Interivew with Sean Garrison, October 12th, 2016

Chip Nold:Here we go. I'm talking to Sean Garrison on October 12th, 2016 at his home on Second Street in Louisville. And so we're going to talk about his illustrious contributions to the Louisville underground music scene. So just start with some personal information. Where were you born?

Sean Garrison:Here in town. I don't know what hospital. I can't remember. I can't remember. What was on Eastern Parkway? Which one was that? Was General on Eastern Parkway?

CN:No, there's that -- Kosair -- I don't think there was. I mean, Baptist was on Barret, you know, where that lonely building is, but anyway.

SG:But I think that hospital that was on the Eastern Parkway is where I was born, if I remember right.

CN:All right. So, what part of town did you live in?

SG:I grew up in Pleasure Ridge Park. I'm the only member of the family that 1:00didn't live in Portland at some point.

CN:And where did you go to school?

SG:I went to Greenwood Elementary. I went to Conway Middle School on Terry Road. I was bused to Shawnee Middle School in seventh grade. I went back to Conway in eighth grade and then I went to high school at Pleasure Ridge Park and Butler.

CN:Okay. All right. And so, when -- I asked where you were born. When were you born?

SG:September 13th, 1967.

CN:What did your parents do for a living?

SG:My mother, well I mean I think for most she had various jobs I know off and on before she married my father. But after she married my father, she really, she didn't really -- she was just a homemaker. And then after my father died, 2:00she went back to work. So, I mean I don't really know. I don't know what year they were married. I mean, I just don't. I don't know. But it was probably 1960 would be my guess. They were married in 1960, something like that. But dad was a marine drill sergeant for many years and then he was an iron worker with Local 70 here in town. And most of my mother's male relations were also Local 70 ironworkers.

CN:Is that how they met?

SG:No. They grew up in the same neighborhood, which my father's house was just like, I don't know, 100 feet from the Portland Library. And I think Geraldine's 3:00family lived the longest on -- The Atzingers -- I think they live the longest on Northwestern Parkway, I think. But, you know, during the depression, you know, a lot of families moved around and they would usually, you know, end up in the biggest house, you know, whatever family member had the largest house. A lot of families moved in together during that period. But mom and dad were both born in the early thirties.

CN:So how did you -- what are your earliest memories of music and, you know, kind of getting interested in music as something?

SG:Well, it's, you know -- when you're -- you're a TV generation person and so am I, and you're probably -- you know -- I mean by the time you were born, most households probably had a TV, you know. So aside from the radio and the TV, my parents didn't really have very sophisticated tastes. They didn't really or they didn't really show much interest in it. My father was a big Heifetz fan. He liked Wanda Landowska quite a bit, the clavichord player, the harpsichord player. And they seemed to -- they were able to drop a lot of names, but really when you would look at the record collection that they had, you know, it was pretty sad. I mean, they didn't really seem that interested in it. Just like the 5:00house didn't really have a lot of literature in it either, regardless of how good they were at -- how many names they could remember. You know what I mean? They were really, really -- they were familiar with a lot of, you know jazz people and, you know. I mean they were just -- I don't -- they're not here to ask, you know, but for me it's like I really like to -- I mean I liked Heifetz a lot. I liked my father's classical records, but there was a stack of 45s that I had inherited from my older brother Lance, who had in turn inherited them from his -- from my siblings from my mother's first marriage, my half siblings. So there was a stack of 45s that had to be like, I don't know, seven or eight inches tall that I just -- my brother would play them for me when I was really, really small. And there were some really strange records in there, you know, but 6:00there were also things like -- you know, there were Chuck Berry singles, there were Beatles singles, because my sister was a Beatle mania person, you know. She was completely swept up with that. I mean -- but there were a whole lot of like records just for little kids which I loved. I mean, that stuff was fun, you know, but I think that the first record I remember being like really like hooked on, that before I was able to identify any kind of rock music, was I loved The Sword in the Stone soundtrack because of Mad Madam Mim.

CN:"A legend is sung of when England was young."

SG:I don't really remember anything. No. I mean I know I liked the whole record. I liked the whole record when I was small, but the only thing I can remember in my conscious mind is the epic battle between Merlin and Mad Madam Mim. That was 7:00a big thing for me. And we listened to a lot of, we listened to a lot of Jonathan Winters albums. That was really popular in our house. So absurdism was really -- anything absurd, but I liked any music. Almost -- I liked almost everything and there really wasn't -- there was very -- there was some stuff that I just didn't like. Like my father inexplicably -- I don't know why he -- whose records these were, but they were like some Jackie Gleason Orchestra records at our house.

CN:My Dad was into that.

SG:You would hear it and you'd just be like -- I was two and would just be like, "this is fucking -- this is ridiculous." You know what I mean? At two years old, just being like, "no, dude, no." I don't know what this is or what feeling this is supposed to evoke, but it's fucking horrible. You know what I mean? I just remember feeling that. I mean like as long as I was conscious, just like don't fucking play that around me, you know. It's like no. So, I was a big fan of the Banana Splits, I know that, when I was like three, I guess. So my father, my first concert my father took me to see the Banana Splits at King's Island. That was awesome. Yeah, it was great. And so I mean I remember the Monkees show and that was -- I knew that -- I mean I could tell that I was just like, man this is really lame but it's still adorable, you know. So, I was really judgmental as hell, even from the beginning, you know. I remember when I first heard, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I Saw Her Standing There," I was pretty shocked by the speed of that, you know, and that was like at the same period that I was listening to all these other 45s that we're in this stack. But of all those records, you know, like Chuck Berry records are great of course, but there was 8:00something about the speed of the Beatles, which like of course it doesn't sound very fast now but it's actually pretty -- that record's pretty fast. I mean the amount of snare.

CN:Yeah, "She Loves You," man, the way that that--

SG:Yes and especially that turnaround, that bass turnaround. That's just, man if you don't like that just like get out of here. I mean the way I -- it's just the way I was. But I think my brother says my first favorite song was "Yellow Submarine," that I sang a lot to myself, and we must have had that single too. So I mean, I was into just about everything that I heard. Like I liked almost everything I heard on the radio. I found very little of it to be like offensive. But, I know this happened before my father died, but I guess when I was five is the first time that I started to be able to distinguish between something that 9:00was like on the heavier side. You know what I mean? When I first started thinking, well they're trying to put this over a little bit, you know, which was probably Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Because those first string of hits that they had, I just thought that the guitar tone jumped out to such a degree. Like when 10:00I was a little bit younger, like The Sweet were also like, you know what I mean, like pretty severe sounding, you know. But I could tell the difference between somebody who was trying to tough it up a little bit, in a way. And that that happened when I was around five because I remember asking for like a BTO record, and I think somebody got me a Bay City Rollers record by accident, you know, I guess because they just couldn't remember what I had said. But I just remember being five years old and being like, what the fuck is wrong? You know what I mean? Like just like already knew, just like no dude, no, no, like no. Like I mean even at five I knew that the Bay City Rollers were just -- it was just like you could tell that if they meant what they were putting, I mean if it was 11:00legit, if what they were doing was legit, then they were really fucked up. Like something was really wrong with them. Like I don't under -- I did not understand whatever sentiment that was. It did not compute to me, right.

CN:Right. I mean, I hardly have listened to them, but yeah.

SG:It just would not -- it would not compute. But if I saw something like Donny Osmond, I would go, I think I understand who is supposed to like this. But then 12:00sometimes I would see stuff and just be like, man I do not understand what the message is here at all. So that was probably the beginning of that when I started to think when I would hear something on the radio and try to understand the back-story in every possible way. And that's I think when records became more important to me because it was something to think about.

CN:Is it something you talked about with your friends?

SG:Well, mostly my brother because my brother was a connoisseur of a fashion that just didn't exist out there in Pleasure Ridge, because Pleasure Ridge was pretty much a separate town at that time. I mean you would spend like long periods of time where you just didn't come to Louisville at all. You didn't need to, you know.

CN:St. Matthews was the same.

SG:Yes, yes, absolutely. Like it was a self-contained community. You didn't -- 13:00you had your own goddamned grocery, you didn't need to go out there, you know. Your doctor lived out there. So, the culture of the neighborhood, you know, almost immediately started to create that, to create the -- what's the word, the arena in which the discussion about rock music happened. It became a discussion within that particular place because you were stuck there. So, you didn't really -- it was really, really hard to figure out what was going on in other places and in other income brackets and I mean you were surrounded by --everybody around you was working class. At the time when I was five, most of the families were making good money. I mean no one was poor out there back then. I mean, it was solid middle class income and mostly homes that were paid off within a 14:00couple of years because almost everybody were union type workers. So, it was like that discussion about the differences between the Bay City Rollers and Bachman-Turner Overdrive was, I mean that was like a discussion that just, just didn't stop. Because my brother would like -- anything that he thought that I would like, I mean he would go to any lengths to make sure that I heard about it. Either saw it or heard about it.

CN:How much older is he?

SG:Five years older than me. But he was -- I mean that was his mission really. I mean absolutely because he could detect my lack of satisfaction in general, you know, just a general lack of satisfaction or a general distaste for life very early on. And he would do anything that he could think of to try to alleviate that. Like you can tell if your parents are like -- if your parents have had a 15:00few drinks, suddenly like you recounting a cartoon you saw it's really funny to them like they're cracking up. And you can tell the difference between a receptive audience and a non-receptive audience. And with my brother, he would just -- he could look at my face and tell me whether -- and tell whether something was lightening up my brain or not. So he would do just about anything. He'd go to just about any lengths. And that was really great for me because I just found out about stuff at a clip that I shouldn't have known about probably.

CN:So how did punk come into that?

SG:He was onto that really early, like probably from the beginning. Now I don't think we really understood what would be called -- I mean there's a lot of stuff that like got by us, right. A whole lot of stuff did get by us. Like, I mean we weren't really aware of the MC5 or -- I'm trying to think of other stuff. But I 16:00think what caused me, aside from my brother presenting stuff to me, he had a friend named Warren Carly who I don't really know if the guy's alive or he doesn't seem to have an online presence or I don't know how to spell his name or something. But he was like -- like he was an interesting person because he was really repulsive. Like he was -- yeah man, I mean he was just one of the most unlikable motherfuckers I'd ever seen. Like everything about him was repulsive; like physically. He had a like an awful personality -- he was just a horrible person which -- but he was hysterical to me. I mean, I thought he was funny because it was the 70s and he, like everyone else, he didn't seem to understand that he was not cool. That was the best thing about the 70s. Everybody thought either you were cool already or you were about to be cool in about five minutes. And that was the magnificent -- that's why that decade was funny and interesting. And he had -- and I'm not shitting here man, I'm not kidding -- he had like, you ever seen like photographs of people who had rows of teeth like a shark, teeth growing over teeth over teeth?

CN:Yeah, sure. Yeah.

SG:He had a mouth full of, just full of fucking teeth. So he was always having surgeries to remove teeth from his palate. He was just a very unfortunate person, but he brought over the first New York Dolls record and the first 17:00Dictators' record to the house. And that was probably in seventy-- my guess would be '75.

CN:Sounds about right.

SG:So I don't know why he knew about that or why he -- how he got turned onto that and I don't know what year Phoenix Records opened. So I don't know where Warren got those records. He may have gotten them at Consolidated. He may -- I don't know.

CN:Yeah. Stuff would show up in places like that.

SG:Yeah, it would. Stuff would just show up in the weirdest record stores. Or just -- I mean there was a time, I don't know if you -- I mean of course you remember this, but like all types of department stores sometimes would have even really small record departments that were really small. And that's where we got the Pistols record and we got the Pistols records, Some Girls by the Rolling Stones, and the first Devo album on that, at some department store that only had like five or six record racks. It was complete -- I had no idea which one it 18:00was. It was like a Bacon's or some crazy shit like that, like you wouldn't think that those records would be. But I did not dislike The Dictators' record or The Dolls' record, but at the time I mean I was not into cross dressing dudes, you know. I mean I just didn't like hippies, and those guys had long hair and I was just like "fuck that." I don't know why, I just had a problem with that, you know, unless you were openly super androgynous. And then it didn't bother me at all. I don't really know what that meant or, you know, but like I wasn't really particularly bothered by Bowie. I mean, I was -- Queen were my favorite band for most of my childhood. And I liked Elton John a lot. I fucking loved the classic Elton John records. I bought -- I loved those. I loved the Electric Light 19:00Orchestra, early on. But all that stuff, I mean the stuff I was listening to before those records were probably Elton, the early Queen records, and the Electric Light Orchestra. I didn't really know about Kiss till '75, which was -- so it was impossible for me to understand that Kiss were like ripping off The Dolls. Who knew? I didn't know that, but that was like the first --but I didn't know what it was. I didn't know that it was a -- I just thought it was like who -- I don't know who the fuck they think their audience is, right. I mean--

CNRight. That's the way it worked out.

SG:Yeah. But I remember feeling like, I don't know who the fuck they think is going to buy this record. I mean, it's, it's sounds great, you know, it's okay, but when you looked around you, when I looked around, you know, in my life I was 20:00just like, man no, nobody around here is going to be even remotely interested in this because it didn't reflect what they were already trying to be back at them. Like I mean if you -- I mean I don't really understand like why everybody wanted to be like a person in Fleetwood Mac. You remember that, you know. I mean it was just. There just seemed to be this devotion to the Zeitgeist that was total, was total, and especially out there. There was just not a lot of interest in anything that was different. But the big turning point, the big turning point was probably, I remember very specifically in seventy-- I don't know-- when Devo 21:00was on Saturday Night Live, that was the moment for me. That was the big wake up call. But I had been buying a magazine called New York Rock Scene. I don't know if you've ever seen that magazine.

CN:Yeah. Oh yeah.

SG:It's the greatest rock magazine in American history.

CN:It's mostly just pictures.

SG:Yeah. It's better than Cream. It was -- but it--

CN:David Byrne shopping for frozen vegetables. I remember.

SG:That's right. Now that's when I realized that there was something going on, that there was a whole different set of musicians that just didn't seem to be pandering at all to the period. And that was a fucking mind blower. But my brother woke me up and said, "You've got to come downstairs right the fuck right now." Like in seconds he picked me up and dragged me down there. And so when I 22:00saw them do "Satisfaction," for me this was like a major thing because I don't fucking hate anyone more than I hate Mick Jagger. I fucking hate that cock sucker. And even when I would hear like early Stones stuff and I'm just like man this is so good, I still hate that motherfucker. You know what I mean? Like it's the same way with like Robert Plant. I would look at Robert Plant and just fucking want to die, you know, just like, "Fuck, I hate you." But there was something about them doing "Satisfaction" like that that was like, "Oh fuck, it's on." To me it seemed like some -- there had been some sort of -- something had been brewing and then the idiots at NBC had let these fuckers on TV by accident. And then I think I saw the Elvis Costello thing too. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I did. I don't remember. I don't know if what I saw -- I don't know if Patti Smith was on Saturday Night Live or if I remember Gilda Radner 23:00making fun of Patti Smith on Saturday Night Live.

CN:Both things happened.

