"Tearing Down The Orange Curtain" with Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn

Graham is joined by Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn, authors of Tearing Down The Orange Curtain, to talk about the history and legacy of Orange County's explosive punk scene.

📻🎚️
Social Distortion “Mommy’s Little Monster” (7:06)
Agent Orange  “Bloodstains” (7:22)
T.S.O.L. “Sounds Of Laughter” (8:02)
China White “Dangerzone” (8:14)
The Vandals “Wanna Be Manor” (8:21)
Pennywise “Bro Hymn” (15:20)
Millencolin “Lozin’ Must” (15:34)
The Offspring “Bad Habit” (16:35)
Adolescents “Amoeba”  (17:11)
Social Distortion “Story Of My Life” (19:53)
Ink & Lead “So Drunk, So Many Hotdogs” (21:02)
The Mechanics “No Brakes” (47:44)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
This is Major Label Debut, the podcast about major label debuts.
I'm Graham, right, I'm the host of the podcast. Step
back with me in time, if you will, to the
mid nineteen nineties. We're in suburban Ontario. We are at
my parents' house. Me and my younger brother, Scott shout out.
Scott are maybe nine years old and seven years old,

(00:30):
and we're doing our favorite thing, watching much music Canadian MTV.
We're watching a band playing live, not a music video.
It's a live broadcast a band outside on the street someplace.
I don't know which place, but it's three young Ruffians
and they're singing about how sometimes they give themselves the creeps,
and then the song ends and they destroy the stage.

(00:50):
They smash their guitars, they trash their amps, they throw
the drums around, they do that whole thing, and young
Graham is saucer Ie with sheer bewilderment. I didn't know
anyone did anything like that. I didn't know anyone could

(01:11):
do anything like that. Surely it's against the rules. I mean,
I just had no frame of reference for this whatsoever.
They never talked about this on Veggie Tails, So at
first my brother and I were making fun of it,
you know, like you do when something scares you or
shocks you, you kind of try to get above it. But
then later that night we were doing our other favorite thing,

(01:33):
playing with our stuffed animals. Those stuffed animals got up
to all kinds of stuff, man, and tonight they were
playing a gig you can whip up guitars and drums
that it connects, no problem. They look really cool, and
wouldn't you know it, most of this stuffed animal gig
was them trashing their gear, just like the boys in
Green Day. So clearly, even though it frightened me, even

(01:54):
though it confused and bewildered me, it also left an impression.
And I think for a lot of people that might
be like the punk rock origin story. You know, then
they would seek out every Green Day record, and then
all of Green Day's Influences records, and then all of
their Influences Influences records, and they'd immerse themselves in the culture.
Maybe they'd even start a band. So I don't know
if I was too young or too scared, but I

(02:16):
actually never delved any deeper than that. And then I
got distracted by indie rock, and off I went in
that direction, more or less completely unaware of punk rock's
history and punk rocks present, you know, give or take
a copy of Enema of the State. Of course, I
always knew that punk rock was there. I knew it
was a huge world, but I only really saw the
very tippity tip of what is a humongous iceberg. So

(02:40):
it was with no small amount of trepidation that I
cracked the spine on the book we are here to
talk about today, Tearing Down the Orange Curtain, How Punk
Rock Brought Orange County to the World, by Nate Jackson
and Daniel Cohen, is a comprehensive, practically anthropological history of
the scene that gave us no doubt the offspring and

(03:00):
sublime bands that even I was aware of, at least
to the extent they were on the radio in the nineties,
and needless to say, the iceberg goes way way deeper
than that, bands like Social Distortion, Tsol Adolescens, the Vandals,
and so many more who change not just punk, not
just rock, but like the face of popular music altogether,

(03:22):
and a ton of other bands who, for whatever reason,
never quite made it out of the scene. Because a
scene is such a complex ecosystem, especially a scene as
big and as influential as Orange County Punk, and Nate
and Daniel do an amazing job of telling the whole
story of bringing it to life. It takes place in

(03:43):
these incredible locations. There are things going on in this
book that would have obliterated nine year old Graham's mind.
You know, if I thought Billy Joe Armstrong smashing a
stratocaster on stage was scary, this would have really really
raised the hairs on the back of my neck. And
you know, some of these stories still raised an eyebrow,
even on this old chunk of coal that I've become.

(04:05):
I love books as much as I love music, So
I was just thrilled to get to talk to Nate
and Daniel about how they did this. It is an
incredible feat to have pulled off. And I was brimming
with questions just about like, how do you make all
of this information into a book let alone, a book
that's really fun and easy to read like theirs is.

(04:29):
We had a great conversation about writing about music and
thinking about music and living inside music.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
So here it is.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Nate Jackson and Daniel Comb, thank you so much for
doing this, And I know I always feel a bit
like it's a backhanded compliment to say first that the
book is such an accomplishment sounds a little condescending sometimes,
but it's so monumentally sprawling. I really was astounded by

(04:59):
the scope of it, and not just the scope of it,
but how much scope it felt like there still was,
like every paragraph could have been a whole book unto itself.
And you know, I see you both nodding.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
With, Yeah, someone who gets it.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
The's someone who gets the plight and the story, fly
nature of what.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
This is and the struggle.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Well, I want to talk a lot about the process
and just how you went about it, But I thought
to start off with as a Torontonian, as a Canadian,
I sort of had to go on Google Maps and
define for myself, Okay, where is Orange County? And specifically,
the book is called Tearing Down the Orange Curtain, and
I was hoping you could define for our non California

(05:43):
adjacent listeners what Orange County consists of and what curtain
it was behind.

Speaker 5 (05:50):
Well, I mean a lot of people look at Orange
County as sort of a monolith, one big place, sort
of like this sort of homogenous area, but it's actually
you know, thirty four cities incorporated into you know, this
big thing. If it was all one town, let's say,
or whatever city, it'd be like, I think, the third

(06:12):
largest city in America. And within that structure of all
those cities, you have the coast. Obviously, you have inland
like Disneyland, like Anaheim, Central More I guess, like you know,
Garden Grove, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
And then you have like South Orange County.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
Which is you know, more towards again like Laguna Beach,
Newport areas like that, which again most people kind of
either associate Orange County with Disneyland or the beach.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, and that's totally fair. But there's also a lot
of other areas.

Speaker 5 (06:48):
So like we talk a lot about a few specific areas,
being like Fullerton, which is just north of Anaheim, and
that's like kind of one of the cradle of civilization.
When you talk about like Orange County punk uh specifically
with like Social.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Distortion Drop, it's like Asian Orange.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
Far and some of the bands that were just like
kind of at the forefront of the beginning of our
time period we're talking about here, you know.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
And then we also talked about Huntington Beach, which.

Speaker 5 (07:42):
Is about eight miles south and it's like towards the coast,
and it's like that area is kind of thought of
as sort of the next phase of where things grew
out of.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
But you know, you also have like t s O.
L From Huntington Beach.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
As like China white Vandals.

