Ted Silence talks about Dead Silence

Dead Silence arrived on the scene in 1984, they were politically outspoken to the point of being labeled as preachy. This sort of approach ran headfirst into the ‘Don’t rock the boat too much’ philosophy of the Denver scene. The band was hardline on animal rights and vegetarianism, though not all band members shared the same level of passion that Kevin Vulture, the ad hoc leader of the band did.

Say what you will about Kevin and company, but over the years they honed their craft for combining politics and music. When the band was on stage, Kevin’s diatribe backed by a wall of sound set the tone and commanded the room’s attention. After forming, Dead Silence initially played shows in Denver then spent their later years playing in Boulder where they had a stronger following. Despite the short physical distance between Denver and Boulder, the attitudes and lifestyles were fundamentally opposite. Dead Silence seldom played Denver proper past 1985. During an interview in the 8 Flights Up fanzine Kevin and Carl stated: "We don't fit into the music scene in Denver because...Certain bands have a monopoly. We don't fit into the BumKonBrotherRatFluidAcidRanch clique so we haven't played Denver since 1985." 

The band was prolific in releasing records and touring as Kevin kept the vision alive through many incarnations spanning a 10-year period. In hindsight, what I appreciated about Dead Silence was they chose a path and never compromised their integrity. I recently reconnected with Ted, the drummer. Since he and Kevin were the original members who stuck it out for the first 5-years, I thought he’d have a unique perspective on the band. Lorn, another original member also shed some light on a couple of the questions. It was a pleasure catching-up with Ted after more than 25 years. He had a couple of beers during the course of our one-hour conversation, which was a perfect pairing for his Texas accent.     

Dead Silence. Original photograph by Jody Rodney. Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina). 

Dead Silence was initially a fanzine?

Yeah, but I didn’t know Kevin when he had the fanzine. When we first got together he had already stopped do it. One of my first memories when we had a jam session was trying to decide on a name. Nobody had an idea and Kevin said, “I used to have a fanzine called Dead Silence, we could use that.” I’m not sure if he wanted to use the name, he didn’t seem against it, we just couldn’t think of anything else. So we all looked at each other and went, "Yeah, that sounds cool."

Lorn: Someone had also graffitied 'The Silence is Deadly' on the Boulder Mall. Which was up for quite a while. I cannot really recall which inspired the other. I just remember seeing that slogan on the mall, and Kevin coming up with the name to name the band and I thought it was cool, and we had free advertising.

You were all living in Boulder when you started?

At the time I was still living in Longmont with my parents, that was 1984 and I was 19. Kevin and Lorn were living in Boulder. Adam lived out in the sticks. Dead Silence formed in a barn. Adam's folks let us practice there. I wouldn't say it was a working farm, but they had animals they harvested for their own consumption. I remember in particular Kevin was appalled when Adam's dad beheaded a chicken and then boiled it to get the feathers off.

We got together real informal. Kevin and Lorn were friends, Kevin went to Boulder High School and Lorn and Adam went to Niwot High School. In the 80's Niwot was considered a hick town. How those two met up I don't know. It was Lorn who called me up and said, "I heard you're a drummer?" and I said, "Well, I own a drum set," I had just recently acquired and could barely play. I told him that and he was like, “That's fine, we're just starting out. “

I had discovered punk in high school in '81 or '82. A buddy and I saw the movie The Decline of the Western Civilization and that really lit us up. Especially since we were kids who grew up in Longmont. We were pretty sheltered. When we saw that raw energy, we didn’t know what was going on. I was telling my brother a couple of months back, I had a good life, I wasn't that angry about much, but for me the punk experience was a new way to consume and produce music. Growing up it was album rock on the radio and that was only way to discover music. The only way you saw live music was if you went to a big arena concert. Suddenly we discovered this scene where you could go see live music for $3. And if you wanted to make music, you could make music. For me that was a whole new world. For Dead Silence it just seemed like one of those natural progressions of getting together to start a band so we did. Then we started playing some shows. At some point we said, “Hey, let's do a record because that was all a part of that experience. You didn't worry about sending off a tape to L.A. praying to get discovered, you just made a record because you wanted to make one.