SG:Yes. Okay. But that -- yeah, Devo was when it happened, and that magazine because like I remember very specifically seeing a photograph of Devo before they were -- before the record was out. And it was Iggy Pop on the ground on all fours and Mark Mothersbaugh had his foot on his back, and it just said, "Devo conquers the Igg." And I was just like who the fuck are these assholes? Like, who the fuck are these guys? The place they're playing in looks like it's the size of a garage. Why are they in a magazine? And then I was just like oh-oh, like oh I'm going to find whoever these morons are because the sense of absurdity there where something is both 100% serious and 100% not serious at the same time was just like oh well it's like a Warner Brothers cartoon because it's like it's funny, but every personality disorder and major mental disorder is 24:00being explored here. You know what I mean? So that sort of reflected that instantly to me, that it seemed like in the Warner Brothers' tradition of irony, like that type of irony. But yeah, that's how punk rock started. I had to know who those -- so my brother of course like got that record. Like I said, I don't -- I think it may have been the week that Some Girls came out, so I don't know when that was. Probably in late November, something like that. '77 would be my guess.

CN:Sounds about right.

SG:Because they did "Shattered" on Saturday Night Live where they're trying to be more New York. They had cut their hair short and I was like, "Oh The Stones 25:00don't suck so bad." I remember that very specifically, just being like, oh my God they're not just laying more hippy bullshit on me because they look -- they seemed like scumbags. Well at least now they like look like real scumbags and are kind of acting like scumbags. And I found that refreshing, that honesty to be really refreshing because all the like long-haired people like you would look -- like I would hear like stuff like Crosby, Stills & Nash or something. And I would just be like man I am not tricked for a second. Like I detect E-Ville, you know what I mean? Like there's so sort of creepy vibe to me in that California mellow rock that was happening then. It just seemed like it was a scam somehow, 26:00that something -- it was hiding something that was very malevolent underneath it. And, of course, like once you read about what was going on in Laurel Canyon and shit, I mean that -- those motherfuckers were fucked up. That shit was sick.

CN:Like that John Phillips biography.

SG:Oh, all that shit absolutely. Like Frank Zappa like he rented that house from, I don't know what this guy's name was, I can't remember his name, but he was like him and his wife would take these street urchin girls and like dress them up and they kind of invented hippie fashion. And Frank Zappa would hang around there so he could scam on all these 14 and 15-year-old girls. And I mean they were just all sick, but they looked sick to me. There was like -- the message didn't seem to fit. There was some underlying mansonesque kind of feel there. To me like they seemed more like they were hiding something, and I just 27:00didn't buy it. So like when you saw the Devo guys, you're like yeah like nobody would be this of their own volition. This is how these fuckers are. Why would anyone choose to be that? You see what I mean?

CN:Right.

SG:And I think that's why Kiss didn't bother me because it was so cartoonish, and at first you could tell it was so attempting to get you to like it that I didn't really feel like I was being duped.

CN:Right. Right, I can see that.

SG:Yeah. It was dumb and it was being presented as dumb. But that whole live, like that 70s live like you're going to rock and roll all night and party every day. I mean, I would say that by '79 I knew that that was complete horse shit, that no one except like this weird 1% of the people in Pleasure Ridge Park who were inexplicably like these stars, like neighborhood stars. A guy lived in my 28:00neighborhood his name was Mickey Paul. He's one of the best-looking motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life. He was frightening. He was the ultimate 70s like hot guy. And he was also hysterically funny, and he was a nice dude. He was also dangerous, like really dangerous. So, he was sort of like Fonzie in Pleasure Ridge Park. But when you would -- when I would look at everybody who thought their lives were going to be like Mickey's, and then I would look at Mickey and I would just be like, man these people don't realize that like it's not going to happen. Like whatever these expectations are that they have are not going to happen. And when I started hearing music that did not keep trying to tell me that, it was great, but nobody else around out there was interested, I'll tell you that. They were not happy to have that narrative change at all. They were not happy. Every high school and middle school had its untouchable crowd, and you could not get an explanation for why they were, right. They were just these gold -- you know what I'm talking about. They were just these golden people, but you could not figure out who decided it and why. And that, when you started encountering sexual politics and then you started being cognizant enough to realize that rock and roll itself was telling you something that was just 29:00horse shit. You know what I mean. The girls were not going to like you. They just weren't. Like if you -- if you had the right haircut like that didn't fucking matter. Like, I don't know what the star quality was, I just knew that I didn't have it and almost -- and no one else I knew seemed to fucking have it. There was this unequivocal worship of golden ones and I guess it's still going on, but it seems to have been, to a great degree, diluted by so many choices. And yes. But Devo was it.

CN:So was that something--?

SG:And the Pistols, of course, the Pistols. That was my personal revelation were the Pistols.

CN:But what was it about -- you just kind of said Devo?

SG:Well, my life was a lot more intense and desperate. Devo set off the bells where I knew that something had happened. But it wasn't until I -- and you would 30:00see The Pistols when they came to America you would see stuff on the news, because they would act like it was the apocalypse or some shit. And then you would see photos of them, and I remember the photos of those guys really scaring me. And I was just like, goddamn, thank God somebody actually looks fucking ugly, like fucking at last. I was just like -- but I thought Rotten was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen. I mean it made a prof -- his look, especially that photo session with the jacket where they tied him to that cross and he had that wreath on his head. I remember seeing a photo I think in some magazine, Hit Parade or Cream or something. I was just like that's the coolest looking mother fucker I've ever seen. I mean it was just a revelation to me.

CN:Just had that intense--

SG:He just fucking looked like -- he was a new -- he was a herald of a new -- well, to me it was new. I did not understand Bohemianism and the tradition of 31:00Bohemianism, I didn't understand it. But hearing that record it -- I was in a very dark place. I was very unhappy person. My home life was unhappy. I was surrounded by chronically depressed people, I was a chronically depressed person. And I really was not -- I didn't have many things much to live for. And I was thinking about fucking checking out. I really didn't want to be here. And that was a very -- I've had long protracted suicidal periods off and on my entire life. But I just remember that there was a big difference, at least for me, between liking punk rock and then becoming that. That I was going to undergo a change that was literally social suicide, absolute social suicide. But it had to be done. Like I really could not think of any other option because I just -- 32:00people just didn't seem to care about anybody except these golden ones. And most people, if they were personally upset by this, they hid it, but most seemed happy with this weird feudal system.

CN:Beautiful [unintelligible - 00:34:23].

SG:That's exactly what it was, it's exactly what it was. And I knew that it was going on in bigger and bigger circles all -- that the world I was in was just the world in small, on a small scale, on Lego scale is what I used to refer to it. Just like we're in Legoland but the same laws apply to the whole planet or whatever. But that option of just being, of rejecting a false narrative and 33:00accepting a very, very painful, troublesome, real narrative where you're like why is "Holidays in the Sun" different than "Beast of Burden," and both those records we bought them on the same day. What's the fundamental difference between them? Well, one is a reflection upon desire, and one is a reflection upon frustration of desire. You know what I mean? A lack of freedom. So instead of somebody telling me about the hamburger that I'm going to get, somebody's telling you like well like make your own fucking hamburger, I guess. I mean it's hard to articulate, and I've been thinking about it for 30 years, and it's still 34:00hard to articulate, but cutting my hair and deciding to dress very extreme that was -- it would be like if you dressed -- if you walked around in a fucking Nazi uniform in the Highlands, period. That's how it was received. It was a major, major thing, you know. And later on I met musicians who really never went through that phase at all. They never looked fucking stupid. They just liked this other type of rock and roll more for whatever reason. But they didn't feel the need to go through a major fucking transformation in order to free themselves from a very oppressive, what seemed extremely oppressive at the time. But like cutting my hair and man I remember just like when I would wear pins, just like buttons of bands I liked. I mean man people got really upset over 35:00that, like fucking major. Why is your hair short now?

CN:Really?

SG:Oh yeah dude. I mean it's a major problem. It was a major problem.

CN:So this is? This is what--

SG:'79. '79 is when like I cut my hair off and like -- because right -- I mean, right after we got those records, I don't really know. I mean I know my brother got The Jam album and we were -- but we were also buying new wave stuff like watery kind because some of that stuff was great. You know what I mean? Like I mean you're Elvis Costello fan, I didn't really think that it was any different really. It was just about -- it was about emotional bullying as opposed to other 36:00type. You know what I mean? Like the types of damage that people do in relationships to each other. And I thought that the approach was really good. I really liked the Graham Parker Squeezing Out Sparks record a lot. I liked the first two Police records that came out in '78 or '79. But London Calling was -- that's when I knew that something had happened that was so major and so important, and the fact that it was completely unknown that also did something to me. That just added to my general confusion about the people that were around me. But the amount of trouble that I personally experienced, just because -- just from cutting my hair and like looking punk rock was I mean I got -- people 37:00would stop their car and just kick the shit out of you, get back in their car and drive off.

CN:So physically assault you.

SG:They physically assault you, yeah, a lot. Because -- I mean there were either like older people, older men especially who were afraid for you because you were doing this. Literally you could see it in their eyes. They were worried about you and that was one type of harassment. But then there was this whole other type of harassment that came from people under 25 that was violent and--

CN:Trying to enforce the social order, right?

SG:I guess. I just know that I got the shit knocked out of me until I started trying to stab people. I had to orchestrate a couple of incidents that were severe enough to where people were like man you just don't, you don't cross him. He's not the person you cross. And then I went through this like incredible thing at the same time that punk rock became my life, because it did, it became 38:00my fucking religion. After I heard the Pistols, it was my fucking religion, but I went through this long period where like I would figure out who the major assholes were in every high school and middle school and then I would just ride my bicycle all over like that part of Jefferson County and just fuck their property up at night. I mean just fuck their shit up good. And then never tell anybody about anything. You would just be like, "Oh, did you hear about so and so, his parents' car was set on fire." And they would be like, "It was the guys from Valley." And I would just be sitting there like, "Nope," like staring at him. It's like, "No it was me." And so I went on this -- like in '79 -- in '80, '81 I went on this bizarre Heart of Darkness trip where I was still out there. I 39:00didn't come to -- I didn't start hanging around in town yet. I hadn't met the Languid and Flaccid guys yet. I hadn't met anybody else who liked what I liked. Brett Ralph, I met him in high school. But Ralph was really establishment, man. I mean regardless of the fact that he's such a personal maverick, 'cause he is, but at the same time he was on like the debate club and the fucking football team and all that. No, I was setting people's fucking cars on fire. I'd take weed killer and draw a fucking swastika in your yard in the middle of the night. I mean I did that shit all the time all right. I'd have like five tons of gravel delivered and dumped in your fucking yard at 5:00 AM. I mean I went on a reign of terror in '80 and '81 that was just -- until somebody came to get me, the 40:00guys from Squirrel Bait would come and rescue me and get me out of PRP. It was fucking complete war.

CN:So are you saying you didn't -- so you didn't have any friends you were sharing this with except?

SG:Well no. You'd try to. Like I said about London Calling, you would try to tell people, "Man motherfucker I am not fucking lying to you. When we are 50 years old this is going to be considered one of the greatest records that's ever been made in the English language, and you are a fucking idiot for not listening to what I am telling you."

CN:I remember that feeling so vividly, yeah.

SG:"You're a fucking retard. Like you are fucking up. Like don't tell me that you're committed to all this other music. And I mean, Rolling Stone is telling you, Rolling Stone is telling you to your fucking face that this is a game changer and you still don't want to hear it because those guys don't look pretty 41:00to you. They don't make you think about whatever it is that you think about when you fucking whack on that clit or when you're masturbating." You don't -- it's not Stevie Nicks or whatever it is that people -- I don't know what the fuck they wanted. I don't know. But I mean, I guess social bonds and fitting in, for a vast majority of people, is so instinctive and so deeply ingrained in them that they are naturally repulsed by anything that they think will alienate others. Right?

CN:Right.

SG:Well, I didn't know that until I was 40 fucking five years old. I didn't get it. I didn't get that. I did not understand that instinct within others at all. So, every time anybody was expressing that natural instinct to belong it fucking 42:00just made -- it made me fucking infuriated. It still does, just like you're missing out on everything. You're just fucking up. You're fucking up, man. But they didn't want to have any -- they didn't want to hear it. So, yeah, in '80 and '81 before I -- well I mean I -- when I discovered hardcore, of course that's a whole other kettle of fish because that -- I discovered that sound, extreme punk rock, extreme punk rock, at the exact moment that I was going to do something really crazy, like really like danger. I was going to do something fucked up. Like I was either going to -- I was going to hurt somebody, or I was going to hurt myself. I mean there was no question. That's how total the war had become for me. I mean, I thought a lot about it, I'm going to just kill my family. They're idiots. I'll get out of jail before I'm fucking 25. They're fucking idiots, you know. When I just looked at the way that they could not 43:00control their lives. Well, I didn't understand about depression either, about how it renders your ability to control your life impossible. So a lot of my own depression was masked or reflected back at me in this, and my war out there in Pleasure Ridge allowed me to survive that first major depressive fit, which hit me when I was about 14. You know what I mean? But I mean of course my statements about herd mentality and about its natural thing, it's just a natural thing. Of course, that stands. That's just a fact. All of history points that out. But when I got that Dead Kennedys record, I bought "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" at Phoenix Records probably within two or three months after it came out. And that had to 44:00be December of '80 or early '81. Right?

CN:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's about right.

SG:I mean for me. But I remember the first day of school, and I was supposed to graduate in '85 so my first day of when I was a freshman, what was that, '82 I guess. 82, 83, 84, 85. Yeah, '82 right. All of '82, '83, '84 and '85, right, I guess, but I had that Dead Kennedys arm band that came with that single. I had it on when I walked into the school. So, I was already into hardcore before high school. So that summer before high school that was the pinnacle for me. That was the darkest, the absolute darkness, and punk rock saved me. It saved my life.

CN:So you said a hardcore was a different transformation. How would you--?

SG:Well with that, with hardcore it's so much more you stop attempting to explain to people at all. That's what hardcore was really. It's suburban. It's the suburban reaction to The Pistols, mostly suburban. You know what I mean? Like guys that are like were raised around jocks, whose fathers were in the military usually, or really tough union type guys. So they have a certain physicality and respect for -- it's like a part of -- it's like a jockism that you just can't get rid of no matter how arty you were. You see what I mean? Or even if you were gay, even if you were gay there was a certain level of that jock post-World War II American value in you. Even if you were everything that 46:00they hated, it was still in you. You'd see it in black folks, you know. Some black families that were out there. There weren't many. I didn't speak to a black person until I was probably 10. You know what I mean? Like I just never had a chance to have a conversation. I mean -- well no. I mean I guess there were some black kids in my school, in my grade school, but there weren't many. That's hard to remember. But, yeah, The Kennedys, I mean I thought that record was on the wrong speed. I didn't like The Ramones. They had long hair. Fuck that. It's more the same. That was more the same to me. So the speed, you know, like I don't know if you bought It's Alive when it came out. It's pretty crazy how goddamn fast that really is. I mean it's crazy. Like even today, if you hear 47:00it you're like I cannot believe how goddamn fast they're going. But back then it just like I wouldn't even open my ears to that band. I mean it's --like I could immediately hear The Archie's in there and I could hear a 60s girl groups in there, which it took me years to appreciate that stuff. I didn't understand that. I mean to me they had long hair, so they were -- to me they were playing nice. But hardcore was where you stopped trying to explain to other people about this other type of music. You just fucking stopped and then it just became a 100% war. Like if it was not punk, it was shit, it was absolute shit because for a long time it was. You could kind of justify it. Like you could kind -- I mean even though in the back of your mind you were like, no man, that first Queen record is still great. Like it's still awesome. I mean -- you know I love 48:00Rumours. I love that record. I do. I love Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I love it. But at the same time, you had to have this period where you were just like, "No, man, it's fucking war, total fucking war." And so luckily it was there for me.

