Boulder's White Trash: Mexican food and Nazis in the neighborhood.

Friends,

The editing is officially concluded and I fly off to Las Vegas tomorrow to had the flies and images to Sonny Kay, the book's designer. Here's more good news, you can still preorder the book and get all sorts of goodies before I leave for Egypt in 2 weeks. People that have pre-ordered are enjoying their freebies this very moment.

The book release date has been set.
Date: Saturday, October 10 2015
Location: Mutiny Information Cafe 2 S Broadway Denver, CO 80209
Time: 6 pm
Special musical guests TBA

The artwork from the book will be exhibited and avail for purchase.
If you wish to preorder the book, you will receive extra goodies. You can do this by visiting: http://bobrobart.bigcartel.com 

White Trash

The fury of the dual guitar attack of White Trash was born in the fraternity-infested university town of Boulder. The band arose out of the ashes of Annex Red, and later incarnations helped pave the formation of the Fluid.

Louie Largesse, the band’s vocalist, cites being turned on to punk rock by drummer Garry (Garret Shavlik) while working as a dishwasher at Boulder’s legendary Mexican restaurant, José Muldoon’s. “I was a kid, 14-years-old, probably 1981. I tested out of 10th grade, but because of Colorado law I couldn't test out of 11th grade due to my age. I started working full time at the restaurant.” Other band members worked in the restaurant’s kitchen as well. Louie even proclaims White Trash played a show there.

The remainder of the interview will be published in the book. 

Book Update and Sheri Van Decar of Human Head Transplant

Friends,

First apologies for not posting last week. I have been knee deep with the editing process. The editor has done an excellent job in focusing on continuity and cleaning up the grammar. This week we will be fusing the chapters together and doing the final edit before sending it off to layout.

The book release date has been set.
Date: Saturday, October 10 2015
Location: Mutiny Information Cafe 2 S Broadway Denver, CO 80209
Time: 6 pm
Special musical guests TBA

The artwork from the book will be exhibited and avail for purchase.
If you wish to preorder the book, you will receive extra goodies. You can do this by visiting
http://bobrobart.bigcartel.com 

From here on out, I will be posting excerpts of interviews.

Sheri Van Decar of Human Head Transplant 

About the time the music scene started to splinter, evolve, and exponentially experiment, Human Head Transplant (HHT) arrived to fuel the continued potentials of avant-garde in Denver. Although they were lumped as an industrial group, their early sound escaped any firm genre boundaries.

Their ambitious aesthetics appealed to the fans desiring a soundtrack that did not adhere to cookie cutter 4/4 tempos, structured riffage and solos, and perfectly timed endings. Vocalist, guitarist, and trumpet player Sheri Van Decar has categorized their melee as, “ … a melange of sound and a vehicle for expression and personal evolution!  A right ol' eclectic mix!”

  

Their compositions combined live instrumentation layered with electronic textures ranging from keyboards and drum machines to samplers and analog equipment mashed together long before computers simplified such tasks. The group both seduced listeners with soothing synchronizations and chaotic layers, which evoked disconnect and alienation.

The band often performed in appropriate settings, such as art galleries, junkyards, and converted warehouse spaces in desolate areas of downtown Denver. Their most infamous appearances found them opening for Einstürzende Neubauten in 1986. Meanwhile, Beach Blanket Bingo, their alter ego, satisfied their cravings to play pop.

While my friends eagerly dropped hits of LSD in preparation for their shows, I tripped, minus the narcotic haze, because the shows alone were such a heavy encounter with arrayed visuals and dizzying soundscapes.

Human Head Transplant. Original photo by Nancy Kennedy
Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina) 

How did Human Head Transplant (HHT) come about?

It was early 1984, and I was starting to listen to so-called industrial music, and my friend Jonathan Garcia told me, "Sheri, I met these guys from, Michigan, and they're really into that type of music, you should meet them." It was Bert and Paul Dickerson. Paul was staying at Christian’s, and we were invited along to do something. We went over there and started making an awful lot of noise. Kelly was also from Port Huron, but was living in Winter Park and eventually came down to Denver. He was quite interested in what we were doing. At first, it was just Bert, Kelly and I and it went from there. We all had some musical background, but the boys more than I did.

As HHT, our first gig was at the Art Department on Santa Fe. We pretty much got our start there. We managed to secure other art gallery performances, warehouses, and whatnot.

When the band started out, did you have a concept in mind?

We did. We wanted to experiment with different sounds and noises, and we experimented with different instruments. I had a trumpet that I don't remember how I got, plus an electric guitar with a little amp, and I managed to get pedals. I would play around with those things and doing vocalizations in one form or another.  People actually thought that I could play the trumpet, but was just being ‘avant-garde’… hilarious, really.

