood brothers served as guest musicians on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance in 1993. The band’s 1994 album Too High to Die subsequently became their most successful release. The band broke up twice, in 1996 and 2002, but reunited again in 2006.
The Meat Puppets have influenced various rock bands such as Nirvana Dinosaur Jr, and Pavement. In 2011 they performed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for SPIN’s 20th anniversary tribute to Nirvana’s album “Nevermind”.
FISHBONE
Fishbone is a U.S. alternative rock band formed in 1979 in Los Angeles, California, which plays a fusion of ska, punk rock, funk, hard rock and soul. Critics have noted of the band: “Fishbone was one of the most distinctive and eclectic alternative rock bands of the late ’80s. With their hyperactive, self-conscious diversity, goofy sense of humor, and sharp social commentary.
Fishbone was mostly considered to be a ska/reggae band in its early years, but later became more guitar-driven with a focus on rock and soul music.[4] The 1988 album Truth and Soul brought Fishbone wide critical acclaim. With this album, the band also added left-leaning social commentary to their lyrics, covering important topics such as the breakup of families, early 1990s racism, fascism, nuclear war, and oppression in lower income housing projects. The album was highlighted by a hard rock-inspired version of Curtis Mayfield’s classic “Freddie’s Dead” from the film Super Fly. The music video, directed by Douglas Gayeton, became the band’s first hit on MTV. That same year, the group toured with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and became nationally known in the burgeoning alternative music scene. Also that year, Fishbone and Little Richard recorded the Leadbelly song “Rock Island Line” for the tribute album Folkways: A Vision Shared.
More recently, the band was deeply involved in the making of the documentary film, Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, which debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 19, 2010 and is currently playing at film festivals around the world, and their latest album release entitled “Crazy Glue” which dropped on DC-Jam Records in October of 2011.
OFF!
Keith Morris (vocals)
Dimitri Coats (guitar)
Steven McDonald (bass)
Mario Rubalcaba (drums)
The individual roots established by Keith Morris (Black Flag/Circle Jerks), Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), Steven McDonald (Redd Kross), and Mario Rubalcaba (Earthless/Hot Snakes/Rocket From the Crypt) are uniquely woven throughout the rock music canon. Each has challenged society’s cyclical and complacent ideals in their own respective bands, and three decades on they’ve never strayed from their intentions.
Now they come together as a four-piece called OFF! and they’re as confrontational as ever, lunging inside the aesthetic of West Coast hardcore to push life’s most provocative issues to the forefront. The pinch-hitting First Four EPs box set – available November 23rd via Vice Music – marks their explosive approach for a total of 16 songs in just under 18 minutes. The band split its recording into only two sessions, with the first nine songs completed in January 2010, while the latter half was hammered out on August 25th. The limited edition 7”, 1st EP, is out October 12th and it’s your official entry to OFF!’s dark party.
Keith Morris has been a seminal figure in the American punk movement since the late ‘70s, having been a founding member and vocalist for the infamous L.A. band, Black Flag. After the group issued their groundbreaking 1979 debut, Nervous Breakdown EP, Morris left to form the Circle Jerks. Together the band issued six studio albums, including their seminal first album, Group Sex, in 1980, and 1983’s standout Golden Shower of Hits.
Steven McDonald has had his hand not only in the Los Angeles rock scene, but in the international rock scene for over three decades, having co-founded the alternative-rock band Redd Kross (aka Red Cross) in 1978 at the tender age of 11 years old. In the early days of the LA punk scene, Redd Kross shared countless bills with Morris and Black Flag as well as a rehearsal space at the now infamous Church in Hermosa Beach, CA. As a producer Steven has worked with a myriad of varied artist; from the indie pop sensations Imperial Teen to the full blown deathpunk spectacle of Norway’s Turbonegro. As an artist, he has continued to rock audiences worldwide, not only with his mainstays OFF! and Redd Kross, but with other legendary artists such as Beck and Sparks, to name but just a few.
Dimitri Coats began the visceral alternative rock stylings of Burning Brides in 1999. The trio went on to issue four albums, including their latest, the critically acclaimed Anhedonia, in 2008. The band has toured extensively with such acts as the White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, and Mastodon. Coats also stars as the lead villain in the film, Suck, also starring Malcolm McDowell, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Alice Cooper and more.
Mario Rubalcaba hails from San Diego, having recorded and toured with Earthless, as well as Rocket From the Crypt and Hot Snakes. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he made a name for himself as a professional skateboarder for Tony Alva’s (of the celebrated Z-Boys crew), Team Alva.