Speaker 5 (08:28):
So there's like these kind of different municipalities that we
talked about throughout the book as things sort of evolve.
But really, you know, with Orange County as as a place,
it's sort of like the archetype for suburbia in that
it's just outside of this major hub of culture LA
that has all of this you know, rich history and accolades,

(08:52):
tons of books on the subject when you talk about
punk especially, and there's just I think this prevailing feeling
that Orange County, the Orange Curtain, is a place where
you know, people go to move away from the city
and get away from culture and get away from diversity

(09:12):
and to have you know, a nice like you know,
leave with beaver kind of white pick it fence existence.
And that really kind of doesn't excite most people who
think about, you know, wanting to be close to like
a vibrant music scene on paper, but what you have
to understand is that I think in a lot of ways,

(09:33):
with punk rock as it's a it's a music fueled
on rebellion. So, you know, while it is often thought
of you as rebellious to live in a city and
like pursue your artistic dreams and you know, you're you
have dealing with a lot of transplants coming from all
over the country wanting to live their best freakish life.

(09:55):
I think a lot of times in the suburbs, it's
that struggle is more of a struggle because you're surrounded
by people who kind of look at that as an
affront to their existence rather than like, you know, just
an overall part of the backdrop of their culture. So
in a way, it kind of makes you have to
fight for your your scene in a way that you know,

(10:19):
some of the big city artists mean not I've had
to do. So that's kind of why I think this
book was important, because I think there's a lot more
suburbs than there are cities, and I think a lot
of people can relate to the struggle of having to be,
you know, living as an outlier and trying to find
their tribe. And I think that's a big part of

(10:41):
what this story represents.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, that's I grew up in a suburb myself, a
suburb of Toronto, Newmarket, Ontario, not famous for its punk
rock bands, or really for any of its bands, but
that was the only music there really was. You know,
we were in this indie rock band and we were
trying to get local gigs and the only local gigs
were punk and hardcore shows. And but there was fifty

(11:05):
punk and hardcore bands somehow in this you know, this
town that seemed to have no as you say, no
artsness about it really at all. Maybe sort of a
cheap Shakespeare festival. And what do you think, Daniel, is
there something about the suburbs that is almost necessary for
punk rock scenes to flourish. I mean, I know there's
been urban scenes, but feels like whenever you hear about

(11:27):
these places, it's largely as you were just describing it,
in these more leave it to beaver esque, white picket
fence suburbs.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
Yeah, because if you I mean the grit, you know,
the dirt under their fingernails, grit maybe in the cities,
but the actual grit of life itself is in the suburbs,
because that's where most people end up when living when
they leave the city, and it's a story in this
case with oc that people you know outs an outsider story.

(12:00):
It's a story with you know, people who had chips
on their shoulders for as Nate described, with not being
from the big city and people from the big city
would look down upon them and being the outsiders that
would go in instead of welcoming all outsiders.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
It ended up becoming.

Speaker 4 (12:14):
What they thought they were, you know, not preserving with
other scenes, and they became exclusive instead of inclusive.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
And when these.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
People from not around there came up to do it.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
So a lot of these scenes that happened in the
suburbs or people fighting for their place to be acknowledged
and recognized. And that's what as a suburban kid myself,
drew me to this story so much, was that these
were suburban kids who did have real problems, in some
cases more real than people might have realized and expected.

(12:45):
And that's why we shine a light on it because
we covered the area for almost two decades each so
we know what it was like and what these people
were like and the struggles they faced. It may not
have been you know, your typical city struggles, but suburban
kids and especially in the late seventies, there was a
lot of stuff going on in oc that they didn't like.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
As we write.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
About, a lot of them had family problems and they
had and they didn't like the culture that was surrounding them,
the white picket fence culture and then post Nixonian pre
Reagan times. So those are things when you're a kid,
you feel stifled and by the politics of the area,
and at the time Orange County was one of the
most conservative regions in the whole country. One I believe

(13:30):
someone I think might have been Reagan that said it's
where good conservatives go to die. So, I mean, it
doesn't get more backlashy than that, especially if you're a freethinking,
liberal minded kid, even though there were conservatives obviously in
the scene. But it's just like if you wanted to
just get your aggression out and you couldn't go to
the city, you make your own. It's a diy culture,
and they made their own scene in the suburbs, and

(13:52):
that is you know, of there were where they were
from and bred I mean, that's where Cucko's nest and
what we'd write about that they made their own culture there,
even though it may not have been intended that way,
and a lot of big things happened. And as you
know from your town, if you don't have somewhere to go,
you just.

Speaker 3 (14:10):
Make your own culture and do it yourself.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
And that's what suburbs and suburban culture was. That's what
made this thing so I hope relatable to everyone. Is
just they were focused on doing something and they didn't
let geographical boundaries exclude them from that.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Now, Nate, you grew up in Orange County, right, I did, yeah,
playing in bands, being in the scene. What was your
first encounter with I guess punk, which is a very
very broad term, but I'll let it lie there for you.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
Well, it all sort of happened together, meaning like with
me is like you know, I spent a lot of
time in my skateboarding with friends and it would ultimately
be someone would bring a stereo to, you know, accompany
our sessions wherever we were, and a lot of that
is me learning about the music as I was kind
of like listening and skating and asking my friends like

(15:06):
who is this?

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Who is this like?

Speaker 5 (15:08):
And some of it we all kind of knew as
music from our day, which you know, could have been
like you know, bands like like penny Wise.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Out There.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Or Melancholin really makes me sad when you have self
fund up here spelt draft and why no.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Wait, don't.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Ye in yourself.

Speaker 5 (15:45):
Bands like that, we're kind of in that sort of
I guess third wave of punk.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
But then you know, mixed in there would be like bands.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
That like I knew, but I was like I still
had questions about because they just weren't obviously their time
at long past. But so like you know, there'd always
be a big brother who knew somebody's big brother is
something who knew like more about it, and then we
would get into talking about it, like oh cool.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
And then I kind of like sparked my curiosity on like.