The remainder of the interview will be published in the book. 

Patrick Barber talks about Ante Bellum, Expatriate, and Colorado Springs punk.

60 miles south of Denver sits a wet dream of one of America’s highest profile industrial military complex and what my parents referred to a town full of holy rollers know as Colorado Springs. In layman’s terms, “The Springs” is sandwiched between the Air Force Academy to the north, Fort Carson Army base to the south, with Peterson Air Force base guarding the east and Pikes Peak as a natural buffer to the west. As a child driving through The Springs meant the hopes of catching gliders in the sky, billboards for the North Pole: Santa’s Workshop, Garden of the Gods, Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, and army tanks on maneuvers rolling over hills. My impression from a car window view was the town equaled one huge playground I was continually denied of. The only time my family indulged me a little was when they pulled off the interstate for a quick bite at Denny’s. Other than playing a handful of shows down there in my late teens and early 20’s the place still remains a mystery to me.  

During the early 80’s, what intrigued most of my friends and I about Colorado Springs was NORAD, short for North American Aerospace Defense Command-a bunker type fortress tucked inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex made famous in the 1983 movie, WarGames. The film plays up America’s cold war obsession of being on the constant brink of World War III with loosely thrown phrases such as M.A.D.-Mutually Assured Destruction. Nuclear war paranoia was a pasture for where a great number of punk anthems were written on.

I supposed I was flabbergasted when I learned there was punk rock in Colorado Springs. The town seemed like a breeding ground for acid rocker dropout types tearing up the streets in muscle cars. Of course I imagined these types of kids coming from postwar ranch styled homes with manicured lawns looking to piss off their retired military fathers.

Ante Bellum was the first punk band I knew of from The Springs, mainly because I remember making a flier for a show where my band was set to be the opener. As mostly intact as my memory is, it is suspect if the band actually played that particular night. However I do recall seeing them a handful of times and thought their set was a solid mix of punk and hardcore with emerging metal licks, a trend many bands were flirting with at the time. In Ante Bellum’s case, they were a cut above the rest at playing it.  

The band eventually folded leaving guitarist Dennis and bassist Patrick to form Expatriate. This is about the time I became friendly with Patrick and asked them to contribute a song to one of my Colorado Krew compilations. Live, Expatriate raged beating listeners to a pulp. Had they been from either coast, more accessible, the band had the chops to be huge. They often played with their sibling, Dead Silence and proved to be an ideal combo on any given night.

Patrick was a prominent figure in the Colorado Springs music scene helping mold Mosh Pit Records with his business partner Wendy and later their fanzine, The Pit—a staple in the underground metal scene. One thing I could vouch for Patrick on was his commitment to helping out other bands and tirelessly working on getting his label out there. He always came across as half-full sort of guy and brought a positive can-do energy to the scene at large.

It has been decades since we last chatted. I felt it was essential that he be included in this project so us non-believers could get the real scoop on what it was like to be a punk rocker from Colorado Springs.

In loving memory of Dennis McPherson.         

Ante Bellum. Original photograph Danny Stewart.
Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina)

I read that Ante Bellum started out as No Truce, a high school band? Did you play any sort of battle of the bands losing to a classmate’s lame version of Hotel California?

No Truce was a band I started with two friends from school and a young woman I knew named Bonnie Ramsey who was a punk rock DJ at a local college station. I would hang out with her at her punk rock radio show.

The way I remember it, Dennis, Sean, and Dave, who I had not met before the talent show or whatever it was, were looking for a bass player. They heard about my band through a friend of theirs who had talked to Bonnie. This was in 1984; I was 16 and a sophomore in high school.

So Dennis and Sean came to my school’s talent show to see my band. It all sounds very after-school-special except you gotta remember we were really terrible and could barely play our instruments. We did Louie Louie and possibly an original punk song or two.

Dennis and Sean said they were looking for a bass player and a drummer and we may have had a practice session or two. Then it came out they already had a drummer or maybe Bonnie had quit and we got Dave. It went something like that.

So Ante Bellum was a completely different band from No Truce: I played bass, Sean MacDonough on vocals, Dennis McPherson on guitar, and Dave Fruh on drums. It took us a while to settle on the name.

Colorado Springs is a hotbed for conservatism, what sort of reactions did punks face living there. What was it like to going to shows there?

You know, it wasn’t much different from everything else in Colorado Springs. It was fun to act like we were oppressed punk rockers fighting against the system. In reality we were having a great time and the resistance we faced as a band (or as a punk rocker) were the same we’d faced doing any other kind of art—there isn’t much place for it in a town like Colorado Springs. You mostly work with people in a small group who also have similar interests. In your interview with Headbanger, he summarized the way it was back then: when you met anyone who shared your interest in underground music, you suddenly had an awful lot in common.

