Episode 17: Joe Pop-O-Pie, Pt. 2

I got in right at the cusp of, you know, when 415 was being annexed by Columbia Records. So I had the benefit of, you know, being a corporate rocker without selling my soul to the devil. Anyway, so Courtney was living at that house, and she came down and she was wearing nothing but a black negligee.

And she said, hey, you hungry? And I was like, yeah, what do you got? But we could have played full sets, but I wanted to keep it that way, and, you know, so that everybody around the country would at least get one sample of what I had tortured the San Francisco audiences with. And I mean, one thing Jerry said one time was, I remember him saying this, it's like, The key to having a happy life is to just imagine the most funnest life that you can imagine and then live it. And that's a great philosophy, right? And now for part two of this two -part interview with the one and only Joe Papopai. It never occurred to me to ask this, you how of all songs in the world and all bands in the world, the one that you performed entire sets of, you know, how was it that Truckin came to be that that song? You know, was that just how much of that was just chance versus? Oh, yeah, yeah. OK, so I'll tell you. Yeah, that's a little story behind that. So I was a music major when, you know, I got in, you know, and I discovered punk rock and getting into punk rock, it's like, you know, 78, 79, around that time. And I think it was like in 1979, I was, you know, we're sitting there, I talking with some of my music major buddies. And, and some of these guys really, really didn't like Deadheads. Some of these guys really had an aversion towards Deadheads. I mean, I was neutral. I mean, you know, I wasn't a Deadhead. And, you know, I knew the Grateful Dead's music, because my older brothers were into the Dead. And in fact, The very first rock concert I went to in 1974, I was like 15 years old, it was a Grateful Dead show. And they rolled out this banner over the balcony and it said, Impeach Nixon, and everybody cheered.

This was around the time of Watergate and everything, so I kind of caught the tail end of that 60s stuff. So I was kind of slightly a participant in it as a very young teenager. here. But, but yeah, trucking. So, so, you know, one of these guys, you know, was talking smack about deadheads. And like, yes, fucking deadheads are so obnoxious, and blah, blah, blah. And so and then I said, you know, wouldn't it be interesting if if somebody, you know, took like, some Grateful Dead song, like trucking. And, you know, as if it was written by like, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads and Devo. And, and you know, if the Ramones and the Talking Heads and Devo got together and decided to write Truckin instead of The Grateful Dead. What would it sound like? And I just, I brought that up and everybody, you know, laughed hysterically. And I thought, you know, maybe I should explore that. So I created the arrangement of Truckin and that's how it came to be. And yeah, I mean, you just think, you know, I just did that on a lark, you know, I didn't think it would be, you know, become like my thing, you know. You didn't create a spreadsheet of all possible songs and then

whittle it away through analytical methods to figure out, here's the one song. Exactly, exactly. So yeah, there was nothing too cerebral about it. It just kind of happened. And so, you know, so did Jerry think I was making fun of him? No, no. Actually, you have to understand, And Jerry was a man with a great sense of humor. And he loved that somebody was, you because he liked punk rock in a way, you know, liked the energy of it. And I think he kind of saw it maybe like, you know, the way Jagger really loved the version, Devo's version of I Can't Get No Satisfaction, he thought that was hysterical. And he was on board with it, and he even said like, you yeah, Devo, they did the best version of Satisfaction I ever heard.

So, and I think Jerry was kind of the same way with this thing. It was like, wow, it was like, this is, this is like, you know, you know, I mean, Jerry, he drops acid, you know, he's got an open mind. He's got a great sense of humor and, you know, and he loved it. He thought, you know, I mean, it's like a lot of these people, they're good sports, you know, they don't take themselves too seriously, like, like Led Zeppelin, you know, like there was this guy named Little Roger who put the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven to Gilligan's Island, you know, the theme of Gilligan's Island. And, and, you know, and he put it out just as an indie single or something and, and Led Zeppelin, uh, you know, got all offended by it and they, you know, they had him pull it, you know, so he couldn't do it. And, uh,

you know, but, but no, not, not Jerry and the Grateful Dead. They, they, they thought it was awesome. And, uh, you know, they got a good laugh out of it. Uh, let me see. So, So, um, so it's late. So I maybe, maybe at some point you were leading up to, um, and, and didn't quite get there with leading up to, to Steve Tupper. And yeah, right. Steve Tupper. So I'm about to encounter Steve Tupper for the first time. And, um, you know, so I'm, I'm back in town, I'm crashing at Bill's place until I find my own place. And, and, and by the way, I just want to say, uh, give, give gratitude where gratitude is most mostly do. And Bill and Roddy, those guys saved my ass on a number of occasions. They, whenever, you know, I was in between places or, you know, I lost my place or something or one of my girlfriends would kick me out,

they'd always let me crash on their couch. You know, they saved me many times. So I wanna say thank you. I never said it before, if they're listening, and I have much gratitude. And so, you know, I got my own place and I was shopping my tape and I sent it out to some places and I sent it to Tupper and I walked by the office that they had there on Valencia Street, Subterranean Records, and I walked in and I said, Steve, and Steve was like, hey, hey, I got your tape, man. I want to talk to you about it. When you get a chance, because I was busy, I'll come back later. So I came back and we talked about it. And I really liked the vibe I got from, you know, it's like this, you know, this guy said, you know, I want to give you a total artistic control and, you whatever you want to do, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, you know, I could make a home here for a little while. And so, you know, so he goes, you know, let's talk deal. And so I said, okay, great. Let's, you let's, let's do something. And, and Joe's second record materialized out of that. And I did that at Malin's place, Tom Allen, who, by the way, I just want to say is one of my favorite engineers to work with. Tom is a great engineer, a great person, and I would say a great friend, too. He died about eight years ago.