Speaker 5 (16:11):
Playing music myself, and so then I got into playing
in bands, you know, learning bass, you know, some of
like my first like real stuff learning. Yeah, it was
you know, Offspring, Honeysuize, I just mindset. It's kind of

(16:36):
a hodgepodge of stuff that I would just kind of
learn before I could actually write my own songs. So
that all became sort of the backdrop of life really.
I mean, it didn't really even occur to me so
much that the bands were local, that they were from
the area where I was from. It was just like,
this is the soundtrack of what we were doing, the

(16:56):
life we were living, which was like sort of you know,
fast paced, aggressive and fun, and it had its own
vibe to it, you know. The sound of the adolescent's
guitar sort of felt like what it was like to
you know, do a kick, flip off a ramp, you know,

(17:29):
or like squall and scrape your knee like whatever. Like
it was the stuff that we that fueled us. And
it was only really later that I got into knowing
more like the history of the bands, and that kind
of seemed cool that you know, hey, like I live
in this area like where it's Fullerton or your Blinda

(17:50):
or Placentia, where it's like not a lot going on,
like and the outside like if you just look at it,
if you drive through, you're like, oh, so it's a
it's cool. It's like a middle class suburb. Like I
kind of wish I was in a cooler place. Mom
and Dad like, why aren't we living in the city.
But then it was like you discover this music and
these bands are from the same you know, walking down

(18:10):
the same streets doing all the same things. You know,
decades earlier and you're like, oh, this is cool. I
felt like a lot more pride about being from Orange
County because of them music.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
I remember walking, you know, being in high school, walking
down the street in Newmarket or whatever, on some impossibly
long walk between houses that just went on forever and ever,
and you'd hear drums, someone practicing drums somewhere, and it
was like, oh my god, there's a It's like finding
the ear at the beginning of Blue Velvet. You know,
there's another side to this, Daniel, you grew up on

(18:40):
the opposite coast, sure did. What was the punk scene
like there? Because I know Long Island has one, and
how what was your first interaction with it?

Speaker 4 (18:50):
It's funny because when I was growing up in my
formative listening years, very much, I was very much a
creature of MTV, which I mean it's fun saying that
now thirty something years later. So what was the scene
to me? And was always stuff that was going on there?
And then whatever would hop into town or at least

(19:11):
be in the city, which I lived probably twenty.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Miles east of Manhattan.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
I think if you went through line from the train
station in my town to Madison Square Garden. It was
like nineteen point nine miles or something to that effect.
So in terms of where I grew up, it wasn't
really very punk. It was very much alternative rock in
indie rock, but it was like indie rock and like
the Dinosaur junior sense in the ninety sense of what

(19:37):
that was, and pavement that style of scene.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
And then there was also jam bands in my town.
So it wasn't very punk.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
But the first time I experienced punk was I couldn't
have been more than eleven or twelve years old when
I first saw the Story of my Life video and
seeing Mike on TV. He was the first person I
had seen with more than one tattoo, so immediately it
was fascinating and like it was like what is the
And it was like, you know, kind of rockabilly, kind
of alt rock, kind of punk, all fused into one

(20:04):
song that was, you know, literally telling a story, high
school singing.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Sasha dum.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
I did that much interesses watsa school election.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
Then a few years later, I wanted the summer of
ninety four, I came back from summer camp and all
my friends were suddenly listening to Offspring and it was like, Oh, okay,
this is what we're doing. And they were skateboarding and
you know, doing all this crazy shit bag biking and whatever,
and so like, okay, cool, so this is what we're
into now. And that's kind of how I got introduced

(20:41):
through the front door to punk and then later on
the senior talking about was probably a little after my
time there on the island, and it was a little
bit east of of what you're talking about, like taking
back Sundays, I imagine, and people like in brand New
and blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Right, I'm actually talking about like my friend's bands like
inkin Lead that no one outside of our friend group
has ever heard of, but I know they formed on
Long Island.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah, it wasn't in my area.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
It was definitely in the middle and South Shore because
that's where a lot of those bands came from.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
And Glass Jaw. I know it was in Merrick, which
was due south.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
In theory, it shouldn't have been that far, but with
parkways and traffic lights and blah blah blah, it was
probably like forty five minutes to an hour, which is
incredibly annoying. And there was no real venues where I
grew up at outside of really house parties, and then
tackling into this subject matter and seeing how these guys
got their start at house parties and then at the nest,
it was like, Wow, there's a lot of common ground

(21:46):
here compared you know with what I grew up around,
at least maybe not sonically, but like scene wise with
what was going on. So that so to say I
was a Long Island punk in the most traditional sense
is I wouldn't go that far, but seeing shows that
in the city and places like that, yeah, I mean

(22:07):
that was more of my speed than on a super
DIY local thing, just because the music and that my
town specifically didn't have that, and it was impossible generally
to get to towns that we did hear about it.
It would be like we'd have to have our parents
drive us or take taxis, which is totally uncool.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Fast forwarding a bit, what's the origin story of the book?
How did you decide to write it together? And how
did you decide to write it? It must have been a
long time ago based on how much research and work
must have been required to put this thing together.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
It was definitely was.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
I mean we started on this, I say, like the
summer of twenty nineteen, Nate and I were working at
this other outlet and one day we just we were
boarded at our desks. We set diagonally from each other.
Couldn't have been it had to be inches apart, maybe
two feet apart.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
From each other.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
We realized that no one had written this book, and
it's like, well, how is this possible? So it's like,
I don't know, how is it possible? So we went
back the next day. We were we guts to look
into it. So we went back the next day and
we're like, wow, no one really had written this, And
the people who would have written this, like the great
Mike Boehma the La Times, had recently died. So it
just felt like if no one had, you know, taken it,

(23:22):
why don't we take it. We'd covered the region for years,
we knew a lot of the key players, and it
was like why not. So we went back and forth. Well,
one person was editing and looking over stuff and like
running a newsroom. The other person was quietly and feverishly
working on the proposal to the point where we were
pretty satisfied where we had what we had at the

(23:42):
end of twenty nineteen to the point where early twenty
twenty we ended up, through Nate's charm and wisdom, got
to Sublime with Rome at the time, and we ended
up asking Eric a couple of questions about it, which
I don't even remember what they were, but we were
able to go back to subib and say, hey, look
we got Eric and the Sublime people at the time

(24:04):
were believed in the project, so we have that going
for us.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
But you know, it's one of those things no one
wants to be first.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
So once we kind of said, hey, we got Eric
and they at the time, it was very different with
Sublime now, so they were managed by someone else. There
were different camps, the estate and blah blah blah. So
once we got that it was a little bit more real.
Then the pandemic happened and we had a you know,
tamper down things. I got a new job and so
did Nate, and by mid twenty twenty one and then

(24:33):
we reached back out the Sublime and we actually got yeah,
you could talk to Bud about this, he's down. I
was like really, So we went to Reno in May
of that year and it was like, oh wow, this
is like cool, really cool that we got him for
like four hours, we sat down with him, and then
you know, it was off again, probably for a few
more months. I think Nate wrote a piece for me

(24:53):
on the Offspring, and Nate like dropped the little bread
crumb then that we were doing this, and again it
was still very informal. But by the end end of
the year we call it a stroke of luck, timing
or whatnot, we ended up speaking with Dexter and Noodles
and Mike Ness and Johnny two Bags from Social Distortion
within a span of like eleven days, and then it's like, Okay,
this thing is real. We actually have to go do

(25:13):
this and get this going. And from there a friend
of ours introduced us to an agent who gave us notes,
and then we formalized the pitch, got it to an
editor and signed, sealed, delivered, I think once the editor
had it within like seven days, so then it was
time to get to work.