CN:So, when did you first meet somebody in Louisville who was -- when did you first become part of the Louisville scene?

SG:Well, my friend Kelly Brady knew about the Dance Band. So, I think in the summer before I was in high school we cruised a party or something or a show where you all were playing. And I just didn't see many fucking wild looking people around. They must all have been inside or something. But I do remember meeting Rigot at the Great Escape once and knowing who he was for some reason. 49:00But, when Ralph got into Malignant Growth that's what -- that's how everybody out in the southwest part of the county got involved -- met you guys. That's how we all met you guys was through Kenny. Because the Growth of course, for people who are listening, the Growth are the Dance Bands' support system. You know what I mean? Like people didn't get it. Just like that would -- Mark was a roadie for the -- he carried Tara Key's amp. But it was Ralph getting -- I don't even know how Ralph met those knuckleheads, I don't know. But when I saw the Growth with Ralph, probably his third show or second show, that was the first time I saw anybody play like that severe because -- that was my introduction to local 50:00bands, you know, was through that, through Kenny.

CN:And so when you say Kenny?

SG:Kenny Ogle. Yeah, Kenny, because Kenny was the guy that was out, right.

CN:Right. Oh you mean from Kenny Ogle leaving?

SG:Kenny and Mark. Kenny and Mark, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kenny leaving is what set -- that's what's did it for us. So, I mean I guess it's Kenny's whatever fucking ridiculous behavior he was involved with at that time that got him out and got -- somehow Ralph got in and yeah. So, the problem was a lot of the guys that 51:00were from out in PRP and Valley, I mean they were just -- they all turned out to be conservative fucking jack-fucks. So, there was always that, and I was like that too, you know, like mean as shit. You know just -- it was hard for us to drop it completely.

CN:So, what are the things that you -- so you saw Malignant Grow -- you saw Ralph who you knew?

SG:Yes, at The Beat with DOA and no one showed up, and I saw that show. Who was that guy Witt that worked the door there? Is that what his name was?

CN:It wasn't Wink.

SG:No, Witt. Some guy named Witt. You ever heard of that guy? Was -- I may be--

CN:I seem to remember the name, yeah.

SG:Yeah. I may be getting this wrong, but Joe Gales and him were there. Joe was there, and this is when it was next to The Penguin still. So, I was allowed into 52:00that show.

CN:So, you would have been 14, 15?

SG:I would say 14 years old. So that was right at the end of that reign of terror that I was involved with that one man, this really weird one-man war out there in PRP where I was completely isolated. So, I would disappear for like long periods of time and my family wouldn't even, they wouldn't even ask me where I had been. I'd be out on my bicycle for -- I wouldn't get back till 5:00, 6:00 in the morning. I mean I was able to cover huge amounts of space and then ditch whatever arson tool I had or see if I could get home with the fucking hatchet that I had or the bug sprayer like that. Pretty hard to ride a BMX bike 20 miles holding a bug sprayer. But man, there was no cops out there dude, there were no cops out there at all. If you weren't on Dixie Highway, they did not see 53:00you. They did not see you. So, I could ride -- I could go on these missions and be gone for hours and not a single cop, never see a single cop. So, I found out who all those people were, all of those bullies and all of those golden boys and all their cheerleaders. I fucked all their shit up major. Why does somebody keep cutting our cable line, our cable TV line? Who dumped a gallon of fucking food coloring in our swimming pool? Like who put the lawn furniture on the roof in the middle of the night? Who? I mean once me and my friends met--

CN:And you never got caught?

SG:Never got caught. Never got caught, you know. I remember one time like there was a family that I hated a lot. They were just awful and I just fucking hated all American type fucking, just fucking hated it. They went on vacation so me 54:00and my friends like cleaned and organized their entire garage. Like, I mean like man we'd label jars. I mean we cleaned it like spic and fucking span, and when they came home from Nolin Lake they were fucking horrified. It was in the paper. People were -- they were fucking freaking out. What does this mean? Who did this? We did stuff like that. I orchestrated stuff like that. I did that stuff almost every night. So, I stopped doing my schoolwork in eighth grade, in the summer of my eighth grade. I did no schoolwork throughout high school and I went all four years. I went there every day and I never did a single lick of work, none, nothing. They gave me my own school room. I mean my own classroom.

CN:And just passed out?

SG:No, no. They just said please do your work if we give you your own room. Will you do your work now? No, I wouldn't do anything because I was tired and I had 55:00apnea and I didn't even know it back then. I had sleep apnea. I really -- I've had it my whole life. So, like I was exhausted all the time, like in a weird kind of psychotic depression, sleep deprived state.

CN:Yeah. If you've got depression that's got to be terrible.

SG:It was amazing. I mean I wanted to die really bad, but I was just like I could shoot the school up man, but it's not their fault. This is a situation. You know what I mean? It's just a bad situation. They wouldn't deserve that, like -- or kill my stupid family with a hammer while they were asleep which I came close to doing multiple times. I'd be standing in their room staring at them with a fucking hammer. Just like, God you're stupid, you got to go, you need to go for -- just for everybody's sake you need to go. And I would just -- they'd wake up and I'd just be standing there, what's up? Like, it got pretty 56:00dark. It got gnarly as fuck. And then I found out about you idiots and it saved me. You saved my fucking life and saved a lot of other people's lives, maybe.

CN:I hope so.

SG:I think I was going to go -- that crime spree thing was going to continue. I was thinking about bank robbery. I was thinking about some scary shit and it fucking gave me an out. I mean it's -- you guys saved my fucking life.

CN:So, what did you do? You see Malignant Growth at The Beat Club and then how do you get drawn into it? What are the things you did then?

SG:Somebody introduced me to the Languid guys. We went to the Languid and Flaccid / Zoo Directors show at Tewligans. Do you remember that show?

CN:No, I must have been there.

SG:That was an all-ages show. And that was -- I didn't feel -- it was great. I 57:00was just like whoa it's a about fucking time. It was just about time. It just changed my -- it saved me overnight. It just saved me overnight.

CN:What do you mean it was about time just to be with?

SG:Well, just like you could just tell that like these people were just not concerned with these rules that seem to be all around us that were really odd and never written down. And they just seemed to be existing completely outside of that. So my mother tried to get me into the Brown, but I was honest during my interview. I'm glad I didn't get in. I mean I told them, "I'm not going to do anything you tell me to do." The second they left me alone, the second my mother left the room I was just like: "No. I mean it's -- I'm glad that you -- it's nice that you guys saw us because I'm friends with so many of the kids here, but 58:00like no, you can't help me, you know, like you can't help me." But I came out of that, I came out of that slowly. But that show was great. I mean, just like meeting the Languid guys. So, they wanted to start a second band that played more even harder music. And so, I was the -- I talked about -- I absolutely insisted that I be in that band and they were nice enough to not tell me no.

CN:And so that was your first experience of doing music?

SG:Yeah, my first rehearsals were -- I mean I like to go to Malignant Growth practice but Irv -- before I could drive, Irv and that -- so I must've been 15, right. I mean I had to -- I couldn't -- I know I wasn't -- I couldn't get my license. I got my license a year late. I don't even know why. I mean, probably because I just didn't want to work. I didn't want to have to get a job, I guess. But I wasn't going to go to school and I wasn't going to work. I mean that was 59:00just a done deal. That was decided. I mean, it was going to be fucking that Bohemian life. Like there was not going to be a discussion about it anymore. In that summer of my eighth-grade year it was just like started reading about painters, started reading about writers, started reading Bukowski, started finding out that this happened all over the place across long periods of time. Diogenes, you know. I'm not even going to wear clothes, man you guys can just kiss my ass. You know what I mean? Like, just no, no -- like you're not going -- you can't make me fucking act any way that -- you can't make me. And of course there were like -- there were certain films too that were -- that helped. I'm not going to act like only punk rock did it, but I mean Animal House was a major thing. And that was '78.

But this idea that you could sabotage your life just for entertainment purposes, just to entertain yourself, that was a great message. You're just like, oh no I know that I am literally fucking everything up but it's too funny. I cannot stop, it's too funny. So that was a big influence too just that idea that you could just blow it on purpose in every possible way at every level. Like a girl's talking to you and she seems to like you, no fuck it up. Fuck it up. Figure out what you -- just say whatever you got to do to fucking ruin this because it's -- that lit up my brain in the same way that a Warner Brothers cartoon did. That type of behavior where you're actually sabotaging yourself. But it's so fucking absurd and funny it changed the tone from desperate and 61:00criminal to one of joyous. And it happened incredibly quickly for me. I remembered again that kind of a manic joy feeling of that, so I escaped that darkness just enough, just enough. I mean it made me irritating to everyone else that I went through that because my experience, my life experience was so radically different than almost everyone else I met. You know what I mean? Like I would hang out with Grubbs, and I'd just be like man these motherfuckers might as well be from fucking the other side of the universe. Like I mean when I -- when Ralph called his house like a couple of times he found out about Grubbs. And then we're playing, trying to make music Squirrel Bait, Youth they were called at the time, Squirrel Bait Youth. So, Ralph finds out about them and he's trying to meet everybody that he can find, right. But it's just like he gets on 62:00the phone with Grubbs and Grubbs is like, "Oh Brett, you shouldn't call my house anymore until you're formally introduced to my parents." And we fucking -- that was so fucking great to us, you know what I mean. Like we were just like holy fuck, like this guy is a fucking total fag dude. Like he's just like --and of course I don't mean homosexual. I mean, the kind of guy Grubbs was and is, I fucking hate that motherfucker. But it was just they were into -- you would meet guys that were into this good music, and they didn't have the same relationship with it that I did. They didn't have that period where they were, man I'm just going to start fucking shooting some motherfuckers. They didn't even get 63:00anywhere near that or like really seriously planning to off yourself, which that went on for a couple of years. But that difference in my experience and how that dark place in my relation to that part of my life, it became so tied in with music, I couldn't really unglue it. And that caused some friction later. But the amount of goddamn understanding and patience that I encountered in this new group of people was so goddamn unlimited that it just made it all bearable. Because I just could not believe how fucking nice everybody was, except to people who weren't like me then they were horrible to you. I mean it was great and I'll never get over it, you know. I'll never get over it. It was the greatest. But yeah. So, we started playing together and so I started playing 64:00with Brian McMahon, Ned Oldham and Britt Walford from Languid and Flaccid. They wanted to start at another band and of course Languid and Flaccid was just falling apart. So we played fast, hardcore for maybe a year and then Walford started getting -- I mean those guys started doing drugs behind my back and their musical brain just blossomed. So, I really never really was really concerned with -- I mean I know the kind of band I wanted to be in. I just knew that I wasn't going to find the kind of guys that really wanted to play what I wanted to play. So, I was really happy just doing any of it, any of it because they were just letting me be involved at all because Britt was so talented and so smart that it was hard to believe. I mean, you would just -- and the way he went off on his parents, just how unbelievable incorrigible he was in this 65:00charming way and how much patience he showed with me it's -- I mean I owe the guy my fucking life really in a way because he's just one of you guys, and you guys did it for me, you know, you saved me from hell. I wouldn't live in this house. I wouldn't have this, my wife, I wouldn't have anything without you guys. It fucking saved me from prison. So we tried to play fast for a while and then of course we just -- we weren't playing a lot of shows at the time because Britt was also playing with Squirrel Bait and Grubbs was going to just -- he got the money out of this parents so they could record, which is just like well you can't just let these guys that are preparing this music, you can't say, well now Britt's going to do my thing. It's just like we didn't have any money. Grubbs 66:00got the money out of his fucking parents and they started recording demos and stuff and what are you going to do? You can't interfere with that. You just can't. So, Maurice never got recorded even when Pajo got in the band, the band was never recorded. There just wasn't any money.

CN:So how did that -- how did it change from like the early, you know, "We're going to play fast, hardcore" over the--?

SG:I think the fandom that was going on among all of us was moving so quick that you realized that you couldn't, that there wasn't any kind of movement. It was moving just too fast. You know what I mean? Like you were discovering not just new stuff, but you were also discovering stuff from long before you were born. You know what I mean? Because I was into 30s music really heavily, by 1985 I wasn't buying new rock records at all, at all. I was only interested in 20s and 30s music. I mean...

CN:I didn't know it started way back then.

SG:That early, yeah. I mean the only new music was probably Swans, Foetus, some of the New York, really severe New York stuff that happened post hardcore, but like I bought hardcore records from like probably all through '81 and '82, and then in '83, by mid '83 you could just tell it had burned itself out, that everyone was going to try something else. But the branches were so disparate and so radical that by early '84, you could just tell that there -- punk rock didn't exist anymore. It was just musicians now who were just like absolutely cutting edge, trying something -- you have to try something else. You had to try something else. And when Britt, Britt and I saw Saccharine Trust play with Black 68:00Flag and he was into a whole bunch of music that I just wasn't into. And he just started writing -- I mean, I've talked about this on the Slint documentary. What they -- what he started producing was just so fucking radical in Maurice that nobody even knew what it was. There wasn't a name for what we were doing. It was jazz speed metal with lots of jazz timing changes. Lots of Robert Fripp weirdness in there. You know what I mean? It just -- nobody's going to fucking listen to that shit especially when you're 16 years old. I remember we played with The Descendents and they were just like, okay guys. I remember the singer for The Descendents said, "Okay guys," said this to me and Britt, "I've heard of Sabbath and I've heard King Crimson," and we were like "Man, fuck you, I've heard the fucking Ramones dude. Like really? I mean we blow you guys away. We're 69:00so far fucking advanced more than you are. Like you're a fucking fool." Like they were there hitting on all these punk rock girls and the girls were just like, "Go home. We liked that first record. Go home." But it just got so weird that everybody just was so desperate to try to be unique because man, these people weren't going to quit. You know what I mean? You heard the Fading Out thing and you're just like what the fuck is that? It was like mid-tempo. It wasn't rock. Ralph can't sing but the lyrics are great. And it's not hardcore. What the fuck even is that? I bought Meat Puppets II and I was just like what the fuck is that?

CN: That was such a mind-blowing record, yeah.

SG:What the fuck is that? Yeah. So, then you knew that it had like gone into it another thing entirely.

CN:Well, so what did you get out of -- I mean, the way you described it was you 70:00were in this band that was something that was great to do with these guys you really liked and who created a space for you--?

SG:I respected them and I was -- yes and I was very impressed with them but it wasn't what I would've done had I had a chance. If I'd had my own ability to build a band, what would I have done?

CN:I was thinking more just in terms of what did it feel like? I mean was it--?

