Little Fyodor: Walls of Genius, Architects Office, Under the Floorboards

My friend Jimmy and I would obsessively spend our Saturday nights together and going to shows at Kennedy’s or the Packinghouse, but more often than not, we sat in my bedroom with an improvised metal hanger antenna duct taped on the top my ghettoblaster tuning in the Wild West Show on Boulder’s KGNU 88.5 FM. We’d stack up on the cheapest cassette tapes from the aisles of Skaggs drugstore looking to swipe new music DJs Richard and The Wolverine (Doreen) spun.

If we didn’t pass-out after three hours of taping, then we’d stick it out for Little Fyodor’s show, Under the Floorboards. Jimmy and I were convinced Little Fyodor went to the edges of the earth searching for the most absurd sounds, the type of stuff not suitable for casual listening. His collection of songs weren’t going to win you many new friendships. Through his show, we learned early on the unlimited possibilities to music and sound. By the time one of my professors in college turned me on to John Cage’s 4’33”, though I appreciated the concept, the idea didn’t seemed far fetched or radical compared with what I heard on the radio and going to shows at the Art Department and other spaces in lower downtown Denver. In short, Little Fyodor’s radio show should assume partial blame for corrupting my musical sensibilities.

I recall reading an issue of Der Moderate Times (DMT) and coming across a Walls of Genius article. The photo of the band was off-putting, they looked like a Scottish troupe dressed in the most obnoxious threads even the Salvation Army was embarrassed to sell. I read the piece only to find out Little Fyodor was a member. I now had a face to put with the guy that spun strange late-night music. One concept I walked away with from the article was the part of putting a ping-pong ball in a Mason jar and recording it.

Along with Walls of Genius-Architects Office was another outfit that experimented with sound and often formed a collective with other players for live performances…including the Walls of Genius guys. Additionally WoG was a label of self-released cassettes with hand-made covers, fliers, as well as creating offshoots of their own groups sometimes using pseudonyms. Honestly, looking at the band’s catalog, scrapbook, liner notes, aesthetics, and the completionist/obsessiveness of the entire mission makes a case for when intelligent people run amuck with uncensored ideas, concepts, and an infinite amount of time. The documentation can be found on: http://www.haltapes.com/walls-of-genius.html The disclaimer states: The Walls Of Genius Comprehensive Online Archive site has been conceived, constructed, guided, goaded, shepherded, edited, and created with love and devotion by Hal McGee... with the generous cooperation and contributions of Evan Cantor, Little Fyodor, Ed Fowler, Don Campau, and numerous others who have loved, hated, derided, admired, and thrown objects at Walls Of Genius.    

When I recently asked Richard from the Wild West Show what his thoughts were on Little Fyodor’s show, he politely proclaimed: “Never have I met anyone with such a sustained, uncompromising and single-minded focus and devotion (obsession?) to creating musical mayhem. Little Fyodor and The Walls of Genius will always leave me baffled and very frightened.”

My conversation with Little Fyodor.

Little Fyodor-Joy to the world. Image courtesy of Little Fyodor.
Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina).

Walls of Genius versus your solo career?

Walls of Genius existed from about 1983-86; I was more solo in the 80's than I was in that band when I think to calculate it, though it surprises me to realize that. Walls of Genius was right smack in the 80's when I started to get involved with underground music as an actual participant. Little Fyodor was more theoretical at that time.

What is exactly Little Fyodor?

It's an expression of my perspective that included a lot of alienation, social awkwardness, not fitting in, taking a dark skewed view while trying to have fun with it. It's the creativity that largely grew out of being influenced first and foremost by an experience of listening to the Ramones-Leave Home album while very stoned. Before that, I was a little unsure of what I thought about punk.

How did you come across punk?

My very first experience of what I think of as punk was probably a news report I saw right after I graduated high school in 1976. The report depicted the early London Punk scene. It was like, "Look at this, what a bunch of freaks, what the fuck!" and that was how they presented it. They played up the pogoing, they showed someone pogoing on top of somebody else as if it was this demented violent thing. I was wondering if this show created hardcore in America. I have a friend in London when the first wave of punk hit in the mid-70's and he didn't think it was anything like he experienced when he came to the U.S. He was one of the latter day members of the Dancing Assholes and later the electronic post-punk group, Doll Parts. I wondered if the news program planted seeds to make punk look more sick and fucked-up than it was. That was my first exposure to punk and I’m not sure where it went after that except I remember the first person I remember actually say they liked punk was also somebody who ended up introducing me to a lot of experimental music. It was all a part of the same spectrum to him.