What formalized in late 2009 was a mix of fate and irony. Coats signed on as producer for what was to be the Circle Jerks’ first album in 14 years. But it was during breaks in the studio that Morris and Coats created a few raw demos of their own material, and through that, a strong collaboration took shape. McDonald and Rubalcaba were added to the lineup to sire the propulsive force that is OFF!
“I didn’t know what kind of ride it was going to be,” Morris says. “But I walked away incredibly blown away. The intuition, the gut feeling, and the immediacy, it just blew up. The best way that I can describe it would be, with me coming from a band called Black Flag and the history that I have with Steven having been in Redd Kross, and taking that vibe and mixing it up like Led Zeppelin had at their highest energy level.”
“It’s been an inspiring kick in the pants,” McDonald says. “One that is so vitally rebellious and anti-establishment.”
Coats adds, “One of the many great things about this band is that the first time we ever locked ourselves into a room together and played these songs, it happened very fast. It pretty much sounded like it does if we walk on stage tomorrow. It was pretty intense.”
The term “dark party” is something Coats likes to refer to when describing the muscle behind OFF!’s songs and each one aims for that bull’s eye. Delving into the social and political chaos of the time is heavily weighed throughout, particularly on Coats’ ravaged riffs of “Upside Down” and “Darkness.” “Black Thoughts” is equally intense with Rubalcaba’s and McDonald’s riotous delivery, while Morris’ fiery disposition during “I Don’t Belong” is another reminder why hardcore mattered in the first place.
Morris continues to be moved by some of this noise coming from the outside when it comes to he and Coats writing music. “I’ve seen all of this stuff and it still bothers me. Times get tough and the economy gets tough. There’s more cars, more crime, and people work longer, and the politicians get slicker and become better liars. You think ‘Well’ and you just throw your arms up say, ‘Hey whatever,’ but that’s not the way that I am. A lot of that comes through the stuff that we’re doing.”
McDonald also credits OFF!’s time in the studio as quite in the moment, and such an approach really stands true to the songs themselves. “As far as executing this music, it’s been easy,” says McDonald. “We’ve all been playing for a long time and [with this project] we didn’t think we needed to polish this. It should sound like the first time we ever played it, and I think we documented that.”
The First Four EPs will be available as a four EP 7” collection showcasing the artwork of Raymond Pettibon. The American artist is best known for his black and white drawings, which provided a backdrop for Black Flag’s overall visual presentation during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and Sonic Youth’s unforgettable Goo cover, among others. Pettibon is also regarded as OFF!’s honorary fifth member and will design all sleeve art for the box set as well as the limited edition poster for the first EP.
“[In Black Flag], part of our deal was to make a lot of noise and to irritate and bum out as many people as possible,” Morris says. “Now, this is what we do and Raymond senses that kind of quality.”
“There’s a dark sarcasm that’s prevalent throughout his body of work and it fits with what we’re trying to get across with our band,” adds Coats.
Armed with only a handful of songs and no stage time, OFF! made their live debut at South By Southwest in Austin in March 2010. Such a move was incredibly bold and defiant to the industry standards, and it was exactly how it was supposed to be for OFF!
“It wasn’t a total conscious decision to make those [SXSW shows] our live debut,” Rubalcaba says. “We just thought that we were ready to get it onto the stage, and that immediacy just took over. We felt that in one weekend, we could play to people from all over the country and the world, and in turn just push [OFF!] even further.
That force propelled the band to their first hometown show in downtown L.A. in May, when they played to over 1,200 people at The 6th St. Warehouse for what has become one of the hardcore scene’s most pivotal and historical shows of the last 20 years. The room was decked with Pettibon’s signature work and its legal capacity only allowed for 250 people. But as the free beer flowed and as the mass of bodies swelled inside, a monumental space in time was rising. The band’s set inside a skate ramp only lasted 18 minutes. Morris likes to say that there was something in the air that night. It was more than just a show.
“What took place was that the neighborhood surrounding the warehouse was near other similar spaces and with the volume of people there, they turned the neighborhood into an art walk with other musicians. It wasn’t about OFF! It wasn’t about Raymond Pettibon. It wasn’t about the free beer. It was about this thing that would have happened 25-30 years ago and it would have been the same thing that would have happened at a Black Flag show.”
It was there that OFF! reached into the crucial creativity of years past to resurrect its rawness for the present. The dark party rages on.