We weren’t really threatened. There were drunks copping attitude late night at Denny’s or people hollering at you from their cars because they noticed your fluorescent high tops. At least, I didn’t feel threatened. The most threatened I ever felt was not from jocks or rednecks, but from skins in Denver. Even that wasn’t so much, but the skins were more hazardous than the general populace for sure.

In retrospect and in light of what it’s like to be a young black man in this country right now it is easy for me to see how much privilege I had as a young white man in a Colorado town in the 1980s and how easy and fun it was to do whatever the hell we wanted. We started fanzines, rented clubs, put on shows, operated tiny businesses with no experience…we were teenagers. Of course it was difficult! But we got away with it, which in retrospect seems more like a gift than a struggle. Sure it was a lot of work, but I loved every scrap of it.  

Courtesy of Jill Razer.

The scene in the Springs always seemed to have a good relationship with Denver’s. Our bands would go down there and you guys would come up here. What places were there to play down there? How big was the scene in the early to mid-80’s besides Ante bellum and the Creeps?   

There were several other bands around. We shared a practice space with Willy the Disk, who fashioned themselves as an agri-(as in agricultural)core band; mostly guys from the Midwest, from small farm towns who went to Colorado College. I don't remember a lot of the other bands’ names, though there were some cover bands of note that we sometimes would play with. The Auto No in particular.

As for places to play, Bennys Basement was a 3.2 bar on the Colorado College campus. They would sometimes have all ages shows and other times they would just let kids in even though they were underage. You could even drink watered down beer.

Climax Cavern was a bar in another basement, across the street from the campus. We did a couple of shows there including at least one all ages show. Corrosion of Conformity played there in the summer of 1984 and that must have been all ages. I think we did another big all ages show in fall of that year because I remember getting a lot of kids from my school to show up and it was packed.

Jeepers Creepers was this old country bar, formerly the Wagon Wheel? out on East Platte. Dennis managed to talk some club manager guy into funding it as an all-ages club, and we pulled it off for a few months, though it didn't last long. I can’t remember why…it was probably tough to pay the bills without selling alcohol. It was a great place though, big empty box with a huge dance floor and decent sound. We played there a lot. Bum Kon played there as well; I remember bumping into Mark as he was coming in for his set.

We also played and put on shows at DJ’s Nightclub, the place where we met Wendy, our future manager and collaborator on Mosh Pit et al. And at a goth-y 3.2 bar called the Annex, which was a regular hangout even when there weren’t shows going on. We managed some all-ages shows at both venues, as well.

Later in the 80s, when Dennis and I were playing as Expatriate, we played a wider range of venues. When I was working with Mosh Pit, Wendy and I would put on all ages shows at rented spaces, private clubs, Elks Lodges, and the like. The venues varied more. We were really pushing the all ages thing so we played in fewer bars. There were so many kids looking for something to do and this was when metal and punk were starting to mix more, which really increased the number of bands in town and expanded the musical conversation.

Early Ante Bellum show. Flier courtesy of Trashistruth.com 

Bum Kon enjoyed playing down there. Bob mentioned that one of the news channels ran an episode on the punk scene in the Springs and taped some bands at a show, what do you know about this?

I don’t remember the TV thing, but I remember two times that Bum Kon played in the Springs, once at Benny’s and once at the Germanic Hall with the Fluid and Ante Bellum.

I have a copy of the live Ante Bellum tape. I hear some strong metal influences, was the band more of a hybrid, maybe punk attitude and more thrash? What were you guys listening to at the time?

Listening to the Ante Bellum recordings I am struck by how unformed the music feels. Yes it’s influenced by metal. Dennis was into older British metal like Black Sabbath and really introduced me to that whole sound. Sean was listening to a lot of Dio and Iron Maiden. I liked faster metal too, along with hardcore punk. We were all listening to a lot of things. I liked hip hop and big band, Dave was really into the Police and Dennis listened to lots of stuff. Both Dennis and I were into all of the current music that was happening in punk, hardcore and metal. It seems like the late 80s/early 90s were something of a renaissance for underground music, in particular small punk rock bands. It was great to be a part of that whole effort and have all that new music to listen to.

Would you consider the band political because I see a theme in the line of names?

I remember Ante Bellum being sort of political. I definitely considered punk rock as a way to comment on political situations and events. Listening to the recordings I remember that our songs with lyrics by Sean were more personal with some political stuff, but not much.

Expatriate was more explicitly political and almost a protest band, if only anyone could have understood the words. There were some love songs in there too, though. I was doing a lot of the lyric writing at that point and I had a lot to say about the Space Defense Initiative, environmental justice, censorship, and other topics.