Ten years ago. Yeah. I never got to talk to him, but I was just thinking it's kind of an interesting sequence where you went from the Automatt, and I think that's a 24 -track studio, to Malin. Yeah, big glitzy. Yeah, yeah, to Malin and Subterranean, but probably, if not better, at least a good fit for what you were doing. Oh yeah, no question, no argument there. You know, you touched on something kind of interesting. You know, it's like, when I when I did that deal with, you know, the 415 Columbia, it was like, I had the benefits, you know, like, so I'm kind of a hybrid, really, you know, because I started out kind of in that corporate scene, and you know, had the benefit of that. And, you know, I and so when I went made the shift to indie, it was like, I hit the ground running, you know, it was, it was real, it was already sort of plugged in. And, and so I, you know, I could kind of kind of go off that thrust and be, you know, be a little more out there with what I wanted to do, which is, of course, what I love to do is be a little more out there. I like to push the envelope. And yeah,

so so go yeah, going from from the big glitzy to the studio to a more modest studio, which only had 16 tracks. And, but I mean, you know, the amount of tracks really doesn't matter. It's really, you know, the, the comp, the board, you know, the electronics and the board and, and, and the quality of the engineer. I'd rather have a, you know, a less than state of the art board or less than fancy mixing board and, and a good engineer than have a great mixing board and a shitty engineer. But anyway, yeah, so Tom is awesome guy. We met him and I didn't know him before that. And, you Steve kind of sent me over there. And, you know, because Steve's paying the bills, so he's telling me where

to go. And, and, you know, I met Tom, we hit it off really well. And Tom really got the Pop -O -Pies. And that's the thing, and I'll say about both David Kahn and Tom Mellon, they both really got the Pop -O -Pies. And they did their best as engineers to cultivate, you know, what I was, you know, the vibe I was trying to cultivate in the projects. So, but anyway, So Tom and yeah, we set up there, we did that. And and Puffy were playing in the band. And Bowen, I think even Bowen was playing with, he played with Faith No More for a bit. Yeah, he was definitely, he was definitely like pretty consistently with them, or for a good long stretch in 1984, yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, it's, so, yeah, how, how could I, how could I, how could I miss on this project? You know, I got, I got this awesome band and, and, and these guys could, you know, they could play anything. They were good. They're great players. And, you know,

and so, you know, and we were, we were, we were touring, you know, we, we, we went on tour. And some interesting things about Joe's second record. It was interviewed by this guy in Andy Warhol's interview magazine, this guy named Glenn O 'Brien. And says in the article, he goes, yeah, so this is the second record. So there was a first record, but I never heard it. And that's the thing that, because by the time Joe's second record came out, the YDP was sold out, and it was out of print. So you couldn't get it anymore. And so, so when people buy that record came out that people, you know, got the record, and it was the second record. So everybody's looking around for the first record, and they can't find it. So people would would approach me and say, so so it's kind of a prank, right? There, there was no first record. It's that's just like a joke, right? It doesn't exist, right? And I was like, no, no, it exists. It's a real thing. But what that told me was, because Glenn O 'Brien hadn't heard it, and a bunch of other people, that was very validating, because what it showed me was that if I just started right out of the gate indie, I would have still made just equally as big a splash as if I was working with 415 Columbia. And, and see the, the those two labels work is, you know, they had a different methodology of how they would promote their records. Like Howie's thing, Howie Klein's thing was, was that his version was the media blitz method, which is like you, you, you do, you know, you pay some for some advertising and you totally like great guns, you know, media blitz, you know, like pull out all the stops for like three to six months. It's like really intense. And then

onto the next one. But Tupper, the way he works, was more economical, and significantly slower. So when what Steve would do is he wouldn't do any advertising. And he would, you know, send these records to people who he knew would, you know, he wouldn't waste, he wouldn't just sort of like Blunderbuss scattershot all the promos out there. He was very careful with who he sent promos to, people who he knew liked that kind of music and would write about it favorably. And let word of mouth propel the record to the goal. And it's probably about eight times slower, Steve Tucker's method of promoting a record. But both methods are good and they both get the ball across the goal line eventually. And so, you know, both have their advantages and disadvantages too. So I don't necessarily see that one is better than the other.

It's just different. And I noticed that Howie did some other things that I thought were really cool. Howie knew, you know, he worked in a radio station, KUSF. So he understood what people were like who unpacked these packages that came in from the record companies. And when Howie sent out a promo pack to a radio station, especially an indie radio station, he'd always put in two copies of the record, because he knew that person, because if it was a hot record, that the, you know, the intern that was unpacking the package would say, hey, I'm taking this one home. And, you know, and they'd steal the record, and then, you know, you wouldn't have, they wouldn't have a record to play, and now he wouldn't find out about it until later, and that would, you know, that would kind of ruin a lot of the inertia.

Whereas Steve would only send, he'd only send one version, you know, and usually these records would come out in, there'd be like a campaign. So, there'd be like three or four releases in one package at a time, because it's more cost effective that way. And so, Joe's second record came out with Flippers, Gone Fishing, And what else? I Code of Honor, maybe their thing. And one other thing, I think, I'm not sure. That would be late 84 then. But I thought it was a little ahead of Gone Fishin'. This has been very hard to find, but I thought Gone Fishin' was late 84 and maybe Joe's second record was mid 84, but. No, Joe's second record, it was recorded in mid -84, in March of 1984, I believe. Because y 'all the tour over that summer. Yeah, well that March of, yeah. Well, here's the thing. Before that record came out, I mean, you know, the Faith and War guys were playing in the pop -up eyes from late 83 all through 84, up until the beginning of 85. And then they, you know, decided, you know, we're going to be, know, full -time Faith Lemoore and we weren't gonna have time to work with you anymore. So they went off and, you know, started their own thing in earnest. And, you know, and that's when they came up with We Care A Lot and all that stuff. And, you their first one was in India, I think, More Dam Records, that was We Care A Lot. And so, but anyway, so yeah, so yeah, before the record came out, they were playing in the Papa Pies. So, you know, we were working, and we were doing stuff. And so anyway, so Joe's second record and we did this barnstorming tour through the South and we met a lot of cool people who I'm still friends with. And it was a lot of fun. How did you, I know you all played Texas because Bill remembered something about Texas, but I'm not sure how far. Yeah, we did Arizona. There was a couple of dates in Arizona. You didn't make it into the Southeast. No.

And I'll tell you why, because there's nothing, there's nothing in the Southeast. Well I mean, the route that you would have potentially taken if you did do that, it would involve going through Texas and then into Louisiana and then probably from, you know, New Orleans up to either somewhere in the Florida panhandle, probably not, or Atlanta. but you know these bands but and then you know Atlanta and then DC but that's a lot of driving you know and you know Raleigh where I'm from or those places we're generally not on the itineraries if I look at itineraries but you know that's a lot of driving and you know a big picture point about the whole West Coast thing you got to go a long way I've never really you know I've certainly never experienced that as a touring musician but you know, just to get from California to, you the next place that you're going to play is, you're already doing way more driving than you'd have to do on the East Coast to put together a little tour. And in that sense, the Papa Pies, you know, that first tour was fairly, you know, along with Flipper, there really weren't a lot of bands that were making it, that were touring on the East Coast from any kind of underground. I mean, obviously the Dead Kennedys, but from any sort of underground sort of scene, it was not easy to do that. Yeah.