Lorn: Adam and I went to school together, our brothers knew each other. We had a band that we named Spasmodic Tomatoes and then that became Sane Asylum. Both played in Adam’s barn. Our drummer stopped playing and we were looking for a singer and drummer. I think Adam heard about some guy Kevin wanting to form a band. Can't remember how we learned about Ted. Kevin is one reason why I became a vegetarian and still am to this day. Kevin was definitely the drive of the band. He made it happen.

First show?

The band formed in July of '84 and in October of the same year we got a call and I don't think it was Razer or Headbanger. 7 Seconds rolled into town unannounced and they got ahold of a promoter and wanted to play a show and they needed an opener. They called Kevin, so our first show was opening for 7 Seconds, which I thought was pretty damn cool.

Was that the show at Christian’s?

Yeah, were you there?

Nope, I didn't find out about it until after the fact.

Man, Christian's was...kinda reminded me of the Packing House, those places were, umm, I remember a year prior my buddies and I had never been to a Denver show. We gotten into punk, but never been to any shows. One of the guys said, "Hey, let’s go to a punk show in Denver." We found one. We went and I'm just a wide-eyed 18 year-old kid from Longmont. We were all pretty eye-wide seeing punks with mohawks, out on the road roughing it. Christian’s was beat and rough. It was Larimer Street when it was OLD Larimer Street. Our first show went pretty good, I think it worked out because it was a small crowd and a spur of the moment thing. We probably had some jitters like any band playing their first show; we probably miss a few things. Our set was short, 20 minutes. For a new band and young guys, it couldn't have gone any better.

Another diverse bill that Denver was famous for. Collection of the author. 

As I watched the band over the years, Kevin’s persona developed on stage. What was he like early on?

Kevin was ALWAYS intense. He was intense the day I met him. He wasn't that different off stage, except maybe he wasn’t screaming at the top of his lungs. Intense and passionate, he was the fire of the band. He was the leader, not the leader who decided everything we did. He was the guy that pushed us forward like: let's make a record, let's go on tour, let's play shows...

Was he also in charge of the aesthetics of the band, such as the image the band projected? You pick up a Dead Silence record and you know it's going to be politically charged music.

I think he did, but there were never any conflicts about that. It was his stuff and I think we all liked it. We shared the same sentiments. At moments we had different political views about things, but we all liked what we were doing. I loved the way Kevin would talk between songs, every now and then someone would yell "shut up and play!" 

There was time I saw the band and Kevin was going on one of his rants. Some kid yelled something. Kevin stopped mid-sentence and snapped at him. He pointed to the door and told the kid, "If you don't fucking like what I'm saying, there’s the door, you can fucking leave!" Everyone just turned around to look at the kid.

Yeah, he would be intense like that. I remember getting into arguments with him either on the road or practices, not bad ugly arguments, but just disagreements about stuff. He has a very strong personality; I guess what you would call a Type A. That was Kevin all the way on and off stage. I don't think we would have done as nearly as much without that.

There were several fliers for this Valentines Day event, but my favorite has always been the two-tone Doc Martin version. Collection of the author.  

I have an old ticket from a show that never happened. You guys were supposed to open for the Angelic Upstarts, which I thought was appropriate because the Upstarts are very political. The irony was that the Denver Skins were promoting it. I wondered how you got asked you to play, it sounded like a recipe for disaster, oil and water.

Wow, Did the show not happen or did we not play it?

The people who bought the tickets got scammed. We were supposed to get a refund at Wax Trax but the promoter never showed up.

At that time $5 or $10 was a lot of money.

I know, I was like, “Shit that's $12 because I bought one for my friend. I was pissed.”

