Interview with Clyde from New York

Welcome to Punk Love and compassion on this, Clyde.

You got involved in the greater punk hardcore scene up there in what, the

late 80s, early 90s, early 90s, I want to say 92 was the first I was aware of.

Cool.

Okay, so before we get too far into that, I was keeping things on my side.

I know I say this every episode, but just make sure you all still realize that one.

I am not a professional.

Not a professional podcaster.

I just think that a lot of people have stories out there and those stories deserve to be heard and that the people most people I'm talking to aren't like the big quote unquote, like stars in the scene.

It's like I said, everybody has a story to be told and I think all those stories deserve to be told.

So this is heard.

So this is the platform I've created for that.

Going back to me not being a professional.

You will probably hear my dogs barking in the background.

Have a bunch of chickens living in my backyard.

They come to the door and peck on the door sometimes.

You probably hear that.

I also have an 11 year old and I have a wife and they often forget that I'm recording.

Yeah, I think that's.

I think that's it for the housekeeping stuff.

So we will start this and to create a baseline like I do in every show.

Do you remember what the first punk song you ever heard was?

It was Rock and Roll High School by the Ramones.

And it's early 80s.

It was on like regular television.

I had no idea who these people were or what was going on.

I was intrigued and I remember them that song.

I remember the first scene where they pull up and they're riding around like a drop top Caddy.

They're in the leather MCs and they're eating chicken and they're singing and they p up to the high school.

So were you watching the movie and it came on or did you see the video somewhere?

I was watching the movie and that came on.

Okay, so you were actually watching Rock

and Roll High School watch the entire film.

Awesome.

I might have been about eight.

Yeah, that's.

That.

That's a good introduction.

Like, how long after that did you become aware that there was a greater, like, community scene?

Let's get even more basic.

The thing that really intrigued me was the sound of amplified loud electric guitar.

You put a loud guitar in something and I was like 8, 9, 10 years old.

I'm listening.

And it wasn't a lot of metal or punk on commercial radio per se, but the few songs that had Run dmc, big example.

A bunch of their first few singles had these heavy rock guitars.

And that sound always intrigued me.

So anywhere I could subsequently hear that kind of guitar sound, I was.

I'm listening to it.

So if you think of any pop songs this way, obviously the Run Dipsey stuff, like I mentioned.

But we had Owner of a Lonely Heart.

Something with a hard guitar in it.

Something I should not, as a little black kid in Brooklyn growing up, be intrigued by.

I'm drawn to it, but my family was pretty open minded.

So not necessarily with punk, but anything adjacent to like hard rock was acceptable in my house.

And I could listen to it on the radio and I would freak out in terms of.

No, I'm trying to think of like a band.

Like something that really.

I don't know, that I realized these bands were punk bands per se.

I don't know if I had this image of what that was in my head.

I knew what it was when I saw it, but I didn't have a name for it, in other words.

Yeah.

And like when I was young.

So the first real representation of punk that I remember seeing in sort of mass media was from.

It was from that movie in the 80s and it was a remake of an older television show, had Dan Aykroyd in it.

Okay, yeah, yeah, Remember that movie?

And like, the punks were the bad guys.

Dan Aykroyd was a cop and his partner.

I forget who his partner was.

But they had to dress up like punks to go undercover.

And so that was my first real introduction.

Oh, punks are bad guys.

Nobody should be a punk.

But.

Yeah, but then I heard all this music.

Not really realizing, right.

There was some sort of connection to it, all the hair metal bands.

Because I came, I got into stuff mid to late 80s punks.

On its way out in.

In.

In a visibly.

And they're making fun of it at this point.

You'll see the Mohawks on TV or in a commercial or something like that.

Or you'll see the col.

Hair.

I was the sound of the hard rock guitars or loud guitars.

And a lot of the hair bands caught me.

And I remember being in like sixth or seventh grade.

And a friend of mine.

I'll never forget this kid, Ahmed.

Ahmed was like a Muslim kid.

You didn't.

You wouldn't think he'd be into metal either, but football players a little older than me.

And he looks at me one day in the schoolyard, he's.

You're a poser.

Like all those hair bands like Cinderella and Rat.

And he's getting to listen to some mad.

We need to listen to Metallica.

And Metallica was the first.

I went out and got a cassette.

Justice for all heard the first song, ripped off the headphones.

What was that?

I've never heard anything that heavy in my life.

And then I took a back route after that.

I grabbed everything I could get.

I.

That's when I started delving into true.

Like the Clash.

The Clash is the first punk cassette.

Not even a CD at this point, but a cassette that I bought.

And it was like Clash City Rockers or something like that.

And then later on Pistols.

My thing was I went to Catholic school.

So late 70s, early 80s, Catholic school kids, good at hiding stuff, went to school.

I had nuns.

So, yeah, I remember my Appetite for Destruction album getting confiscated because there's a cross on it with some skulls on it that got taken.

And that was like the reprints.

Exactly.

The first cover with the chick on it, they had to pull all together.

But kids would carve bands that were popular at the time onto the desks with the old school wooden desks.

So the name stuck out.

Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Pistols, the Clash, these were all.