Speaker 5 (25:29):
And the actual writing process once we signed the deal
was eighteen months.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Okay, so it was a long lead up to that.

Speaker 5 (25:36):
But then, you know, once we got everything together, it
was basically a matter of assigning ourselves interviews to do
together a lot.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Of them, and then sudden we did.

Speaker 5 (25:46):
Separate, but it was basically just a schedule every week
of like what do we have, who can we talk to,
who do we have to chase, what sort of.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Things do we want to make sure that we highlight.

Speaker 5 (25:57):
And that was sort of the hard part about this book, honestly,
which was because there's so much. Like you mentioned earlier,
there's so much material, and we couldn't cover it all
in one book other as we never finish, so it's
almost like what do we grudgingly have to leave by
the wayside or only mentioned versus write a whole chapter

(26:18):
on or things like that. So that process was kind
of organic in that we realized early on that, like,
we could have written this as oral history, but I
think it would have been less effective. I think it
really made sense to tell it as a story because
as people were talking to us, the same names, the
same points of reference, the same stories kind of kept

(26:39):
circling around. And I feel like the key to the
authenticity of this book is that it's not Dan and
I just we weren't there. You know, this was decades
before us, so we had to really rely on our interviewees,
whether they are rock stars or people that nobody knew
to kind of hone in on the key events and
people and places that really pushed the scene forward. So

(27:03):
as we were doing that, just having those discussions, things
sort of emerged that showed us like, oh, okay, like
we need to pay attention to this part, We need
to pay attention to this record, We need to pay
attention to this venue. You know, we had research done,
you know, as far as our own, but to really
put people there and the time and the place, I
think it was like we had to kind of really

(27:23):
focus on certain aspects.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Of the scene.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Procedurally, it seems to me like probably you did a
lot of interviews and compiled all this information and then
organized it into you know, a narrative. How soon did
you start what I described as the writing process, you know,
the actual putting into the word document or whatever the
pros with the quotes selected out of you know, your

(27:46):
your big pile of quotes and stuff.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
But we started, we had a sample portion, we gave
it our pitch, with our initial pitch, but what I
want to say, the real line shares right began on
January third of twenty twenty four, and we wrote every
day until June third, twenty twenty four. That was the
goal was to kind of get our sea legs straight

(28:10):
and get going and just do a very minimal amount
of work day at the end of the day or
before the day started, like three hundred and fifty words,
which for us is just if you look at any
of those news clips online, they're usually about three hundred
and fifty words. Like, well, if we could do this,
it's like wet our legs going and getting our stamina.
By the end, we should be well ahead of schedule.

(28:30):
And we got to the point where, come late March
early April, we're like, wow, let's just start tallying what
we have to just see where we're at as a
heat check. And we were way ahead of schedule to
the point where the formal writing was done around like
May ninth of twenty twenty four, and then we'd go
in and an interview would pop up here, something would

(28:52):
pop up there, and after evening, after we hand it
in the manuscript, it would just be peppering certain sects
with additional quotes we got.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
But yeah, that was pretty much it. We wrote every day.

Speaker 4 (29:04):
Didn't miss a day, and by the end, I think
we were cranking out fifteen hundred words a day, which
is a little bit I mean, this is a little
bit in the weeds for probably some of the listeners,
But that was kind of the process we figured would
work best with our schedules and just for peace of
mind to make sure we hit all of our deadlines
and got everything in on time.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
How did you divvy up the labor? I mean, are
you like both in a shared Google doc? You trading chapters,
trading scenes?

Speaker 5 (29:31):
We did a bit of We had a master doc
that like we put everything into ultimately to turn in.
But I think, yeah, we had our interviews, we would
transcribe them. We had like a transcription software to help us,
and then go through call them, through them, clean them up,
and then what I would do and I'm sure Dan too,

(29:51):
it's just like you go through it and you kind
of have to like turn those interviews into stories. You know,
what is the most interesting part of that hour We
spent with Johnny two Bags or Mike Ness or you know,
Jack Grisham, But for every interview, it was like, how
do we turn their stories into part of the overall
story that we're telling here Again, like it became more

(30:15):
and more clear we had to go through the process
of interviewing so many people to really finalize essentially what
the book is that you're reading in front of you,
because I always like to say as like, as a journalist,
you should never walk in thinking you know the full story,
because you're kind of short changing yourself and you're you're
going to turn it into a narrative that you know,

(30:35):
again only exists to back up your previous biases. So
it's like, it's good to go in with the blind
a little bit and just open and seeing what happens.
And that's what we try to do with all of
these I mean, clearly we had lines of questioning and stuff,
but always it'd be like, oh, did you talk to
this person?

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Who is that? And then you know we'd be like,
who the hell are you talking about?

Speaker 5 (30:59):
And then like and then we got to like kind
of decide in the moment, like okay, like how do
we get a hold of, you know, someone like you
know Eddie's subtitle, who like no one had really heard
or seen from, but was like a huge like for
years you know after he was you know, had his
moment you know in a fortune scene, you know, several
crucial years there, but like I think we have to

(31:20):
make certain certain decisions like each week, like after our
interviews had been done, like what are our next interview
is going to be, and what's the next story gonna
that we're gonna tell.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
You know, it's fun. It was like putting together a puzzle,
really was.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
I can totally see how it would be and it's
it's kind of it's like a dazzling high wire act
to read sometimes where you'll in the course of one chapter,
you know, sometimes jump from one band over here to
another band across town and then follow them for a while,
and then a third band in like an episode of
Curb Your Enthusiasm, all of the story strands, all of
a sudden braid together at the end of the chapter

(31:55):
unexpectedly or and you know, through the grace of your writing,
and it's h it must have been hard, It must
have been a brain buster.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
It was fun more than hard, because we knew the
natural trajectory of where things would go, and then once
we got writing, it kind of you know, unlocked itself,
if you will. It got to a point like, oh,
this makes sense that we bring this person back here
because they had some history with this band that was
going on at this time, and each door felt like

(32:28):
once we opened one, like three more would open, like
oh we speak to this person, Like oh, you should
talk to this person, this person, and this person they'd
be better at it. So we'd go to that person
and they'd be a wealth of knowledge and they'd go, oh, then.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
What about this person?

Speaker 4 (32:41):
And we made sure to go open each door, but
not to go too far down a rabbit hole because
we would have got bogged down too much into details.

Speaker 5 (32:49):
Yeah, and the process of weaving it together at the end,
it was intense to be able to put it all together.
But at the same time, like I think we had
enough understanding of what each other was doing to be
able to just like snap a lot of it together
and then polish it up.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
So it just felt like a narrative that flows all
the way through.