When you're young and making minimum wage, that shit matters. It hurts when that happens. To this day I'm amused that skinheads would come to our shows. What are you guys doing here, you're just gonna hear a bunch of stuff you don't like. Anyways maybe they came because they’re badass and just wanna start shit. They always genuinely appeared to be pissed off about what Kevin was saying and that would be the funny part. They were like, “Let go raise some hell, drink some beer and kick some ass or whatever.” I can vividly remember them being really annoyed with what was happening. I guess, where else did they have to go?

Collection of the author.

I remember a Boulder Skinhead and Kevin having an intense conversation and the skin was telling him, you just need the Aryan Bible. (Laughter)

Holy crap. Some of those people just never change. I was up in Colorado visiting my brother and he was telling me about a political conversation with a couple of guys and at one point looked at him incredulous, "You watch Fox News don't you?" The guy was shocked that he didn't. My brother is a little conservative, but not Fox News conservative.

Do you think the scene back in the day was a little more inclusive, that people could be conservative or liberal and it didn't matter? It seemed that people could hang out together.

I go see bands every now and then, bands from back in the day. Everyone at those shows is old so I don't know what it's like for young people now who go to those shows. It would be different back then and there would be fights and the like, even though everyone had different views it was a place that they could go and it was their scene nonetheless. Not everyone felt the same way, there was no unity or any of that except this is our place where we can hang out and go to these shows.

Perhaps one of the more strange bills, all bands coming from totally different directions. Courtesy of  Trash is Truth. 

What happened to Lorn and Adam, the first line up?

This was the stuff I wasn't involved in, people would get kicked out of the band or they would leave. I was the only guy that stayed with it through the end of '89. Adam, the bassist was the first one out and a guy named Steve, we all called him Bear, he was a big fella. Bear played bass on our first recording and then Lorn was out and Steve played guitar for about 3 years. Steve was a Longmont kid like me about a year older and was into all kinds of music. He had the long hair and wore a trench coat. He was a mix rocker-goth kind of guy. He was cool and scholar of all kinds of music. After Bear left, Carl played bass and was in the band for a year. I just realized the band had three members from Longmont and one from Boulder. Carl left and another Longmont friend of mine, Jay played bass. Steve left then Joel played guitar and that was the final line-up. In the fall of '89 we called it quits. Yet, another decision of Kevin we all agreed with. He was like, "I think the band ran its course, we should hang it up" and everyone just agreed, there wasn't, "No I don't think we should." It just felt right with everybody. Maybe it just felt right for me, perhaps the newcomers were kind of bummed and wished it kept going. I could be wrong, maybe not everyone agreed. I did it for 5 years just like Kevin, I was like, "Yeah, let's hang it up."

Just like old athletes who hang it up, a year later in 1990 it was like. “Let’s get together and play a couple of reunion shows.” And we did. We drove to Rapid City and Joel reminded me of this while back, but we shared the bill with Green Day. In fact they opened for us because at that point we were well known in Rapid City and Green Day was some band nobody ever heard of. (Laughter) By the mid-90’s I had been living in Texas and I got into the Texas singer-song writer thing and I was thinking, "Gosh I wish Green Day had come out 10 years ago because I would have loved them." At 18-19, I loved that power pop sound more than I did hardcore. I met my wife in the late 90's and one day she told me about Billy Joe, she goes, "You know, he's still in love with his high school girlfriend" And I said, "Oh, really!" Then I remember after the show, Kevin came up to me and said, "Those guys are alright, but every song is about his girlfriend." I was, holy shit, he must obviously love the woman, because in 1990 he's singing every song about her and they are still together to this day. I thought that was a funny bridge from the past to the future. So after the reunion shows in 1990, I moved to Texas and then Kevin wanted to reform the band again in '92 or '93 and he called me up and asked if I wanted to do it and I'm like, "Naw, my life is in Austin now, that sounds really cool, but y'all go on without me." So he got a fella named Marshall form the Eco Guerillas, so he took over the drums, Joel played Guitar and Joel's sister Jody, played bass and they did a couple of tours. At one point I was actually up in Colorado visiting my family and rode back with them to Texas. That was in the summer of '95. That is kind of the chronological story of Dead Silence.