SG:It was amazing to fall in with those assholes because the weirder Maurice got, I was just like either no -- like either 25 years from now someone is going to see what this is or it's just it's the saddest thing I've ever seen. It's sad now because I mean -- because Slint's just Maurice which was already weird, just 71:00weirder. So, I was just these fucking poor guys I mean, just nobody fucking cared. Nobody cared. And so I would say that like in '87 and '86 I was just hanging around with the Mr. Big guys a lot. Greg Maddux and Mulhall from The Dance Band, your drummer, and Irv Ross they had a band. So, I spent most of my time just hanging around with those guys. I didn't do any music during that period. I was trying to convince myself to go back to -- to go to college. And I did for a little while. I took some, I took some classes, but I ran into Bucayu unfortunately at JCC and we were like, what the fuck are we doing here? We're still little kids. But I think me and Bucayu, I mean at that time you knew every 72:00musician who wasn't a moron in your whole fucking county or what I would consider a moron. You know what I mean. But you knew every musician who was willing to do weird shit or just do -- try to do something original and you were just going to have to take what you could get. You'd get some guys in a room and whatever it sounded like that's just what the band sounded like. You know what I mean? Like The Bulls, it's like you just got four dudes that you knew and that's what the band sounds like. You see what I mean? Like, it's just like there ain't no fucking point in talking about it or arguing about it, like this is just how it sounds. You know what I mean? Like what are we going to do? We're not -- it's like you can't really --you're not going to be able to really do much else. You just rely on these other morons and you just take what you can get and do the best you can with it. It's not like you were just like, "Well I want my band to sound like a cross between the first Cheap Trick album that no one likes," and, 73:00you know what I mean. Like just on purpose that's just not how it happened for us. It was organic.

CN:Yeah. I mean it always is.

SG:Well no, no, no, not for other people, you know. No. It's not organic.

CN:Okay. No, you're right, but I mean in my experience.

SG:Yes. Because you're just like, when you've made a record how does your guitar -- what is your guitar sound, sound like? The fucking amp and the guitar that your guitar player acquired, that's your guitar sound, like period. Like the shitty -- like if you change amps, your sound is blown. You'll never sound like that again. You're like what are we going to do? Like we're fucked. I mean, you know, like when Devo got their organs -- I mean their synthesizers repaired it fucked it up. They had to learn -- they had to figure out how they were broken before to be able to reproduce the sounds that they had. You see what I mean? But it's -- but all that stuff I think probably -- I mean to me it comes from The Electric Eels, really. It's just like you really you want to play something 74:00that you're just not capable of playing and you're incorrigible, you know. The Sonics are the same way. You just don't have a lot of skill and -- or The Velvets or all that stuff, that that primitivism or rather just going ahead and doing it even though you know you're not supposed to do it yet. You're not supposed to do that and yet you do that anyway. And that's, yeah. So that seemed to continue on, but it's -- I mean even Kinghorse did not sound like -- I didn't have anything to do with how it sounded. I'm the weak link in that band. I don't -- I think I fucked that album up. I think I'm the weak link on that album by far. Because they're playing very precise. I'm not saying Mark is like the most virtuosic player in history. He's not. He's not the most fluid player in history, but they were so precise. They had that shit down to such a degree that my weak -- me trying to do more than I was capable of doing, I think actually 75:00hurt that record. I can say that now, but I didn't have anything to do with how that sounded. Mark was just going to come up with what he came out with.

CN:I always thought that was like one of the democracy in action aspects of punk where everybody comes up with their own part and--

SG:You may bicker a little bit, but I mean most of the best punk bands didn't even seem to have much disagreement about stuff. You would just be like, well that kind of seems like -- everybody seems they have the same bad idea at the same time. You're like, well yeah, the bass line should be that of course. And sometimes magic happens. The Endtables record is, I think it's just a prime example of you just get boobs together and sometimes it's really awesome, but then you've got The Blinders records, you know what I mean, which I just think those guys were late bloomers, especially Wink. I think he was a late bloomer. I 76:00mean, I think The Blinders are too -- were too designed. They wanted it -- they knew what they wanted when they started doing it. And I just don't think that's the same thing as -- you hear that Your Food record and you're just like these are just idiots. These guys are just idiots. These are just boobs.

CN:Right. Who would ever do that?

SG:Yeah. They just were just like, "Well, this is the only sounds I know." But that was the magic of all of those records that now are considered these artistic masterpieces. I think that happened all over the world. But a lot of punk records are bad, but a lot of really well-played albums are bad. Like, I don't like any Emerson Lake and Palmer albums. I mean you -- like, you understand the kind of person who does like that. You're just like oh yeah a really hyper intelligent guy that will not stop smoking pot and lives in his parents' basement. You know what I mean? Like, he's just like fucking smart as 77:00fuck but he's just -- he's a ne'er do well and he wants to be a virtuoso or something. But you would hear it and you would just be like how could something be this bad that's this well done, you know, how?

CN:So, talk about getting Kinghorse together then. You said it starts with you and Bucayu.

SG:Yeah. I saw Bucayu you at -- so in '86 and '87 I guess Maurice breaks up in '86 somewhere at some point where like Slint is -- they just wanted me out of their world, socially too.

CN:Oh really?

SG:Oh yeah. I was intolerable. I went through another really intolerable period. I mean all our first girlfriends were monsters. I mean they were just assholes but girls aren't supposed to be assholes. So it didn't really make for -- it's like when you meet somebody who's just as incorrigible as you, I mean just as 78:00unhappy as you and they're like a girl. You think it's supposed to be like TV and it's just not. If you wanted a girlfriend that wasn't an incorrigible douche maybe you shouldn't be an incorrigible douche. But a lot of us were mixed up during those years with like our first girlfriends, and I hated my first girlfriend. She was a fucking asshole. And I loved her anyway, she's like my sister. I mean she was just like so familiar to me in the way -- in her attitude about shit. My wife's a dick. I mean she knows how to behave, but she's just like we are. She has that contemptuous streak for most of culture. She just like, just like that is fucking bullshit. She just was born that way. But yes. So, in '86, I think -- yeah. I mean, I think I got my GED because it just like 79:00made my mother happy, and I remembered enough of mathematics and stuff that I was able to like score super, super high in that. I almost aced it. And that was very lucky for me that it was so bunny, that the test was so fucking low level because man, I mean I had stopped paying attention years ago, years ago. I mean, all I did was read on my own after that summer in eighth grade where I stuck the safety pin through my fucking face and acted like nothing happened. I just ---- you know what I mean? I went well I'm out, I'm out of the game, like I'm in a different game. So, I just started self-educating. But -- so I went to JCC because it seemed it would make everybody shut the fuck up. And I'd been hit in 80:00the head with a crane hook at a job that I had, and I was kind of scrambled, and I was having a really severe psychotic depression, too, all through '86. And I had a lot of really bad religiosity, like serious, really serious religiosity which happened about the same time that I was hit with that crane hook. So, the only medications that I could afford -- I mean the only way I can afford the medications, the psychiatric medications that I needed, was to get on disability. So, I was on disability for a long time because it was also like a way to fund punk rock until I straightened up and decided what I wanted to study in college. And I knew that eventually I would have to do that. I would have to decide on something else. But -- so in '87 when I'm hanging around with Bucayu down -- I had moved into the Highlands when I was 18, yeah, the year before in '86, late '86. So '87 I hung around with Greg Maddux, went to JCC and saw Bucayu and we were taking these classes and we were just like, fuck we can't even buy beer yet. What the fuck are we doing? This is absurd. We got to fucking get out of this. Like, no, it's not time to straighten up yet. No, this is fucking absurd. So luckily Mark fell for it. When we asked Mark to play guitar for us he, "I'm not doing anything else." He was on the garbage truck. He just wanted 81:00something to do besides work.

CN:Mike and Mark said that you all asked Alex Durig.

SG:Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Oh yeah. Yeah, we did. Me and Bucayu asked Alex first. I'd forgotten all about that. And a guy named Rock and Roll Bill Heideman we wanted to play drums. He was in Ethan Buckler's first band. Bill Heideman. He's great kid. Nice kid. But the first rehearsals were fucking great. We had like two practices I think, and Alex was very depressed too at the time. I think him and his wife were going through a rough patch, a really rough patch, and you could see he could not concentrate. You know what I mean? But I remember distinctly the songs that he was -- I'd never -- they were not like Endtables songs. They were different. It was -- I can't even describe that to you, what they sounded like to me. I've never really heard anything like what he was playing. It was definitely something new. And I think that band would have been 82:00interesting, but he went back home. He had to go. I think he wanted to -- he wanted to finish his PhD. He has a PhD, right?

CN:I think so.

SG:Yeah, he does. But so he went back to his wife and then we just said, do you think Mark would fall for it. Exactly, right. And then we asked Mark and then I don't know why we didn't -- I think Bill went to college, he went away to school. And so Brownstein, Kevin Brownstein was the drummer, the last drummer for Fading Out, which was Malignant Growth. So, we got -- we went ahead and said well why don't we ask Kevin too, and Kevin and Mark were just like well they just had nothing to do. And me and Mike were just not done being jackasses. We were just not done being fucking jack fucks. And so luckily that band formed at 83:00the exact right time, which is Redneck America had gotten to speed metal. If it wasn't for Metallica, we would not have gotten signed. There's just fucking no way. There's no way. We would not have played to those gigantic crowds during that period if it wasn't for Metallica. It was Metallica that was the Beatles -- you know what Nirvana was a few years later, they had that type of wide appeal. So, when Metallica are constantly talking about all this punk rock that they liked, all of those redneck kids suddenly are interested in this music that was already over. It was already over. So, me and Bucayu we could smell that. Blood smells like pennies. I mean, we could smell it. Just like this is the moment to strike. And I just think we came up with the wrong sound.

CN:Oh really?

SG:Yeah. I mean, I just think we just -- I think I was the problem really, which is really strange considering like anybody who saw us play were converted immediately. But almost anyone who heard that record first, no did not work for them, right, it just didn't. But -- so we -- Kinghorse played to a lot of people immediately from the very beginning. Our first show was with Fugazi which had 500 kids. So, we played to between 500 kids, 500 and 1,500 the entire time we were together, which to you, to somebody like you is insane.

CN:Makes me sick. It's so great. I mean it's just so exciting.

SG:That's insane to somebody like you. But see that would not have happened for this town if we did not refuse to stop at that juncture. Because I mean it sounds nuts, but man me and Bucayu would be like we are part of a fucking 85:00tradition here in this town. This town has a tradition, an underground music tradition, and we're going to do it while the -- this is the time to fucking do it, to play in front of all those people who should have always been there. So that old punk rock contempt is still there too. Because you're like motherfucker you wouldn't be here if some long-haired cock sucker didn't tell you that I was cool. You had to have somebody that looked acceptable to you tell you that what I like is okay. So at the same time you're just like, you little fucking fuck heads. But then when you got to know those kids, you realize that it was just a great batch of kids man, still to this day. The kids that came out and saw us during that era, fucking great guys, great girls. I love all of those kids. They were just great kids. I mean they were -- I don't know what it was about them, 86:00but they were just, they were super loyal. They were proud of the town. They were proud of the scene. They wanted to know about the bands that came before. You know what I mean? They were receptive to the elder statesmen. They were receptive to the people who had the balls to do it first. And it's still happening. I mean, there's -- the bunch now, the kids that are like in their early 20s now, they know about every -- they know everybody. They know who everybody is. Everybody. They know about every fucking band ever. They're just like Strict-9 were okay. They know who -- they know all that shit. So that's great. But -- so we knew that that was the moment, right, but we -- I just -- we chose a sound that later became called "crossover." And there weren't a lot of bands that were part of our generation that were being looked at by majors. 87:00There was a handful of them. Two things happened. The year that Kinghorse forms, every fucking body who likes metal is also listening to rap music. But everybody who doesn't listen to metal is listening to rap music. So this type of metal punk crossover just does not take off. It only takes off with the percentage of the people who are already into metal. See it doesn't cross over at all. The biggest band probably of that whole school is probably Suicidal Tendencies, who were the first of that, in my opinion, the first crossover. Void and Suicidal Tendencies are the first punk metal crossover bands that are important. But I just think that for some reason like -- and then right as our record comes out the Nirvana record comes out and everybody's buried. Everybody, like a whole 88:00generation of musicians got buried like overnight.

CN:I thought well -- didn't Nirvana come out in like '92 or something? Am I wrong -- or are you talking -- maybe it's the first album, like Bleach, not Nevermind.

SG:I remember this very specifically. We were having our photos taken right after the album -- no, while we were recording the record for promotion to come out after that record, and they were asking us to wear flannel shirts. They brought in a box of flannel shirts. And we were just like you're fucking out of your mind, you're an idiot. And I remember I had underwear on that had cows on them, boxers. So I pulled them away out of my pants, over my shirt, and would not put them back. So I fucked up the whole photo session. And I mean, I saw the fucking prints from it, the fucking photos were hysterical. I mean we're just 89:00full-blown idiots just because if you left us alone with the photographer, I was going to fuck it up. I mean I just had this feeling that it wasn't going to work. I don't know why. I just had this feeling that it just wasn't going to work outside of this place, outside of this town. That it wouldn't translate to something. And I think it's -- I'm the person who sunk that band, but that's just me. I just don't think the singing style was what people -- people still have a real hard problem with -- I'm not a very good singer. I sing loud and I sing hard, but I don't really have a good voice or much control. I can just write good lyrics and I can write a good folky song, which I loved. I loved that kind of stuff, too. But I mean I was raised on that shit.

CN:Like the vocals on something like "The Tempest" that's pretty good.

SG:Well it's okay, but I was raised on that shit. My sister was in the folky 90:00music and my real father worshiped Hank Williams and my stepfather did. That stuff was as around as much as Kiss was. But I tell you, right before we got signed and then the year we got signed, those were happy years because in '89 I knew, I knew that we were the fucking best live band anywhere around. Because in that type of volume, during a show a lot of my shortcomings just were masked. You know what I mean? You just did not hear them. Just like you would see Black Flag records from that period and then you'd hear Henry like the motherfuckers can't -- he just doesn't have the chops. He's overreaching. But that was the thing we did during that period. You were trying to be as good as you could and you just hoped for the best. Not going for it was fucking weak. Because it's the 91:00same hardcore attitude. Like you're trying to improve and you don't realize Ozzie is a good singer until after that, after you -- until that -- that's until his influence on you when it finally starts coming out. Freddie Mercury comes out and all that stuff comes out and it's like man you ain't -- he's a better singer than you think he is. Ozzie is way better than you think he is. His fucking control's pretty good, and he has a very unique sounding voice. But all those bands that were from our school none of them fucking -- they all fucking died in the water. They just died. None of them went anywhere.

CN:Well, so tell me about the feeling of that. I mean there's got to be a moment there--

SG:But it was a wild -- it was a great -- yeah it was a great feeling when you knew that like, well, we're not signing with an indie. That's bullshit. We would rather have signed to SST of course, you know what I mean, 'cause you get a 92:00built in audience. But I knew we were signing with Richard Branson. I mean, I knew we were signing with a representative of Virgin Records.

CN:Oh, was that who Caroline was?

SG:Yes. Oh no they're -- oh yeah. Keith Wood was a lieutenant of Richard Branson, absolutely. And I knew that the Geffen got people were looking at us because Michael Alago came to see us, and when Michael Alago comes to see your band and he likes your band, you can hear it, you can hear it in the distance. You can hear that cash register going off. And when the Kinghorse album didn't do well, I still got a solo record offer from Virgin, and yeah.

CN:Wow.