WAYNE KRAMER
Wayne Kramer is a songwriter whose reputation writing music for film and television risks supplanting his legend as one of the world’s stellar guitarists. Rolling Stone lists him as one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. Recent playing is featured on Marianne Faithfull’s new album, score to the series Why Not? With Shania Twain for the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) and a Nickelodeon series theme The Troop for ‘tweens.
Highlights from Wayne’s score can be heard in HBO’s East Bound & Down, and the comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby for Sony, where “Edge of the Switchblade” runs at its end title credits. Wayne composed the score for HBO’s controversial documentary Hacking Democracy, which also featured “Something Broken in the Promised Land” as its title track. He wrote underscore for the film Daydreamer in 2009 and he will contribute score for the Nelson Algren documentary in 2011.
While completing score and narration for the PBS documentary The Narcotic Farm about America’s decades-long failed drug war — as well as its accompanying free jazz soundtrack album entitled Lexington — Wayne was featured on the release of Activision’s video game Guitar Hero: World Tour.
On television, Wayne’s title theme for the Fox Sports program 5-4-3-2-1 was a bona fide hit and he now has many themes running on Fox including, Spotlight, In My Own Words and Under the Lights. Wayne composed the theme for E!’s hit series Split Ends as well as the “Unlabeled” commercial for Jim Beam. His songs have been featured in a wide array of TV shows and feature films, including Jackass, Judging Amy, Millenium, Almost Famous, Rock ’n’ Roll High School, I Shot Andy Warhol and Pump Up the Volume. His cues are regularly heard in NFL, NBA and MLB Playoff events and many Food Network productions. He has written over 1000 cues for network libraries, including Fox, TelePictures, PostHaste and Bravo’s 2010 series Kell on Earth, among others.
Wayne was the teenage founder and leader of the MC5, widely recognized as the prototype for punk rock, but he was also the first to incorporate a nod to free jazz. In 1969, the MC5 released the incendiary album Kick Out The Jams on Elektra Records, which included the hit of the same name. After being dropped from Elektra due to “radical antics”, they released two albums on Atlantic Records: Back In The USA, produced by Bruce Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau; and the critically hailed High Time. Between world tours, Wayne scored Gold and The Living Theatre’s film production of Paradise Now.
Wayne spent 1976-1978 in Lexington Federal Penitentiary, then the 1980s in New York City, where he teamed up with the infamous Johnny Thunders for a short-lived, headline grabbing, punk rock supergroup Gang War. Soon after release, Wayne co-wrote the acclaimed R&B musical The Last Words of Dutch Schultz with Mick Farren, then joined Don Was’ revolutionary acid funk band Was (Not Was) as the group’s original guitarist. Ironically, he helped define the band’s sound through, of all things, a dance hit entitled “Wheel Me Out”.
In 1994, Wayne moved to Los Angeles and signed with Epitaph Records. He recorded four records in as many years. He also produced and co-wrote the album Full Circle with John Sinclair and produced a retrospective collection for Rhino Records entitled The Big Bang and a punk compilation Beyond Cyberpunk.
Wayne launched MuscleTone Records in 2001. Its flagship release was his album Adult World. In 2003, he music-directed a performance for the DVD Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5. That 30-minute documentary and 60-minute concert ran as broadcast staples for BBC-4 (UK) and Trio Networks (USA).
Wayne is recognized nearly as often as a vigorous social activist. Along with legendary British singer Billy Bragg, Wayne founded Jail Guitar Doors USA, a Los Angeles based 501(c)3 non-profit group that provides guitars for use in prisoner rehabilitation. Known as “the loudest charity on planet earth,” Jail Guitar Doors USA launched at Sing Sing Prison with in New York. Shepard Fairey donated the charity’s logo and board member Adam McKay’s company Funny or Die donated the design and programming of its interactive site. JGD-USA is currently building its Board of Directors.
WAYNE KRAMER — COMPOSER / PRODUCER / RECORDING
DUANE PETERS & THE GREAT UNWASHED
The Great Unwashed is a collaboration between skateboarding legend Duane Peters (US Bombs, Die Huns) and producer / composer Greg Kuehn (TSOL, Bob Dylan).
credits
released 14 February 2012
Produced and Arranged by Greg Kuehn
Songs written by Duane Peters and Greg Kuehn
vocals: Duane Peters
instruments: Greg Kuehn
additional guitar: Elvis Kuehn
violin: Semen Lev
trumpet: Larry Williams, Marcus Crewes
trombone: Dave Ralicke
