not take it. I looked at that banner and I thought,
no,
I'm not gonna play in front of that.
Don: (whispering) This is a clue to what he's
about.
Brian: They say one thing and they have
T-shirts that say another.
Don: They told us to quit every ten minutes.
Brian: They say "Skate and Create" and then
they say "Skate or Die" a little later. I couldn't
stand for it. I'm sorry...
Are you through?
Brian: No, we still got to...
Tell me more.
Brian: We've got to have that contest, man. I
still challenge those guys. You know, I'm sorry,
lan, I understand your point of view. I may have
been belligerent...
Did you talk to him?
Brian: Yeah I talked to him.
Did he kick your butt?
Brian: No-
Bam-Bam: That means Allen has to skate too.
Allen: Hey, I must admit, skating looks like fun.
Brian: Yeah, listen to that, Allen will even try to
skate.
Don: It'll be like battle of the Network Stars.
Allen: I ride a mean Camel. None of THEM can
ride Camels. You can't come near a Camel.
You'll catch syphilis, 'cause Camel mucus
causes syphilis and I will not get it because I
know how to handle camels, and I play foosball.
I can beat any son of a bitch on a blue-top table
in foosball. ni play them alone. Doubles! Skating
looks like fun.
These guys were telling me all about you, so
what's your personal relationship with
Reagan. I want to hear it straight from you.
Allen: Oh, yeah? With Reagan?
Yeah, something in Hollywood.
Allen: I have no personal relationship with
Reagan. I'd love to. I'd like to ride camels with
him once.
Race him on a camel, goddammit!
Allen: Now Reagan won't come near a camel...
Don: He's afraid it'll spit on him.
Allen: Yeah, I will challenge anybody to any
kind of phlegm tactics.
Bam-Bam: What about me?
Shut-up. It's not your turn yet!
Allen: We work as a unit.
Bam-Bam: I can fill up whole Pepsi cans.
Don: Bam coughs up dirt-clods.
O.K. (to Bam-Bam), what about it?
Bam-Bam: I'm a swinger and I like anything that
doesn't involve gluing my fingers together with
crazy glue. Ronald Reagan's an all right guy.
We get together for a cocktail once in a while.
You can't trust him with a spoon you know.
So how long have you been playing the
drums, and why did you forget your equip-
ment?
Bam-Bam: UUHHH!
Don: Yeah, where's your cymbals?
How could you be so lame as to forget your
tools?
Bam-Bam: My tool? I never forget my tool.
Yeah, if it wasn't strapped on.
Don: Where's your skateboard?
It's in the trunk of my car. I didn't come
down to skate.
Bam-Bam: Why isn't it here? We brought our
skateboards.
I'm just gonna take one of yours. What kind
of drums do you play?
Bam-Bam: Loud ones.
Really. What color loud ones?
Bam-Bam: They're god-like.
I've heard of those. What kind of drums do
you play, and why is your name Don?
Don: I play... My name... I like the cymbals.
So tell me, what did happen last night?
Don: Yeah, what did happen? There was a
show, wasn't there?
Why are you guys out here?
Don: I think it has something to do with last night.
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Brian: We came to skate. We have not skated
yet. We're on our way to Los Banos at this very
moment to skate down the hill.
There's a hill in Los Banos that you guys
came out to skate?
Bam-Bam: We didn't come out for these shows.
You've got to be kidding. We came out to visit
Stubby, the one-armed gas station attendant.
Don: To skate down the hill
Bam-Bam: His real name is Jerry. He's a nice
guy, but he shoots squirrels.
Don: And when this bus dies, it's gonna go back
to Los Banos.
Brian: I skated that hill with a 35 mph tail-wind.
Midnight at night. I was too drunk to do it.
Was God your co-pilot?
Don: There we were. We thought we were
seeing tracers, then the engine went, "BLEGCK-
SHEHHEH!
Brian: I made it blow up. It was me, I swear.
Don: No, it was that session at The Dish.
Brian: Mental.
Why did you join the band?
Allen: Uhh.
C'mon spit it out. No don't. No phlegm.