So for years I'm seeing these names, not realizing their bands.

And then now that I have a connection to Metallica and I know what the Clash is, I go back and I start listening to the Pistols and stuff like that.

This is junior high.

Yeah.

And I think I had a similar journey.

So my oldest sister is eight years older than I him.

And when she was in high school, she was dating, like, guys on the football team and stuff.

And jocks back then are not like jocks now.

So they were all into.

They were all into metal, right?

So, like, they got me into Iron Maiden and Cinderella and Metallica and Anthrax and stuff like that.

So that was my journey.

And the first song I really remember hearing was more than just a song, right?

Like a song that I heard.

And I was like, wow, there.

Like, there's more to music than just music.

There's.

This is making me feel a way that I've never felt before was the Anthrax, Public Enemy, Bring the Noise.

Like, I heard that song and I.

And it flipped something internally for me.

And that was like my route into.

Yeah, pretty much junior high.

Everything went that way and changed where it was like, all right, I'm never just going to go back and listen to rap again.

What's funny is, right at the time, it wasn't.

Like I said, it wasn't Necessarily acceptable, at least in my little local community, for me to be listening to that.

I remember being told, and someone said, I was sheltered, went to Catholic school.

You're in school with these same kids for all these years.

Now we're going into high school and I'm going to a public school for the first time.

So the big thing on the street is, oh, Clyde's gonna have to watch himself in high school.

You can't go around telling people you're into that kill your mother, kill your father music.

This is what Dipsuta was referred to at the time.

Yeah.

I feel happy for these kids.

Kids now, where a lot of that's gone.

I went to.

There's a band called City Morg.

And they're okay, they rap, but it's.

They call themselves trap metal.

And it essentially, it reminds me a lot of onyx in the 90s.

I don't know if you remember, Onyx was working with Biohazard.

Oh, yeah.

Their whole set sounded like that.

Okay.

And the crowd.

I couldn't have dreamed of a more diverse crowd than that.

You know what I mean?

Everybody was there.

All the pit rules were still in place.

Everybody's picking each other up, they're looking out for each other.

It was pretty awesome.

And I'm like.

And I remember in the early mid-90s, like, there was a lot of that, that crossover, especially in New York, with like, the New York based hip hop groups, rap group groups working with or palling around with the New York type.

O Negative was working with rappers.

Biohazard was right.

A lot of the Brooklyn groups, a lot of the Brooklyn hardcore groups were working with.

With hip hop acts as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I think.

I think we were all seeing the same injustices, Just experiencing it differently.

Yes.

I don't know if you remember the Judgment Night soundtrack.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's a classic.

But yeah, that was.

I converted a lot of people into a lot of metal acts and rock acts based off of that.

Yeah, yeah.

And even with, like, Ice Tea, like, his rap stuff was amazing.

But then he came out with Body Count.

Look like we can do this stuff too.

And we can do this really amazing.

I don't know our age difference, but my freshman year of high school was the first Lollapalooza.

Okay.

You're a couple years older than me, but not much.

No, I think the first Lollapalooza was when I was in, like seventh or eighth grade.

Okay.

So high school.

High school for me was 90 to 94.

Okay.

So, yeah, that and even High school was a big leap into something else.

Because now I'm coming out of this little, small community of people who don't know a lot about the music that I'd like to.

And now I'm seeing kids with metal shirts at school, so I get to ask them and pick their brains.

And of course, back then, it's.

We're trading cassettes.

That's how we're.

That's how we're getting the music back and forth.

And a friend of mine made me a tape of Jane's Addiction, subsequently became probably.

They're in my top five for sure.

Huge.

One of my first shows was Jane's Addiction.

You'll laugh at my first show, Soundgarden.

What was it?

Oh, that's not bad.

It was.

I didn't even know what I was.

I knew it.

I was into them.

I had heard.

What was the album I heard at that point.

It was the one before Bad Motor Finger.

It was Louder Than Love.

Or it was Louder Than Love.

So I knew of them through that.

And they were so not well known at the time that.

Yeah.

Because grunge hadn't hit right.

We're talking 91 into 92.

And they had just released Bad Motorfinger.

The album release party was here in New York.

WNEW was our hard rock station at the time.

And they.

If you can tell us what city these guys are from, there's free tickets to the album release instantly called Seattle.

My father goes.

Picks up the ticket.

I go.

It was my first show.

So I'm just.

I'm just like, I can't believe I'm here.

I can't believe how loud this is.

I can't believe there's a bunch of people who are going off and feeling the same way I do about this.

And.

And I was like, 14.

So it's much around a bunch of big dudes.

I'm not going anywhere near the pit.

The little pit that was forming up.

It was.

I was expecting, like, an industry kind of thing.

I thought it would be suits.

It was a crowd.

It wasn't.

I thought they'd play for maybe five minutes because.

But no, they played a full set, and that was it.

Never looked back.

And I think at that point, when I first saw Rock Band Live, that's when I wanted to participate myself.

That.

That's what led me into saying, I want to get up there.

Scream into that mic, too.

Yeah.

The first concert I ever went to by myself was Kiss.

Really?

Yeah.