Who was that?

Will McLeod, a friend in college.  In the fraternity I joined, believe it or not!

You were in a frat? How? Why? I guess, I’m curious about your hazing experiences and I can’t quite imagine you doing beer bongs.

(Laughter) Frats were so numerous at University of Virginia that there were all kinds, if that makes sense to you. Mine was by far the most casual. It was known around campus as the hippie frat, though I met several people there who were into punk and a few who were into weird or intense experimental stuff, so it was only hippie if that’s anyone not so mainstreamish or prep or who doesn’t take the frat thing so seriously. The “hazing” was limited to a couple of pranks where we were tricked into thinking something fucked-up was going to happen to you and it didn’t (instead you were presented with a beer and a joint!).  It was a little sadistic to have fun watching the subsequent classes go through it, I’ll admit, but you knew it was going to end up fine, so it really wasn’t such a big deal.  Ha-ha, don’t remember any beer bongs, but we did party a bunch, what can I say.  I’ll only add that being introverted and shy actually gave me my own, if maybe ironic, motivation to join a frat, as it was like having 30 instant friends.  Naturally, it didn’t always work out quite like that, but I’ll leave it there….

When did you start getting into experimental music?

At the beginning of college, but more so after I moved to Colorado in 81. It went along with starting a radio show focused on that.

Was it your show Under the Floorboards?

I was doing it awhile before I finally settled on that name. I started doing the late night shift on Saturdays on KGNU in 82.

I stared listening to the Wild West Show in 83 with Richard and the Wolverine.

I remember them, when I first started it was Peter Tonks' show, Over the Edge. The Wild West Show was the replacement and Smash It Up with Vanzetti replaced the Wild West Show. I always like following the punk show and now I follow the Techno show. (laughter).

Festival of Pain flier. Images courtesy of Little Fyodor. 

I have fond memories of seeing the Festival of Pain flier on a light pole months after the show, mostly because it occurred on my birthday. I was intrigued. I asked Duane Davis about his involvement in the Small Appliance Orchestra…he also mentioned Blood Ball?  

Well Blood Ball was an ad hoc or one time sport they played that night, just for the festival, to fit the “pain” theme. It involved a ball and a lot of squirting red liquid and a lot of macho running around. I didn’t participate myself; instead I huddled on the sidelines next to Duane wearing some protective covering from the “blood”.  Susanne Lewis from Spray Pals and Thinking Plague etc. was also in the Small Appliance Orchestra, who, as you might guess, made music/noise with a bunch of small appliances.  My Walls Of Genius crony Evan Cantor and I performed as The Pus-Tones.  He played acoustic guitar and warbled old top forty hits while I played found percussion (beer bottle, sauce pan, etc.) with a drum stick while dancing around like an incensed goon in my loud thrift store fashioned clothes, about which several folks expressed fascination: “Where did you get those clothes/that jacket??”  I told them via “the Great Ed” cause it was Ed Fowler from Walls of Genius (not there that night) who got me interested in loud thrift store fashion and who picked out many items for me personally, including the weird, dazzly red jacket that someone (Gil Asakawa?) called “one of the most awesomely homely sports jackets to ever disgrace the human figure” in the write-up of the show in Westword. Various stories, both good and bad, can be spun off from that night, but overall it was a lot of fun. Evan actually recorded the whole event on his own reel to reel recorder that he brought for the occasion, and as a result we were able to include our rendition of CCR’s Green River, with sounds from the Blood Ball as recorded from underneath, in the basement where the music happened, edited onto the front and back of it, on our Crazed to the Core cassette release.  I remember once seeing a video of that event, and oh what I wouldn’t do to get a hold of such a creature now….

I remember hearing a lot of strange music and lyrics, words or what have you on Under the Floorboards. I have to admit, it was challenging for a 14 year-old kid. 

I was playing the weirdest shit I could get my hands on. That was my philosophy. I was trying to find anything worthwhile artistically to justify playing it.

Image courtesy of Hal Tapes

How do you define artistically?

That’s hard isn't it; you know it when you smell it.

Does it mean pushing limits?

My show is for the insects of society. I tried to find material that represented unique individuals. Nowadays, people might call that outsider. That can have different meanings. That word didn't exist as such back then but I would define it nowadays as an intersection between outsider and experimental.