SG:Yeah, which was ridiculous. I think they were going to try to get somebody to tone me back a little bit, you know what I mean? Try to get -- keep me from 93:00pushing too far with what I was trying. And I was very sick when the album was made too. I was not in good voice. If you're not -- you know what that's like. On the day you walk into that fucking studio if you're not exactly right, it's not going to sound -- you're going to hate it the rest of your life, because when you sound right. You just know. You've probably had rehearsals where you're just like that's one of the greatest fucking rock sets that's ever been played in America, motherfucker. I know it. Like you know. Not a motherfucker there to see it. Tape isn't rolling. It just was like, I had a new girlfriend, I was fucking exhausted from her, and we got in the van to go to New York and the temperature change was extreme and I fucking got sick on the way to New York and I blew it. I fucking choked. I mean, I did the best I could, but I was not in good voice. Like that last Void album should have been a masterpiece. The fucking guy was sick. He fucked it up. There was no money to go back and do it 94:00again. I wanted to come back and do the vocals when I was well, but they were just like we can't do it, you got to finish it now. And I was just like, uh, and it fucked it up.

CN:So were you ever close to like making your living from the band at that point?

SG:No, the band paid everybody's bills for a couple of years at least.

CN:Okay. I mean that's--

SG:We should talk about the money. We should talk about the money just so it gets documented. But the truth of the matter is, when you're playing -- when you rent a space and you bring your own PA that you got from doo-wop for $20 and you charge $5 a head and there's 1100 paying customers, and the opening bands live with their parents so you pay them 100 bucks, think about it.

CN:And how often were you playing that?

SG:We were doing at least one all-ages show and one over 21 show every month. And the over 21 shows were always around 400 paying customers. And we would get the door -- we got the door at every show, the entire door at every show. We would not play otherwise. We got the whole door. So there were many gigs where Mark left with amounts of money that we would have to send him home to hide the money. He simply could not stay -- keep that money on him. Large amounts of money where you'd have to take them out in a box. There was so much money, it was in a fucking big box. Same thing for Oblong Box and Endpoint and all those bands during that era. We were making huge amounts of money. You were paying your rent easy, easy, easy. Not just that, you were sitting on a band fund that always was $3,000 at all times. Like if somebody wanted a piece of equipment, it was no problem at all. We bought Bucayu three basses, you know. He had two 96:00precision basses and a jazz bass, no problem. That's how much money there was during that period. But apparently it was like that during the 50s too with The Monarchs. The Monarchs were making thousands upon thousands of dollars a show during that period and they just didn't talk about it. They didn't tell anybody. They played that one big show at fucking Churchill Downs and they were like 5,000 fucking customers for $2. They made fucking bank during the 50s and the 90s. That's when Louisville local bands, just local, made these gigantic amounts of money. I mean we were making fucking money hand over fist. There was no problem at all. I mean Mark even would like -- Mark would take long periods of time off work. He didn't need to work. I think we were paying the rent. Everybody was paying rent easily, easily with one show, one show. And then the all-ages show was just cash in the band's fund easy, no problem. And then you'd 97:00sell another $600 of tee shirts.

CN:Right. That's what I was going to say. You all actually had--

SG:Every show almost always had a new shirt, almost. Endpoint too. I mean we were all doing well. It was a great time to be playing, to be younger and playing music in Louisville because you just you were young enough to not have really -- you could still shirk enough and bullshit. You know what I mean? You were still able to bullshit enough people would let you do all this bullshit. When Bucayu stopped asking his parents for money it changed everything. They were just like, oh they just didn't even think about it. They didn't think about how Bucayu was paying the rent. He was working at the record store but he wasn't making hardly anything. He worked as little as possible. Thank God. I mean, I bought -- I mean like when we got started, I bought Mark's Marshall Stack. My mother died and I just took what inheritance I had and just bought him an amp. But yeah, it was crazy how much money there was. It was crazy. Like that time we 98:00played upstairs at Louisville Gardens, I mean nobody knows how many people were at that thing. We kept the fucking whole door, the whole door. I think we had to pay them maybe 500 bucks for the use of the room upstairs. There were so much goddamn money. Now I would have liked to have paid the opening bands a lot more, but most of them were little kids. Just like no, you guys don't have any overhead, shut the fuck up. We have LG&E and phone bills and shit. But we hated touring. Yeah hated it.

CN:Yeah. I mean that was -- did you draw any kind of crowds?

SG:No. New York, we would always draw in New York and we would always draw on Florida for some reason, but everywhere else was complete nobody. There was nobody there. Lollapalooza wiped out everybody during those years. Everybody was 99:00saving their money for that festival during those years. So, people would tour during the summer and no one would go. No one would be there because everybody had to save every dime they could to try to get to wherever Lollapalooza was. That festival fucked everybody and we couldn't get included because we had been so fucking unbelievably irritating to our rep at Caroline who could have done anything. I mean she could have really helped us. She was Nirvana's road manager, but she would like get a fever and we would like -- she'd have like 102 fever at home and we'd prank call her like 24 hours a day for three days. Like not let her fucking sleep. We'd have Chinese food delivered to her house. I mean we'd order food from her neighborhood and have it delivered to your house.

CN:Why did you do that do you think?

SG:Why did we do that?

CN:Yeah.

SG:Well, these people weren't any --they weren't any fun when you met real music business people. I mean we prank called the head of our record label all the time at home at his house.

CN:Did he know it was you?

SG:Of course. And we would do it on his dime with his 800 number. We'd do -- yeah. We ran up profound prank phone call bills on the company's dime. Fuck those guys, man. I mean they just weren't -- alike when you got around them you could not understand that they had a job. You could not get it. Now Mark could. Mark was 26, 27 years old at the time, he was a grown man, but me and the other two morons -- and when we reformed, I mean we didn't have to worry about that. So, when Jerry acted like an idiot it was great because Jerry was just as ridiculous as Mike, more so. But when you're dealing with people who can make you rich you wouldn't -- I mean we acted like idiots. We would go see Geffen, 101:00we'd go see Alago, Geffen and just like ask for all these CDs that he knew we were going to sell so we could get pizza money. And he could have made us millionaires. He signed Metallica to Elektra and he was the top ANR guy at Geffen. And we were like fucking torturing rap guys in the fucking waiting room. We just could not stop fucking with people. I mean like there's The Lady Smith Black Mambazo story.

CN:What did -- I don't know that.

SG:We were in the same fucking hotel as those guys when we were recording our album, Bucayu would not stop fucking with them. He wouldn't stop fucking with them. Like--

CNWhat did he do?

SG:Well at one point we walk into Washington Square Park Hotel and The Lady Smith Black Mambazo guys are all in their silk suits. And they're getting on the elevator. And they're staying there because they're either recording a new record with Paul Simon or they're doing a show. I mean, it may have been at the 102:00garden, I don't know where it was, but they were staying at the Washington Square Park Hotel. And Bucayu looked at the coke machine and then looked at them walking toward the -- and he did this kind of thing and I'm not lying, I'm not lying. He could do this type of thing on the fly up to 10 times a day and every fucking time it was a fucking home run. So he just takes change out of his pocket real fast. And he buys a soda right as they're getting into that elevator. So they all turn around and face outward and Bucayu goes, "Hold the elevator please." So we start running. Well while we're running Bucayu is shaking that fucking can of soda for everything he's got, right. So then when we pack into this -- I don't even know how we got on the elevator with those guys. He fucking opens that soda and it just goes all over those suits and they're just fucking livid. They're just furious. Their eyes all go white. And Bucayu is 103:00just like handing it to me, we'll be like slurping this soda. Like every fucking -- I mean I've got a couple of dozen stories that are like that or worse. When you got around people who were real music business people, you were so shocked at how serious and unfunny they were that this Louisville thing would just kick in and you could not -- we could not control ourselves because they just weren't ever funny ever. They just took everything seriously and it's like, man I'm only doing this so I don't have to pick a major at college. Like I don't want to work. That's the only reason I'm here, like to not work, to act stupid. Like I want to act stupid. I want to make a great record, but I also want to be around other childish people who are trying to escape the real world. But that's not 104:00how they saw themselves. The people at Caroline had their dream jobs. They were working in A&R, they were working in -- and to us we were just like aren't you just an idiot that's trying to keep from having a real job? We didn't even -- we didn't know. We didn't know how much it cost to live in New York, we had no idea. We're fucking bumpkins. So yeah, I mean we -- in that one it started because they did not -- the record cover was completely not what I wanted, not what we had discussed. They completely fucked me on that. They fucked me by not letting me come back and do the vocals, which you've got to remember we could have left three days early and went back to Kentucky and saved them that money for feeding us and putting us up at that hotel. We could easily gotten out of their hair and I could've come back in good voice and did those vocals right. But they just couldn't do it because of Glenn, and I was so disappointed in the 105:00record and we had so much fun torturing them that we thought that because Alago liked us, that we'd be able to jump to a major. And I got offers after we broke up for -- they wanted to build a band around me and move me to Los Angeles and get a vocal coach and keep me from going into certain places where I shouldn't be vocally. You know what I mean? Tone me down, get me to go lower instead of going higher. But like when you're raised on 70s music you think -- you want to be able to sing even though you can't, you know, but you don't know that. You've done most of your singing in the shower. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?

CN:I know what you mean, yeah.

SG:Yeah you know what I mean. But it's like -- I never heard that on Dance Band 106:00records. You know what I mean. Like you're not trying to do something you know you can't do. Well I got -- that's the problem when you're trying to be a little bit more metal to escape that whole indie rock thing that actually overtook everybody. It's like everybody who didn't get into rap got into indie rock, and then the scene that we were trying to be part of it just fizzled out and died. Black Flag broke up. That whole thing just, it just disappeared overnight. So not only did I -- I give up very easily, I really do, because -- and I always have because I think I can -- I'm a pretty good judge of a hopeless situation. I'm pretty good at that. I think that most of the time, regardless of my own depressive delusions and my own mental illness and my own lack of sleep, because you've got to remember during this entire period, I didn't sleep more than 60 seconds, 90 seconds at a time. So I was sleep deprived and fucking crazy, 107:00un-medicated. It was completely crazy. Now, it made for fucking comedy. It was funny but at the same time it's like you couldn't -- we could not fucking be nice to journalists because we just couldn't take any of it seriously because we didn't think you were supposed to. We thought that was the whole point to act stupid. Why aren't you acting stupid is what we want to know. Why aren't you, why aren't you acting like an idiot? So we would act like morons on the radio. We had this one thing worked out where if I said a certain thing, the next sentence me and Mike and Kevin would all talk at the same time and then stop at the same time.

CN:That's great.

SG:Yes. So they -- we had this whole signal worked out that if the person was an idiot who was interviewing us, we would all answer the question at the exact same time but also end at the -- so it was just -- they could -- I mean we'd be on the radio and you couldn't understand anything. It was complete gibberish. It 108:00was fucking -- because we just thought that that would make people like us. And then they would meet you and then they would look at me and they would see how short I was and they would just -- you would see this disappointment just cross their face immediately, just immediately. They were so bummed out with what they actually got and especially like if they made the mistake of talking to us. The abuse was unbelievable, unbelievable. There was evil Popeye. There was that routine that we did. Bucayu would go to parties with kids after shows and like just do fucked up shit to alienate them. I mean we were just masters at that shit. We thought that was funny to everyone else like it was to us, but apparently outside of this town, people don't think that shit's funny. I mean in Louisville when you're in a band -- is this par -- is this all going to fit on 109:00this chip?

CN:This is like a four-hour chip, so yeah.

SG:All right. Good. Thank God. But I mean, I hate to keep you here but some of this stuff is fucking funny. Some of this shit is funny. But here when you're in a band you know that you shouldn't be doing it because you're from -- you're kind of from a realistic town because our town peaked in 1885. We'll never recover, ever. Well maybe, but we won't live to see it like I told you the other day. So being in a band alone is because you're just like, I'm only doing this because I'm getting away with, it's like playing hooky from school.

CN:Getting away with it is the perfect thing.

SG:Getting away with it is the whole purpose. Well, when you went to other towns where people actually took this thing seriously as a career, we could not 110:00understand that. Mark could. I don't know why he could. He could understand it. It's like well you don't alienate the people who interview you. You don't -- I mean the shit that we did was I mean it's just unfucking real. The only people that seemed to get it were from Australia. Everybody we met from Australia understood exactly what we were doing. They were just like, oh no we get it, absolutely get it. It's just like pure ACDC fucking foolishness. You guys are fucking buffoons. We were like, exactly, but in the interviews and stuff I would come off with all this half bait fucking weird gnostic bullshit that I believed and people were just like, ooh. And then they'd see that you were fucking midget and you'd just see the disappointment was unbelievable. Then if I walked away, the other guys would tell them that I went to try to go find a male prostitute 111:00like a young boy. They told everybody we met the second I left the room that I was a pederast. Everyone we met. That's right. Except like maybe people who wrote for major rock magazines they wouldn't do that. But just about anybody else that we met, the second I left the room they would be like, "Well there he goes again." "What do you mean?" "Well, we'd rather not talk about that." They'd be, "What, what happened to your singer?" It's like, "He's out trying to pick up some teenage boy." Like you think that helped us? That didn't help. That didn't help. And I also fucked up by certain lyrics that I put on our album.

CN:How do you mean?

SG:I wrote some things that I put on that album when I was mad. I changed some lyrics around that I should not have changed around. I mean I don't talk about this one much. You know what I mean? Like I put some stuff in there that was just -- that I knew it would be misunderstood.

CN:Like what?

SG:I don't repeat it. People can go back and listen to that album if they want 112:00to figure it out. But I remember very specifically like some hardcore feminist alternative music girl who was just talking to me like I was a fucking moron and it wasn't on purpose. Like I was a fool and I didn't know it. And I just remember it being like -- and she was supposed to be a friend of ours and I was just like, I'm going to change this line in the song just to fucking make this girl mad and people like her. Well that was a really bad move, man. It was a bad, bad move. It really was stupid. But I thought that maybe people would listen to the whole thing and try to figure out what the actual narrative was, but that's not how people are. It's not what they are. They're idiots. They are idiots.

CN:Don't you see that I'm pointing to character here?

SG:They're not capable of understanding. They're not capable of it. You're telling a story and you don't say, "Here is a story." That's why that song about 113:00Greg Maddux, Michael Mullins have you ever heard that song? It's the quintessential Greg Maddux on but it starts out, "This is a story about Michael Mullins. He's awful fat and he's awful sullen." You know what I mean? He wants to make sure that you're not an idiot and you don't get it. But yeah, I mean I just like got so angry about all these limitations and all these fucking projections that people would pull on you and you could just tell it wasn't the time to do it. I just fucking could smell it. All these punk rock guys were dressing like rap guys. And I was like, this is fucked up. This is fucked up. That's not punk rock. I mean, that's black punk rock, why are you trying to take it from them? Why are you fucking it up for them? Like those guys in fucking in Brooklyn and those fucking guys in Queens, you're fucking them over by doing 114:00that. You're just fucking over your own fucking friends, guys that are just like you. They're way even more -- they're in a worse situation than you and you're going to fucking steal their whole fucking culture. I just could not understand that, but it seemed to be something that we could not -- we couldn't stop it and we couldn't stop that precious fucking shit, that fucking grunge shit where everybody was a precious little sensitive fucking nice boy who is just sad. I mean, no, they weren't nice boys, they were just like us, your Black Flag fans. They're fucking assholes. But fucking Kurt from Nirvana like one day he listened to the first two Beatles records and he made charts of all the songs and then he started writing his new songs based on those charts.

CN:I didn't realize that.