Really, in the mid-late 80s, how could you not be political? The Reagan/Bush years!

Jocko?

That was one of Sean’s songs, again a personal thing. I don't remember if there was a textual hook other than “Jocks are lame”, but probably someone got beat up in that song…

What sort of adversities did you faced as a band? I don’t know why, but I have Blues Brothers vision of you guys playing a bar behind chicken wire and a bunch of cowboys calling you guys’ faggots and throwing empty cans of Coors at you? Please tell me that happened.

Unfortunately, this never happened. When I was in Blowhole, a free-jazz/noise band a few years later it happened all the time…well, not literally, but we cleared many a room in Colorado Springs, later in Seattle, and all up and down the west coast. Free jazz was the new punk circa 1994.

Was Ante Bellum allergic to the studio or just plain poor like other punk bands?

We actually recorded two demo tapes in a real studio. It sounds weird to say it now, but I don’t think it ever occurred to us to release music ourselves on tape or otherwise.  A few years later I was swimming in self-released product of my own and many others, but even then it was a real departure from the status quo to create your own product, your own record label, etc. That didn’t stop people from doing it, but it sure was a different climate back then. Nowadays bands release their own stuff as a matter of course.

If I recall correctly, Ante Bellum’s approach was to make a demo or two and then in the style of the time we would shop it around to labels. We did send tapes to Metal Blade, SST, and probably some others. Nothing came of it.

When Dennis and I were performing as Expatriate we went into the studio with the intent of releasing our own record after scraping up cash and so forth. Again, it was a long time ago, but making records and recording in the studio was not cheap. We were all minimum-wage workers so it was a tough situation at best. The Expatriate record did pretty well and helped us start up the distribution network that I continued to work on for several years…which is a whole ’nother story.

Expatriate. Original photograph by Andy Spillane (R.I.P.)
Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob (Medina) 

At what point did the band reach the point of no return, run out of fuel? You and Dennis continued playing together and went on to form Expatriate immediately after Ante Bellum. What made you want to go as a 3-piece this round?

I remember it was right when I was about to graduate high school. Spring 1986. You know, we got to the point where we had different goals. I had an email exchange with Dennis about six years ago that filled in some of the details. We had been sending out tapes to labels with no real interest coming back. Sean and Dave had real criticisms about how we weren’t getting paid and should be. There was disagreement about whether or not we should be aiming for labels or doing it ourselves, I don’t remember. I was young, naïve, and didn’t care about making money or making records-I just wanted to make music.

So after that meeting we split up. Dennis and I resolved to find a drummer and start a trio later that summer. I wanted to try singing and we thought a three-piece would be simpler and tighter. We found Pete Schroll playing in the band, No Fashion. We politely scooped him up and started Expatriate that summer. I loved Ante Bellum, for sure, but Expatriate was my baby. Dennis’s too, I mean we were locked in and we pushed that band as hard as we could. We had a great run of it, but not very long- late summer 1986 until spring of 1988. We did the record in 1987. Played a ton of shows all up and down the Front Range. Had some seriously fantastic shows, experiences, and played with a lot of amazing bands. We were fortunate to get on as the opener for a lot of "big" punk shows right at the time when Suicidal Tendencies, The Exploited, etc were headlining shows at places like Norman's. I still occasionally hear from people who saw us at one of those shows and remember it. 

Were you and Dead Silence blood brothers, did you all make a secret pact?

Nothing secret about it, we were really good friends and had great times playing shows together and hanging out. We traveled together to Rapid City for a show, and also once to Albuquerque. Good times at the gigs and in the towns and on the road. Albuquerque was in about 1985 with Ante Bellum…Rapid City was 1986 with Expatriate. Expatriate went to Rapid City again, but not with Dead Silence (or Dennis).

Courtesy of Todd Grow

In high school I accidently saw Megadeth at the Rainbow Music Hall, I think they opened for King Diamond. Anyhow, my not-old-enough-to-drive-yet crush bought me a gift that night for taking her: a Peace Sells…Who’s Buying t-shirt. Years later you wrote, Megadeath Sells…was that a nod to how awesomely cheesy they were?   

Oh, quite the opposite. I didn’t know much about Megadeth, but in my fiery teenage self-righteousness I took their “Peace Sells....but Who’s Buying” record title to be a cynical dismissal of working for peace. No idea if that’s what they actually meant, but it made me mad back then so I wrote a song about, and I quote, how they were “fucking sellout bullshit.”

In retrospect, I can’t support this message that I created so many years ago, because I don’t actually know what Megadeth meant by their album title. I never thought about it much. Just wrote a two-line song and kept going.