And when I saw him, they were touring without their makeup.

Oh, Damn.

Yeah, but you know, still, right?

Still Kiss.

And then my first punk show.

It was.

It actually happened in Huntsville, Alabama, and it was.

I don't remember all the bands that were playing.

I want to say one of them was called Inside Lori.

I think they're all, like, local bands.

Inside Lori.

And then, like, I went to two shows.

Almost like I went to one one

day and one the next.

Okay.

So I went to two shows back to back.

And there was a band called, like, Skeletal Earth.

I don't remember the others, but one of them was this, like, 77 punk style.

Like, the singers look like Darby Crash and you're spitting on people.

I don't want to get spit on.

That's gross.

That means they love you.

Don't love me that way, but I love the music.

And then.

And then, like, the other bands, they were doing this fitting nonsense, and I was like, okay, cool.

I want more of this.

And one of my neighbors was really.

A couple of my neighbors were really into punk, and they were older than me, and my parents just really weren't around.

So I just.

They're like, hey, do you want to go to the show with us?

Yeah, let's go to the show.

Let's go.

Yeah.

And I was in.

I don't know, I want to say I was in, like, sixth grade, maybe fifth or sixth grade.

Sixth grade, I think.

Yeah.

I was about 12 for, like, my first introduction.

That's pretty close.

Yeah, but.

But for me, it took me a while from that because then a couple years later, I moved up to D.C. where my mom was living, or Northern Virginia, D.C. area where my mom was living.

So it took me a while to, like.

I knew there was a scene.

I knew there was stuff going on, but it took me a while to, like, find it and to connect with it, I guess.

Going back to that question earlier.

So going from the Bad Motor Finger release party, like, how did you find, like, a community from there?

School, like I said, once I started going to public school, where you're coming up with more diverse kids from all over Brooklyn as opposed to just my local area.

I started meeting kids that were into different stuff.

I started getting tapes from, like, the local.

I didn't know there was a New York hardcore scene.

Knew nothing about this.

I got the bands.

So someone gave me a Pig Face tape, and then someone gave me a Murphy's Law tape, and someone gave me an Agnostic Front tape.

And it started happening like that.

I didn't even realize these people were local.

There's no Internet for Us to research where these people are from or what do they even look like.

If you don't have a picture with the cassette or whatever you got and you're getting your information through Rick magazine or Circus or one of these magazines at the time, the information is pretty limited.

There's one particular day though.

I had a couple friends that I gathered together that were all like minded by my freshman year of school, the last day of school, sitting with four of these kids and one of them goes, wouldn't it be cool?

We had a band.

None of us play instruments.

We're all 14 years old.

It's the last day of our freshman year.

We're like, yeah, that would be cool.

Ironically enough, three of these guys, we end up forming this band years later.

But it's the same guys that I had that little dream with nice freshman year of high school that ended up being the band.

So it was a cool story when we were in our 20s going, how'd you guys meet?

Playing together since high school.

Yeah, it happened through school by accident.

Just you end up in the right class with the right person, you ask them, hey, what do you listen to?

And it happened from there.

But high school was big.

There was a big hardcore punk scene.

And I didn't know there was conventions involved in it.

I didn't know the separation between the old school punk and this new hardcore stuff.

I didn't know what the aesthetic differences were.

These guys are pulling up looking like they work construction.

They got backpacks on stage, baseball hats, Timberlands.

And we look real New York up there compared to what I'd seen on tv.

You know, blue collar punk scene.

I ended up.

So we have this daydream in.

In the beginning of high school.

The following year, one of my friends picked up a guitar.

One picks up bass.

I had closet sang for years.

I could sing whatever the hell I wanted to in any style.

My voice hadn't changed yet, so I could go real high if I wanted to do all the Axl Row stuff.

We formed a little BS band.

We called it Finger Soul.

And Finger Soul was a joke on my.

High school was right across the street from Brooklyn College.

One day we're cutting class, hanging out there, and someone asked us, do we know where Fingersol was?

Ingersoll hall is a hall in Brooklyn College.

We've been drinking or whatever, so we heard Fingersol.

We named that the band that.

And we had this little.

Fisher Price, my first rock band set up for two years while we were in high school learning to play.

I eventually pick Up a guitar, but not with this group of people.

There were some.

It's always some older kids that get you really deeply involved.

So I'm a sophomore in high school and some seniors.

They wanted to do a summer band, just a cover band.

We end up doing that and it ended up doing pretty well.

So that was my first gig.

It's 92, 16, maybe from that, the word started to get around.

This guy can actually sing.

He's pretty good.

And I pretty much the bass player from that summer band ended up in a big hardcore band.

They needed a singer.

I ended up joining that fall.

But this is summer band, so that's.

It all ends in August or September.

By October, I'm playing, like big hardcore shows in New York, not having any real clue of.

There's a scene and it's this big and these.

But I'm playing.

I look at.

There's a flyer.

It's got the Bannerman and Murphy's Law.

Like two of the biggest fans in that scene.

I have no clue.

I'm a kid.

I'm just trying to get through the set, remember all the words, not get completely nervous up there.