Allen: Because they needed a bass player. I
was there and it worked out.
Can you play bass or sumpthin'?
Allen: Pretty much.
Minimally?
Allen: Because skating looks like fun.
Who taught you how to play the bass? I want
to slap them.
Allen: Who taught me?
Yeah.
Allen: You can slap me. I didn't take lessons.
That's what I wanted to know. Why didn't you
just say that before?
Allen: Whuh. No, I just see what's going down
inside of me, then I reached out from within and
pulled out my techniques.
What about your background?
Don: He's not an asshole.
Allen: There's no hassles in skating, because
skating looks like fun to me. So I'm not going to
withhold ramp info or nothing.
What about your musical background?
Allen: It's wide and plenty.
Don: Part of it's purple.
Do you like Hank Williams?
Allen: Sure.
Bam-Bam: I like Hank Williams, but Hank
Williams Jr. sucks.
Don: Hank Williams is a big coil of rope, isn't it?
Allen: I like Albert Ayler.
Bam-Bam: Look, a sign. Los Banos!
Don: Ten miles!)
Who's Albert Ayler?
Allen: A saxophone player who was found
floating in the East River in 1970.
Why do you think he picked the East River to
floatin?
Allen: The other river, the Hudson River, had
too many white people in it.
I guess you could call the guy a floater.
Allen: Definitely, and he played a mean sax to
boot
So when did your cherry get popped, Brian?
Brian: Well, uh....
Any day now?
Brian: Well, do you want to bullshit with me or
do you want to hear the real, sexual, erotic truth?
Be explicit. I've got a second.
Brian: Iwent out with this girl for a real long time.
She was too old for me, and she was ugly, but I
didn't know it at the time. So about a year later,
after she went out with like a million other guys,
we finally got some cavortation down ourselves.
Don: Tell him about Deanne.
Brian: EAUOOHH!
Bam-Bam: Deanne? EAUROAUHH! Gazonga,
Casaba-melon, ha-ha-ha!
Brian: Amazon woman,
Amazons. You like Amazons?
Brian: I can't truly say for matters of female
distinction.
On the magical J.FA. tour bus
So why did you guys form a band anyway?
Don: Because it's fun.
Bam-Bam: Not into cooking
Don: Nobody else plays the stuff we like to
skate to.
Bam-Bam: It's the only way we can skate for
free
Don: We get to skate everywhere.
Bam-Bam: The only way we can get real
skateboards. We can't afford them.
Brian: Hey! All sponsors. I need some new
wheels.
When was your first tour?
Bam-Bam: Last summer.
Don: We went on a .22 calibre tour.
Bam-Bam: It was from Califomia to Tucson.
And Phoenix too.
Don: But we went on another one that was
10,000 miles.
How is it on tour?
Don: Pretty cool.
Bam-Bam: Only cause I don't have to see
anybody from Phoenix.
Don: You just wake up every day in a new place.
Go skate and then play
So you guys are a bunch of freaks.
Brian: And proud of it. Damn proud of it.
What about you, freak-o?
Don: I'm a freak?
Yeah.
Bam-Bam: I'm a freak, they're geeks.
Brian: Yeah, GEEK-AIR!
How many car accidents have you been in
Allen?
Allen: Quite a few, behind the wheel.
What do you think is the cause of it?
Allen: The thing pulling strings in my head. I go
along with it, that's obviously why it happens.
But I always have that control to be able to turn
it around.
That's quite a hobby.
Don: What is? Car accidents?
Yeah.
Don: That's how I got my amplifier. Some old
lady hit me with a 1975 Chrysler New Yorker.
Just went "Ber-ul-arughuh. Had a compass on
the dash and everything. Killed my car, I got to
keep the money, bought the amp.
Bam-Bam: I've been in seven car wrecks. Four
in a car and three I got hit by a car. Two on a bike
and one on a skateboard. One time, it wasn't our
fault, but this lady slammed into us at a four-way
cross, ripped our front tire off. It was her fault,
she went through a brick mailbox and a cyclone
fence, and then busted her face on her steering
wheel, it swelled up. Then I went over to help
them and they locked their doors and rolled up
their windows, because I had my head shaved,
and they didn't like that. But before this interview
is over, I want to say "hi" to Scott Duff, aka Joe
Heavy Metal.