Well, you're touching on a very good point there. The East Coast, yeah, it's very compact. And around that time, there weren't that many cities that you could play in, there weren't that many. Remember, this is the 1980s, which is very different than the 1990s. By the 1990s, people had kind of woken up and indie was a thing and it was, you indie was almost mainstream in the 90s. You people, you know, there was a lot of cities, a lot more cities to play. And even in those cities, there was more than one venue, whereas in some places, they're just like one venue, one place to play where everybody played. Like, you know, in DC, there was only one club, the 930 Club. But, you know, in order to understand rock and roll in the 1980s, in order to understand the rise of indie in the 80s, you know, the beginning of indie in the 80s, was because you have to understand, I mean, you really have to go all the way back to the end of World War II and where the story begins. The story of rock and roll does begin at the end of World War II. And the reason why, you know, in other words, when you're telling a story of rock and roll, you got rock and roll, it is reactive. So it reacts to something that was just very much that way. It kind of pushes off. It stands on the shoulders of what has come before and reacts to what has come before.

I'll come back to that in a minute. But yeah, there wasn't that many places to play in the 1980s. And what bands would do is, the only place that was hip enough to handle independent bands, or bands kind of like that, you know, newer bands, bands who were playing, you know, punk or new wave or post -punk or whatever you want to call it, you'd play between Washington, DC and Boston. And that was it. And there was nothing south of that. I never heard anybody playing Atlanta. I never heard anybody playing Miami or Jacksonville or, you know, Montgomery, Alabama. People went as far as about Baton Rouge, Louisiana, because it's a college town and, you people like to party there. And talking about from the from from the West. Yeah, from the West. You were coming from the West. Yeah, you do Texas and you do Baton Rouge. We were gonna play Baton Rouge, but they canceled at the last minute. And, but we saturated Texas pretty good, playing some cities twice, as I recall. And then we had a gig fall through in El Paso. So we did a gig in somebody's garage instead, and we just passed the hat.

And that's actually a very difficult way to perform because there's a small amount of people. And I don't know about anybody else, but for me, it's harder to perform in front of a small group of people than it is a very large group of people. The larger the group, the easier it is, I think. So when you're playing for a very small group, like a dozen people or something, it's like you have to relate. You cannot kind of look over their heads or something, you've got to have a kind of intimacy with the people. And that's, you know, that takes a little more roots, but, but anyway, so that was El Paso. I we played in, we played in Tucson, and we played in Phoenix. And what was really wild about the Phoenix gig, we played this place called Vivian's. And what it was, was it was a former Catholic church. Okay. And the bands played on the altar, and then the little balustrade and everything. And, and there was, you know, they pulled, they took out all the pews, and, you people, you know, people just slam dance, and they got in this wheel that, you all the punks would kind of get in this wheel, and slam and it was pretty, you know, friendly and everything. But, but for me, you know, the irony was not lost on me. I'm playing a Catholic church. And I'm singing the Catholics are attacking, you know, almost, almost as if it's like, you know, yeah, we won. And now we're desecrating their grave here. Let me see.

You know, and then we played LA. We always played LA a lot. You know, some places there, I forget where we played. Oh, we played this, we played a really cool place in the summer of 1984, Occidental College. We played a college gig and that was really fun. They gave us our own little cottage to stay in, you know, played for all our plane flights and they took good care of us. I mean, you know, they were they were really nice. And there was a lot of great food and alcohol there and stuff. And they're really nice people. And I met some really cool people there. That was the first time I met Chuck, Chuck Mosley. And Chuck was, you know, he was slightly lit, you know, zooming around on a skateboard.

And he was he was playing me this tape of his band, Haircuts to Kill or something. And one of the songs on it ends with this line, because drugs is the happenin' thing. And I thought it was so funny just to hear Chuck say that. It fucking hilarious. I mean, Chuck always broke me up. He was very, very funny man. Yeah, may he rest in peace. God bless him.

So, we did the Joe's second record thing, the Joe's second record tour. And the funny thing about it is, when I conceived that record doing it, I was in this state of mind where I was like, you know, the working title for it, in my mind, was Joe's last record, because I wanted to just kind of like really let it all go and not pull any punches and just say what I really felt about what I experienced about the music business to date and not, you know, and places that I had gone that I thought the people were, were, you know, not cool. And, you know, cities that I thought were fundamentally lame. And, you know, and I just wanted to pour that, you know, pour all that brutal honesty into one record. And, you know, and I just thought, you know what, after I release this one, I'm going to piss off so many people, that that's, that's going to be it, it's going to be over. And if so, I didn't give a fuck. And so when I put that out, much to my surprise, it was kind of like, everybody that heard it, that I was talking about, thought I was talking about some other aspect of the scene. You know, it's like, it's funny how when you don't mention names, everybody reads into it what they want to read into it. And they thought I was talking about somebody else. But maybe I was talking about that. Maybe I was maybe I wasn't, I don't know. But But everybody took it that way. And everybody was like, yeah, you know, and so that record went into multiple pressings. And Tupper was so pleased with it. He was so thrilled with it that he said, yeah, we got to do another record. So, you know, Joe's third record, if you will allow me to, and I'll try to be as diplomatic as I can. That record, I have some

issues with that record, as people may or may not know. But anyway, so where I got the crew for that record. Mikey, kind of, you know, he doesn't appear a lot in your book, but he was, you know, very, very present all through the Pop -O thing. And various things kind of knocked him out of the picture, apparently. Like he got, he had some accident before Joe's second record, he was going to play on that, but he had some accident, he broke his hand or something, and he broke his wrist or something. And, you know, so he couldn't play for a while. And, you know, but he was on the first, the YDP tour. He was on that first tour. And he was on, he was on the Joe's second record tour. You his hand had healed up. And Bowen, Bowen wasn't on the road with us. He had left the band at that point. And Bowen couldn't, he filled in for Bowen because Bowen couldn't because Bowen got, he got sick. He got ill. He couldn't do the first tour.

So, you know, and Mike, of course, did all the third record tour stuff, and he was the bass player on that record. And anyway, so, let me how did I get these guys? So, yeah, so at the end of, I guess it was like right at the beginning of 1985, you know, Bill and Puffy and those guys said, we're going to do our thing now. We don't have time to, to work with you anymore. So I said, okay, great. But, you know, thanks for your help. And, and so, uh, I, I had seen Hello Kitty on ice or I was going to see Hello Kitty on ice. And I don't know if I had seen them yet. I think I had seen them already. I you would have seen them. Cause I think they, they kind of, um, yeah, they, they, they, that was right around the time. Yeah. That was right around the time they broke up. It broke up right, right around that time. So I'm not crying. So I gotten, I'm a little bit maybe, you know, off in the time here, but I remember what happened. You Greg Turkington was, you know, as our favorite Neal Hamburger guy was working as an intern at Subterranean Records. And that was when I met, I met Greg in like, I think it was 83.