Lorn: Adam was the first to leave, but he was the guitarist and I played bass originally. When he quit, we got Bear on bass and I switched to guitar. What I remember about Adam leaving is that we were playing a party, and he became paranoid that some dudes were going to beat him up. He split before we played, I think. Can't remember if we played without him. Anyway, I think we did.

We recorded a few songs with Bear on bass and Mark Derryberry engineering it. He did a great job. I ended up leaving the band before this was released. I had a cassette copy of the master that I put up here http://www.llornkcor.com/deadsilence

I didn't mind leaving at the time, as the scene was becoming violent. Headbanger getting beat up was too much. The skins were increasingly threatening and violent, the cops were harassing more and more. I was a peace punk. Fuck the violence and intimidation.

The real tragedy about all that was this. I was at the Dead Silence house picking up the last of my stuff, Bear ran over and informed me that one of our friends had hung himself...that was what the ‘Stress’ 12” EP cover was about.

The Jay and Joel attack. Original photograph by Jody Rodney. Brush and  ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina).

Do you missing playing?

Every now and then my wife asks me if I miss being up on stage. I think after 5 years I was good. I just enjoy being a spectator now.

Tell me about the first record, the Stress 12” EP. It was on Unclean Records and now you and Roger Morgan are neighbors in Austin, right?  Do you ever run into him?

I delivered a pizza to him in the early 90's. It was cool reading your post about the Lepers and I wanted to say something, but I didn't want it to be misinterpreted. Our first release, the Stress 12" EP came out on Unclean Records. Kevin knew Roger and they were buds. We went into the studio and sent Roger the tape and some money and then nothing happened. We're all like what the fuck, where's our record. We felt like he was screwing us over. When I read your story, I got it; he was in a jam. Understandably our record took a backseat to all the shit he was dealing with. When we sent him the stuff, in our 20-year old naive minds we were thinking it was going to be priority one for him, like he was going to turn that thing around. Eventually everything got made right and it was cool. He wasn't screwing us around; he was dealing with some heavy shit. I was hesitant to tell that story because I didn't want it to be misconstrued. I would hate to think somebody was mad about that 30 years later.

Yeah, when you’re older you have a grown-up’s perspective and when you're a kid, you want instant gratification.

A few months is such a long time at that age and now it's nothing. From Kevin's perspective, he and Roger were friends and trusted him because he had been putting out records. So he was like, "Let's do it through him, because none of us knew how to put a record out." After that experience we learned what's involved in making a record and started to do everything ourselves.

What I like about the Stress 12" is that it plays at 45 rpm. I would show it to people and they would think it's an LP and it sounded slow when they played it. They would say, "I thought you guys were punk" So I'd fire it up for them at the right speed.  That was the little quirk about that record.

You have the songs Fucked In The Head 1 and 2?

Part 1 Kevin wrote about the time he was up in the mountains and had a mohawk, I think it was at Winter Park for some reason. He and somebody else went into a restaurant. Shit can you imagine Winter Park in 1983 and seeing someone with a mohawk, he got the hates there so Kevin wrote a song about it. Nowadays you think of small towns in the mountains as forward thinking progressive people, but that's not how it was back in the day. Part 2 was about bands selling out or making money a priority, charging more for t-shirts and shows, that kind of thing. The first one was being angry with people out in the normal world and the second being angry with people within the scene.

Any other songs with an interesting backstory?

There was Sally on one of our 45's. It was about a homeless woman in Philly that gotten so dejected she set herself on fire. In pre-internet days, that made it all the way to the papers in Colorado. Kevin saw that and was appalled that someone could sink to that because the safety net was so weak. That song was hard to record because of the rhythm; we had to do it in several takes to get it right. It had great lyrics, but I hated the song, it was hard to play.

How did you prepare for the next record, Beginning of the End?

We were always trying to write songs, but didn't write many. We weren't songwriters. Kevin was a lyric writer. I knew our music was kind of simple, like a lot of punk songs: short and simple. We had a difficult coming up with melodies people liked. We did the Stress record and did our first tour. We fell into the natural rhythm, record, tour, record, tour, which all bands tend to do.