How did that coincide with playing in Wall of Genius? How did that band fit with what you were playing on the radio? 

If you were going to stick it in one category, Walls Of Genius was experimental. There was a lot of pop, traditional, and classic sensibilities that were interwoven into it. Some people might be perfectly happy with those elements in experimental music whereas other might say that is a compromise and not real experimental music. A lot of the stuff I played on the radio was probably weirder. Overall maybe my show was a little more out there than Walls of Genius.

I loved the radio growing up. My mom was an avid listener to mostly country or any station that had a contest. She was very open-minded about that sort of thing. In my pre-teens I would roam the dial and listened to anything I thought was interesting, even talk radio. In my early twenties, I discovered Art Bell’s Coast to Coast and that shit spooked me in a big way, especially when I lived in the South and drove in rural areas. For a moment I thought maybe your show Under the Floorboards would be the perfect soundtrack for it.

(Laughter) Yeah, I would probably have to lean toward the more instrumental side of things. You really can't get more outside than outer space or aliens; they're outside of any normal experience. I'm sure many listeners thought that stuff I had on my show were played by people from other worlds or dimensions. I could definitely go along with that. Then again, it’s really all part of the human experience, and that was an important part of what my show was about, too.

Back in the early to mid-80's how well did you feel connected to a scene?

I felt totally connected; it was exciting in that sense. I got a lot more phone calls on my radio show back then than I ever do nowadays. I made some important connections to people in my life via calling in on my radio show. Maybe it was because I was young, dumb, stupid and naive, but it felt like it was one of the only few things I ever felt a part of in my life. It felt I was part of an international scene. One of the musicians I played with via Architects Office, Rick Corrigan. I remember him distinctly saying he was hoping to change the world, at least when he started out. I didn’t know how many people are aware of it, but I really felt that a certain sense of 60's idealism as you might say about the whole sense of there being a scene and having some sort of an affect on things. Of course, nobody would really define that other than something going on that mattered.

Architects Office image. Image courtesy of the
Walls of Genius scrapbook on Hal Tapes.

Speaking of Architects Office, I once bought a cassette from the band at an art show and it came in a ziplock bag with a cool booklet with Architecture-I think it had the Sleeper House on the cover. I didn’t know what to expect when I popped in the tape, but it was hard to wrap my brain around it. It sounded complete damaged. Going back to Art Bell, I think A.O. was otherworldly. What did you exactly do in Architects Office and what was up with hand written labels on cassettes tapes? It was obvious that they didn’t press a lot of them. I’m thinking dubbing machine and maybe made on demand? 

Everyone was doing it whatever way it worked for them. You gonna tell someone you can’t record and share your music just because you didn’t come up with some sort of official artwork for the label? That said, I prefer official like packages myself, for my own stuff and for others.  Just makes it more real.  But I can understand why some people aren’t into that. They’re just not into it!

When I listen to experimental music, and this is a far stretch, I hear droids from Star Wars? Do you think the sci-fi craze in the 70’s/80’s contributed to what was to come later on?

Heh, I read a Pink Floyd bio which said they hated being thought of as a sci-fi band!  Think I gotta draw a line here and say no, experimental music doesn’t really have to have a damn thing to do with sci-fi.  It might, and it could just as easily not.  At the risk of sounding hippie, if it does for you, fine.  But for others, including me, there’s no inherent connection.

We did something like this when I lived in Boulder, except we did the
Hare Krishna mantra. Image courtesy of Hal Tapes.

Was the scene more open and less defined back then?

It is a lot more codified now. It seems like everyone had figured out what genera they want to emulate or preserve from that past. Even like punk and noise seems like, "Ok, this is a box" and people who want to do that are going to go over and open that box. I may seem like a cynical old fart, but I call things the way I see it. I don't get worked up over these matters; I figure there are pros and cons going on all the time. I’m not entirely connected anymore these days; it might not be my time for that. I should add that I’m talking about musical trends there, cause I don’t know what the musical trends are, and I don’t quite understand all the technology, either.  But there’s still plenty of stuff happening and I see it happening all around me especially when I play out live with my band and people respond to us and I feel a part of it then.  Even if I’m not always sure what it is!

What sort of phone calls did you on your radio show?