Speaker 5 (33:12):
Sometimes, especially when you're talking about multiple eras, multiple bands,
it has a tendency, like some books, to overly silo
the material, almost like a book report, you know, And
while that knowledge is great and it's key, like I
think we kept the reader in mind more so than

(33:34):
the bands in a way, because we had to what
are the themes that are emerging.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
What's the construct.

Speaker 5 (33:42):
Of this story we're trying to tell and how do
we keep referring back to those points which to me,
were again trying to crystallize that sort of pointing your
adolescences where you're trying to find out who you are
doing so in an area that maybe doesn't get you
or like people the society doesn't understand you. How do

(34:02):
you rely on family and your friends as a community
to push something forward through adversity and then what comes
out on the other side once you've established that, now, like,
how do you move forward and stay true to those
ideals that you fought so hard to get? And that
to me is like the punk rock story in a

(34:22):
nutshell and no matter where you're from, but I think
we had to take this, We took this certain route
to get there, which I think the best music sort
of thrives on being seeming of a place and a time,
and I think that like a lot of this music
really does showcase that, both.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
In the lyrics and the music.

Speaker 5 (34:43):
I mean, it's that you listen to it, it's like,
you know, the surf influence, you know, the different aspects
of the eclectic, like the ska, like the third wave
SKA stuff like. It all to me why I think
it's so popular, why it's always going to be associated
with Orange Counties, because it really was people took an

(35:05):
art form that had already been done and transposed their
own lifestyle on top of it, and that's what makes
it unique, and so you can't really disassociate the two.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
And that's a good thing, I think.

Speaker 5 (35:17):
I think more scenes when you look, when you actually
start to look at like other places and other scenes
that have popped up over time, like outside of this one,
you can kind of see that. You know, it's it's
a perspective, it's a lifestyle, it's a way of like
the Boston hardcore scene. You know, obviously stuff going on
in the UK was so much different, and that that
place where punk originated was so much different than what

(35:38):
OC ultimately wound up with, you know, stuff you know
going on in Texas or up in the Northwest.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Or Canada like wherever.

Speaker 5 (35:47):
Like, there's always going to be those touchstones of culture
of where the music emanated from, and I think that
Orange County just happens to be one that a lot
of the world pays attention to because of their infatuation
with Sonny, California.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
One of the things that amazes me about this book
and other books in you know, this genre of seeing
histories or I don't know what kind of what would
you call the genre of this book, the category into
which it falls that's file under a question mark.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
Well, for me, I look at it as a, yeah,
a historical history that where the truth is found in
unreliable narrators. Being that, like, everybody has their own biases
and their own sort of acts to grind sometimes or
their own sort of like what they saw as the
thing that made that shifted the culture in a certain way.

(36:44):
But oftentimes they're just all too close to their own
you know, they're all kind of huffing their own gas,
and so you know, you need to be able to,
like I think, in a sense, see what they're seeing
and then step back, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Like that's where I think Dan and I's expertise.

Speaker 5 (37:01):
A's journalists came in, was to be able to take
all these great stories and moments and just put it
together in a way that makes sense to why we're
even talking about this today.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Because I think, you know, and as Dad.

Speaker 5 (37:16):
Would probably agree, it's like we got a lot of
people who were supportive of this book, but were like
scratching their heads as to like what, like, what do
you want to do? You know, like even people that
are like legit like part of this music and or like,
you know, so instrumental. I think that there's a tendency
to think of punk as something that you know, is

(37:39):
was not meant for posterity. It was not meant to
look back on later and be like, oh, like what
a amazing influential scene. It was like it was a
here and now burns hot, burns fast, ultimately burns out.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
And then has to come back again.

Speaker 5 (37:55):
But it's that cycle that continues throughout it, you know,
through the decades. But I think everyone had their own
piece of that, and so they kind of all just
were like, yeah, I can't believe you guys are doing this,
and like I wouldn't file it under skepticism. I would
just file it under like it just wasn't really a
thought that people had. But then now you see, as
we were doing this book, I mean, things like the

(38:15):
Punk Rock Museum popped up. You know, you see different
documentaries and things like kind of take shape and pop
up as history kind of moves forward and finds a
new wave of nostalgia like this ultimately falls and crashes
like right on time with like when we started this book,
like I would say, like the mid eighties to like
the nineties. All that stuff keeps, you know, it swing,

(38:37):
it's swung back around like you know, as much as
you can basically, and that's what was cool about it too.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
And maybe, yeah, Dan, you could talk a.

Speaker 5 (38:46):
Little about the epilogue, but that's basically what our epilogue was,
just to step back and look at that.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
Yeah, and for the sake of this the name of
the show, a lot of major labels weren't even and
I mean it was the farthest thing from these guys's
mind when they were first starting out major label. They
just wanted they were happy to get vinyl made in
that people wanted to buy their vinyl seven inches nevertheless,
get on a major label. But yeah, by time January

(39:17):
third of twenty twenty four rolled around, I mean already
the calendar was being dotted with events. I mean that
I could speak to that specifically just because January sixth,
TSOL played at place in Santa Ana what a Coasta
Meso sant Ana called the Observatory and it was their
first show with Mike Roach, their original Bassis who had

(39:38):
been ill for since before the pandemic, so that would
us was a sign of like things to come. And
a lot of the old players like the Detours were
playing that night, and Jerry Roach, who on the Cuckoo's Nest,
was there that night. A lot of these guys were
there and I was like, oh, okay. And then like
less than a week later, it was announced the Coachella
and the lineup was announced with the reunited No Doubt

(40:00):
and Reunited Sublime playing their first shows and years and
then things started slowly unpacking and the Offspring announced that
they're doing a thirtieth anniversary show for Smash at the
Honda Center, which is a big arena in Anaheim.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
With Save Ferris opening.

Speaker 4 (40:15):
And then the No Values lineup was announced, which was
a punk festival put on by a Golden Voice which
got its origins in Huntington Beach that featured the Misfits
and Social Distortion, the Vandals, Tsol Adolescence, Agent Orange, on
and on and on. It was all these folks that
were in the book and had a presence. It was

(40:36):
like all these things started like adding up, and then
you know, Mike getting you know, Clean Bee a bill
of health after a cancer scare happened that year, also
with coinciding with him getting the key to the city
of Florded.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
So it was all these.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
Things that were unwrapping, like you know, one of those
like Choshke dolls.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
You know, there would be more and more and more
that would.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
Happen, and it was like, wow, this this epilogue is
kind of writing itself with all the interests now all
of a sudden in the scene.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
It just helped us so much because more folks were felt.