SG:Yeah. On those pop -- figuring out how pop songs put together. It's just that we got to figure it out and then you just repeat the same line over and over at 115:00the end to make it sound weird, "weird." And then you got instant fucking platinum. But Alago would not or could not sign us, either because we just weren't -- our record had not done well enough or because it was well known that we were not going to fucking act right. I mean it's a miracle we didn't get Caroline involved in lawsuits because we fucking anytime that they were paying for the bills, we fucking acted like idiots. They flew us to Los Angeles once and we got everybody in the whole fucking hotel completely wound up and like all kinds of damage got done. We stole -- we didn't realize that they were going to fucking keep track of the towels we were stealing. We didn't fuck -- we're idiots. We're fucking from Kentucky we don't know. I stole like 10 towels from the LA Sheraton. They must have charged them $100 a towel. We didn't know. We didn't fucking know. We figured that no one would notice. We didn't know. We 116:00didn't think that there were -- we didn't know there were fucking cameras in the fucking hotel that you couldn't see. When Bucayu was fucking naked rubbing his fucking butt on all the fucking door knobs or whatever it is that he's doing in the middle of the night. I mean, it's a miracle we didn't get involved in major lawsuits. I would hit people with the fucking mic stand. Like when we played live on MTV, we fucking lied and said we were the road crew.

CN:Oh really?

SG:Yes. So we started our set without telling him. So then they had to turn on all the fucking cameras and they were fucking livid with us. And then I made fun of all the industry people in the audience. I was fucking making fun of them right to their face. And like you figured that they would fucking think that was funny. No, they did not think that was funny which is -- still to me that's insane. Rick Ruben was there and I was ripping on him, openly ripping on him.

CN:What did you say?

SG:I was just like, "Thank you for destroying fucking rap music. Thank you so much for fucking it up." And like we figured he'd think that was funny and like no, he didn't think it was funny.

CN:Not a Rickles fan.

SG:No, no. I mean we thought that they would all get the joke and nobody got the joke because -- and so when you run straight into the real business people who can make you rich, I mean a lot of it was like, "I'm not signing you fuckers." And he would come see us every time. But when we split up, I started getting calls and I felt terrible about that. I was just like, "You can't move me to LA. I'm fucking deeply mentally ill dude. I am dangerous. I hurt people every opportunity I can, like really." And they were just like, "We'll get you straightened out." And I was just like man you move me to some fuckin hotel with a whole bunch of aspiring actors, you watch what happens man. I'll have those motherfuckers all completely crazed. I won't let anyone sleep. Like just like 118:00you can't move me to the El Mocambo or whatever it is. Like you can't. Like no I can't survive in New York or LA. It won't work. But they tried. They tried because they thought they could get me a vocal coach and get me to be some sort of -- actually calm down. They thought that--

CN:You never took them up on it at all?

SG:No, not at all. I told them it's absurd. The idea was absurd because by that time I was completely convinced, and I still am, that there's something really important that's fundamentally missing from my character, which is I do not understand how important sex and fitting in is to the average person, especially 119:00the average person under 30. Like I did not understand that fitting in was going -- that behaving in socially acceptable ways were going to allow your needs to be more easier met, easily met. I didn't believe that those things were needs at the time. You know what I mean? Like sleep was not obviously something that -- I was still alive. I wasn't sleeping, right. I was crazy as hell. I was still there. I was living on one can of tuna a day. I was still there. And I had a girlfriend for years and we were platonic for years. She was just like, "If you leave me, I'll blow my brains out." So, I was basically celibate when I was 17, 18, 19 years old. And I had a record deal with a major record company. I got us 120:00that deal. Without me we wouldn't have got that deal, period. Because of the bullshit charm and the people I knew. I mean period, we would not have got that record deal without me being friends with Glenn, and that bullshit charm that I could turn on at the time. But like I just didn't get it, and I still don't. That my definition of what "need" is, is very, very different than a normal person. And I don't know if it comes from year after year of that depression just burning my mind alive and that lack of sleep. So sabotage for the purpose of entertainment made sense because when you do without all these things that everyone else values, and slowly you, almost by accident, replace what you value 121:00with a whole different set of things, like suddenly just acting like a fucking idiot is as important as having a girlfriend is to an 18-year-old boy. You know what I mean? Like it's just as important. Alienating anyone who seems even remotely sane, like oh, no, no you're not getting out of here, you're going to remember this the rest of your life. Like every fucking person that we encountered, like you're going to -- man those guys were -- what the fuck was that about? Why did they act that way? Well, it's just like if you're that -- if you do without that -- if you're at the bottom of -- as low as a white guy can get, you know what I mean, like a guy that's not from the ghetto, like some fucking poor kid born in a real ghetto. If you're not from real hell, real hell, 122:00and we're dealing, trying to deal with that at the time of this recording. America's trying to come to terms with that for real for the first time ever. But it's like if you're not a black kid from some fucking ghetto and you've got PTSD just like they do and you've got some sort of inherited depression, because we know it changes your DNA. We know you inherit it now, but when you get that underground, when you're that alienated and you go to the deep dark place where you're not getting any human contact, unless it's stupid, then stupid becomes the most important form of contact you have. You just accidentally get -- you get it wrong. You just get it wrong accidentally. You forget over a period of time what other people value. So then everybody that you encounter that's got normal values they just -- they seem like they need your help. They need your 123:00help to fucking enlighten. You need to be enlightened. You know what I mean? But that brings me back to the same like that when all these New York punk rock guys started looking like rap guys, just like I don't think it's very fair to those fucking guys over there, to those girls and those kids over there who invented that scene. Like you don't know what that life is like over there. I don't give a fuck if you're a squatter or not, like you're a white guy and it's different. But so then it became permanent. That attitude became permanent, so that school of fucking with people for entertainment, and I guess it just comes from when you're from a town where there's nothing to do, you fuck with each other. I don't know why we do this what we do, I don't know. Like I met somebody once who knew those REM guys and the REM guys told them about you all fucking with them 124:00busting their balls in a way that they did not understand. They were like we did not understand any of their jokes at all. And I was like well God -- yeah, yeah you dumb fuck. I said, well we're just like those -- we're just like as bad as it gets. Like this is -- I mean this is bad as it gets. If I'm staying in your apartment like shit's going to happen while you're trying to sleep. I'm getting in bed with you in my clothes. I mean, it just got really out of hand but we didn't know that it was like -- Bucayu got in a hot tub in Los Angeles in this hotel that we were at, there were all these rock stars there. He got in a hot tub in clothes that he had and his boots that he had not changed in months. And he was drunk the entire time we were in Los Angeles. And when he did that, this 125:00scum of filth came off of him like instantly and everybody jumped out of the hot tub and they were all like bummed out. He still to this day does not understand why they didn't think that was funny. He still doesn't understand. They were like Speedos and metal guy hair. It was like a metal, like the industry meeting that they sent us to, to hang out and hobnob with all these people who used to be punk rock and metal heads. And they did that shit for three fucking days, drank. Everybody drank except me. I just act -- I was just un-medicated so I might as well have been drunk. And then poor Mark was trying to fucking get laid or have a conversation like about rock with somebody. Nope. No, we did not understand. We didn't understand and Slint the same time, but like you look at that Slint, people would hear that Slint album when they had broken up for all 126:00those years and think that these guys were not -- we're like -- no, they were fucking fools like everybody else. They're fucking fools. Like everybody had been taken in by -- and their imagination filled with what they were about. It's like no, I mean those guys are as fucking nuts as any of us. And you look the way they behaved it is just unbelievable, but that same idiotic -- everywhere we went, man. I mean all Louisville bands encountered the same stuff. Like you have to move from somewhere and then move here and then you can become famous. But you can't be born in this town and fucking be able to deal with that, what real, the real entertainment industry is like. Nobody I know has ever been able to deal with it ever. They knew who Peter Searcy was at Geffen. They knew who he was. They knew that everybody was ripping him off. You know what I mean? That 127:00that guy from -- that fucking asshole from -- what's that other grunge band, that big grunge band?

CN:Pearl Jam?

SG:Yeah, Pearl Jam. That that guy's ripping off Peter. They knew who he was, but they were just like Louisville guy, Louisville guy, Louisville guy, you know, and you'd be like, what? They're just like, "No, no, those guys blow it. They can't wait to blow it." Well, it's just like I'm telling you, man, had they not fucking fucked me on that album and fucked me on that record cover we would have played ball. We would have. We were ready to fucking be serious, but they fucked us from the fucking beginning and lied to us, and then we acted like typical stupid guys from a border state, just like fuck y'all. You know what I mean? Like when we're talking to Yankees, we're southern; when we're talking to southerners, we're Yankees. I mean just like we fucking -- we knew, at least I 128:00knew, that my shot was gone. And then I got two more offers. I just knew that I just was not going to be able to deal with it, that I was too mentally ill. The idea of me being that crazy and being away from this place, I wouldn't have survived either. Number one I had to survive.

CN:I'm going to pause for a second.

[OFF MIC CONVERSATION]

CN:Wait, let me turn the recorder back on. Say this again because I think this is -- it's interesting. I mean it's not different from what you were saying.

SG:Well if you look -- if anybody goes back and you look at like the flyers I made or if you listen to the music that I did and it's -- most of it is pretty, pretty negative and pretty dark. And I've always been interested in that side of it. But the reason that that happened, and I used Grubbs as an example of 129:00somebody who was not, whose experience of punk rock and underground, the underground world, the underground Bohemia in Louisville, was different than mine. Like if you went and you talked to Grubbs and you met his parents and you went to his house, you would see that he was like somebody like John Bailey who like is one of my best friends. But to Bailey punk rock was something that did not intellectually insult him because he's fucking smart as fuck. So it's like punk rock had energy but it also did not insult his intelligence, and it also did not glorify all these old tired, stupid lies about any day now man the chicks are going to love you, unless you're Mickey Paul. That guy started out telling him, "Unless you're Mickey Paul you're fucked motherfucker." Like if you're Mickey Paul that is going to be your life. What you hear on some stupid 130:00rock record in the 70s, man that mother fucker lived it. I wouldn't want to be him after it dried up, but man he was living the dream. You know what I mean? He got as much pussy as a dude could and still walk around and do stuff. Everybody's mom tried to bang him. He was -- you could not resist that motherfucker. But anyway, my point was, when you talk to those guys like Grubbs or John, their experience of entering the Bohemian world was nothing like mine. Mine happened during a period of intense darkness. My family was a fucking train wreck. There was drug abuse, there was horrible depression, there was like suicides in my neighborhood. They were -- I'm from a very, very fucked up place. 131:00That's -- the working class had been decimated. Everybody's nutty fucking family members had to come home because they let them loose. So, there was like lots of suicides, lots of rapes in my neighborhood. It was a fucking decimated place, and I was just like everybody else from out there, like fucking -- I went through an incredible dark very dangerous, very, very not funny. Now it was funny -- you would try to describe it to some of these guys that were more sheltered than you and they would not -- they just could not understand what you were talking about. They just didn't know what it was like to go into your mom's room and she's been fucked up on pills for six weeks and hasn't spoken to you in 132:00six weeks because she can't move because she's so fucked up. Either she's -- not only is she having a depressive episode but she was fucking popping pills. They were all--

CN:That was your mom, that was something you experienced.

