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K.T. entered into this 10th anniversary of
Jodie Foster's Army interview during an
exchange or words between co-founders,
guitarist/technician Don Pendleton and
vocalist/keyboardist Brian Brannon.
Don: Mark my words, man, boards will have
two tails from now on. The only reason they
got round noses is they tipped-off surfboards.
You don't need a surfboard on land.
Brian: But it's more aerodynamic to have a
round
nose.
Don: Oh, bullshit, man.
First question; wiry Jodie Foster's Army?
Don: It started our because in Taxi Driver, the
guy was going to shoot some politician to
impresa Jodie Foster, then Hinkdey did it in real
life. Then somebody told me that somebody
else was writing to Jodie Foster, so 1 figure,
man, she's got ber own army.
Brian: I tried to write some letters to Jodie but
it all came out too sweet and poetic. It didn't
flow right, I would've scared her away.
Don: She would've puked.
Brian: Oh man, who knows what she would
have done.
Don: She would've dropped logs on that letter.
Brian: I'm her biggest fan.
Okay, okay. How did things first get rolling?
Don: I had a couple of songs and said. "Hey
Chicken-butt, let's get a band going." At first
he said. "No, no..." But then we saw DOA.'s
Hardcore '81 tour and suddenly Chicken-butt
was all for it, because DOA. fuckin' ripped.
He knew Brian, and I already had Bam, so we
the band.
started
Here in Phoenix?
Don: Yeah, I was going to school here.
You were the West Coast connection, Don.
Don: The Huntington Beach connection.
They were already playing music like that in
Huntington Beach: the Screws, the Klan,
China White, the Crowd, the Outsiders...
Phoenix was still the blue-hair art deal
Brian: Yeah, and Sid Vicious-style punkers. We
just came out of nowhere and slam danced on
their pogo scene. It set 'em back a little bit, but
they eventually accepted it.
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70 THRASHER MAGAZINE
Anyway, getting on to the day Reagan got shot.
Don: That's where our theme song, "JFA"
came from. The harmonic part in the
beginning goes along with the video tape,
because they played it back so many times. I
was sick, homne from school, and I played along
with what was showing on TV, the Secret
Service guy whipping the Uhi out and the
whole bit. That's what made Uxis popular.
James Brady took one in the melon.
Brian: We don't condone that. We're making a
social commentary
Don: Yeah, that a movie star could have
somebody shoot somebody for her, it's like.
"We're the TV generation, let's kill somebody
for Magnum."
What's the rundown on some early classics?
Don: "Beach Blanket Bongour" was something
I saw when I was young. I used to go surfing
down at the beach, and the down jacket
hippies with the Miller beers would beat up on
my friends who were smoking pot and had
pink surfboards. Then Chicken Butt wrote
"Do the Hannigan" about these rancher guys
in Arizona who nurtured illegal aliens because
they were from Mexico or something. And
"Count" was the shortest song ever recorded. It
was about three seconds. "Cakes and Snickers,
that was our diet.
Brian: Our breakfast too.
Was that the Ep with Brian's backside grind?
Brian: Yeah. That was the ramp that "Ramp
Song" was written about.
Don: Brian helped build that ramp.
Brian: I stole all the wood for it.
Don: They moved it to this rich guy's property.
Brian: It was on this doctor's son's property. He
comes running out and he's yelling at our
friend Danny Moped, "Get off the ramp, quit
skating! We're telling him. "Hey, we're just
skating the ramp." And Danny's pretending
like he doesn't hear him. So the guy jumps up
and grabs Danny while he's skating, knocks
AN INTERVIEW WITH DON AND BRIAN OF JFA
BLATANT
VOCALISM
him off his board, off the ramp. Danny docan't
take kindly to those kinds of things, especially
when he's skating. They started rolling around,
beefing it out in the dirt. Danny klacked him
right in the ear and made the guy's ear bleed.
He called the cops, you know
Dan: That's what the Ramp Song" is all
about: our friend fighting some guy's dad on
our ramp, the "Blatant Localism" ramp. That
was really supposed to be a backside air photo,
but Bam made such stupid faces we couldn't
use them.
So it was an edger.
Don: Yeah, on a Steve Olson.
Brian: Steve Olson, Indy 169s, and Blackhart
pink wheels.
Let's finish up the discography.
Don: "Blatant Localism" Ep, then we came out
with "Valley of the Yakes," which was an Lp,
then we did the black album, which was
"Untitled." That was the one where there was a
desert pipe and all four of us standing there
and a friend of ours skating in the background.
Brian: We started getting weirder. We were
pretty straight ahead hardcore before that.
Don: After that, we did the "Mad Gardens"
Ep, then "My Movie." That didn't get out to a
whole lot of places, because it was only a seven-
inch, three songs. Then the "Live" album.
Brian: Up to that point, everything we did was
45 r.p.m. We'd have like sixteen songs on an
album and it'd be half an hour long
Don: They were all too fast.