Speaker 4 (41:06):
Like they were getting their due and being recognized and
not even recognized, but being acknowledged, And it really helped
build out the way this book ended in just the
cohesive fashion, just because of the June eighth, twenty twenty
four date of No Values and the June third when
this book is due type of thing. It felt just
felt like everything came together so neatly and gave the

(41:28):
book such a great way to wrap it up that
we wouldn't have never expected in summer of twenty nineteen
to happen.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
It almost felt like a twist to me. The first
time I realized that you were going to keep following
these threads till now. I feel like I just was
assuming that a book like this would sort of cover,
you know, a ten year, fifteen year span and then
sort of say, and then the scene dissolved or things
changed too much, you know, like our Band could be
Your Life as another book that's sort of similar to

(41:56):
this one, and all of those chapters sort of end
when the bands stop being indeed, whatever that means. And
it was thrilling to read something that was both a
historical document but also a journalistic document of something that's
still going on. And it was like, for someone like
me that's not immersed in the punk rock world, it
really felt like a visceral reminder that this is still

(42:20):
alive as an art form and as a genre, and
these so many of the people in the book aren't
just still out there. They're still out there playing in
those bands or in other bands. And I don't know,
that felt so exciting to me when the first time
you finished the chapter by going into the twenty first century,
I was like, Oh my god, that's right, this all
still exists. It's not in a museum, it's not under

(42:41):
a bell jar.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
No, it's not.

Speaker 5 (42:43):
It's bumping into you the supermarket, Yeah, bumping into your shows.
I mean, these guys all still live here. Yeah, Like
I live in Long Beach, I go to OC fairly
often all the time, and you know, when I go
to shows or i'm out, like, there's a good chance
if I'm going to anything punk rock lay to that
I'm going to see members of these bands that we
talked about, at least some of them, or people in

(43:05):
the scene that I know.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
That we were talking to for this.

Speaker 5 (43:10):
And so, yeah, it's very much alive because they're also
I mean not all of them, I mean, sadly. One
of the things that it's like a two pronged thing
because on one hand, I feel we're constantly being sort
of like reminded in a way that like this culture
still exists and that the people still around, you know.
But then there's also, like I think there was a
nagging need to be able to do this now while

(43:33):
a lot of these people are alive, because some of
them aren't. And you know, while I was at OC
Weekly specifically, you know, I wrote a lot of obituaries
for punk rockers.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
It was kind of eerie how many I actually had
to do.

Speaker 5 (43:46):
And a lot of it were you know, bands from
that could have been in this book. I was like
the front man for the Cadillac Tramps, Gavig Warno, like
Steve Soto from the Adolescence Musical Geniuses, both of them,
you know, hard working, you know, middle.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Class guys who had a vision. You know, those guys
who had been great to have for.

Speaker 5 (44:06):
This book, you know, to add to it, you know,
but it was just kind of like in lieu of
being able to not talk to them directly, and you know,
maybe if I had some interviews with them from the past,
you know, or like you know, people that passed even
before that, like Dennis Denell from Social Distortion, Like it
was important to, I think, memorialize these guys and also

(44:28):
still talk to a lot of the people that were
still alive, that are still alive, still kicking, still doing
the you know, performing and doing their thing. I think
it just dawned on us both to like just not
take time for granted when it comes to covering this stuff,
because you just never know when people are going to go,
and you know, it just made it ultimately such a
more gratifying experience to be able to see a lot

(44:51):
of these guys see their names read about these stories
that there were, like it was just a freaky thing
for them to kind of read this stuff back, you
know that we talk to them about and like seeing
it in book form. So we've got a lot of
comments like that from people who are part of this,
and I think that was ultimately really a big reason

(45:12):
why we did it, just to show, you know, appreciation,
but also to really give it the full like kind
of deep dive that it deserves when it comes to
the music and the culture.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
The way that you were telling all these stories and
especially sort of coming back to them through the chapters,
and so you pick up these threads. I loved how
one of the bands will be the offspring, and even
someone a neophyte like me knows that things ended pretty
well for the offspring. But then there'll be bands that
start with all the same possibility and so many of
the same stories and narrative beats, and then for whatever

(45:46):
reasons don't either don't make it or stop just before
or whatever it is, which is of course the story
of any scene in any group of bands is that
not every band ends up becoming huge, and most bands
fact don't, but almost every band contains some amount of
that potential in it when they start, and having those

(46:07):
bands treated the same as no doubt or as the
offspring or whoever. It just was such a beautiful way
to paint the picture of this scene and to give
respect to bands that you know, don't get the same
adulation that the you know, the big crowned victors or
whatever you want to say do. It was I just
thought that was a great texture of it. So it

(46:28):
would have been, I'm sure very easy. And I don't
know if you ever got this note, but I imagine
this kind of note is out there to say, like,
but we can cut this bad Boy down to two
hundred type pages if we just cut out all the
bands that aren't that famous, that don't have Wikipedia pages
or whatever. But then it's not the same book anymore.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
I mean, the thing is, it's like if you if
you cut out Tsol, then you don't have the offspring,
you don't have the vandals. There's like the each each
band was integral and another one's either in influence or success.
I mean, you do cut out the HB parts, it's
cut out the crowd, which is the each boulevard compilation,
which is a significant moment for West Coast Punks. So

(47:05):
there's definitely elements of everything that needed to be in
there to paint the full picture everywhere as full as
we could possibly make it of within the story we
were trying to tell, because I mean, we've heard from Hey,
we didn't write about our band. It's like they played
six shows in someone's garage in like nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
It's like you have to draw the line somewhere.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
Yeah, But then you know, again going back to that
earlier thing I was talking about where like bands would
mention other bands to us, and it was like, if
Mike Nest tells you to write about the Mechanics, better
write about the fucking Mechanics, you know what I mean.

(48:01):
And we were like, okay, I knew the Mechanics were
actually had covered them for those two weekly before.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
So people who don't know are listening to this.

Speaker 5 (48:09):
Like the Mechanics were, you know, one of the earliest,
maybe the earliest like punk rock band out of Bullertin
that was kind of like in that space between like
the New York Dolls and they Pop and all that,
like some of the proto punk stuff, and they inspired
what would become adolescents and social distortion and let's said

(48:29):
Asian Orange, all these d I like because of the
techniques they use. The point is is like they existed

(48:55):
in a time before you know, there was any sort
of major label or like recording ideas of like, oh
we're going to make an album. It was like they
were just literally just doing their own thing, you know,
wreaking havoc, causing trouble, but also creating this amazing music
with a specific style that influenced all the bands that

(49:15):
we hear today that are everywhere. So yeah, I mean
it was important to talk about the I We just
simply couldn't have done this book without mentioning some of
those bands that maybe didn't get famous, or maybe fell
by the wayside or to come to their own demons,
whatever the case may be. Yeah, but that's the story
of music in general. It's just the evolution, that evolutionary thing.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
You know.