I think it was like 15 years old or something. And when, you know, I came by Subterranean to talk to Steve for that first time. And, you know, I thought he was cool kid. He was, you know, he was very mature for his age. And this was the thing, you know. So I got to know Greg, you know, because he was always down in subterranean. And although he was a younger kid, you know, he was nine years younger than me or something. He was very, you know, very precocious and very, very bright for his age, very, very worldly wise. And I could definitely relate to him. And he said, oh, yeah, Joe, you got to come see our band, Hello Kitty on Ice. It's really good. You got to come see it.

So I said, oh, OK, OK. So I'll put you on the list. OK. So I went down and I caught their act. I didn't expect much. I really didn't. And I saw Greg is like a 16 year old kid doing his schtick in front of like 20 something kids. And he was breaking them up. He was making them laugh so hard. And it was so awesome. Hello Kitty and I. And, you know, Kirk was there. Kirk was almost like Greg's straight man because Kirk was so serious and he was so into his, you know, guitar, you know, set up and gizmo and, you know, he never looked up and he was just playing like the Dickens. And so I, Mikey and I went to see, when, you know, Puffy and Bill, you know, were kind of giving me notice, we went to see, I think one of the last, maybe we had seen them already, I'm not sure, but I remember Mikey and I went to see Hello Kitty on Ice at one of their shows. And, you know, we were checking out Kirk, and, you know, and we both looked at each other and said, yeah, this guy, this guy, he'd be good. Let's get him. Let's get him in the band. And then he can go back to playing bass, and, you know, we can move forward from there.

And so, but, you know, and as luck would have it, I think right around that time, there was some dust up over a woman, you know. And Kirk's girlfriend at the time was, you know, So she dumped him and started going out with Greg and of course that created so much tension in the band and so the band broke up and so Kirk was bandless right at that time. And so that's when Mikey and I approached him and said, listen, you should play in our band. And Kirk was like, yeah, right on, man. So, you know, so we saddled up together and I started writing some songs and he knew this drummer that he liked. But, I mean, I thought he was just, you know, a basic utilitarian drummer, you know, Johnny G. He was, you know, was okay. He wasn't, I mean, you know, he was pretty good. He wasn't, you know, anything fantastic. But maybe that's what we needed at that time. You know, didn't want anybody too flashy, you know. So, so anyway, Johnny didn't get, Johnny didn't really get punk or post -punk and, you know, The kind of music he enjoyed listening to was like, you know, Van Halen and, you know, that kind of stuff. And he was, you know, he was sort of a classic rock kind of guy. And but Kirk liked him and he wanted to work with him. So we said, okay. And but so what I did was during that time, I remember, you know, I started to hang out with Kirk a lot because I'm kind of the Hector Berlioz School of Songwriting, where, you know, Hector Berlioz used to go hang out with, you know, members of the orchestra, you know, buy them a beer and a sandwich and, you tell them, hey, what do you like to play? What are your favorite passages?

And, you know, and, you know, that's how he got to be such a great orchestrator. And anyway, but so I, you know, if I can, I like to hang out with the people who I'm going to be writing songs, you know, four to play. And what I did was I remembered during that time, like January, February, I was hanging out with Kirk at his place out at the Great Highway, Great White Highway. And, you know, and we would go out there and we'd get drunk and I'd bring my bass and, you know, I'd play all these bass lines and stuff. And he would get his guitar and we would just start, you know, jamming and, you know, and I would kind of see, you know, what kind of worked. And I, so I would, you know, kind of write the songs around what he could do well, you know, what he, what he enjoyed doing and, and did well. So, so it was a good, you know, it was a good fit. They were, you know, kind of tailored in a way. And so I gave him a lot of room to stretch out and be himself.

And so, you know, I wrote the, I slapped the songs together and I guess we, you know, rehearsed them in, I think, March of 85. And, and we were also, we were playing some shows then too. So I would try the songs out in live context, you know. Then, then we went into the studio in April, early April of 1985, to record Joe's third record. And, you know, the name of Joe's third record was from Steve said, what are we gonna call Joe's third record? And I said, Well, it's called Joe's third record. So there you go. And we didn't put a lot of thought into that one. And so

he so here's, here's where we start where I start to run into trouble. Now, you know, the second record had done so well, Steve gave me this, you know, big ass budget to record this record, you know, probably the biggest budget, probably the biggest budget he ever outlaid, but it was, you 10s of thousands of dollars, and which is a lot of money for an indie label. It's a lot of money, $19 .85. And it's a lot of money for an indie label of, you know, Steve's size. So it was, you know, he had a great deal of faith in what he was doing here. And he said, you know, I want you to work, I want to send you to Hyde Street this time. And, you know, not Mallet's. Because you know, they got 24 tracks, and a bigger studio, and you know, we'll get a bigger sound, you know, all this good stuff and, and, and the house engineer who's there. And what happens is during the, I think it was, I don't even know if I was in the studio when it happened. But the engineer accidentally erased most of the drum tracks on the one of the songs, Sugar Magnolia. And I, you know, I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, that that's not even a rookie mistake. That's just like fundamental incompetence.

And I was fucking pissed. And I was like, here's my blood and sweat and tears and pour it into this thing. And this goofball erases the drum tracks when he's rewinding the tape. And so, oh, and it gets worse. So while we weren't around, he got this like cheap microphone with a flat surface head. And he tried to, you know, with his thumb, you know, play the song and then tap on the top of this microphone to kind of, you know, get a drum sound, you know. And so when Mike and I showed up the next time to, you know, continue mixing, he said, yeah, well, you know, I accidentally erased the drum tracks, but, you hey, I fixed because, you I took this, I took this microphone, you know, tapped on the top of the microphone to, you kind of do the drum, you know, get a get a drum sound, you know, fill in the drums that I raised. And Mike and I both turned to each other, and we gave each other this look like, is this guy out of his fucking mind? You know, I mean, like, who the fuck does

that? You know what I mean? It sounded terrible. It sounded it horrible. And so I said, so he was rewinding the tape after that. And I heard the tape going backwards. And I said, I joked to myself, hey, it actually sounds a lot better going backwards than it does forwards. I'm like, I know, we'll put it on the record backwards. So that's why that is the way it is. Okay. Now there's another record, there's another song that's going backwards. And the reason why that one is going backwards, too, is because the wrong take of In Frisco got saved. And it's the one where Johnny is playing on two and and four instead of just two and four. And believe me, it makes it sound more like a like a classic rock song and a punk rock song. And when I heard that, oh, shit, somebody said the wrong fucking take on this thing. And I wasn't going to put it out like that. Because, you that's, that would, you know, represent the definitive of that song in people's minds.