Sometimes they were form crazy people and sometime they were from friends...or both. (Laughter) Well... I also worked graveyard shift at the Hotel Boulderado at that time. I had weird interactions with people in the middle of the night. One lady was convinced I was the reincarnation of a 16th century poet.

You remember shock jock Alan Berg from KOA 850 when he was ambushed after pissing-off anyone and everyone. Were you ever threatened? Did you feel that that crazy people tuned into your show and hoped they got that special message they had been hoping for the next set of instructions? 

(Laughter) Maybe I was too naive to worry about that. Though I did meet a guy through my radio show and through Wall of Genius who I gave a ride to once and he started telling me how he was meditating on death. That was a little unnerving.

The combination of the strange music you played mixed with a nocturnal audience brought out craziness?

I think you hit it on the head there. It was an intersection of those two things, maybe even more late night. Nowadays I do a show from 11pm-midnight, but back then I started about at 1 am to 4 am. It was perfect for me since I worked the graveyard shift and was up those hours anyways. 

‘Snake want's to be your friend’ is a song that always stuck out listening to your show. Who played that? It started off with a slow country waltz, gradually speeding up and it turned into this fast-tempo screaming how the snake wanted to be your friend.

Wow, I don't know. You're testing the limits of my brain cells!

That's your homework, find the song, I want to know who played that.

I think you’ll have to wait till I’m in my 90’s and have nothing else to do.  Sorry!

Speaking of forgotten songs, you also played a Krautrock one with the line, "There's no Coca Cola in Angola"

In the mist of all this experimental music, I played stuff that had some sort of cheesy catchiness to it too. That sentiment was reflected in Walls of Genius as well. Some people were into the experimental music I was playing and other thought it was appalling. Someone has to think it's appalling or it's not experimental.

I always think if most people like it, you miss the point of being experimental...as to say if you're parents like it...

That's a strange thing to old farts like me-we never had that problem. 

Duane Davis of Wax Trax

Make my day by pre-ordering the book. My goal is 100 by June but I'd be happy with 50! Please visit:  http://bobrobart.bigcartel.com and choose one of the 4 options. You know, pre-orders receive extra goodies! 

In the late 80’s Duane offered my friend Matt and I part-time seasonal work at Wax Trax. After a couple of weeks, it was obvious that my music knowledge didn’t quite cut the mustard. Duane suggested it would be a better idea for me to focus on completing community college.

For those 2-3 weeks, there was some sort of prestige working behind the store’s glass counter, ringing up purchases, finding albums for people, and of course getting that 10% discount to help payoff my brown paper bag. The paper bag was my generation’s (analog) version of today’s virtual shopping cart; meaning if you were in good standing, the clerks would let you keep a bag of records you intended to buy but couldn’t afford at the moment. The process was habit forming and operated like this: you’d come in and figure out what you could chip away at followed by browsing the bins for new discs to refill the bag. Nowadays, you just pay with a credit card for instant gratification and instant debt.

In almost every interview I've conducted and post I've written, Wax Trax comes up time and time again; it’s a testament to how fundamental the store was to the development of Denver’s punk and underground music scene. The shop was command central providing: music, band shirts, stickers, buttons, fanzines, a meeting place, information about shows, an in-house records label, publishing a paper, and providing a space to foster a community. You can blame owner’s Duane and David’s efforts for getting the music into the store and into the hands of impressionable kids who in turn started their own bands…it spread like an infectious disease.

I have known Duane and others who have been associated with the store for over 30 years. I usually stop by to see him within the first 24-hours of arriving in Denver. Our conversation usually starts with one of his biting smart-ass remarks. Also important to note, tucked away in the back of the store is Dave Wilkins-perhaps the Dr. Evil of the entire operation-making phone calls to distributors to flood the bins with music to corrupt lives.

Duane was one of the first supporters of this project in mid-90’s handing me early issues of Local Anesthetic, record covers, and other items of interests. Hocking music to the public is a tricky business with continual changes in fads and tastes. Music is a soundtrack hallmarking passing moments and defining the present day.  Duane shares his thoughts about the store, music, and ideas about running a record store. ¡Viva Wax Trax!

Duane in the summer of 2014 at the store. Original photograph by the author. Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina). 