How did you get involved with The Pit and Mosh Pit Records? I thought it was cool that you and Wendy started something down there and had that crossover vibe. I have to admit, I was scared of that satanic shit when it became more her operation years later. What did you think about that change? Did you see it coming or was that more of a natural progression on her part?    

Expatriate was trying to release our record. We’d played at DJ’s Nightclub a few times or put on some shows there or something. Wendy was the booking agent there. She suggested she be our manager and help us put the record out. We didn’t want a manager, but she and I basically became business partners in order to release the Expatriate EP and then in order to sell it we decided we’d start an international underground mail order company, Mosh Pit Records. In order to promote that we’d create a catalog that was a fanzine, The Pit.

So we did all that starting in 1987 when the record came out. Expatriate broke up not too long after the record was released, but I stuck around till 1990, did seven or eight issues of the Pit, helped produce some records and a lot of other stuff. It amounted to graphic design school for me; Mosh Pit was where I started to learn to typeset, use digital layout programs, and create publications-getting them printed and distributed.

Just for the record, Expatriate also released a second 7-inch EP on Heart First records from Germany. The record was a live recording-six songs from a performance in January of 1987 at the Longhorn Saloon and sound was done by Jimmy of the Rok Tots. There were about three people in the audiences at the shows, I believe we played two nights. We gave it our all and got some good recordings.

Expatriate set list. Courtesy of Todd Grow.

At one point you were doing your own “documenting of the scene” project. Was that for school? It seemed that you had a good eye for photography. How far did you get on the project?   

It was a month-long project in senior year of high school. I created my own photography class documenting the Colorado punk and underground music scene. I photographed lots of bands, shows, and interviewed everyone. To present it, I had a photo-poster shop enlarge the final photos to huge paper posters, 2x3 feet, and arranged them all on a wall of butcher paper, which I then decorated with a collection of flyers torn from various walls and poles. I also spray painted various graffiti all over the place. The interviews or parts of them were tacked below each poster-photo.

The whole thing, rolled up, would barely fit under a bed. I didn’t keep it too long, but I wish I had.

Later I created another poster of a photo of Gibby from the Butthole Surfers from their Locust Abortion Technician tour show at Norman’s and gave it the same treatment. I pasted it to a board and plastered it with flyers and spray paint. I called it “Butthole Surfers Are God, part II” and got it into a juried photo show in Hays, Kansas. True story.

To hear Ante Bellum and Expatriate click on the links below.

Ante Bellum: https://soundcloud.com/patrick-barber/sets/ante-bellum

Expatriate: https://soundcloud.com/patrick-barber/sets/expatriate

Burnt Fase: Jim talks about crossover, skinheads, drugs, and more

­During the summer of 84, after an Idiots Revenge practice/wrestling matching in my parent’s front lawn we piled into Ken’s metallic gold hatchback and drove down to Christian’s to catch the D.R.I., C.O.C. and Faction show. It was a typical summer midweek night in the desolate lower downtown Denver: warm with the bums staggering out of bars around from the corner outnumbering the punks. The “bum mobile” with its bright flashing lights combed alleyways collecting the passed out drunkards. The street sweeper followed while the music raged inside. Between bands we roamed around outside forcing down cheap cans of lukewarm beer complaining about how warm it was.

As for the bands that night, it wasn’t your typical hardcore or thrash fare. What Denver witnessed that evening was a shifting of music on a grand scale, perhaps a merging of genres. There was definitely some metal influence in the music, though more prominent in C.O.C.’s set. Both D.R.I. and C.O.C. at the time were treading and infusing a metal sound into their song writing essentially evolving the hardcore sound that would set standards in the coming years. Appropriately the term “crossover” would be coined for this style on D.R.I.’s third album three years in the future.

At the end of the night I’m certain several people drove home including myself completely dumbfounded and in awe about the heaviness and sudden chord progressions we saw on stage. I had picked up C.O.C.'s-An Eye For An Eye LP before the show and had mixed feelings. I hated it more so after the show because it didn’t translate to what I witnessed live. The same could be said about D.R.I. though their Violent Pacification EP was more listenable.

Another person who saw the show that night was Jim Hale. Jim would later front Burnt Fase, a band  I consider Denver’s first real punk-metal group. The five-piece was something wicked and brought a new element into the scene that wasn’t always welcomed by others. Their shows were notoriously tense ridden and would often be an arena for a showdown between the skinheads and Mexicans, meaning bassist David Lee’s family and friends.

Jim had pipes and let out ear piercing wails and screeches while frantically shaking his head to Mark’s bombastic drumming. If you ever seen a photo of David Lee holding up his bass, he held it like a weapon until lowering it to blast through songs like an on/off switch. Live, you wanted to be up front banging your head to the quick assault of the band’s fury of sound.