SG:But she would come out of it too. She would also come out of it. But during that period where punk rock overtook me and it became my life and it saved or whatever. But during that period it was just this. You wouldn't believe the shit that was going on in my life. So, it was about as dark as darkness can get. Everybody was on drugs except me. My sister came back to live with us after her divorce and she started hitting all the bars and fucking going crazy because she never had an adolescence. And at the time she was really, really pretty. She 133:00went through -- like everybody in our family like they go through this period where they're really, really cute and then they're fucking ugly as fuck forever. That's just how we are. So, she had her -- at 27 she was having the life she never had at 17. So it's like I was like basically taking care of my niece, who was seven years old, all the time and people were either suicidally depressed or my stepfather and my mother were not getting along. And there was like -- I mean it was completely -- it was like the worst Redneck miserable soap opera you've ever seen. It was just fucking off. So that stuck with me. I was never really able to unstick myself from that. So, art and music are -- I cannot separate 134:00them from depression, clinical depression that was in the family. So, a lot -- some people would do stuff and it just didn't seem to have any substance to me because it wasn't life and death. I was in a situation that was life and death and some people thought that that was like cute or something. They thought that that was like -- they thought that was funny. They would laugh at people who were crazy and who were from -- whose families had fallen apart. They thought that that was fucking cute somehow. But that didn't happen often, but it did happen amongst certain types. I mean you would go to like the Oldham's House and 135:00you'd just be like, these motherfuckers. You loved them. I loved them but at the same time it was like a Wes Anderson movie. Everybody just thought they were fucking the cutest fucking thing. Everything we do is so quirky and adorable, you know what I mean. It was just fucking hard to take, because you didn't dare tell him what the fuck. Oh we went to visit my stepbrother who's in prison for murder and he got out and he babysits us, I mean every now and then, or used to babysit me, you know like when I was 11 or 12. You ever been left alone with a fucking homicidal fucking sociopath like who actually was really good to you? Like I could not explain my life. I just could not fucking make them understand it. So sometimes you would just get this kind of like this totally -- and then 136:00sometimes you would meet people like that through punk rock who would just -- they're just from that obtuse school. They're just into that, you know what I mean? There's a school of music that's like -- I mean I guess it -- I don't know who it comes from, the Velvets originally I guess, Television, Wire. There's like a more noisy, less rocky, like a great deal of contempt for rock in general. You know what I mean? Kind of like -- sometimes I would encounter those people and it would be pretty hard to take, but they were better than normals though. It was much easier to take than a normal person. But for me, punk rock was that fucking trip down river man to find Kurtz, then you realize you were 137:00Kurtz and everybody on the boat with you was just like -- I mean that's what it was like for me. And for a long time I couldn't remember that I wasn't on the boat anymore. I mean, until they finally -- until like -- modern medications are not like medications that used to exist. My mother had a great deal of success with shock therapy, but I was terrified of it. She would have a full 10-year remission of symptoms when she would have shock therapy. I mean complete remission. So, she was pretty confident that it would help me, but I was fucking terrified of it. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest will fix you with that. I mean, you were not going to be comfortable with that idea. And luckily, I escaped hospitalization lots of times. But, being psychotically depressed for long periods of time and you start creating art that other people just, they're just 138:00not going to understand, you know what I mean. Especially if like you get -- especially if there's a party you that -- I mean I just don't want to hear anybody fucking sing about sex or that type of desire. I fucking don't want to hear it. It's a given. It's like what if you wrote five albums that were all about pizza, you know what I mean, like how much you loved pizza. Like I'm telling you by the fifth song, like you're going to go through a whole lot of -- you're going to go through a lot of analogies there. You're going to try everything you could possibly think of to -- but I mean, I just liked -- that that was with me from the beginning. That was with -- absolutely. Like I didn't want to hear any song about something that was fucking obvious, such an obviously important part of life. It was just there. You know what I'm saying? 139:00Like I would just -- I would just be like -- you'd see somebody -- you'd see an incredibly beautiful woman on TV and you just be like, well sure, duh motherfucker, duh. You know what I mean? Like that's power, and that's a complicated thing of course, but my point is, is just like I didn't want to fucking hear about that shit, you know, and I didn't want to hear anybody talk about a -- try to convince me that they were in possession of some great secret by being obtuse either. I didn't understand that. That aggravated me as well. So I got really into extreme hardcore during that period that I talked about when I was doing all this fucked up shit. Other people would do drugs, man not me. I was a fucking warrior monk dude. I've never smoked pot. I have no idea what it 140:00does to you. I didn't --, I never got drunk till I was 27, except for one time with Sean Mulhall which he got me real trashed to prove to me that it was fucking not -- you would get sick. He was just like, "No stupid, here." No, we got -- I remember we got drunk together when I was like 18. He was like, "Are you cured?" I was fine for almost 10 years, but he was just like, "Fuck it's no good." But Negative Approach, especially Void, that stuff was really influential on me. Especially Void, because Void, I think, are as far as you can take the Beatles thing, the four-piece band, rock band. I don't think you can take it further then they took it. I think that it's more -- still to this day, I think it's the most extreme guitar-based music that's ever been made in human history. I think it's -- Swans is pretty close to being like whoa fuck, like punishing. 141:00And Slayer sounds, there's a lot of stuff that sounds ferocious. It's not truly ferocious. It's not got the true madness in it, the purse snatching madness. That's what I like to call it. You know what I mean? That kind of guy that -- the kid who's -- the voice of the devil is not going to sound like the devil, is it? No, it's not. It's not going to sound like that. So, like I got into that. When I got into Void especially, I just knew that there were levels of discussing the dark place that were way fucking beyond anything metal was doing. So, I wanted to -- I mean Kinghorse is really about depression and that's all 142:00it's about. It's like there really isn't a Kinghorse song that wasn't about the effects upon me and everyone else with an illness that was not only incurable, but that I was born with. I cannot remember a time where I was not dominated by negative emotions, what other people would consider negative emotions. You see what I mean? So aggression trumps sex, Thanatos trumps Eros. It's, you're always 51% down there with Gollum, you know. You're down there with the Balrog. You see what I mean? And punk rock gave you, gave people like me an ability to actually make art where you're trying to be 100% honest about how fuck --how dark it can 143:00be where you -- I mean I've had catatonic depression too for -- but I've been saved from most of that, just through sheer will. I would always be able to get up and at least go work at the bookstore or work out or something or work. But I was disabled for most of my adult life. I mean, it's like it was -- if you had interviewed me five years ago, I would not admit any of this, but the truth of the matter is that I inherited a disease and my artistic life is based upon that disease. But I think all those years of being there and seeing the world like that, where the pleasure center of your brain is not only not working very well naturally, but the medications I'm on also affect the pleasure center of my brain. So, you start to have a great deal of -- your patience with people who 144:00are thinking in normal ways gets really thin, really fast, really fast. Because I'm telling you that you can survive under unbelievable bouts of deprivation, but they're telling you that they can. You know what I mean? Like everybody's got to know about the fact that their parents were -- I mean my mother died when I was 19 and my father died when I was six, and my mother was so fucked up and she -- we were friends, but she didn't even like children. You know what I mean? She had her first kid at 16. She wasn't -- she didn't want to be a mother ever. I know that now. I don't blame her for that either. She could have been a great artist if she had been honest, but she just couldn't be honest. But Void and 145:00Negative Approach and all that stuff, that showed you how far you could really take that level of honesty. Just like when everyone heard those Joy Division records, it's just like man you don't want to get anywhere near that. I don't even think Closer is a record that people should hear, in my opinion. I just don't think -- unless you're really, really okay you shouldn't even hear that record. That's a dangerous fucking album. You know what I mean? It's a dangerous record. But I mean being able to talk about that level of -- what long-term depression did to me, and that's not -- I mean not -- that's not going to take off. You know what I mean? Like, I mean the very idea was absurd. But I used to 146:00think that there was -- but I think that the normal angst that a teen experiences can be so intense that they can almost understand that, what that is. I mean kids kill themselves all the time just from how horrible it is being a teenager, the horror of that. And they don't understand death anyway. My biggest problem has always been like I don't really understand other approaches, other approaches to rock now. I don't, you know what I mean, because it's been going on for so long that I just can't relate at all. Unless it's really exaggerated and retarded, like something from the 70s and then I'll just be like, well that makes sense because it's fucking, it's so overblown. Like, if I 147:00hear something off the first Boston album I'm just like, oh yeah, you know what I mean, or the foreigner record. I mean, every song on that album was a fucking hit and the whole time you're just like -- if I hear it today, I'm just like I might as well -- that person may as well be speaking fucking Klingon. I do not understand what the mindset that created that record. It's just like when I would fucking hear the Jackie Gleason Orchestra, you're like what the fuck kind of fucking mindset creates that? What is this mindset that I do not -- I cannot grasp? Like what is it? What is this? Like you would see it -- like I remember when I would be little and I'd see Liberace and I'd just look around and people would act like he wasn't gay, you know. How -- where are you? How can I get 148:00there? I would just want to understand. And when I understood that they could -- unless you've been as sick as I was and had been over and over and over and over and over, because it came and went, it still never goes away. There is no medication that can really fucking really treat this. But that's how come I would have tension in our community because people would just -- people would have an approach that was just -- that I just didn't understand because they -- it wasn't -- it was kind of mad, but it wasn't really mad. And I'm not talking mad, I'm like talking like I'm thinking about fucking-shooting-everybody-at-my-school mad. Like I'm going to beat in my fucking brother and mother's heads in while they sleep with a hammer. Like that's a real place. It's a real place. So that's -- but I never really captured that either. You know what I mean? I never was really, because I knew it was 149:00fucked up. You know what I mean?

CN:Sure.

SG:You have to be -- there's a level of sickness that luckily I was not cursed with. I am not a schizophrenic. You see what I mean? But when you're schizophrenic, you don't know that what you're thinking is not right. But when you're super depressed you do. You're just like, no man it's always the depression talking. You just know it. But -- so a lot of people would do music and I would be like really mean to them and I feel bad about it. I wasn't more supportive of stuff that I didn't relate to, and I acted like a jackass, and I want to go on the record for history. It's just like it wasn't something I did on purpose, you know. It's like when I got all pumped up, when I started lifting weights and getting really big, a lot bigger and a lot stronger, it wasn't because I thought chicks would like it. It was because like if I punched a 150:00motherfucker at a show, I wanted it to work. I didn't want to be like fucking Charles or Doug or something like where it's just like they get -- they'd be fucking filled with -- they couldn't hurt anybody if they wanted to. That's who I really am is I'm more like Doug really and it just got -- it just went to a worse place than Doug. And Doug is not exactly a happy person, but I mean, I didn't get -- I wasn't trying to get -- I don't understand that motivation because it's just, you know. And that's why punk rock was great because goddamn it, you could buy two or three, four records in a room and you never heard a goddamn song about that, about how much oh you're so hot, hot blooded or something. I mean, isn't everybody? It's what I heard. I swear to God when I heard that I went, whoa I mean, everybody's under the age of 50 years is like 151:00that. I mean isn't that why your hair smells like that, you know. I was with my cousin, you know. I was with one of my cousins, she was really cute. She was a popular girl and she was fucking hot. And I just remember being with her, hearing that song and just being like why the fuck do you want to hear something that everybody already knows? And that was why punk rock was great because you're like -- when you hear that marching at the beginning of that fucking Pistols record, you hear those jackets -- I just remember being like oh shit, oh fuck like this record is not about that. Like goddamnit, how do you write a fucking album that's this passionate? It's because you're a bug-eyed fucking freak, that bug eyes of his and that hump back. I don't know if you saw that documentary goddamn it. That motherfucker wasn't going to get any action. You 152:00got to keep living. You got to keep living even when you're not what they want, when you're not one of the golden ones. And to me, that's what this whole thing is really about, is punk rock especially in Louisville has always been about the question about why do we value the things that we value? You know what I mean? Blind glorification is not thinking, is it, and blind condemnation isn't either. But that took a long time for me to understand because condemnation tricks you into thinking that you're smarter than you are.

CN:I see through this.

SG:Exactly. Well, you don't. It takes a long time to realize that. It's just you may be announcing how much you figured something out that everybody else has figured out, you know. You're late to the party.

CN:Well, I'm going to take a bag. We've been real metaphysical here which has been great.

SG:I have no -- there's nothing else I can do. The reason being my situation was so fucked up I don't know how else to speak of it.

CN:No, I know. I was just thinking I wanted to go back to a couple of things. I mean this is -- you were kind of touching on this before but I mean, what do you see, I mean as an artist what was the expression? How would you describe what you achieved in terms of expression in Kinghorse, say?

SG:In that band what I was trying to do is try to get people -- we're going to get metaphysical again, sorry.

CN:That's cool.

SG:I was trying to get people to understand that before the social feudal hierarchy, as we talked about earlier, before the feudal hierarchy interfered 154:00with their inner life, they were both creator and destroyer. When you're a child, and I said this earlier, I wrote this earlier online, when you're a child you draw a snake, you put legs on it, the snake has legs now. And you build something with wooden blocks and you say, well this is the city where God lives, like I said earlier. But then when you become aware of the social hierarchy, your ability as a creator is completely interfered with. It's almost cut off because suddenly you have to negotiate for all this stuff. And what I was trying to get across is no -- even if you're completely crazy, you have the ability to remember before either this depression came upon you or this rough period of 155:00your life came upon you, and remember when you were purely a creator. I mean, all these fucking people who talk about art, they say well you learn all this. You learn all these techniques so you can eventually learn how to draw like a child. Well, I just -- I saw right through that. I just -- when I started painting paintings, I just started making the same exact kind of paintings I did when I stopped drawing when I was six. I just said, fuck it I'll just go right back to what I was painting before which is stupid fucking just fantastical bullshit that makes you happy when you look at it. The snake has feet. You see what I mean?

CN:Yeah.

SG:Yeah. Now the snake has feet now motherfucker. Snakes don't have feet. I'll punch you in the eye over that. Like go ahead and tell me the snake doesn't have feet, it's right there on the paper. Fuck head, I say it does. And that's what the purpose of that band was, is like even a normal teenager well they're in 156:00hell because they don't want to grow up and I don't want them to either. But a lot of, some of those kids were crazy too and you don't want them to fucking die. And some of them you just couldn't save because they got into drugs and crazy people should not do drugs. And that's why we lost some of them and we lost others to other types of addictions and the fact that they wouldn't take care of themselves or just accidental illness of course and stuff like that. But that's what the purpose of that was, is like even if you're fucking as bat shit crazy as me, creation and destruction will save you. It will save. I'm living proof that it will because I should be dead. I don't even like it here, Chip. I'm honest. I don't like it here. I don't like earth. I don't like this body. I 157:00don't -- I find all of it slightly distasteful, but I'm here, you know. If I can crack an occasional joke for somebody I know, I'll do it. But that's what the purpose of that band was. Now in Maurice, I was really upset with the fact that I just -- like that was during that period where I was just like, man, whatever it is that girls, these girls want, I ain't it. You know what I mean? And/or anybody. I mean, it wasn't just girls. I mean, I was getting that type of feedback from everyone out there. And, you either were totally silent and you threw your fucking -- you threw your flowers and your money at the feet of the golden ones. You were either going to get -- you we're going to get in line in that feudal world and you were going to worship those who were chosen to be 158:00worshipped or you better just be fucking completely quiet. And even if you didn't say anything, you were supposed to be in the pews. You could see it all around you. I remember the first time I realized that Fonzie was like five foot two, you know what I mean? You're like, oh wait a minute, wait a minute now, that's not how it works. It's not how it works. Like my father was probably five seven, but my brother is probably four eleven.

CN:Oh really? I didn't know.

SG:Yeah. He's almost a fucking midget and he was really dyslexic and really sweet. You wouldn't believe what that motherfucker went through, unbelievable. Kids taking his corrective shoes and throwing them in the pond. Like I mean, he was just like -- he never had a fucking chance, never had a chance, man. He 159:00still believed though. He kept thinking if he was nice to these fuckers that they would relent. Not me, not for a second. Watching how they treated him was a big part of that. That's what made punk rock so glorious. You know what I mean? You could see that there were people who were fucking fed up. They were fed up with the whole way that things work. It's just like okay it may be like this but I'm not going to participate in it willingly. I'm going to fuck it up. I'm going to -- but I can't change it but I'm going to fuck it up. But, man, that motherfucker like he would just keep being nice to them. I just got the distinct feeling that they didn't want me at the party. I don't know why. I was just -- and it of course it hurt me but what made -- what took that hurt and turned it 160:00into burning hot rage is that when I realized how many people were getting that treatment. I fucking couldn't believe it. I was just like every single girl in my school's in love with the same boy. Every single boy is in love with the same five girls. Who the fuck are the rest of these people? What is going to happen to them? You know fuck and they're going right along with it. They're fucking going right along with it because the idea to not go along with it is beyond terrifying to them. It's worse than any abuse that they could possibly get. I think that's what Bohemia in a lot of ways is about. You know what I mean? You're just like, if you have different values, we know that you're lucky. That's why we -- it's like we know something you don't know. Well actually yeah you do. No, that's not an adolescent view that's true. That's true. If you can escape it, your life is probably going to be more joyous and creative. But 161:00that's always been the same message is the same sermon I've been speaking. I've been saying the same sermon since I was 14 years old, just like you -- your fucking sexual orientation or whatever other bullshit like that you think makes you an outsider, like that stuff has got nothing to do with the world that you commanded before these issues took over your life. It doesn't matter what makes your dick hard. When you were a child, you didn't have to negotiate for those things. And that allows that creative power I think of either refusing like getting involved in this later when you're just like it's always, -- you know it's always been bullshit, rather you've always known that it was bullshit, and then later you act on it. You're just like, well I'm going to do bad and I don't 162:00give a fuck if anybody likes it or not. I know we're not going to get in the radio because it's going to be too good. You guys -- I mean you guys played fucking too fast for a long time. It was just too fast for people to fucking -- you couldn't dance to it. You could only fucking fight to it. You know what I mean. Like that was all it was -- that's proto hardcore we call that down. We call that proto hardcore. But back then there wasn't any name for it, you know what I mean, because it was like it's more intricate than what The Ramones are doing. It's just as fast, but it's more intricate. There's more going on, the playing is better, it's not just -- like that but it's, all that stuff is, it can't help but end up being metaphysical, like it's impossible to avoid. It's impossible for me at least because that's been the message all along. You can subvert it or remember before it took over your life.

CN:We've talked for almost three hours.

SG:We'll let's stop unless you've got another question.

CN:I mean, there's other stuff I'd like to hear.

SG;Like what?

CN:Well like going back--

SG:You can always cut this up and then numerous files. Nobody has to listen to this whole fucking thing.

CN:Sure. No, but what I was going to ask about was--

SG:Sorry about the sniffling to whoever's listening to this. Sorry about the sniffling. My sinuses are fucked up. Go on.

CN:You were talking about -- when we talked about Maurice and you were talking about the guys in the band. The scene I really associate Maurice with is Charlie's Pizza Parlor. And I just thought maybe just hearing a little bit about that, just what that was like.