And I didn't want it going out that way. So I said, Well, listen, man, I'm going to do this some other some other way in the future and do it right with the drums are on two and four, instead of two and and four. So I said, Well, fuck it, I already got one, one song going backwards, I don't have two. And and I listened to that one going backwards. And it did sound better going backwards than forwards as well. So then I, then, you know, Kirk was there and I was like, Hey, why don't we put the whole record backwards? And was, I'll kick your fucking ass. So, you know, and he wasn't being serious, of course, but I mean, you know, but I was just joking, really. I mean, it was just a joke. I thought the rest of it sounded pretty good. You know, the rest of it did sound good going forward. So, back to the Hyde Street disaster. So, this record was taking forever, and it was going over budget. And Steve, you know, called me and said, Joe, how is it going? Because I'm running out of money. You know, you got to get it done in X amount of times. I said, okay. And so I did. But it ran over budget so badly that it delayed the release of the record. But anyway, so I had to do, I guess, what was the analog equivalent of a GoFundMe. And actually, me and Mike actually put in the legwork on that. So I got to give some props to Mike King, because he, you know, really helped out. He was, he

did an awesome job of helping me out raise this money. And how I did it was I went through, you know, locally, the Popo fan mail that I got, you know, because back in the old days, you know, back before everybody had computers and email, you would actually write a letter to somebody and put it, you put a stamp on it and put it in the And so I had this stack of of pop of my fan mail. And I went through the fan mail. And I, you know, located people who were local, who I felt, you know, I'd bought, you know, some merch through the to the mail order. And I, you know, singled out some people who I thought might be interested in, you know, helping us bail the record out, we need to raise about 2000 bucks. So what I did was I wrote them letters. And this is how incredibly slow things move back. And some of the people I said, you know, give me a call. And, you we'll talk if you're interested. And, you know, I'll come over and I will play you the copy of the album. And, you and you can decide if you want to give us, you a donation or whatever. And that's what I did. And that's how I and Mike King raised the money for for this to

bail out the record. But because everything took so long, the record was delayed by a good, you know, six or seven months. So, you know, the ill -fated Joe's third record came out in early April and didn't have as much, you know, airplay time before it kind of got lost in the sauce for next year's round of releases and things, you know, but that was a that was a strange time, like for me trying to put that chapter together. And I don't, I don't know what you thought of it. Like I kind of grouped it together with a couple of other, other things, but it seemed like, you know, that was getting towards the tail end of whatever era it was when you started, that was winding down. Right. I don't know how it felt to you. Well, I mean, you talked to me. No, I got a whole piece on that. But yeah. And yeah, I know what you mean. Because right around late, late 1986, see, I had started to, you know, as soon as the Joe's third record came out, I started planning the tour. And anytime you plan a tour, you know, you got to do it, you know, four to six months ahead of time, at least because, you know, you got to lead everything. And I had set up this really great tour for the Northeast in late 1986. But I don't know what the hell was going on. But some some big clubs, some of the bigger independent clubs closed down that I had, you know, we were going to play. And because of that, we had to cancel the whole tour. Because, you know, too many things that dropped out at the last minute, and they were the big money, you know, rooms that we were going to play. And so it wouldn't have been financially feasible. So I had to cancel the whole fucking thing. And I was, I was really kind of bummed. I took a year off at that time. And, and then this place called the Music Works opened up in late 1987. And, and they said, Joe, you haven't played in a while. Let's, let's do a show, the booking guy, Michael, whose guy's name was. And it was this kind of a big, independent venue. And we packed the place, and made really good money. And I was like, wow, this is the way it should be. You it's like, this booking agent guy is, he's not like other booking agents I've worked with. I mean, he's really honest. And he's really, you know, he pays you what you make and everything. And it was a great place, but it got shut down. Somebody had it in for that place and used some classic local yokel music mafia dirty tricks to get the place shut down. And I noticed right around that time, this was like, you know, coming into late 1988, that a lot of, you know, bigger independent venues, not just in San Francisco, but on the East Coast as well. Because again, I'm trying to set up tours, but these these clubs keep opening up for a while and then they shut down. And I noticed that, you if your place as long as your club had a capacity of

like less than 75 people, you know, you didn't get shut down, but anything bigger than that, you know, these places were getting shut down for some reason. And this is what I call the beginning of the long punk rock winter. And, or post -punk winter, like I refer to it as, there was some weird stuff going on right around that time. Like, for instance, like, I know that Alternative Tentacles was dealing with this lawsuit from the Frankenchrist, their warehouse got raided by the FBI or something, and they were embroiled in this obscenities trial or something during that time. And that was kind of eating up all their resources, their financial and administrative resources to put anything out or do anything.

And the similar kind of thing, Subterranean Records was getting audited by the IRS. And that was tying up all their resources and time and energy. And SST was dealing with some monster lawsuit from some – I don't know if it was media conglomerate or – Oh, that was the Negative Land YouTube. The Negative Land thing. Yeah, the Casey case. Which is a little bit later. Yeah, a little bit later for sure. But, but I mean, you know, it's definitely but but I mean, it happened, like I'll call the post punk winter, between late 88 and late 91. So there was like a three year, solid period. And also, there was other weird thing going on. And of course, I had a tape, you know, back in during that time, I had written a bunch of songs, and I recorded them with, you know, some people And Bill Gould had this Reevox. What a Reevox is, is it's kind of like a poor man's portable recording studio. And it's very limited.

But Bill had this new gizmo and he wanted to try it out. And he said, how'd you like to be my guinea pig? And I'm like, all right, let's do it. So Bill helped us make this demo tape that I made. And I went down to, I guess this was like late 88 or something. And I went down to my attorney, Barry, and I said to him, Barry, here's my next offering. I'd like you to shop this tape. I'm working on my next deal. And he said, okay, but I listened to it. And he said, you really have to understand something. For the next few years, they're not gonna be signing anything except spandex hairbands. And you're not a spandex hairband. And so they're not gonna pay any attention to you. And so he said, why don't you just, if I were you, I'd just go off and do something else with my life for a little while for the next few years.