When Burnt Fase recorded and released an LP/CD combo it was suspect. Most local bands barely had enough money to record and at most release a cassette demo or a 7” EP but certainly not a CD. Even Wax Trax barely started selling CDs stocking only a handful. To put it into perspective, the price of buying 2-3 LPs was the cost of a single CD. For many of us a Burnt Fase CD wasn’t plausible. Without a follow-up tour, the band appeared as fast as it vanished.  

Jim and I chatted about the origins of the band-how it came to be, going to see real metal bands at the Rainbow and being chased out of Denver by skinheads. Below is Jim’s story.  

Burnt Fase one Denver's original crossover band. Original photograph: Unknown. Brush and ink drawing by Bob Rob Medina.

I consider Burnt Fase and Ante Bellum as the first crossover bands in Denver, what do you think?

The scene seemed to have crossed over pretty quickly; a lot of bands wanted to get harder and maybe a bit more edgy. It went from punk and when bands like Corrosion of Conformity (C.O.C.) came through, they were hard punk with a thrash metal edge. It seems like a lot bands wanted to go that direction at that point. Thrash metal started to take off about this time as well. I would say it was more of the thrash than mainstream metal that punk was leaning towards at the time. Metal was still viewed as pussy rock, whereas thrash really took more of that punk energy into a harder direction.

Do you attribute the D.R.I., C.O.C., and The Faction show at Christians that propelled directional change in some of the Denver bands?

That was the show that did it for me; I think it was the Eye for an Eye tour. Those guys just ripped so hard-they crossed over to heavier riffs and played super fast. Maybe it was the drop D tuning, it came in so heavy.

I was always into Bum Kon; they developed a punk metal edge. They were influential for what I wanted to do. I was really into the metal world-into all hard bands with the super fast and hard sound. Then I started hearing some of the punk stuff. I liked that punk was aggressive and fast. As it got be 84-85, bands like Slayer started coming out. Shane from Happy World and I were hanging out at his house talking about wanting to be the first Slayer band of Denver. That conversation is where Burnt Fase came out of-we wanted to be a fast thrash metal band. When we put the band together it didn't come out as hard as I wanted it, but it was definitely harder than anything going on in the scene at that point. Once Shane and I got Larry from Bum Kon to join, we started working on making the band’s fast and hard sound. Larry had a hardcore and thrash background and started listening to Slayer and was inspired by them. We all wanted to see what we could do that was sort of like that. Shane was really into doing something new. Happy World was his first priority and Burnt Fase was his fun side project at the time.

So your idea of a band was to have a metal influence, but maintain hardcore sensibilities?

In the 70's I got turned on AC/DC and Black Sabbath early on. My first concert was KISS and they blew my fucking mind. I got into the Sex Pistols and Ramones because when I heard them I thought, "Holy crap!" The Ramones were super fast but not really aggressive. Maybe I was an angry person and gravitated more towards the harder stuff. The first Iron Maiden records had sort of a punk influence.

My friend Dave sent Tristan over to my house so he could take me to a punk show. He showed up at my house with a double green Mohawk and told me "I heard you're kind of crazy so I'm going to take you to punk shows." He took me to shows and turned me on to the whole hardcore scene in late 83-early 84. Then I got in trouble and did some time in Gilliam Youth Center, nothing but good times...

Trouble?

Yeah, trouble with a Capital T. I was an idiot with a bad attitude towards any type of authority. When I got out, I basically went back into the scene and attended every show I could see. Butthole Surfers at the Packinghouse-one of the best shows I had ever seen. CH 3/Samhain-even though that was kind of a nightmare show, it had all the aspects of a scene I was into. I was very aggressive and I needed an outlet. When I think back to bands like the Samhain, they were hard, had a doom sound and didn’t give a shit about anything or anyone. That was a great combo for any young kid to look up to. Trouble just was part of the allure to the scene.

Back to you and Shane listening to Slayer.

Shane and I were hanging out with Gigi and I was into thrash metal, had long hair, went to shows, and we were talking and I said we should really do a hard band. My favorite band at the time was Bum Kon. Basically when I first saw those guys, I thought, if I could be in any band I would want to be in that band. Fortunately for me I became friends with Larry, Mark, Erik, and Bob so when we started working on building Burnt Fase it was Shane and I talking then David Lee and I talking. Shane, David Lee and I would hang out and smoke a lot of weed.... so we decided, let's put this thing together. We started calling people. I think David Lee just got done playing with Children of Denial.  Shane was already on board, I asked Larry and Mark if they wanted to do something a bit different and they were stoked to give it a try. We all got together down at the Yogurt Factory; it came out sounding good, like country-metal-punk. It was a weird sound.