SG:That particular juncture, almost all of you guys were either in graduate school or

you had to get a job, most of you. And then some of you were like -- some of you 164:00were just deep in the bottle, some of you guys were doing drugs, some of you guys had left town. So, it's like the second-generation guys and the third-generation guys that are still doing it. Well in Maurice, being like first show January 83 in the hardcore era, there's only one tape of that band playing that set. There's three specific sets of Maurice music. If you're a Slint fan, this is important. The first set of Maurice music is written at the same time that Languid and Flaccid is together. It's just much faster. It's very Circle Jerks, Minor Threat style playing hardcore and whatever lyrics I was writing and 165:00some of the lyrics from the other boys too. And that band, Ned quit so then we get Bucayu and we write a second group of songs with me, Mike Bucayu, Britt Walford and Brian McMahon playing guitar. That band plays twice, plays those set of songs twice. Most of those songs in those shows had no lyrics. They were totally improvised because I was totally obsessed after -- I had heard that some people just fucking made shit up. What if I just -- what if each song had a theme? So I would try. I tried that a couple of times. It didn't really work and the songs were actually starting to become songs over time. Brian quits and joins Squirrel Bait. But then you get a whole other, --you get another crew of punk rockers. Now the problem with this bunch is that they want to hear a type 166:00of music that is already gone. See what I mean? Like they want to see Black Flag with Henry, they want to hear Damaged. They don't want to hear, Slip It In. They think it's rock and roll bullshit. They're just so fucking late to the party that they're almost comical. So when Britt is listening to King Crimson and I'm listening to Blind Alfred Reed every day, some fucking crazy hillbilly from the 20s or something -- I mean, I was obsessed with like early American music during that whole period. But it's like you're -- so you're in this band and you're not even into fucking rock and roll anymore, but you're playing it. But Charlie's was a group of these kids that were very, very fucked up and really were trying very hard to be punk rockers. There's a big difference between a punk, a punk 167:00somebody who's just naturally a Bohemian rocker and a punker. We call them punkers, you know what I mean? They were just like -- they wanted to be part of something that they were just too late for. So, they tried to like make that kind of music and it was just already over. I mean you hear Meat Puppets too and you're just like it's over man, this is a whole other level of fucked up. Like we got to catch up. You hear the Minutemen and you're just like, goddammit there isn't even a name for this. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And then it gets even crazier at that time, Saccharine Trust, there isn't a word for that, for that band. And that's -- Britt figured that out but it's just -- in every documentary I've been in every time I've been interviewed, so you're talking about little musicians from this period, like Slint is the most influential band of the 168:00decade, period. Artistically influential band of that decade except for like rap people. I'm talking about a band that influenced -- there were 10,000 imitators. But that comes from that thing is like Charlie's is a bunch of these people who are desperately trying to act punk rock and then you're trying to play them jazz fusion, kind of a cross between Metallica and King Crimson. They don't want to hear that shit. They would get really mad man. Nobody liked that band. Nobody liked that band. They would come see us. They were nice. They tried to be nice. That's not what they wanted to hear. If we had busted into -- if we had started playing fucking something, some early Black Flag song, yay. Like all these kids 169:00are into the Ramones now they just -- they love them. Just like, well sorry cocksucker you're too late. I mean, it doesn't mean that the band is not good, but yeah that was the punker era I like to call it. People with Mohawks and just going all out. Now I admired the fact that they wanted to look stupid. That's very important because if you don't look -- if you don't have a period where you look stupid, you're kind of phoning it in as far as I'm concerned. You got to kind of look dumb at least for a little short period of time because it's like man if you think people thought if -- I don't know if you've ever seen colored pictures of Elvis right before he made a record, he looks like a goddamn clown. People were not interested in a white boy looking like a gay black dude. It was not cool. Like, he looked like a fucking idiot. And I just think that if you don't go through that and you just get on there, get up there on your street clothes, in your street clothes, that's fine if you really tear it up. But 170:00that's the only thing about the punker era that was nice because they were willing to -- but a lot of those guys they were fucking white power idiots. They got involved in all these other stupid fucking ideas and it was just ridiculous. It was really -- it was pretty sad and depressing really because you were trying to like -- you were trying to compete with these guys that were 12 years older than you, you know what I mean, and blow them away when you played with them. I mean, when Maurice played with Scratch Acid, they fucking were like their jaws were dropped. Britt and Dave could play circles around all of those fuckers. Every single band that saw us they were just like, "What you're doing is just horrible. Like it's awful it's unlistenable. No, you know, it's just it's awful, but we just can't fucking believe how good you guys are." And like I said in all -- that me and Bucayu had to say over and over, we wanted to make music for 171:00people for riots, a soundtrack for a riot, not for something for pot smoking college kids to fucking play to impress somebody. Now, I mean it's not Slint's fault that they got the type of fan they got. But it's not Malignant Growth's fault either like a bunch of the -- during that jockey period. But I mean I just wish there was more documentation of the early bands, studio, quality studio documentation.

CN:So what -- I guess the other thing I was thinking about, you mentioned briefly, but it seems like really key in your story is the whole relationship with Danzig. And like I think I read that Slint book right that you would like call them on the phone.

SG:Yeah. Well, the thing about The Misfits that they are a lot like The Dead Kennedys, and I mentioned The Kennedys being a bridge for me. The Misfits were 172:00very important because they're a band from the CBGBs era, the very earliest era, New York area, but they're New Jersey fucking blackheads. But like my wife for example, like my wife has never really been particularly -- she likes what she likes, but she's not a music fan like us. She can't -- she doesn't talk about records. She just, "Bowie is awesome. I like the Bowie songs I like." You know what I mean? But like if she hears the Misfits, she can say, "When I was 13 this is what rock -- I wish rock had been like, like the first Misfits album." But, of course, they're getting their due at last. They're finally getting their due. 173:00But yeah, I mean I was --like I was friends with lots of because you could call those guys on all these stolen phone card numbers that were going around in the punk rock world. Anytime anybody got a new corporate phone card number, everybody would use it to touch base. So Bucayu kept in touch with the Minor Threat guys, the Discord guys, the DC guys. I was a Misfits fan so I was friends with Glenn because I was trying to get Misfits' Artifacts out of him, right, and he was fucking super nice to me. He gave me fucking just about anything I wanted. Super, super friendly to deal with over the phone. And he's just a jackass in person because he was fucking really depressed and he had had this band for years. But The Misfits and The Dead Kennedys are that bridge band between punk rock and hardcore. You see what I mean? Between urbane, city type punk rockers, art school types, and suburban clods who aren't offended by Lou 174:00Reed for some reason. Nobody knows why. You're on the football team, you're like man Lou Reed is cool dude. Like Ralph, that's what Brett Ralph is. Brett Ralph is a typical fucking football jock, but he just didn't understand why you would be bothered by Lou Reed. Like what the fuck? What's the big deal? That's the magic of Ralph though. He's the ultimate crossover guy.

CN:Right. Well, so then Maurice you all--

SG:Maurice toured with Glenn's second band, which was called Samhain. But we did out of town shows with them. And it just was not well received at all. People were respectful and kind, but they didn't know what kind of music that was. It didn't fucking make any sense to them. And it's still -- I mean it's terrible. 175:00Sorry, you know what I mean, because it's just it's something else that's attempting to form. You know what I mean? Just Britt knew too much I think about -- him and Dave just knew too much. Like in the middle of the Maurice thing, Dave went away to Berkeley and fucking came back and he understood theory in and out. He went to Berkeley for a summer. So it's like we didn't understand -- me and Bucayu were lost. We had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. Just like, "Well, what about that partial Mixolydian scale that you--" You're just like we don't fucking know what the fuck you're talking about. Like seven seven-sixteenth time signature or something. Like what the fuck are you -- and that's been discussed over and over in the book and all that stuff. But we just didn't -- that's not what we, me and Bucayu envisioned when you hear about what was going on in Los Angeles with like full-scale fucking wars with the fucking cops where the cops had to come in bats and shields. That's what we were after. 176:00That's what we're looking for. We want to be this fucking soundtrack to a full-scale fucking riot. You know what I mean? That's a completely different artistic goal. And we did not -- the music that Mark came up with for some reason it worked here but it just was not that -- it wasn't right. It just -- we didn't get it quite right. We just didn't get it. Somebody -- we were -- we were hoping to pick up on that original SST audience that was still there and they were waiting for the return of this riot soundtrack approach to rock. But it's just like we weren't -- we just didn't pull it off. I think Mark was a little too old, too much older than us and we encouraged him to like, let's go backwards for some of these ideas. You know what I mean? Like let's steal something from a Bloodrock album. No one's ever going to know. You know what I 177:00mean? No one's ever going to know. But when you like Sabbath, those first four Sabbath records as much as the Kinghorse guys did, it was a really bad time to try to incorporate doom metal, what's now called doom metal, and mix it with punk rock. It was just a bad time to try it. I don't think it would work now either. I just don't know. I think there's something about my voice that doesn't work for most rock fans. I don't have the right type of voice. Maybe they can tell I'm small. I don't know. I don't know what it is. I don't know. I just think that it doesn't have -- I think it has a very limited appeal. Now the show at the time was we were the fucking best live band I think that would exist. Bad Brains were maybe -- Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Brains the only people who could touch us. You know what I mean? Really. I mean we were fucking a goddamn tank at one point. 1990, '91 that band was unstoppable. We were fucking incredible. But it just didn't come across in studio.

CN:So why did it break up, from your--? Because I just kind of got from Mark, and Mike both just sort of like--

SG:I knew it was doomed. I knew the recipe was wrong. I could accept that, and they tried to replace me. They just couldn't find anybody. They couldn't find anybody. Had they got somebody with real pipes, they could've started something else. You know what I mean? I think another record with somebody who could really sing would have been fucking fantastic. The three of those idiots just made a record recently on the sly. And I'm not singing on that motherfucker. They don't understand. They still think that I'm the guy, you know. I'm not that guy, you know what I mean? Like I can't even sing my own folk songs right. They're made for fucking Dwight Yoakum to sing it. In my head that's who I hear singing it. You know what I mean? Too much of a music fan. And I don't know how 179:00to really play to my strengths except in I Have a Knife. The band that I'm in now, which I'm not going to be in very much longer, I just don't want to do it anymore, but the band that I do now, it's really what I did early on in Maurice and what I should have done all along. Stop -- every now and then I'm fucking up though. I keep catching myself trying to fucking sing something I really can't do, sing, quite a bit. I still keep trying to do it because it's just -- I hear what it should be there, I can't do it. I just can't do it. It's like if you hear The Misfits and you hear an early Misfits song and someone's playing a lead it's just like I mean it's just like deedle, deedle, deedle, it's just like one hammer on, you know. In their mind they're like Ace Frehley. They cannot do it. Now that's charming sometimes. In my case, it's obviously irritating, I mean at least to American ears. I mean we went over great in Eastern Europe, Australia.

CN:Is that right?

SG:Oh yeah. Oh my God, yeah, oh yeah. If we could have got to Australia and Japan, we would have killed it, we would have killed. Our record did well over there, very well. I don't know what the deal is. I don't know. Maybe they appreciate failure, like that trying to do something that you're not quite -- maybe they like that or something. They see some sort of nobility in it. I mean, I certainly did.

CN:There was a quote from you that was reported that you said to something -- at some show or something that it was like whatever. I wrote down my recollection of it. "This is for people who make money by selling lies to children."

SG:That -- no, what I said -- I said that at the foundation's forum in front of all the music industry.

CN:So that time you were saying when you were ragging on.

SG:We were just ripping on people. Well, I wasn't exactly -- I was pretty mad about that, about how the album had turned out. So, when we got in front of those people, I had already thought in my mind, you've already fucked it up. You people have already fucked up my record. But there's live footage of that show online and we just crushed, fucking crushed. But I say, "This set is dedicated to all the people who are into the business of selling lies to little children," which is what rock music was to me. It was a fucking bunch of bullshit about--

CN:So it's the same thing you were talking about, about the golden people and all that.

SG:That's right. The golden ones. You're selling them -- you're telling them to get in the pews and I'm telling you, get out of the pew. In fact take your chair and throw it at me right now. You know what I mean? Like I can take it. It's no 182:00big deal. I mean like that's the problem, isn't it? I mean, the reason punk rock was great is if you didn't like me you just unplug the fucking guitar. They just laugh and plug it back in. You know what I mean? Like what happened to Johnny Thunders when he came here? He just got -- it didn't do well because they could get to him. It's like you little prick, like he was just like, "Whoa, you're supposed to tell me I'm great." Like, no fuck you, you creepy little weirdo. Like can you play your own song? I mean it's just like -- and then when you think about Hasil Adkins, when Hasil Adkins first played here, he hadn't done a show in his life. First show he did was Louisville and it was fucking packed out. Everybody went ape shit. He only did fucking shows in his house.

CN:No, I hear there was a bar.

SG:Was there? I had no idea.

CN:I went -- it was called the Corner Pocket.

SG:Where was it?

CN:In Madison, West Virginia. Right down the road.

SG:I had absolutely no idea. That's great.

CN:I mean, you know, the movie that Julien Nitzberg did.

SG:See I thought that all happened at his house.

CN:No.

SG:Well, that's awesome.

CN:I think a lot of it was done at his house. It was great because there was like this nudie, you know, like six-foot nudie pin up from like the 60s and then Hasil there and like.

SG:But that's a classic Louisville moment, though. You know what I mean? Like you think about Johnny Thunders coming here and then you think about Hasil Adkins coming here and you're just like wait a minute. That tells you everything you need to know. Were you at that first Hasil show?

CN:You know I never saw him-- or wait-- Yeah, at Tewligans, yeah.

SG:That was the first one. But it was fucking packed and everybody went ape shit for the motherfucker and he couldn't even remember his own songs. He was so terrified, or whatever it was, or fucked up or whatever it was. But that's -- that tells you everything you need to know, right, about our thing.

CN:We'll welcome Hasil and will hassle.

SG:We'll fucking harass Johnny Thunders. It's like now come on, we know Hasil's 184:00a crazy hillbilly but, you know, you guys can remember your material at the same level here. Come on, come on Thunders, really. Oh, you're not drinking five bottles of fucking Nyquil a day just to keep like kind of calm. You know what I mean? Like, he just fucking embarrassed us.

CN:He had that crucifix on stage. Do you remember that?

SG:I didn't go to the Thunders show because I knew what was happening. I was like, man, they're going to just rip him alive. Our people are going to fucking just fucking make fun of that motherfucker. No, just brutal, ruthlessly. Like the best part, man this is my best, the best quote from that show that I heard, he says at some point, you can tell me if this is true, from the stage he goes, "All my life I've heard about how Louisville was just like the city of beautiful women." Did he make some comment about that?

CN:Maybe.

SG:"My entire life that the Derby City was chock full of the most beautiful women." And someone went, "They don't go to Johnny Thunders' shows," like and he 185:00was just like, oh yeah like for a split second oh sorry you're right. Like that --now that shit that's fucking hilarious.

CN:There was some song where he was hitting on Tari. And then I think he like exchanged punches with Gravy Dave.

SG:No, Dave punched him. It doesn't matter if you punched Dave, it just fucking doesn't work. I saw one time Keith Artele hit fucking Dave with a fucking beer glass, beer mug and it did nothing, did nothing to him. It didn't make any sense. There was -- like nothing happened. That was fucking wild dude.

CN:Really?

SG:Yeah. Oh yeah. But the time that The Dead Milkmen came, they got smart. They were smart asses and they had to leave town in a hail of bottles. They had to flee. And I stole the license plates off the They Might Be Giants van and then I 186:00called the state police and told them that some hippies with no license plate with a van full of drugs was driving down the 65. So, I had them fucking thrown in prison for fucking with us, thrown in jail for fucking with us, because you just don't do that shit here. We don't like that shit. You're only a rock star if we say you are.

CN:Well, that's a good stopping point.

SG:Yeah. That's a good place. /AT/ /cw/