Brian: They'd blow right past you.
Don: The "Live" album had twenty songs and
it made it down to 33 r.p.m. Then we did
"Nowhere Blossoms," with original members.
Brian: Now we've just gone into the studio to
do a demo and hopefully spark some interest.
Are you still touring?
Don: We're going to go to Europe in March.
Can we expect to bear some old standards?
Don: Yeah. You have to, especially in Europe.
for people who've never seen you. We'll draw
from every record we put out. It's not like we
say, "We're the new JFA, and people go away
shaking their heads. We play everything.
What about JFA Skateboards?
Brian: The reason we put out our own boards
was Santa Cruz stopped making the Bevel.
Don: Right. Amen.
Brian: There was no concave out there that was
big enough for our feet to get into, so we came
out with the JFA concave.
Don: Plus, we wanted a stinger fishtail.
Brian: A pool and pipe tool.
Don: A lot of kids couldn't relate to it because
we skate big stuff. They skate streets, we skate
pools and pipes. You can't take a twenty-nine-
inch board in a twenty-six-foot pipe. You'll spin
out. They don't ride little bitty surfboards at
Waimea Bay.
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So you didn't expect to sell fifty thousand.
Don: Exactly. Plus, we didn't have a pro rider. I
mean let's face it, Hosoi could put his name on
a garage door and he'd sell a half a million of
them. Anyway, we were happy to have enough
bounds so we could give some to our friends.
Back to the early tour days....
Brian: On the fint small tours we took off on,
we drove can. We had our trademark Green
Bus for the big ones.
Don: Yes. Our bus lives. It made it every year
because of our Deadhead mechanic. Wayno
Brian: And Jonathan in the early days
Does Wayne have credentials from way back?
Brian: He's a Zen mechanic
Don: He can wake up from a twenty-eight beer
dead drunk and say "It's the solenoid man, tap
the solenoid." It runs bitchin' after that.
Brain: It's the soul bus.
Don: It's ready to go to Tijuana.
Brian: It's rarin' to go. It still has stickers from
the first tour. It still smells the same. I love it.
Don: We've been real fortunate. We got to play
with the Big Boys, Black Flag, Minor Threat.
DO.A.. all the hitters. And they were great
shows. It was back when people were cool to
each other. Now it's all this racist bullshit and
we play with these white supremacist bands
and they bum on us. That was when we still
had Cornelius, so I'd ask them, "Why are you
on the bill with us if you know we've got a
black bass player. What's your trip?" That's why
we're going to Europe, to see what it's like.
Brian: The main problem we've seen with the
scene the past couple years is people take
themselves too seriously. That's the whole thing
that punk was originally against. It was rebel
and do whatever and not worry about it. But
people get in these little cliques: straight edge,
hardcore, skinheads, and they put definitions
on it. Like to be punk you have to wear these
kind of boots and have your hair this short.
Don: With these kind of laces, this kind of
tattoo, "X" on the back of your hand.
Brian: That's not what punk is about. Punk is
about wearing the exact opposite of whatever's
cool. We're still like that. We throw fucked
songs into the set that we know the audience is
going to hate because we like to do it.
Did thateboarding parallel it at the time?
Brian: It's always has, and we're proud of that.
It doesn't hurt nobody.
Don: Plus, it doesn't really fit a label. People
were trying to make it like that, but it can be
anything. We skate to all kinds of shit.
Brian: Yeah, it's whatever you can skate too,
not any particular kind of music. We used to
skate to "Tocata and Fugue in D Minor," by
Bach. Pipe organ in the pipes. Natural reverb
echoing throughout the whole pipe.
The music fits the crime.
Brian: You can't skate real hard to Journey. You
need something like Black Flag with Chavo
singing, and have that propel you to get wild
and risk life and limb on the coping, You can't
do it to music that doesn't have any soul to it.
Maybe punk isn't technically the greatest music
but it's got feeling behind it.
Don: Before punk it was Ted (Nugent).
Tell me about the skate rock challenge.
Brian: 1 challenged all the supposed skate
bands to a pool contest. I wanted to see who
would show up. After that, it would be a party.
and a gig and everything would have been cool.
Most memorable show?
Don: Most unmemorable. The Misfits and the
Flesheaters and the Misfits clubbed some guy
over the head with a guitar. It was Deadly
Reign, us, the Meat Puppets, then the Bud-
weiser cans started flying. Then the Flesheaters
played and people didn't dig them, so cans
were flying. Then the Misfits waited an hour-
and a half to come on. When they come out,
the crowd was tanked up. The Misfits sounded
like shitty Kiss. Then this fight breaks out in
the audience, the drummer from the Misfits
jumps over the kit, adds to the fight.
Brian: Gets his ass kicked.
Don: Then the guitar player's getting frus-
trated, so he takes his Ibanez Paul Stanley and
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