Speaker 5 (49:40):
It's like there's no point in lionizing bands that have
already been they already have diamond records, Like, we get it,
you know, I mean we want to hear their hard
luck stories. We want to hear about where they came
from and how they got inspired. To do what they're doing,
and so all of the stuff that went into that
involved whether it was the music or it could have

(50:01):
been you know, specific concert they went to or a
venue or a record store, like all those things were
super important in the telling of these bands' histories.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
It's amazing to me how much these guys love to
give each other credit. I feel like in the indie
rock world where I came up, I don't know if
there's more ego or what you want to call it,
but like people seem less willing to be forthright about
you know, who they were influenced by, or who they
were ripping off or you know who. We could never
have done it if it wasn't for this guy, even
if you could just never mention that guy again. But

(50:33):
these guys seem to keep their friends close. And you
were at the beginning you were talking about Nate the
community and the friends aspect of it, and that, I mean,
it's just a perfect example of that in action. Is
just this, you know, this constant credit giving.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (50:47):
Well, I think they were also bonded by a lot
of like I said, that experience of not just playing music,
but you know, skating, surfing, going to parties together like
they were all. Not to say that everyone was best
of friends or whatever all the time, but you know
it was.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
I think it was just that.

Speaker 5 (51:04):
Yeah, there was a genuine community that was based around
this music as like the backdrop of life, but you
had so many other social aspects to it that really
allowed them make friendships that lasted super long. I mean
to this day, you know, you still see the guys
hanging out together.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
The name of Mike Nast, the singer and brains behind
and driving force of Social Distortion, has come up a
few times, and inasmuch as the book has like a
central character and a narrative spine, it seems like Mike
and Social Distortion's career is what you keep coming back to,
like when you need to anchor it in a new
era or a new moment. It seems like that's kind
of home base. How early did that emerge as such

(51:45):
a big part of the book.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
We knew that he was the central figure in terms
of the just the through line. He was around the longest,
he did it the longest, He never gave up, He
fought through everything and pretty much was the personification of
what the scene was with his you know, what Nate
was saying with you know, burned, fast, burn bright, burnout

(52:09):
type of thing.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
He was.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
He was the quintessential example with that, with Mommy's Little
Monster and then all of his addiction issues and then
picking himself up and just when he should have been
doing something else or had another career, fighting through it
and writing even better songs. And we knew from the jump,
just even you know, in our time covering SD that

(52:31):
he was the big figure that influenced a lot of people,
and he was around the long It's like TSOL.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Sure they were.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
They may have gotten their fame earlier, same with the adolescents,
but they crashed and burned pretty quickly with lineup changes
and all these other things. Where SD Mike, it was
Mike and Dennis until two thousand. They fought and called
in their way to where they are today. And without Mike,
who knows Mike's still doing it, Especially when a lot

(53:00):
of those other bands either were gone or went started playing.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Metal or whatever.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
He was the lynchpin that kept any remnants of a
scene together.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
Yeah, I think he his his songwriting and his approach
to creation of songs that could appeal to sort of
an everyman aesthetic like I think it was part of
you know what also allowed the music to persist because

(53:31):
it just has like an immortal quality in the sense
of like a lot of those type of themes of
getting through struggles, you know, self reflection, like redemption.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
I mean, it's woven into the.

Speaker 5 (53:46):
Fabric of most great rock songs, So you know, he
just found a way to channel that in a way
that it was timeless, I guess, you know, but not
not trying too hard.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
And I think that.

Speaker 5 (54:01):
There's an attraction to that that makes you want to
root for a person who for a lot of years
was not the most likable guy, right, you know he was,
he could have been likable to some people, but you know,
I just think it's funny that, you know, this guy,
he winds up getting a key to the city in
Fullerton Town where there was probably was in.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
A day he didn't commit a crime of some sort.
So I think that showing that evolution of where you
come from, how you're able to survive life and come
out the other side with some Wisdom's it's a hero's
journey that we all could kind of put ourselves in,

(54:43):
and Mike just sort of embodies that in a lot
of ways, and so you know, it was really cool
to be able to tell that story not just through him,
not just through talking to him, which we did talk
to him for a long time, but through other people,
you know, like his manager, Jim Garrin, oh, other band
members Two Bags, Johnny two Bags, and Chris Reese and

(55:06):
like various people throughout the the chapters in the book
all kind of had this perspective on him, and so
I think it made it easier to kind of track through,
you know, the years and because they never quit, you know. Yeah,
that was the other thing too. A lot of the
bands that we talked about.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
That had their years of like their heydays and kind
of burned out or changed direction, which is also you know,
you can be the same band on paper, but if
you change your sound, it kind of starts over. Like
people just there's there's certain demarcations where people kind of
almost had to start over after sort of like change.

(55:45):
I mean, Social Distortion did that too, where they went
from like being a rowdy punk band to like more
of like this. But the people who describes like cowpunk
like mixture of like blues, country and.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Rock and roll with punk rock.

Speaker 5 (55:58):
But they did it, I think at a early enough
time to where it hit and then they just kept going, kept.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
On chugging along. Yeah, you know, not everyone can do that.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
So that's why I think it made sense to make
them like definitely a through line in the book and
a lot of that stuff that like Dan wrote about
in the various parts of their career. I think that
it really helps keep the reader focused on a goal
of getting all the way through the book.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Everyone, not just Mike. Everyone seems to be so honest
and you know, needless to say, there are many stories
that are maybe less than flattering for the people concerned.
And the impression that I get from the book is
that everyone was very unflinching and forthright in their discussions
with you. Was it difficult getting people to open up
or was it difficult getting them to stop talking?

Speaker 4 (56:48):
It was a warts and all book, And that's what
I think the beauty is in the honesty. Everyone is
pretty much self aware of what's going on, and it happened,
and so we you know, even if someone didn't tell
a story directly, we heard the same story from three
other people or four other people, and that were pretty

(57:08):
much down to the detail what happened.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
So yeah, I mean, the thing.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
Is is that these guys, you know, honesty in the
is what matters. Integrity of this project is what ultimately
they saw this for some may have been more open
to it than others, but they respected that the truth
was out there, even if they may not have liked it, accepting.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
The people who are no longer around. Is there anyone
that you really wish you could have talked to for
the book where it just didn't work out?

Speaker 4 (57:41):
There are two or three folks that we would have
left to have gotten, but they will remain safely anonymous.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Well, I mean one obvious one that's not in there.
I mean we were.

Speaker 5 (57:51):
We were definitely trying to get Gwen from no doubt,
and I mean I think that there was a point where.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
You know, we saw, okay, like it would be a
great thing.

Speaker 5 (58:02):
To be able to get quotes from her for this book,
specifically as far as like people who are huge names
on the in the book, that are on the cover
and stuff that we would want to talk to. She's
the only one, I mean, obviously living that we didn't.
I mean, Brad obviously we couldn't talk to from Sublime,
But I think that we were able to put together.

(58:27):
This is kind of where our research skills and our
interview skills with other people were like really instrumental to
be able to compile sort of a composite of her
and what she went through as part of this evolutionary.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Chain in punk rock, you know.