In an interview with Yellow Rake fanzine you mentioned that you and Dave Stidman took over Wax Trax in late 1978 after leaving your collective jobs as caseworkers for social services. Your new mission was to corrupt adolescents rather than save them. With you at the helm of being Denver’s main punk rock music pusher, I have an image of you being similar the old man barbershop character in Spike Lee’s movie Clockers. The guy recruits young boys to sell drugs for him. But in you case you had young kids pushing punk records? What was your and Dave’s vision in taking over the record store?

Our vision for the store actually had a lot less to do with young kids than it did with the music. In 1978 Dave and I were in our early 30s, we were both married (Dave had a couple of kids), had what passed for 'real' jobs as caseworkers in Adolescents In Crisis Units with Jefferson County Social Services, house mortgages, and car payments.

At this point not a lot of punk rock had seeped into Denver: a handful of pissed-off and generally maladjusted adolescents were trying on spiked hair, Elvis-style sneers and safety pins. They jumped up and down in the middle of the floor at house parties with bands like The Violators and Defex grinding out loud, fast music. They were all getting their own electric guitars and learning the requisite two chords and wide-legged Johnny Ramone stance. And they were all coming into Wax Trax to buy the singles and LPs of the new punk rock, which it bears noting, was never as monolithic or narrow as the genre petrification that set in by the early Eighties.

It was obvious then and it is even more obvious now that punk rock owed a lot to Iggy and The Stooges, the New York Dolls, Alice Cooper, Bowie and, importantly, going even further back, countless rockabilly, garage and, yes, even psychedelic, bands and performers from the Fifties to the Seventies. Punk rock was not just the Sex Pistols and Clash: it was also Elvis Costello, the Jam, Joe Jackson and Ian Dury; it was Buzzcocks, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Throbbing Gristle and Ultravox.

Dave and I had grown up (and through) a lot of that older music. For us, the music we loved, from Gene Vincent to the 13th Floor Elevators, from Elvis to Patti Smith, from Johnny Burnett to The Shadows of Knight, from James Brown to the Who, was of a piece with punk, a straight-out continuation of music and attitude that was formed and shaped by the pressures of daily life for each succeeding generation.

The wonderful thing about Wax Trax was that we were immediately in a situation where we could not only try to share what we knew about music but we were learning, every day, every hour, from the people who came into the shop. We would say, 'Here, listen to this...' and put on Joy Division, Killing Joke, Magazine, Echo & The Bunnymen, Pere Ubu and the next thing we knew the person on the other side of the counter was telling us about something else, something they had heard and liked and wanted us to know about, something that spoke to them and they wanted to know if it would speak to us: this is the shared experience, the momentary community that springs up when you and someone else hears a piece of music and it ropes you into not just a closer contact with your own feelings but the feelings of the other as well.

"The Wax Trax Crash Party was the 1-year anniversary of a car crashing into the Wax Trax store on the corner of 13th and Washington on February 7, 1979, pinning worker Steve Bruner under the car. This was the Gluons first gig and the DefeX final gig." Flier and caption courtesy of Trashistruth.com

You did have a lot of people who played in bands working behind the counter, was that a conscious decision to field with store with staff that were knowledgeable on what was relevant and current?

Well, 'conscious' in the sense that we, of course, wanted people working behind the counter who loved and knew music, though not necessarily just the music we liked. Again, the people who have worked at Wax Trax for the last three and half decades have unfailingly taught me a lot about music. Our first employee, Steve Knutson, talked me into driving up to Boulder in February, 1979 to see Pere Ubu at the Blue Note. The show absolutely blew me away, one of the best shows I've ever seen and keep in mind I saw Dylan, The Rolling Stones and The Byrds in 1966!

About employees: I never thought that having a record store meant being a boss- more like it meant collecting around us a core of like-minded people who loved music and who were ferocious in that devotion, who liked to argue and stake out outrageous claims for their taste: who would go toe-to-toe with you about what music counted and what music didn't: who could give as good they got: who didn't back down when someone said something they liked was crap, but just laughed and turned the volume up.

What I always liked about your business practices was that when touring bands would pull through town, you’d support them by buying some of their merchandise to help give them gas money? Was that a common practice?

I imagine it was fairly common for independent record stores.

Local Anesthetic newspaper/fanzine

I had penpals I’d trade records with during my mid-teens and they always asked about Wax Trax, did you feel that the store was a destination for music lovers, bands, etc. visiting Denver? Wax Trax served as a hub of information about shows. Would people show up looking for fliers or call the store? How was the store central in that?