One your album insert, the band sold a Dead Silence ‘Ski Vietnam’ t-shirt. I admit, I was amused because it both sounded like a call to activism and a politically incorrect statement.

Carl had been in a band called Ski Vietnam. We thought that would be a great name for a tour, I thought it would be funny to have a map of Vietnam with a little skier logo by each city just like the Colorado maps have for ski areas.

Our first tour was in 1986 we went out east for about a month, mainly to the mid-west and points east. Our very first show on tour was in Des Moines, Iowa and we played a United Rubber Workers Hall across from a Firestone plant. That's how a lot of shows were, places like a VFW, Knights of Columbus, American Legion Halls. People would rent those places out for 100 bucks and put on shows. In 1987 we went west and came home for a few days then headed east. We did then same thing in 1988, Dissent came with us for the west leg. That was fun; those guys were really cool and fun to hang out with. In 1989 we did it again, but this time with Political Asylum from Scotland. They toured with us in the west and did the east on our own. That was our last tour.

I remember you guys being tight with Dissent; you were a perfect fit for each other. Not to put a damper on the conversation, but when did you hear about Bob and Bobbie’s death?

I think that was in the early 90's. My friend sent me a newspaper clipping about it. That was stunning, just a total shock. Tragic. You're just not used to seeing peers die in your mid-20's. You know, it's always the good people. It was a drunk driver that had hit them, I don’t soapbox about that stuff except you know it was a two-time felon who was wanted on other charges.

They were the nicest people; they were humanitarians and worked with disabled children.

Yeah, that's how those two were wired. That's just how they were going to live their lives. We go on about, "It's always the good people." You know what that tells me, most people are good. You go out get drunk and kill somebody; chances are likely that you're going to kill a good person. That’s sort of a positive spin on it.

Looking back at Denver bands and personalities from the mid-80's , it wasn't really a politically charged scene. Maybe each band had a song or two about Reagan. The exception was Elaine with Music For Action, Anarchy Annie from Archy-Type Morality the bands Peace Core and A.S.F.

I don't think there were many political bands overall in most scenes. In my travels I saw some youthful rebellion and the frustration kind of thing. Political stances or calls to activism weren’t very common.

Because you were a political band, did you ever feel people held it against you? Was wearing politics on your sleeves like a scarlet letter?

I think some people didn’t like it. You're a 17 year-old kid and maybe you want to go to a show and blow off some steam, drink a little beer, stage dive, mosh and some guys preaching at you tell you to get off your ass and go protest the war in Nicaragua or go do something for animals. You just wanna go out get loose and have some fun. I can see why that wouldn't always be well received. But other young people that were out and looking for something important and felt like being apart of a scene meant something. I've had some people come up to us and say, "You're band changed my life." I thought that was pretty cool. I always thank them for the kind words. I tell them it changed my life too.

Sometimes people didn't like us, they would usually leave during the set. Most people wouldn't waste their time coming up to us after the show and tell us they didn't like it. It was a cool feeling when your driving the intensity of the room and everyone is responding to what you’re doing. That’s gratifying.

What's Kevin up to these days?

He's living up in Portland being a middle school librarian. That always gets a few laughs. He was a classroom teacher for high school teaching English, and other classes. We'd loosely stayed in touch over the years. Work sent me up there in 2010, I got to see him and we had a couple of beers and chatted.

I remember one your shows in Boulder at Penny Lane. Between songs Kevin was going on about animal rights. There was a mom and pop Italian restaurant across the street and Kevin was telling the audience how that place serves veal. So he rounded up the punks and they marched over to the place to protest it. Those poor patrons out on a date night trying to enjoy a nice meal and a horde of punk rockers are marching towards them. It wasn't like they were protesting a chain; it was just a local business trying to make a living.