Speaker 5 (58:44):
I mean, I wouldn't necessarily consider her to be like
an authority on speaking about punks like early days or anything,
but as far as no doubt is concerned, like they
kind of weave together all these different elements to make
something that was you know, essentially like undeniable for this.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Radio era of like the era.

Speaker 5 (59:05):
Of k rock and you know, MTV, and they just
came along at the right time. So, you know, when
we kind of realized you weren't going to get her,
I think it was better to focus with the other
band members that we did talk to, Adrian and Tony
and Steven the trumpet player, and you know a few
members like that were in and out of the band

(59:26):
and stuff to talk to, you.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Know about about her role in all of this. Yeah,
and I mean there was, yeah, some bands, it was
very few that just.

Speaker 5 (59:35):
Like were like, oh, well, I don't know, or maybe
wanted to, but just like, couldn't you know a lot
of herding of cats type of thing, or it's just
like we could have probably hung out and indulged it,
but our book would have been not turned in on today.
And you know, at a certain point you got away
like how much are you willing to sacrifice your own
progress for someone else? Is a question that you have

(59:59):
to some when they come to terms with And for us,
it was just like, look, we have all this stuff
that we need to tell this story effectively. Could it
be more indulgent on certain.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Stories or aspects that came directly from this one particular source. Sure,
but it's also not going to make or break the book.

Speaker 5 (01:00:17):
And so I think the larger goal was to finish
it and to make it something.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
That feels cohesive.

Speaker 5 (01:00:24):
You know, I still think and I still believe that, like,
it's great that we did this book first, you know,
and I as a style and format like this focused
on Orange County through the decades, right, But I think
hopefully it inspires some people who were a part of
it or weren't a part of it, to write books

(01:00:45):
or things based on their own you know, experience. So
hopefully ours is the first but not the last Orange
County book.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Well, as we discussed at the top of the conversation,
this is a book that is rife with possibility for spinoffs,
as we say in showbiz, so I think there are
many more Orange County books to be written. So to
wrap up to end the podcast, we always ask the
same question we ask, you know, the usually the musician
we're talking to, what were you eating? Well, you made

(01:01:17):
the recording question, so Daniel Nate, what food was fueling
the immense task of putting together this entire amazing project.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
I mean to speak for myself, I mean I wrote
generally in the afternoon, so food was definitely not on
my mind as but I could speak to whenever Nick,
when Nate and I were have our little writing sessions,
we did eat a lot of burritos in Mexican food.

Speaker 5 (01:01:45):
Yeah, yeah, it's a good California burrito. Feels like the
appropriate fuel to be writing about this stuff. And yeah,
lots of coffee. I was writing a lot of this
and the morees like my parts and stuff, and I
had to kind of once I woke up, i'd have

(01:02:05):
a little bit of energy to write, like by three
hundred and fifty words, or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
And like do my little bit for that day.

Speaker 5 (01:02:12):
And so yeah, just doing it like I would anything
like an early morning routine and just like but it
was like my hour to just focus on ocpunk and
so listening to some music, snipping some coffee, hammering away
and then yeah, if it was right in a night,
you know, yeah, like take out burritos or you know,

(01:02:36):
I have a great place over here that does. Again,
you talk about California as a traditional mashup culture, there's
a place over here in Long wed as a Tay
curry pizza and they're pretty awesome called Deans, and like
that to me also kind of embodies the spirit of
Long Beach too. Specifically, we have like cultures kind of

(01:02:59):
like Italian and Thai food mashing up to create something great.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
And shout out to Sinco de Mayo and Long Beach
that was probably the most popular place among that were
the most convenient place where we'd always meet.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Yeah, either before an.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Interview or our game session. Yeah for sure, thanks for
keeping us fed well.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Shout out to California Burritos, to coffee, to the Long
Beach food scene, even to the concept of Thai curry pizza,
which I confess is new to me but also very interesting.
And guys, thank you so much for being here for
the great conversation. And I got to say reading the
book really got me excited to make music and to

(01:03:43):
play and to listen. And I did not grow up
a punk guy. I am probably not what you defined
as a punk guy now, so it was such an
education for me. But it didn't feel like school, you know.
It felt like I was time traveling through this incredible
these many incredible moments across time, and it was so
vivid and exciting. And I mean if it felt punk

(01:04:06):
in the same way the music feels punk, it felt
honest and true and urgent and vital. And I fucking
loved it and I loved reading it. So congratulations on
a great book, and thanks for a wonderful conversation. You
guys are so wise and well spoken.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Well, thank you for that.

Speaker 4 (01:04:21):
I think you might be the first person to ever
say that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Nate Jackson Daniel Cohen, the authors of Tearing Down the
Orange Curtain how punk rock brought Orange County to the world.
I loved talking to those guys. They are so thoughtful
and knowledgeable, and they're so good at talking. I asked
the dumbest question I've ever asked on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
What genre would you say your book is? Would you
tell me what part of the bookstore your book.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
Would be found in? And even that question yielded an
amazing answer, a wonderful thought. So thanks specifically to Nate
for bailing me out on that one, and thanks to
both of the guys for their time and for the
great talk. My fucking internet went down right at the end,
which mercifully for those guys, meant that I didn't really
get to let loose with my questions that are more

(01:05:10):
of a comment about art and commerce. But I think
it was all in there anyway. You know, the thing
about tracing punk from the eighties until now is that
you see it get commodified and commercialized in real time.
And I love how the book is. It's not about that.
It's not philosophizing or chain stroking. They're not really asking
these guys to opine about like what is punk or

(01:05:33):
what does it mean to sell out? They just let
the facts stack up and tell the story, or you know,
the story kind of tells itself, which is a really
great way to write a book, and maybe the only
way to write a book as comprehensive as this one,
but you know you've got like the Warped Tours origins
or Golden Voice is a great example. I first encountered
Golden Voice as the company that books Coachella, which seems

(01:05:55):
to me to be about as far from DIY punk
shows as you can get. But from the book that
putting on punk shows is exactly how Golden Voice got started.
And there's like a million cool tibits like that in
their origin stories for these cultural colossuses, colosses, cultural colossies anyway,
and they all somehow came out of the same little
part of southern California. It's incredibly fascinating whether you love

(01:06:19):
punk rock or don't give a shit about it at all,
but don't take my word for it. Tearing Down the
Orange Curtain by Nate Jackson and Daniel Cohen is available now,
and if you are still listening, I have to assume
you probably ought to give it a look. That's our show,
major label debut is produced by John Paul Bullock and
Josh Hook. Our theme music is by Greg Alsop. As always,

(01:06:40):
I entreat you to tell your friends and your foes
about the podcast and We're always glad to hear from
you if you want to get in touch. Thank you
for listening. Major Label Debut will return with more tales
from the intersection of art and commerce and sometimes literature.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
Peace