My dad shows up to the show, so he sees me jumping in a pit.

He got balls to go up there and say, scream into that mic and say, you're singing.

So the people seem to like it.

And I was, thankfully, at a young age, encouraged.

It wasn't.

There was no.

No one hated on me and said, oh, what are you doing up there?

There was none of that.

It was completely the opposite.

And that's when I realized, hey, there's like a community around this thing.

There's people from school showed up again.

The word gets out even further.

But yet that was mid high school.

Just being in bands drew me into the fact that there was a scene.

I knew nothing until I got out of that basement or that rehearsal studio and actually got into a club.

And I didn't get the pleasure of going to the shows.

I did get the pleasure of playing those shows, though.

So, yeah, still to this day, I'd rather be up there than watching.

Yeah.

Like, the energy is different.

Yeah.

In my opinion, live punk show is a magical place to be.

And no matter where you are at, that show, like, magic is happening.

But in my opinion, like, the two most magical places is one is on the stage and the second is right in front of the stage.

Right in front of the stage.

You're just like.

You are the first person that all of that energy hits.

Right.

And you just have all this Passion and emotion and everything just aimed directly at you.

And you're just like the first person that wave hits.

Yeah.

But again, in my opinion, no matter where you are at the show, it's a magical thing.

I don't think I've ever either on

the stage or that first row is

the only time I'm not in.

In that first row is if it's an arena show.

If it's standing room, I'm bullying my way up to the front.

Believe me, these days I might do it off to the side of the stage as opposed to dead center.

But when I was a kid, I am going, excuse me until I get my way right up.

I don't want to be right 10ft back.

I want to be right there.

Yeah.

Oh, definitely.

So from that, like how.

What did your progression, not just in punk but like in music look like from there?

So that same punk band that I was in ended up getting some label interest.

I'm 16 years old at the time.

These guys are 24, 25 years old.

They've been at it for a few years.

They're looking to.

It was Roadrunner was trying to sign them and Roadrunner says to we'll give you a.

We'll put you on tour with a bunch of our acts.

But the tour is going to be in Europe.

I'm automatically not in that equation.

I am not leaving school to go travel with a bunch.

So they subsequently kicked me out of this band.

I had no stake in the songwriting.

I didn't write any of the lyrics.

I came in.

The band is fully formed here.

Learn these words, learn these vocals, sing it.

And I did it.

And we started to move.

About six months goes by and this situation presents itself.

So I get kicked out of this band and I make a vow to myself that I'm going to pick up an instrument so that I can.

In further situations.

I can say I wrote some of the songs in this.

You can't just throw me out of here that easily.

And I.

Right.

I still feel like sometimes some musicians don't value a vocalist in a rock setting.

If you're just the singer, they kind of look at you like anybody can sing.

So I picked up the guitar at that point.

In that point, the focus from punk switched over.

I got more into, like I said, Jane's Addiction, the Chili Peppers.

There's still a punk thing going on there, at least in the.

Not necessarily in the aesthetic.

But the attitude of those bands was very free, very aggressive and the open minded group of people.

And I like that Sound.

I like what they were going for, so I started writing.

So I picked up the guitar about 16 again.

I now know a crapload of musicians at school, so I might have been playing about two months.

And the guys at the jazz band at school, they look at me and I hate to say it this way, but the director of the band was black.

And he goes to me, you got no brothers in the band, man.

We need some brothers in the band.

He goes, can you play an A minor?

And I play him the A minor.

Can you play an E chord?

Play an E chord.

He's like, all right, you got enough.

Join the school jazz band.

You'll get a straight A from that experience.

Our school jazz band had some phenomenal musicians in it.

So I was.

I had the pleasure of playing with a piano player who, while we were in high school, played Carnegie Hall.

He was a perfect pitch.

He's one of those guys could hear a piece of music and just play it.

Note for you.

Yeah.

Pierre gave me the confidence that I needed two months into my guitar playing to play with this full school jazz band who've been playing together for years.

And again from there, I'm getting involved with different communities of musicians.

Flashback to my friends from freshman year school.

They're all now progressing on their instruments.

We make another go at it.

It doesn't really go anywhere, but we played a couple of little things for the school or whatever this is in the middle of high school, I graduate high school, and the drummer from that jazz band in school goes, I'm looking for a real serious college band, and I want to work with somebody I think is solid, and I think I want to work with you again.

Another phenomenal musician.

My drummer was a classical percussionist.

So anything you could hit, he was trained on it, xylophones and all.

And we're kids.

But he's got this amazing ability to play anything from like Lars Ulrich drums to Mark your Ramon drums to whatever kind of drumming that we needed to be done.

Latin percussion.

He could do it all.

And we set out to form what became our band, Fingersole.

We just used the name we had from high school.

We ended up calling two of the guys from that Little Squad.

And 96 to 2000, we were at it.

We did did the CMJ fests written up in the Village Voice.

We're doing our thing.

The labels that presented themselves were the shadiest of all.

And we fell apart.

Not because of money, but because everyone's graduating college by the time we got somewhere with it four years in and it's starting.

But the minute we started making money, the egos came in.

No one knew how to talk to each other anymore.