Our first stuff was super fast short songs. Our first show in Fort Collins, we all piled into Dave Lee’s molester van, drove up and ripped that place a part. That when we all knew we had something different and good. Shane had some conflicts and missed practices. He eventually dropped out because he was busy with Happy World. We recruited John from Malibu Kens to replace Shane. It wasn't truly metal-metal; I didn't want a hair metal band. I wanted the vocals to sound super screamy and the music fast and hard. Punk had almost been played out; the scene needed bands with a little bit more aggression, which of course correlated to all the violence that was going on. We fit almost perfectly in that because unfortunately every time we played there’d be a freakin' riot, people fighting. We had a lot of people that came: we had David Lee's crew and those guys didn't get along with the skinheads. There was always tension and about our third song, Fase Death, and I'm not kidding-every time we'd play it there was a fight.

Flier courtesy of Larry Rasmussen.

Did you guys ever talk about that at practice or after a show, "Shit, man, we're like a soundtrack for people to clobber the crap out of each other"?

(Laughter) We'd have practices and say we're going to go have fun at our next show knowing that it was probably going to turn into a riot. We would look at each other during songs and we could just feel it happening. The show at the Auraria Campus was a bad scene. The skins started beating-up on Mark's girlfriend Amy. I still had words coming out of my mouth when I saw Mark running past me. He was playing a skinhead like his snare drum, hitting him so fast… We're in the pit fighting and the next thing you know Leroy (David Lee’s brother) and David Lee are in there. At that point, the skins just straight up hated us didn't want us to have a good show, it was a like football practice. They would stand at the back of the crowd and line-up then would run up and hit people trying to enjoy the show.

That is one of the reasons why I left Denver, the skinhead thing just got so thick. I was friends with the core guys like Jeff, Shawn, and Tommy. Jeff was always a cool guy with me, it was funny because I had long hair and maybe it was because I always had weed with me. The new group that came in, like the Ashleys and Maxwells... Those guys just wanted to fight, disturb the scene, and play the race card. We didn't play that-we were just out there to have fun. I was a skater guy that just wanted to skate and go thrash in my band and that was it.

I didn't have a problem until the Ashley types arrived. I left Denver because four skins showed up on my doorstep one morning wanting to kick my ass because I pulled a knife or cut Ashley at the C.O.C show because he was beating-up some 4-foot kid and he’s like 9-feet. Why was he beating this kid up? So they threatened my life and I thought I needed to get the fuck out of there. I was living in Breckenridge snowboarding...so I moved to San Francisco. That whole skin thing was real, it happened. It was a part of the scene that was uncomfortable; it was actually the most punk part of the scene. Punk was definitely a rebellion; if you didn’t have this element of danger in there it would be a false rebellion. This fit my attitude perfect I didn’t give a shit about anything but Skating and Burnt Fase and maybe weed and LSD-it made it a little more edgy and likeable that anything could happen. Jeff actually was good guy and did a lot more to stop that.

Flier courtesy of Larry Rasmussen.

David Lee's crew?

He had a brother Leroy and he would bring in all his buddies, which people thought they were a Mexican gang. They weren't. They would show up and it wasn't their fault, they wanted to party and would get into the pit and have fun, then the skinheads would see them and they would become a target. The presence of those two factions ruined a lot of the shows. You had the Mexican mafia going on and you had the skinhead mafia going on and anytime they were in the same place at the same time it was never a good thing. Blood was often spilled.

Funny, both groups knew what to expect and they both showed up.

(Laughter). Yeah, it was almost like an invitation when they saw the flier. However we weren’t always the main people that got it going. The perfect one was the C.O.C. show at the Aztlan. We showed up, and while we were playing fights broke out, the skins beat-up the B'LAST! van, people were getting maced...That is kind of the allure of punk, you didn't know what was going to happen. It sucked to see a good show turn to a disaster within a couple seconds, but it happen almost every time we played.

Expanding the punk sound?

I think what happened in Denver, specifically was that the scene got flooded with a lot of bands with not a lot of distinction. There were the main bands like The Fluid, Brother Rat, Bum Kon, Happy World, and Rok Tots. They were the staples. Other bands came in underneath that and all sounded the same. When you come out with something different, which really wasn't different, it was just thrash metal with a little punk edge. I think you start to sway people. Later you have Expatriate with that kind of sound. It brought the punk thing deeper into the metal scene.

Collage courtesy of Jill Razer.

At what point did Burnt Fase decide to record and document your sound.

In 86 we went to Avalanche Studios to record a quick 6-song demo. We went in with Shane and it was the nicest studio we could find. David Lee was funding it so we went with the best we could find. It didn't capture the first set we had. In 87 we went into Colorado Sound and spent a week there and worked at nights, paid cash to get a better deal. We spent about $17,000 recoding a CD. Which is more than anyone ever spent on a record in the local scene I knew of.