Right from the start we thought of Wax Trax as a hub for people interested in the kind of music we ourselves were interested in. This was all pre-internet and information was distributed primarily by print. Because so much of the punk and post-punk music was coming out of the UK, we read the Brit papers like they were the bible: New Musical Express, Sounds, and Melody Maker were the big three. What we read there had a lot to do with what we would order from the small number of distributors we were getting import records from in the late 70’s to the early 80’s.

Finding out about, obtaining, listening to and then judging the music: and then getting people to hear the music. That was the process: while we were educating ourselves, we hoped to share that knowledge with the people who came into the shop, eager to hear something new and exciting.

A natural corollary to this was getting the word out about the local music scene. The kids who worked at Wax Trax had bands and so did a lot of the kids who shopped with us. We went to their shows and wanted to make sure others did as well so we did what we could to get the word out. Flyers, fanzines and word-of-mouth were about all anyone could afford at that time.

Mercury Cafe was right around on the corner, how important was the relationship with Marilyn who ran it? Did one hand feed the other?   

Marilyn Megenity is the Mother Teresa of punk rock in Denver. While the Mercury Cafe was around the corner from Wax Trax, Marilyn put on shows from Black Flag, X, the Gun Club, TSOL, the Misfits, the Birthday Party, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Husker Du, Dream Syndicate, Green On Red, Rain Parade, the Church, Jonathan Richman, Nico, Glenn Branca and the list goes on and on. And don't even get me started on local bands: everyone played there!

Marilyn didn't just put on shows: she cared about the bands (even when she didn't care for the music) and she cared for the people who came to the shows. The Mercury Cafe was as essential to the Denver scene as Wax Trax-if not more so!

At some point the store decided to start the zine Local Anesthetic and later a label under the same title. Running a record shop was hard enough, why start a label?

It seems to me that you couldn't have a record store in the Eighties and not have a fanzine and a label. We all did it. Today you have a blog and an audio file on the internet; in 1979 you had a copy shop and 7" single.

Did you intentionally want to document the unfolding scene at the time? Did you feel that post-punk and hardcore was on the cusp of something big?

'Big' didn't matter. What mattered was intensity, depth, ferocity, Us/Them. So, yes, I wanted some marks made that would indicate the passing of these moments, snapshots of chaos, confusion, uncontrollable energy and the different ways people tried to make sense of being alive.

What was the first record Local Anesthetic released? How did it feel when the boxes arrived? At some point the store stopped pursuing the label, what was the decision behind that? If you had a time machine would have saved a couple more boxes of the Bum Kon and Frantix EPs?

The first official release was Your Funeral, I Want To Be You. The first record I actually put out through Wax Trax was The Gluons w/Allen Ginsberg, Bird Brain. The former was on Local Anesthetic; the latter was on Alekos (a name provided by Mike Chapelle of the Gluons). Getting the records in the store and out on the shelf was always exciting and fun.

The label stopped when it stopped being fun.

Local Anesthetic Records was determinedly DIY. We were cheap, fast, and disposable. Squirrelling away records against the possibility of their being worth something in the future would have been against the spirit of the times.

Speaking of the Frantix, they still seem to be getting a lot of mileage out of those two EPs reissued in Australia and most recently Alternative Tentacles. I only saw then a few times and each time blew me away. How did you feel about their sound and vibe?

Thirty plus years later, the Frantix still seem to me one of the best things I was ever involved with. Those four guys tore it up. I could not be happier that Alternative Tentacles recently re-issued as much of the Frantix material as they could get their hands on. To this day, I believe My Dad's A Fuckin' Alcoholic stands up with the best punk rock ever made. To have been part of the process that got that song out to the world on record is something I am absurdly proud of.

Local Anesthetic ad for th' Frantix EP.  My Degeneration fanzine 1982.  

In releasing records was there any sort of criteria you were looking for and how did you approach bands?  

No criteria really other than being something that in one way or another appealed to me. The 'approach' was usually made after a number of beers at a show. Either I or someone in the band would throw an arm around the other and shout, 'Fuck an A, man, we should put out a record!' And then, sometimes, we would.

You have been around awhile, you have seen music fads come and go. Did you think the whole punk thing was different? Did you think it would still be relevant in 2015?

Hmmm... 'Was it different?' A trick(y) question. Every revolution is different and at the same time that it is different, it draws on, feeds on, a core set of problematics: identity, resistance, celebration, rejection of the old and creation of the new. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll. Punk was dead almost as soon as it was born; Punk was, arguably, dead before the first Frantix record. But it has a very lively corpse, even now in 2015.