And enough, which is what I did. I went out and got a steady job, which was something I hadn't done in a long time. So he was absolutely right. It lasted about three more years. And then all of a sudden we have this thing called grunge It comes in like in 1992 and all grunge was was just post -punk before it was interrupted by the long spandex hairband winter winter and um you know and then everything was off and running and oh the other thing that I wanted to point out was during that time around 1990 ish there was this weird thing that kicked in called pay to play and again I'm not participating so I'm just reading about this in one of the weeklies, and, you know, talking to people I know who book clubs who I run into every once in a while, you know, have coffee with them or something. And, you know, and what they were doing was they were forcing bands to like sell tickets to their shows. And if they didn't sell the tickets, then they couldn't do the show. And how the hell are you going to sell tickets to a show, right? If you're just a band, you don't know if it's going to up, you need call people up or something. So that was just a way of derailing a lot of independent bands from performing. And it just seemed like there was this some kind of entity was trying to not completely obliterate independent music, but temporarily derail it for a time. And if you look back at that time, there's not much going on, there really isn't. And I remember the radio at that time, like even college radio was playing a lot of this sort of Eurodisco stuff and there wasn't any like, you know, kind of band bands and even like commercial radio was like playing all these spandex hair bands, you know, like Moderate rock station was playing, you know, Euro disco stuff exclusively. So yeah, it was just anything that sounded half decent was like not happening. During that time. It was just a very abysmal time. And if there's anybody listening out there that, you know, listening to this podcast that has any thoughts as to why you think that was happening or any thoughts that I'd really like to hear. So maybe, maybe someone will contact you and say, I know why that was happening. But

anyway, I'll leave it up to people to draw their own conclusions. But that was the demarcation between the 80s and the 90s. And if you needed a demarcation, that was it. Right now is a good time to circle back and get into a couple of things, what I said earlier, about, you know, if you really want to understand rock and roll of the 80s and 90s, if you really want to understand the rise of independent record companies, and, you know, indie, the independent music scene, altogether, you really have to understand what came before the 80s. And what came before that, even, and I'm going to try to give you a whirlwind tour with this without taking the long way around. But, you know, you have to go back to the end of World War II. And all these GIs came home and all these babies were born, as you know, it's called the baby boom. And, you a ton of them were born in 1946. And what happens is, you know, rock and roll, I, again, people, you know, might have their own idea on it. And if they do, it's fine. Everybody's entitled their opinion. And I respect everybody's opinion. And if you disagree with what I'm about to say, it's okay. We can

still be friends. But, you know, I sliced rock and roll into four very distinct eras. It lasted for 48 years. And there were four 12 year, very distinct eras with some very distinct demarcations between each one. And it, you know, we start in 1952, and you have people like Bill Haley in the Comets. And, you know, then later you had Chuck Berry and Elvis, Richard and Buddy Holly. And I kind of caught the end of that, that era, because when I was a preschooler, my first memories were, you know, singing along to Buddy Holly at Christmastime 1962. Because I had an older brother who was really into Buddy Holly, and he played him to death. And so I really got acquainted with my older brother's music pre Beatles. And that era goes from 52 to 64. And then in 64, the second iteration of rock and roll is what they called the British Invasion. Now, rock and roll is an American invention, like hot dogs, ice cream, and rubber cement burgers. You know, it's something uniquely American. And so somebody had to say that this was the British invasion, because a lot of the bands, I guess, they had slated, you know, were going to be imported from the UK. There was going to be a lot of English bands. And sure enough, over that next 12 year period,

that most of the bands were English bands. There were some American bands, you know, but they were in the minority. Now, in the, what I call the 50s era, you know, that first one that went from 52 to 64, that was like largely a teenage phenomenon, okay? It you know, rock and roll was a quirky teenage ritual. and, you know, then you were supposed to go to college and get a job and, you know, grow up. Well, rock and roll takes on a very different persona in the British invasion era from 64 to 76. And what it does is rock and roll becomes more political. Rock and roll becomes more of a social force. And rock and roll is not just for teenagers anymore, but it's for kids in their 20s, you know, up until the age of 30. And it's a very robust, vibrant thing. And, and there's a lot of money. And the reason why there's a lot of money in it is because there's all those kids that were born after World War Two, or are you know, they got money and they're consuming and they're, they're buying records, and it's feeding the record industry. I mean, to give you an idea, in the early 70s, you had bands putting out one album every six months. You know, whereas like, by the 1980s, it was like one LP every two years or something. By the 90s, it was like one LP every three years or something. You know, so there was a lot of money, and they could afford to have dud bands and, you know, still keep cooking right along and make tons and tons of money. Well, what's going on there is

a lot of people are starting to go to concerts as well. And the concerts are not just like some hall somewhere that has, you know, a few hundred people in it or 500 people, you know, it's, they're starting to play in sports arenas, you know, Madison Square Garden, Philadelphia Spectrum, you know, places where basketball teams and hockey teams do their thing. And, you know, and the seating capacity is huge. It's, you thousands of people, like 10, over 10 ,000 people. And you got bands packing in those kinds of crowds. So they're making real good money, especially all through the 70s. But there's a there's a there's a slight problem here. Now think about it 1976 rolls around. And all of a sudden, there's a problem. And all through the 60s, and you wouldn't know this because you didn't live then. But when I was a kid growing up in the 60s, there was a saying, you can't trust anybody over 30. And they made t shirts and posters and Mad Magazine had a lot of fun with it. And, you know, it was just a very, you know, counterculture youth hippie kind of thing. You can't trust anybody over 30. And, you that was the generation gap and the war between the generations and stuff. Well, think about it. What happens in 1976 to all of those people who were born in 1946? They turn 30, right? Yeah. So all of a sudden, attendance at concerts starts to drop off immensely.

And they're not selling as many records as they used to. And I remember it was back in 1976. I was talking to this guy locally in South Jersey. He was, you know, he had a band, which was like a cross between, he had a prog rock band. I it was cross between Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Yes or something. And anyway, I was talking to him.

He said, yeah, I went down to catch Emerson, Lake and Palmer's soundcheck at the Philadelphia Spectrum. And he goes, they had to send everybody home because what they would do is, mean, these things got pretty elaborate. What they would do, they had this like this orchestra thing, they were doing that Aaron Copland kind of orchestra thing. And they would hire string players locally, who were, you know, ringers, who were sharp players. They would bring them in the afternoon, and they do a rehearsal with them. So they get the parts down, and then they do the show that night. And they get paid for the rehearsal, and they get paid for the show. Well, They had to send everybody home because they didn't sell enough tickets, and I don't know if they canceled the rest of their tour or what the deal was. But this started to happen. So the rock and roll recording industry realizes it has a problem because its consumers are aging out of the consuming demographic. And so what they did was something very smart. They lobbied the FCC to enable more broadcast power, the college radio stations. And they would use these college radio stations as test markets because they couldn't afford to have duds anymore. And they would use them to vet the, you know, they would test market these guys and see if they were good. And so the two stations that they, I don't know if they funded them overtly or covertly, but that they wanted to use as their flagship stations, KUSF in San Francisco and KXLU in Los Angeles. And like I say, I don't know if the donations were overt or covert,