Shit! 17 grand?

We came out with a CD, we thought we were going to blow-up...it was because David Lee had a lot of money and didn't mind throwing it down. It was his baby, if he wanted to blow it out; he had the means to do it. We were one of the first bands in Denver to put out a CD; there were literally 2-3 other CDs at Wax Trax. We basically had a good set and the first couple of shows we played; we thought we needed to record this because we had the money.

Any touring after all that production of putting out the CD?

Ha, no. We pretty much broke-up after putting out the CD. When the CD came out, we had a launch party and then we had a blowout with too many personalities in the band...then drugs got involved. At one point David Lee pulled the trigger and said he was done. We all went with it. Mark and I weren't getting along that well since we were living together, we had a little blowout and that's when they started Soak and played a show with the other singer and later Mark and Larry said, "Hey, why don't you join us" That was the band for me. Burnt Fase was badass and fun for sure. Soak was the next level of Bum Kon and that band just blew doors open. It was the best band I even been in.

Soak felt like a later version of Bum Kon?

It was like Bum Kon version 2.0, the core of it. This is no slide on Bob; Bob was the baddest-ass guy ever. Bum Kon was my favorite band in the entire world. For me, getting an opportunity to play with those guys, I was all over it.

It was the top of the line for what I liked. You can say that Mike Serviolo is one of the best guitarist I'd ever seen, but for what I like, it was these guys. Mark is one of the most underrated drummers out of anybody-he could just pound on the drums like John Bonham. And Larry could play as fast, as punk, as rock, as thrashy metal as you wanted. And you have Erik on bass who played it like a guitar, One time at the Grove he played so hard his fingers where bleeding all over the bass, the most punk rock thing I’ve seen. I was hanging upside down from the rafters screaming my brains out and see a pool of blood forming on the ground below…Erik , so badass.  

Flier courtesy of Larry Rasmussen.

When I was talking with Davey form the Frantix, he said Ricky compared Mark to John Bonham and Davey to Keith Moon.

That sounds about right. Those are two guys that never got their due justice. Mark tried, he lived it, but he had to pull out because of health problems, because of his back, knees, he’s a thick dude. He had joint issues. etc. He still plays and makes his own tapes. He’s the best I ever played with. Great guy. He was so good I would tell him he should push his kit to the front of the stage and we'd play behind him. People were coming to watch him because he would hit his kit so hard and loud, just amazing to watch.

After Burnt Fase it seems like David Lee dropped out.

It's out there and most people know the story. It was the mid-80's and a lot of people in the scene smoked a little pot, snorted some coke. David got popped for selling so he was shipped off to Canyon City for a number of years. Mark was involved in that. Soak moved to San Francisco and Mark couldn't travel so we got Jason Smith for the recording. It was what it was. It just happened back in the day, there was a lot of shit going on and sometimes people got popped and that was the game we all played back then. Fast and hard.  

It seems like you played extreme music to go with the extreme sports that you were into.

When I was in Burnt Fase, I was trying to be a professional snowboarder. I was sponsored. For me it was always an extension of who I am. I like to do stuff that is on the edge, individual sports...It went great with the music I was doing, a soundtrack to my life.  Soak sold a couple of songs to commercials, snowboard movies, it was a great avenue to try and push that genre of music into that stuff.

Burnt Fase stories?

One of the best things I liked about Denver was that we had house parties and the second time we played was in a basement and this is when I knew I was in a fricken' crazy band. One of David Lee's guys gets into a fight out there and we're all in a 10' x 10' room and I'm singing out to a crowd in another room and the basement starts turning into a whirlwind pit and somehow somebody gets shanked. Some people pick the guy up and there's this pit still going on and someone is trying to patch him up against the wall. Someone comes down the stairs and switches off all the lights and all you can see are the lights form the amps. It was dark; people are screaming...it was one of the more exciting shows we ever played. That’s one of the cool punk things about Denver was playing basements, backyards, Yogurt Factory...It was always amazing how you can put a show on just about anywhere.

One of the best shows we ever played was in the basement of Jerry's Records. Ecstasy started to hit pretty hard in Denver. We get down there and David Lee didn't show so Larry played bass with Mark on drums and Shane guitar. It was an ad hoc sort of deal; we played on equipment that wasn't ours. I had a 4’ mic cable and a mic that looked like a spike. It was sharp and I cut my mouth while I was singing. We played with this crazy line-up to over 50 people in that hot smelly basement. A lot of people said that was one of the best shows we ever played because we sounded good and a lot of people were on drugs. Yep those where the days of haze and fun- nothing will ever be like that again.