Yeah, it wasn't like some corporation running a factory farm. I don't really remember that. I was never a vegetarian or PETA, but you know I don't think its right for animals to suffer. I'm down with that, but a bunch of punks going across the street...If that happened to any of us as adults, we could laugh, but to an adult in the 80's they were probably not done.

I get it, people get caught up in the moment and when you're young and angry and hear any sort of rallying call you just go for it. Even if it is something like "They’re serving veal, fuck them, let’s go!"

Yeah, especially when you're at the age, you don't give a damn; you don't see the big picture.

You wanted to mention the Peace and Unity show at the band shell in Boulder?

We didn't play that. The band shell in the park is at one of the busiest intersections in the town. Someone got a permit and had some bands play. Did you go?

I think my band Idiots Revenge was suppose to play but we were kicked off the bill. We were pissed off and didn't go.

What happened, the permit was until 4 o’clock and the police were there ready to shut it down at 4. Of course, the kids aren't going to stop at that time. They keep playing and a confrontation ensues. The kids start throwing shit so the cops immediately called for back up. Since it was the busy intersection of Boulder, suddenly you have cop cars swarming. In the middle of it all, there was a motorhome camper that loses a wheel on Canyon Road right in front of the park where this is all going down. The wheel fell off and the thing drops on its axel further blocking traffic and now the police have to deal with that. There's only like 30 punks and some punk throws a pop can and as usual, the cops over react. It was almost comical or surreal to witness this.

I can imagine, your camper loses a wheel and you and your family are caged inside with a front row view of a small-scale riot. I'm sure they thought the spaceship had just landed.

Yeah, you get out to find your wheel and there are cop cars everywhere for something you know nothing about and people running around with mohawks and leather jackets. (Laughter)

Did Kevin say something about Uberfall in fanzine once? I’m thinking there was some sort of bad blood between Kevin and Flye. 

I don't know if they had a history before Dead Silence, but it seems like Flye always came to our shows. Maybe he liked the music but not our politics? I do remember Kevin once said, "Flye's real name is Peter Flyski, the Polish Nazi", but it might have pissed Flye off a bit. Kind of funny because I saw Uberfall and liked the music but not the politics.

A classic, six plus band bill for $3. Courtesy of Trash os Truth. 

Any memorable shows?

I remember our buddies in Colorado Springs, Antebellum got asked to open for the Circle Jerks and being the good buddies they were, they said we'll do it if you have Dead Silence with us. That is how we got to open for the Jerks at the Blue Note. That was in December of '85. We arrived when The Circle Jerks were doing a sound check and they got into a fight, like a fistfight, throwing punches. I was already a little nervous, but to see that was kind of intimidating. I was thinking, “Man, these guys throw with each other.” I had yet to experience being in van with guys on tour, which can get a little edgy so I didn't know what they were going through. I thought, these guys aren't to be trifled with. We never did come to blows on tour, you get a little chippy but you sort it out.

How did the show go?

It was cool, because we played twice. There was an all-ages and 21 and over. The all-ages show was full of young punks who dug it. The 21 and up show was older people who were mildly curious. The early show was better. It was pretty exciting because the Circle Jerks were one of the bands that I had seen in the Decline movie I mentioned earlier.

ASF were also from Boulder, did you play with them much?

We played with them a couple of times and hung out. One of the British bands had a sexist song, I think it was GBH, Big Women and they did their own version of it. That was pretty badass they had a rebuttal for that.

I always wondered if it had a deeper meaning, because a lot of the guys in Denver were really into GBH and they would sometimes get into these fun little arguments at shows, one side was pro Exploited, GBH and the other was championing Crass bands.

The scene was a collection of different kids of people. So you were going to have the bullies, sexists, the hippies, free thinkers... They all only really had one thing in common, that was the love for this music scene. You brought up that everyone didn't appreciate the rebuttal. The scene is full of young guys and they have plenty of sexism in them and unfortunately for some it never leaves. It ties in what you asked earlier about how the band's political views were received. ASF had to deal with that more the we ever did. At least we were guys and they were women and their opinions were even going to be less welcomed. 

Special thanks to Ana Medina for proofreading.