On a personal level you seemed invested in the hardcore scene as it was emerging, what propelled that interest? Did you ever consider yourself a part of the scene?  

Hardcore was only one splinter of the music I was interested in: post-punk, industrial, and paisley underground all meant, and still means a lot to me. A kid who worked at Wax Trax for a few years in the early 80’s once confided to me very earnestly that he would never listen to anything but Crass-they made the music that mattered. A few weeks later, he was listening to a bunch of Motown, soaking it up, letting it into his DNA, changing him, making him touch the world in different ways and places.

Despite seeing a lot of hardcore bands over the years, I wouldn't say I was ever part of the scene: more of an interested bystander.

Duane in front of the women's restroom at Kennedy's Warehouse. Original photograph collection of Duane Davis. Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina). 

You have quite a photo collection from going to shows, why did you want to intentionally document the bands and people?

Mostly I wanted to take pictures at the gigs because these kids were so fucking wild! Every show was an anthropologist's dream: tribal markings, secret rites, ritual dances, ceremonies of inclusion and exclusion, spectacular courting displays and buckings up and down the pecking order.

There seems to be a lot of nostalgia for punk, reissues and such, was it the same in the 70’s and 80’s where people were itching for Greaser and Flower Power songs?

Nostalgia has always been big business. Count on it: someone will always be looking to turn a buck on re-packaging your past.

Speaking of reissues, there are a lot of punk documentaries and books coming out. The market seems almost flooded by them…sort of like craft breweries. I was talking with a brewer at Great Divide in Denver recently and asked him what he thought the future of beer was? What was the landscape going to look like once the dust settled? He was under the impression that brew pubs will serve small communities. I guess I sort of feel that way with Denvoid and the Cowtown Punks. I don’t envision selling a lot of copies; it’s more of a yearbook of Denver’s outcasts. What do you think about the whole ‘revamping the past’ trend that seems to be rage?  

Just as there are micro-breweries there are micro-musics: communities of enthusiasts who gather together in celebration of shared likes and dislikes.

Is it true that Dave Wilkins…

...used to wear highwater flares? Yes!

You were in the ensemble, Small Appliance Orchestra. What was the concept behind that? Any other musical ambitions?

The Small Appliance Orchestra was a one-off goof: just me and three or four others folks who worked at Wax Trax (or, who hung around so much they might as well have). We put it together for the Festival of Pain, an event that was staged at an art gallery down on Santa Fe in, what?, the mid-1980s or so. I can't recall exactly the line-up and 'instruments' but we had a vacuum cleaner, some ice-cube trays, a pile of old, busted turntables tied by worn-out extension cords to someone who pulled them around the room, Suzanne Lewis had a big bucket of empty baby food jars that she crashed up and down on the concrete floor until there were glass shards flying everywhere. Music & Risk, my favorite combo.

As is probably apparent from the above description: No, no musical ambitions...

Going back to underage punk kids running the register, did the city ever slap a fine on the store for hiring kids?

No. In fact, the city often offered to pay me to keep those kids off the street and in my store.

The store would sometimes receive altered currency. Collection of Duane Davis.  

How is the relationship of the store now with the so-called underground community? What has changed in your opinion?

Honestly-I've gotten older and more tired. I still have people working at the store who are vitally involved in 'underground' music. I listen to them talk about it, hear the music when I can, encourage them when appropriate. How it may have changed is unclear to me. After so much music over so many years, it is sometimes hard to hear that something is new or fresh. Too much ends up reminding me of something else, which isn't bad unless it is reminding you of something else that is better.

What were some of the local punk bands you enjoyed watching?

Ahhh... Your Funeral, Frantix, Young Weasels, White Trash, Violators, Defex, Zebra One Two Three, Jonny III, Gluons/Still Life, Bum Kon, Fluid, Acid Ranch, Peace Core, Corpses As Bedmates, Aviators, Crankcall Love Affair, Butt Corx, Dog Meat, Big If, Thinking Plague, Hail, Chelsea Girls, Pagan Cowboys, ASF, and everything Jeri Rossi was ever involved in... and dozens of others my poor ol' brain has lost track of.

The soda pop machine at Wax Trax, it was a haven for local and touring band stickers. Collection of the author.