but I'm telling you this, I went into, you know, KUSF to do a bunch of station IDs for DJs and stuff. This was like, early 83, late 82, early 83, something like that. And, you know, I used to go there a lot. So, you know, so if I was hawking a show, I would go down there. And they liked me down there. Because, you know, I was, you know, kind of a fun interview. And I would just hawk the show. And they'd play some Poplify songs that I'd, you let people know what's happening. Well, I went down there around that time, late 82. And I saw, like, state of the art. I mean, they had headphones, you know, they're real nice. And you could talk to people on the air, and you know, everything was brand spanking new and, and was was a top notch outfit. Well, I'll

tell you something 20 years later, after the implosion of rock and roll after digital killed rock and roll. I went in there 2003 to hawk the poppo anthology. And I couldn't believe it. They, they only had one pair of working headphones and it was duct taped with this grimy, grimy duct tape, and only one of the ears was working. And, and, you know, the place was, it was in decline, was declining terribly. And because the funding pulled out of it, because, you know, the rock and roll recording industry had imploded. So they didn't need college radio stations anymore. So they weren't funding them anymore. And they were basically on their way out. I don't know what ever happened to KXLU, but KUSF went out of business, I think in 2010, they sold the frequency band to some classical station down the peninsula or something. But that is what was feeding these things. And the point I'm trying to make is

the next demarcation I'm going to talk about is the one that starts in 77 or 76, I should say late 76, early 77. And that's what they call the new wave, rise of the new wave. And it was called punk new wave later on, as people use that term. And it was it had a very distinct demarcation to it, there was a new set of rituals, bands were playing smaller places, the 45 made a comeback. In the in the 50s, the 45 was what most people bought. I remember my brother, I brother who was drafted, went to Vietnam in 1965. And he was there, I was, you like in the first grade or something. And I learned how to work the, what they call the Victrola. They didn't have stereos back then. Stereos were an anomaly. I mean, there were people that had stereos, but most people had mono things. And all 45s and albums were in mono. And all the rock and roll stuff, pretty much all of it was on 45s. So, but when the when the British invasion happened between 64 and 76, all

of a sudden, you know, singles like faded out, they were considered to be like, you know, cornball 50s stuff. And, you know, the album, the 12 inch album was, you know, big deal. And, you know, FM radio started, and they were broadcasting in stereo, you know, so now you had, you know, stereo, phonic, you know, when you had these albums and, and, you know, it's like the songs got longer and longer, you know, like, like a whole side of an album be long, you that whole prog rock thing. But you know, all of a sudden, music industry starts running out of money. So they do this clever thing where they enable the college radio stations to be test markets so that they can save money and be more economical. So that's why I say that there's a distinct demarcation because the songs all of a sudden get shorter, 45s come back and everybody putting stuff out on 45s and people are buying 45s. You know, the dress code is totally different. It goes from long hair and styled hair to short hair or spiky hair

and everybody's wearing skinny ties and, you know, getting their, their wardrobe from, you know, goodwill, you know, free boxes and stuff like that. Yeah, so, so we're going through, let's see that time. And, but what the corporate rock people have another problem, and what that problem is, is that they don't, they still don't have the money, they can vet, you know, good bands, bands that kids want to here through college radio, but they still don't have the money to make mega acts like they used to. So I think this was around 1983. What happens is somebody comes up with this great idea to say, hey, why don't we recycle the last iteration of rock and roll, and we will come up with a term for it. And we could sell the same records, because we don't have to advertise, because we've already, you when things were good, and we had advertising money, we could create these mega bands, it's not going to take too much to keep them going. So you know, and some of those bands, you know, weren't too old, and they still wanted to tour. So they came up with a term for it. And the term they came up for recycling this stuff was called classic rock. And classic rock, that was the beginning of the end for any 80s upstart bands that wanted to get, you know, a proper corporate record deal and, you know, do their thing. So this is what enabled a very robust underground because what

happens in the 1980s is they realize that they want profits to keep coming in, that, you know, they're gonna have to do this classic rock thing and it's easy and it's profitable. So they're going to stick with it. And all the commercial radio stations are just going to keep playing the same thing. And it's funny how they're still playing the same thing today. You drive down the street and listen to the commercial rock radio station. And the music is not even from this decade. It's not even from this century. No, it's from another century. And

they're still playing. So they didn't take too many, they didn't pluck too much new blood from the college radio stations because they just didn't have budgets for it to do it. And that's why you'll notice that all through the 80s, you know, there's hardly any, you know, good sounding bands, you know, they're all this, like, it's like Men at Work, and Huey, and Madonna, and Phil Collins, and stuff like that. I mean, the quality of corporate rock during the 1980s is horrible. So we had to create independent. it. And luckily, that there was this college radio network and facility that we could work. And you see that the corporate labels didn't care if about about us touring, you know, they didn't, they didn't care. They wanted independent bands to be, you putting their stuff on the radio, because they were listening to that those two radio stations, especially, and they were, you know, making judgment calls based on what they heard and what was popular on those radio stations. But They didn't care if we had a mechanism to tour. They didn't give a shit about that, but we gave a shit about that as independent bands. And that's why we were motivated to build the touring network of independent rock of figuring out how to do this and how to make it work.

So that's a little piece. And so that's why also there wasn't that many places to play And you could play, you know, DC, you know, maybe Philly, you know, Hoboken, North Jersey, and you could play, you know, a couple of places around New York City, like play Brooklyn, play Manhattan, Boston area, maybe Rhode Island or something. And that was it. I mean, you didn't have a lot of places for bands to play. And in the West Coast, West Coast was kind of it was kind of good because, you know, it's all right in a line, you know, it's a lot of driving for sure. And it's not as convenient because the distance between Washington, D .C. and Boston is not nearly as far as San Diego to Vancouver, right? So, and then there's this, you know, patch in the West, you know, you can do Phoenix, Tucson, you can do El Paso and Austin and maybe San Antone, Houston, and Dallas, and maybe go as far as Baton Rouge, coming from the West Side. And it's, you but the East Coast is just this little strip between DC and Boston, and there's nothing in the Southeast. There was no clubs in Miami or anything. And then there was something around the Chicago, around the Great Lakes area that was kind of a loop there, if you wanted to do that. But other than that, it was, you know, you found really, it was really hard to find a place to play.