And that's what happened with that situation.

But yeah, I have to say, right time, right place in the right school.

I went to a school that's still considered like one of the better academic schools in.

In Brooklyn, in New York, actually, in high school.

And we had just phenomenal musicians.

So some of them took me under their wing and brought me along and.

Yeah, that's cool.

And it's.

I think, unfortunately, that happens more than people like to talk about.

Right.

Like once ego's getting involved and once money becomes a part of it and songwriting credits and all of that stuff.

Right.

And I think that takes away from like our root cause of getting involved in the first place.

Not taking it back to funking hardcore too much, but what wasn't it?

Rabies from Warzone.

Don't forget the struggle, don't forget the streets.

Right.

And once all that other stuff gets involved, we forget that real quick.

Yeah.

What's he said that the last hardcore show I went to New Year's Eve, 1999.

I said, if I'm gonna go down, I'm gonna go down in this ship.

And I went to see Murphy's Law at the Pyramid in New York.

Pyramid was like a legendary spot for us.

And I remember it was 99.

We're all worried about 2k happening and everything going kaput at the turn of the century.

And I remember Jimmy Gestapo, the singer goes, don't worry if everything up.

I got a van outside.

I'm taking us all back to Queens, all of you.

But still, it was still that sense of we're here, this is still may have.

And things are completely different in 2000 than they were in the 90s.

But we're still here.

Yeah, we're still all.

You know what I mean?

And that any.

It was funny to see them with tuxes.

I played with them when I was like 15, 16.

He didn't remember me.

But yeah, that was the last true hardcore punk.

I forget who else played, but Murphy's Love was phenomenal.

They were awesome.

Yeah.

So just going back to that.

Your early foundational music days coming up.

What like, do you.

Is there anything that sticks out that like, you still carry with you to today?

Like, any ideas, ethos?

Absolutely.

I had the pleasure in the.

In my early 20s to meet Ari up from the Slits.

She actually lived in Brooklyn for years and she lived in my neighborhood and we had mutual friends and the bass player in my band would always go, yeah, I got this friend, Ariana, and she sang in the Slits.

And I'd heard of the Slits, never heard any of their music.

But he kept bragging about her, for a good year, she's trying to get the band back together.

And she's in the.

She's in the history of rock and roll documentary.

So he was blown away by this.

Again, I'd never heard.

Yeah, she actually comes down to jam with us at a studio session.

And I meet her.

She's got long dreadlocks.

She had dreadlocks down to her.

Way past her, like, down to her knees, basically.

And she was really tall.

She.

The Slits came up with the Clash and Pistols.

They were from that era.

They came up late 70s, early 80s.

Joe Strummer taught her to play the guitar.

There were a couple of songs and a couple of bands that were becoming acceptable to.

To the wider community because I think.

I think just things were changing, you know, I remember the Beastie Boys, Check your Head album being a big game changer where we kind of bridged a gap Judgment Night soundtrack.

So all that stuff started to kind of change people's minds.

But ultimately, I had to make a decision somewhere in the middle of high school.

Like, am I trying to please everybody or trying to please myself?

And at the end of the day, I'm much more.

I was much more.

I'm gonna be who I am.

I'm gonna get into what I like.

I don't care who likes it, who cares about it if kids want to beat me up.

Because I listen to, you know, Metallica and, you know, Big Daddy Kane or whoever they wanted me to.

And the funny thing is, I listen to everything.

You know what I mean?

I listened to 50s jazz at the same time that I was listening to, you know, PE and Anthrax and Metallica and guns and, you know, and all that stuff.

High school was it.

It was a little bit of a problem, but not.

No one ever tried to beat me up.

But there were definitely threats made here and there, but you're not supposed to be listening to that.

Who says I'm the kind of personality.

If you tell me that I'm not supposed to, I'll lean into it even further.

So it never.

I didn't let that bother me for one second again.

The people in the community were pretty accepting of me.

And I still notice this to this day.

I don't know if you get it.

I'll do a show, I'll come off stage and I'll get, you know, you get the congratulations, all good shit, whatever, you know, that was great.

I liked what you did.

But then I largely get like, you know, no one's talking to me out of these shows.

So I've never been able to figure out, is it because people don't want to approach me, is it, I don't know what that is.

But again, it's always been a little weird for me because I never, never really had the experience of sitting and watching these shows as much as being a participant in them.

So you're seeing it a little bit differently than I'm just a person in this community.

I'm a performer, so I'm kind of, I don't know if I'm making sense, but I, I kind of came in a different way than most people.

You're coming up getting a certain level of attention that you wouldn't normally get just as a fan, just sitting there.

So I've never, I don't know that I'm any opposition to what I was doing or the vibe or the music that I was into.

Again, when it did present itself as a problem, I beat it back.

It was not something that I paid much mind to.

I, I, it just, I'm not sure I started touching on it with, you know, like the Beastie Boys and the Anthrax coming out and music started to change when people started becoming a little more open minded.

You had this whole alternative thing where now it's not even, it's, it's a rock based thing, but there's other genres involved.

So now it's, it's kind of softening people up to the idea.