With the Venom tape?
Bam-Bam: Yeah, that guy. He's cool.
What's your earliest memory?
Don: The time me and my brother were
supposed to be asleep, and I piled books on top
of him until he almost smothered. Or having dirt
clod fights. No, playing "Smear the Queer."
Describe how to play Smear the Queer.
Don: You pick out whoever everybody else is
chasing, then, because everybody is diverted to
him, you pick out somebody you really don't like,
and clip 'em.
Bam-Bam: Find whoever has the ball, and kill
him.
So do you think that if we got all the world
leaders together, locked them into a giant
stadium, gave them a ball and made them
play Smear the Queer, we could relieve all of
these world tensions?
Don: I'm just afraid of when the down jacket
hippies from the Seventies grow up and become
the world leaders.
Brian: Oooh, Los Banos.
This is it? That's all? (We had arrived.)
Brian: That's all? This was our life for three
days.
Bam-Bam: Five days. And we were with
Chicken Butt
Don: And Jeanette.
Brian: Jeanette? Shamu!
Don: Ever wonder why they built the Berlin Wall?
Bam-Bam: She used to be from Ohio, but she
doesn't say that. She's from "Heidelberg."
Don: I keep waiting to see her tied at a mooring
post.
I sneezed, dropped the tape recorder,
the batteries scattering everywhere; they
got lost. End of Interview.
The boys hopped out and took two or
three quick runs down the hill while the rest
of the travelers replenished themselves
with cokes, candy bars and micro-waved
burritos.
They started down the hill as I watched
from the bus. My eyes half-open, a signal
of the tired.
The driver spun out of the gas station
and headed towards the freeway on-ramp.
The skaters, Brian, Don and Bam-Bam
were coming back up the hill, but just as
they were about to step into the bus, they
took off skating down the freeway on-ramp.
The bus followed and picked them up as
an old Chevy was passing by. I passed out
and could give a shit about living in a Third
World country. Don't know why I thought of
that, living in California and all. Well, it's
almost the same. Everywhere I go, there's
refugees from someplace-Filipinos in the
laundromat, Middle Easterners running
the 7-11s, Vietnamese behind the grocery
store counters... Not that that's bad, but
shit, I gotta know a whole different lan-
guage just to say that I don't want cheese
on my hamburger. And still it comes back
with an orange, dripping, synthesized
square of cheese. But what that has to do
with skateboarding or rock 'n' roll, I don't
know. Maybe Andy Warhol, William
Burroughs or Chuck Bukowski knows.
They should, they're men of extreme
knowledge because they have grey hair
and know how to spell.
A glance at my watch told me that it was
3:38 p.m. and 83°. Something in the brain
clicks, and I begin to sweat again. I closed
my eyes and tried to find that "BLONDE-
THOUGHT" in the caverns of my mind.
I woke up to an extremely cool breeze
and somebody screaming bloody
obscenities out the bus door. My ugly head
reared up to a traffic jam on the Bay Bridge.
"We are seriously low on gas," Tony
Victor said. "Seriously low."
"We're almost there, it's less than a
mile, someone offered. "We're SERI-
OUSLY LOW!" he repeated.
Well, it was only a half block down the
street from the On Broadway that the
sucker exhumed the last fume. The sign to
the club was in sight and an AA battery's
throw away. (Yeah, I threw it for graphic
descriptive purposes.) The traffic built up
behind us for a mile. Someone ran for gas,
some of the guys climbed on top of the bus
and pretended they were surfing, laybacks,
getting tubed. I went to a phone and called
Mr. Eric the Nordic.
"Hey. Help. I need a shower. Broadway.
YEAH, out in front. Help. Shower, shower,
shower. For me. Yeah, I stink like a pig.
What I don't know what color. What? Yeah,
Continued on page 43
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