Because what people don't understand is, I don't know if you ever saw that movie, Decline of Western Civilization. The first one where there's a scene, there's a scene in this movie where the guy goes, I have good news for the world. There is no this movie was made in 1980. Okay. And most of the bands are talking about were flourishing around LA in the late 70s. And he goes, I have good news for the world. There is no such thing as New Wave. New Wave is what you said you were into when you were really into punk, but you didn't want to tell your friends that at the party because then they'd kick you out of the party and stop giving you cocaine. And that little joke there is very telling of society. Because punk and New Wave in the late 70s and early 80s was like, you know, you didn't tell your family that you were into this kind of music because they kind look at you funny. And a lot of your friends were still into, you know, prog rock and corporate rock and they didn't get it either. So it was kind of good in a way because it was like this community of people, you know, who got it. You it. But a lot of people were, you know, very cagey about letting people know that they liked this music. It was kind of shameful in a for some reason. So because of that, you know, it wasn't popular. And because it wasn't popular, there wasn't a lot of clubs playing. So yeah, it's, it was, it was rough going in the 80s, really rough. And then in the 90s, you know, all of a sudden, it's like they couldn't recycle the dinosaurs anymore. And, you know, they had to, they had to relent and start bringing

new blood and start forking out some money to advertise these bands and make them big bands. And that was what they called grunge. Somebody came up with it. It really just a continuation of what we started in the 80s, the post -punk thing. And yeah, you got that grunge thing. And the funny thing about the 90s was that, and not taking anything away from these bands. And I want to say, and I'll come back to that in a minute, but, you know, in the 90s, a lot of those bands, because those bands were, in the 90s, were honest about telling who their influences were in the 1980s, and they didn't make any secret of it, but because, you know, the corporate rock people didn't have any, you know, they don't own any of the publishing of any of the independent artists, and they're not on their roster, they don't give a fuck about the independent artists. So they really didn't go into it too much. But, you know, if you listen closely, all you had your, you know, your grunge thing, and then you had your neo hardcore punk thing. And then you had, you know, just other sorts of art bands in the 90s. And all these guys, you know, would say, yeah, we listened to, you all these indie bands in the 80s. And that's where we, you know, kind of got are getting ideas from.

And the thing that makes your book interesting is because you zero in, at least in the 1980s, you zero in on that time in history that's like this black box. And that's why people are interested in it now, I think, because there's all these references in the 90s that the 90s bands said, but there are these threads that lead back to this black box. And people are curious, because it's like, well, what do these bands sound like? What of these bands? Is there any place that we can learn more about them? Because MTV and VH1 sure as hell aren't going to be mentioning them or anything. So you're not going to see them on cable TV or YouTube or something. Well, everything's on YouTube. I correct myself. Yes, you're right. Everything is on YouTube. But what I meant by that was,

You're not going to see any of the corporate rock, what's left of the corporate rock entity talking about those bands. I always think back to that Secret Chief song, you rock and roll is the thing that needs to die. What I think they're talking about in that song is not rock and roll music, but the rock and roll music industry is a thing that needs to die. And I can see that sentiment, because the business of rock and roll had become so rotten by that time. It had morphed into this weird animal that was, you know, something very different than it originally started out from. And that's a whole other discussion in and of itself. But yeah, I would say the fourth and final iteration of rock and roll starts in 1988, which is when I, like I say, when I happened on this idea. And I would call that the recycled iteration, because everything in the fourth iteration of Rock and Roll was kind of a recycling of the previous three eras, but all mixed together and happening simultaneously, and maybe a couple of things that were new. You would see people dressing like the 50s, or dressing like hippies, or dressing like punks or, you any, you know, whereas before there was kind of very distinct uniform changes, you know, the hippies had a very distinct uniform change than the, than the 50s crowd and the, the punk rockers, they had a very distinct uniform change from the, from the hippies. And, but, but in this final iteration, all of a sudden, you would find people dressing in a mix of those styles on the same person. And the music was a mix of all styles, not just on the same album, but sometimes, you know, like Mr. Bungle, in the same song. And which is, you know, which is awesome. But, you know, so there was some new stuff, new ground being broken in that era, for sure. But there was a lot of recycling going on. We don't want your apathy. No fucking government gets down on me.

Can you spare any change? Can you spare any change? Anti Reagan and stuff, babe. Yeah. One of the things I want to say, oh, you know what I never talked about was 1993 recording with Trey Spruance and Danny Heifetz and Adam Ellis doing the, you know, we did the En Frisco single that Greg put out on his label, Amarillo Records. That was a really great session. We did five songs in that session. And I never read the recording session. Trey, before we went to record this one take, he goes, all right, you guys, this next take, let's be triply sarcastic. I knew what he meant by that. I didn't have to ask him. A triply sarcastic is like, let me give you an example. It's like when a politician thinks he's clever by pretending to act stupid, but hold it, he really

is stupid. You know, it's like that kind of thing. And that kind of set the tone for the whole session. And yeah, I think we captured Tripoli Sarcastic on that on that on those recordings. The two came out of the In Frisco single. In Frisco and what's the other thing? Squarehead? In Frisco and Squarehead. And then the other three tunes ended up on the Pop -O -Pies anthology. The only Pop -O -Pies tangible product that you could buy a CD for now is this Poplipi's YDP Deluxe reissue. And it came out, it's put out by Liberation Hall Records, which is kind of like a spinoff of Rhino. And good guys so far. So far they're good. The record came out, I think last year, and it's the six original tracks, and seven bonus tracks. You can buy that through, I don't know, Walmart, Target. Well, it's a big seller. I think I saw it at the checkout aisle, right next to the... It's in the impulse buy rack, yeah. But yeah, you can definitely get that through mail order. One of the things that's previously unreleased. It's my six minute stream of consciousness rock opera, Lenny in Wonderland, and which which there was a video of I've put it up on YouTube, me and Jake. Jake was the engineer that and, and we put that together. And so it's there's, we made a little video of it and stuff. And it's kind of fun to watch. It's a video of the Tenderloin and it's a six minute stream of consciousness rock opera about somebody who

gets dosed with some LSD and his green tea and he lives in the Tenderloin. So all the shots are my old neighborhood in the Tenderloin where I used to live, where I lived for 20 years. 20 years, 18 years of rent control in this one place. So yeah, I was doing good. I could save some money. And finally move the fuck out of that place and get to, I love living in Reno. It's great. I'm having a ball here. and it's really quiet, it's you know, it's really mellow and got some nice scenery. You know, I live in the foothills, walking up and down the foothills, and it's really nice to look at. For more on the Pop -O -Pies, you can go to popopies .com, or to the show notes for this episode, which you can find at whocaresanyway .online. moved to Reno and opened up a burrito stand. Now he's making more money than he could have ever dreamed of in the music business. And on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents lifestyles of the rich and famous and 10 represents the world vision of art, he's in a state of mind that doesn't mind grinding the popcorn. But you know, all in all, I would have much rather been brought up in LA