I mean, yeah, games like Fishbone too, which were all over the place, right?

Yes.

I mean, just musically and what they're putting out there, I mean, just all over the place and just amazing stuff.

But like going, you know, going back to your point and again, this is, you know, I'm obviously white person, so my experience is, is different, is I never really understood like the, well, this is like white music and this is black music and this is whatever, like, you know, it just never made sense to me again.

I realize I, I'm white and saying that but, but you know, just looking, looking at the history of music.

Right.

So, you know, you, we've both mentioned Public Enemy a couple times.

You know, a couple years ago there was a podcast that came out about the Clash and Chuck D narrated that podcast.

Really?

Okay.

And in the podcast, you know, first or second, you know, episode of it, he's saying, you Know, without.

Without the Clash, without his love for the Clash, there wouldn't be a Public Enemy.

Yeah.

Which.

Which is interesting because without, like, reggae and ska.

Yeah.

For sure.

There'd be no Clash, you know, so.

So it's, It's.

This is cool.

You know, it's this cultural back and forth.

So at what point in time, you know, just really music belong to.

I think it's.

It's just like Aria told me, it's a media thing.

It's.

It's.

It's more how people are marketing things than what, the crowds, actually.

Obviously, a guy like Chuck D can hear something, be influenced by and tell you about it, but if you read the paper that you don't know necessarily, you wouldn't necessarily be led to believe that that's happening at all.

You know what I mean?

Right.

I think it's much more acceptable now for these guys to genre hop the way they do than in our time.

It was.

Judgment Night was a complete departure from everything.

Just these guys working side by side.

Equal billing was a big, huge deal.

And now it's kind of like normal.

Jay Z did a whole album with Lincoln Park.

You know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

I didn't even hear the album.

Well, and then even, you know, even with, like, punk hardcore, you had bad brains, right?

Yes.

I mean, they were doing stuff.

247 buys.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, they were doing stuff before, you know, before anybody was thinking about it.

Yeah.

You know, just.

Just the speed and the ferocity and the lyrical delivery and it's just 100, you know, and they were sort of all over the place as well, because, you know, that you'd be, you know, listening to that album just like, you know, all this, and then all of a sudden there's, you know, this, you know, real chill, laid back, like, reggae song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think I'm going to attribute this quote to Louis Armstrong, but I believe he was.

He was being interviewed because he was playing the Newsport Jazz Fest or the Newport Folk Fest.

Okay.

And they were, you know, the interviewer was asking him, why are you playing a folk festival?

You're not a folk music musician.

You're a jazz musician.

And his.

His response was, you know, all music is folk music.

I've never heard a horse sing a song and that, you know, I may have taken that, you know, out of context somewhat or whatever, but.

But I remember very clearly the first time I read that quote from him.

And I was in high school.

I was like 16, 17 at the time when I.

When I read that quote from him, and that was from obviously a very much earlier interview than that or time than that, and it just struck me because, like, my musical influences, my musical tastes are all all over the place as well.

You know, I love.

I love jazz, I love hip hop, I love punk, I love metal, I love folk, I love Americana, I love all over the place, you know, And.

And for me, when I'm listening to music, all I'm looking for is for.

For something that makes.

That makes me feel something right.

I just want.

I just want to feel.

And there's plenty of music out there from all those genres that doesn't make me feel, you know, but it doesn't matter what instruments are being played or what's not being played or how the person is singing or speaking or yelling or rhyming or whatever.

Just like, I just want to feel for sure.

I think what struck with me as a kid was everything I was listening to had kind of a rebellious aspect to it.

So I could find that in rap.

I could find that Iraq, and it was equal down the middle at that point.

I think both of those genres have lost some teeth over the years, obviously, but the more money they started to make.

But, you know, we were fortunate enough to have grown up around the time, it was still like, it was a big deal to see a rap act on national tv.

It was a big deal.

I remember watching Guns and Roses on live tv.

They come up smashed and slash curses twice in live tv.

He's still kind of, you know, I had a little bit of that going on.

So I think within the mainstream, you're.

You're 100% dead on.

You know, a lot of those people have lost their edge.

But I think within, like the.

Still, like the underground DIY places like that edge and that anger and that rebelliousness is still there.

Okay.

Like I said, I. I mean, I took my son to see this band two years ago.

They.

And like I said, they were described as trap metal.

So I don't know if you've ever

right that you were talking about City Morgue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

City More.

They're playing like old school metal and punk in between sets.

That's what.

That's what also kind of made me feel good too, because they know that what they're doing now stands on the back of all that stuff.

So there's Slayer in the middle of stuff, there's AC DC in the middle of stuff, and then they're playing their original songs.

The diversity struck me.

The Pit struck Because that was like.

That was one of the gnarliest but safest pits I've ever seen.

There's a bunch of kids that are like, my son dated, you know, all 17, 18 at the time, but they're all like teenagers, and they're actually like, it.

It made me feel good, like the old man, because I'm there with the parents.

Even the club, it was under 21.

They all had wrist.

If you were over 21, you had a wristband.

There was barely any wristbands in that place.

It was all kids.

They had their own venue.

I knew some of the security in there.

I didn't see there was some kids smoking pot because it's legal up here, but I didn't see anybody doing anything crazy like in our time.

Right.

Any kids that passed out, there was a section for them.

They were pulling kids out the crowd.

They had a little triage, a little section over there for them to sit down.

They needed some oxygen, some water.

They're there.

You got a phone.

You can call your parents if you need somebody to pick.

It was.

That was like this tightest thing I've ever seen in like, the 2000s in terms of, like a punk rock thing.

That was still kind of old school, but with.

To date.

And I was proud of those kids.

They were much better human beings in that setting than I remember being in that at that age.

That's awesome.

Yes.

You know, going along all the same lines.

That is what I'm starting to see more at shows is bands having, like, Narcan and like, feminine health products, like, on their, you know, on their merch tables for free.

Yeah, we joked about that years ago, and now it's a thing.

Yeah.

Again, you know, you're not going to go see, you know, Blink 182 and find that on their, you know.

Right, right.

But.

But the more local, the more independent stuff, you know, that.

That belief in taking care of each other is still, you know, very much there and very much a part of the ethos.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

I mean, I've got.

I don't even know what the venues are anymore.

Once upon a time, growing up in Brooklyn and being a Brooklyn band, we would have to travel into Manhattan.

There weren't many clubs in Brooklyn.

I played a few of the clubs that were in Brooklyn, but they were like.

They were more local bars with a stage.

They weren't set up for live acts.

They just happened to have an area and they get a couple of kids from local bands to come by and play for a few bucks, if they could pack the park.

But then Manhattan, we had CBGBs, we had the pyramid, we had Brownies, we had all these spots that, you know, were known and now it's, you know, fast forward.

How many years later it shifted the other way around where all the spots in the city that were the legendary punk spots are gone.

CBG along with it.

Right.

And now the spots are in Brooklyn.

So that's even strange to me.

So that's also a reason I haven't been able to really check it.

I just moved back to Brooklyn a few years back.

I had left Brooklyn for about 12 or 13 years.

I was living further north.

Yeah, the venues have changed.

I, I need to just get, stick my head back into the, into the, into the world and see what's out there because the spots are actually close by now.

Yeah, you know, we would, we would have to Trek into Manhattan 45 minutes on a subway or, you know, if somebody had a van, they'd drive us in or whatever.

Now stuff is in five minute driving distance, like venues.

And I'm like, okay, this is, this is new.

I gotta, you know, now that I'm back in Brooklyn, I gotta get into it and see what's out there.

Yeah, you should, you know, because there's, you know, there's some stuff out there that I'm just, you know, not into.

I'm not, you know, I'm not a big fan of like the beat down stuff, but there's, I mean, there's a lot of really good up and coming bands out there right now that are just doing amazing stuff.

Yeah, I would, I would, I would recommend sticking, sticking your head back in and just, just seeing what's going on.

Hey man, send me some links to some stuff that you like, you know, and I'll start from there.

Yeah, yeah.

Next time we see each other, we'll

compare notes and we'll get into that in a minute.

But you know, to be respectful of your time, you know, we've been talking a good bit, so I'm gonna start wrapping this.

So a couple questions left.

The first one is currently in the crazy world we live in.

What gives you hope?

Believe it or not, the kids, at one point or another, we were those kids that they doubted that they had no faith in.

And here we are, 30 something years later, somehow landed on our feet.

So some of these kids, I, I, I remember maybe two years ago, I'm doing laundry at a laundromat.

So I got the big laundry bags I'm headed to the car, and this kid walks into the laundromat.

I'm looking at his outfit, and I shouldn't have done that, but I'm looking at the outfit.

The underwear is showing because the pants are really low.

It's got this huge belt buckle on, and the belt's got like, you know, rhinestones and bullets on the side of it.

It's got the gold fronts in.

And this is not a look that turned me off, per se, but it just.

I had an idea in my mind of how this kid would be based on how he looked, which, God forbid someone did that to me when I was a kid, I'd have been pissed.

But here I am as an older guy doing it in my mind, not saying anything to this kid or anything.

The kid comes up and throws me, excuse me, sir, can you smell those bags?

Oh.

Grabs the bag from me, walks me to the car, like that type of deal, totally respectful, held the door for me, wished me a good day, and I'm like, here I am being one of those old people that used to look at me when I was that age and do the same damn thing.

And what place do I have to do that?

You know what I mean?

This kid was so respectful and so cool.

And thankfully, I don't know if it's me or just my good luck that when I've had to have interaction with people, teenagers, young adults in New York, at least from my little limited area in Brooklyn, they've all been pretty respectful.

You see some crazy stuff too, but then it kills, so.

But when I do see one that's well spoken, regardless of how crazy I might think they're dressed, they're well spoken and polite and respectful.

That gives me a lot of hope.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

We're not in good hands or these kids are completely warped from the smartphones, but some of them will be okay.

What are you listening to right now?

Listening to right now?

Old stuff.

Old stuff.

I'm trying to think of something that's not.

I've been going deep diving into the 70s stuff, okay?

So I.

And sometimes, you know, you're on YouTube and you, you like certain things, and other things pop up in your feed.

There's this group that I. I never knew the name of the group.

I grew up listening to this song.

This is a 70s song, and I thought it was Jackson 5 song because the singer's got this very high kid voice.

And it was, it was, it was, it was a young.

The group's called the Silvers S Y L V E R S. But it was a family group, R B band.

This is like the last two, three days.

I'm just going into a deep dive of this bit because the guy sounded so much like Michael Jackson as a kid.

And the production quality of it too.

And just the bass lines to the music is awesome.

Listening to a lot of the Ferv Jazz Masters compilations lately.

So I've listened to a lot of Louie, a lot of Dizzy in terms of rock based stuff.

Who was it this week?

This is Mozzie.

Okay.

I always go back in time to go forward again.

I'm always open to new music.

The problem is I.

And I've come to this conclusion.

Our ears mature and then they kind of sit in a particular place.

Not that we're not into new stuff, but we are.

We're now listening to it with older ears.

Right.

You're now hearing what.

What it reminds you of instead of just listening to this group on its own merit.

At least my brain works that way.

I start taking the music apart.

I start going, oh, it kind of has a Black Sabbath thing going on.

And it kind of has a little clash thing going on.

Or it has a list going on.

And I do that.

I still enjoy it, but I can't help but pull the music apart in that fashion.

But my.

My taste will change in a day.

Yeah, I'll go from Bob Marley to like Metallica real quick and then back to like De La Soul or something.

De La Soul's got a new album out that's pretty cool.

Yeah, I haven't heard it yet, but it's pretty cool.

Yeah, I didn't.

I. I had reservations about them even doing one now that you know two past.

But they did it justice.

It's like when Tribe Called Quest did that last album and Fife had just passed away.

It was similar situation.

They.

They did it.

They.

It's like Soundgard or like Faith no More.

These bands don't.

These certain groups don't put out really bad albums or anything.

You may like it, you may not like it, but it's not.

It's not terrible.

Give that a good list.

It's pretty solid.

Okay, last question.

And it doesn't have to be punk umbrella related at all, but what do you think people should be listening to right now?

Well, I'll preface this by I have an old belief.

I've been saying this one for years.

People are in a bad mood.

I'm like, you can't ever go wrong listening to Bob Marley.

I've never heard anybody stay upset listening to Bob.

If you're in a bad mood, put on some Bob Marley.

If it doesn't cheer you up, something's wrong with you.

I can back that statement up.

I can back up that emotion, you

know what I mean?

There's timeless music is what I've always looked for.

Going back to being in Catholic school and seeing the name Black Sabbath on the desk and not realizing who Black Sabbath was or what they meant, what, what was built on that.

When I did get into Black Sabbath, I realized I'm listening to like a building block of a genre.

So I would always tell, like, my son's a musician now, he plays guitar.

I always, I always recommend the Root.

Whatever he's listening to.

I listen for where their influences are.

And I tell the kids to go back, go back in time.

Where did so and so get this sound from that you like the Chili Peppers?

Where did, where did that guitar sound come from?

It comes from Jimi Hendrix.

Where did Jimi Hendrix get his sound from?

So I like go to the classic people of every genre and listen to them and you'll have a pretty good understanding of most genres of music you're going to listen to.

To folk or something.

Go Dylan, you know, you're going to heavy metal.

Go Zeppelin, you know, that kind of thing, you know.

Cool.

Well, I'm going to make a recommendation here.

So new band out of TC called Loose Leash, really good younger band.

Just released an EP and I've been playing it, you know, probably non stop for the last week or so.

Just really, really digging it.

If they have any YouTube or a website or anything, just text it to me.

I'll check it out as soon as we're done.

Yeah, yeah, I will.

Is there any place anybody can go to like find your music if they want to, if they want to look up stuff?

No.

So this is another, this is a conversation I mean, to have with you offline.

Because one of my little struggles now is, you know, time has passed, we're older, you kind of struggle with yourself.

At least I do with who's going to listen to this.

Does anybody want to hear it?

Is it still any good?

Is it?

You know what I mean?

So I, I do go through that and not having a band, I've got tons of stuff that I haven't put out.

So it's like, I think Cardi B is the like most prominent new artist or she took like six years to put out a second album and it was kind of when I heard her do an interview it was the same reasons that I had.

We were all.

We were all kind of, you know, have these security issues and stuff like that.

But no, for the time being, not really, I do have some stuff I'm going to be putting out soon.

But again, sometimes some of us need a little push over the edge to just say, you know what?

Let the world hear it.

So that's kind of where I'm at, to be honest.

Gotcha.

Cool.

Okay, my friend.

Well, thank you so much for.

Thank you for having me doing this.

I really appreciate your time.

For all those who listen to this, thank you as well.

I appreciate y'.

All.

I have social media.

I'm not good at it.

Instagram is the best one.

It's.

Yeah.

So punk, love, compassion, yahoo.com if you want to.

Email me if you want to.

Come on.

You think somebody else should?

Come on.

You have connections to, you know, reach out to me as well.

I'd love to hear from you.

And until next time, my friends have hope.

And we'll talk to you all later.

Thanks so much, man.