Dated

Opens
Mon, Dec 31

Cover

ay back when MTV actually played music, music videos changed the way kids listened. Style and good looks began to trump substance, talent and experience. It’s rumored that Jon Bon Jovi had a contract clause that stated any member of the group would be fired if they became bald or overweight. Madonna may have reinvented her look several times over, but that look always revolved around being svelte and sexy. Eventually, it was obvious how unlikely it was that the music industry would hire another Meat Loaf or Etta James. Being in a successful band suddenly required having looks, sex appeal, dance lessons and vocal talent. For the rest of us, there was punk rock.

It’d been five years since I held a drumstick that I didn’t intend to eat. But when my long-defunct band was offered a gig opening for the Misfits at Pipeline Cafe on New Year’s eve, the years away from drumming didn’t seem to matter. I have been a Misfits fan since I was 15 years old. The third album I ever purchased was the Evil Live EP. I know almost all the words to most of their songs. Hell, I even had a Misfits-inspired devilock, a long streak of bangs that hangs in front of the eyes and down the face, and usually ends up in one’s food. This was around the time that I picked up drumming in the first place.

“The kids are all right”

We started the band out of boredom. None of the four of us had any previous musical experience. I’m not sure why I picked the drums–perhaps it was the semi-anonymity afforded behind a drum set. More than likely, though, it was a chance to hit things repeatedly with sticks. Now all we needed was a name. Punk pioneers tended to pick names that were short and somewhat offensive: Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, Drunk Injuns… the list goes on. By the early ’80s, big bands had names like M.D.C. (Millions of Dead Cops) and D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). It was from an editorial cartoon about a string of television evangelists accused of fraud–including Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of PTL club–that we finally picked our name: Preachers That Lie, PTL for short.

To this day, I never figured out why we became popular. It certainly wasn’t because we were any good. Most likely it was the dearth of bands in the South Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. We managed to convince people to throw house parties, where we would play for free. That’s how we got our first gig, playing in a backyard that had no outside lights. It became so dark that people held lighters and candles up to the guitar necks just so we could find the proper frets. It sounded horrible, but it was good enough for punk.

Parties turned into actual gigs with other bands, more allegiances were formed, and bigger shows came from it. PTL went from our first real gig at Berkeley’s legendary Gilman Street proving ground, to playing with and even after some of the biggest punk bands in the day, bands like Bad Religion, NOFX, Green Day, The Offspring, Jawbreaker, The Vandals, All, Capital Punishment, MDC and Screeching Weasel.

Lookout Records, the East Bay independent record label that launched Green Day, Operation Ivy, Alkaline Trio and The Donnas, wrote and asked us to contribute a song for their next compilation record. We went into the studio to record our own release. A tour was planned. Times were good, and that’s when it all fell apart.

“Hey, Ho! Let’s Go!”

As punk started getting bigger, people started to realize there was money to be made. People with no involvement in the scene started offering to put out the money to rent out halls, allowing us to make our own lineups.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, a band called Fugazi made an edict to remind people that punk was supposed to be about something other than being a cash cow, and those involved had a responsibility to keep the movement underground. Eschewing merchandise like T-shirts and stickers, they publicly announced that they would play no show that cost more than $5. That made sense to us. We didn’t need to rip people off to survive. We never cared about the money anyway. We told promoters who called us that we wouldn’t play anything that was age restricted or cost more than $5.

And then there were other, less benign ways in which we took a stand. When Lookout Records asked us to release a song for an upcoming compilation album, we should have given them our hit, “I’m Not From Berkeley.” But that song was about to get released on our own EP, and I argued that we shouldn’t release a song on two different records, because it would seem like a rip off. Lookout was distributed internationally, our EP had a limited run of 1,000 copies and would be sold primarily to our friends. Such was our ethos.

So we came up with a new song, rushed into the studio, when the compilation was released six months later, realized that the song we created wasn’t very good (good enough for punk–but barely). Most people agreed. Lookout never contacted us again.

Meanwhile, we we’e getting marginalized by some people who took punk even more seriously than we did. Bands that played 21-and-over clubs were considered sellouts, and anyone who even considered releasing a record on a major label were a threat to the underground. But it was the age of Political Correctness that ultimately changed the atmosphere. As the Riot Grrrl movement exploded, bands were expected to toe the line, even in a genre that was supposed to be anti-establishment. Eventually it became obvious that the bands we grew up on and emulated, like the Angry Samoans and the Descendents, wouldn’t be able to play in the politically sensitive Bay Area. They would be run out of town for their lyrical content, mostly involving humorous songs about girls, booze and sex. Soon enough, the same happened to us.

That hurt PTL, but the easiest way to explain our demise was the tour. Nothing will make you want to kill the person next to you more than having to travel for 20 hour stretches of road to the next gig, forgoing showers and food, only to find out the show has been canceled and the promoter is nowhere to be found. Within two weeks, our bass player snuck away to the nearest Greyhound station while the rest of the band slept.

Upon returning, others attempted to fill in, but it was never the same. We decided that what we accomplished–an album, a tour, a few headlining shows and a number of gigs with some of the biggest and best punk bands in the U.S.–was good enough, and it was time to call it quits.

“A hairstyle’s not a lifestyle”

Still, you never forget the time you spent on stage. Every concert you witness thereafter is tinged with a bittersweet remembrance. “I used to do that,” you think, and during these moments you can’t help but wonder why you stopped.

Ask any musician about his favorite gig and he’ll eagerly launch into a story told a thousand times before. That’s exactly what I was doing, one day last October in a bar, retelling stories about places we played and people we met, when the person whose ear I was bending asked if we ever played again after the fateful tour. I explained that we played one reunion show five years after disbanding, and then again five years later just before I moved to Hawaii.

“Matter of fact,” I mused, “it seems like we get back together again every five years, and it’s about time to do it again. Don’t think that’s going to happen this time, however, seeing how they’re in California and I live here.”

“Well, what if you did get together and then do your show here in Hawaii?” he asked. “I’ll have you open for the Misfits.”

The same Misfits who were among my first musical influences, the same Misfits whose founding member’s haircut I copied, the same Misfits that eventually led me to more political, less cartoonish punk. For good or for bad, if ever punk had a brand name, it’s the Misfits. And now we had the opportunity to play on the same stage. Agreeing to the show would mean ignoring our longstanding pact only to play shows with minimal cover charges. Several of the bands, including Green Day, with whom we once shared a stage, had long abandoned the same rule. Fifteen years of doing it for the kids had left us old and broke.

Screw the kids, we decided.

Of course, there was still the matter of the rest of the band. So, three weeks before the show, I flew to California to start prepping for our first show in San Jose on December 23. In stories like this, particularly in movies, the former friends and musicians tentatively put aside their differences. From the moment that the drummer does a four-count, the band slides effortlessly into a rhythm, making it sound and feel just as it did the last time they played together.

In real life, that doesn’t happen.

“Hope I die before I get old”

A quick run-through of five of our songs left my arms aching and lungs struggling to find air. Why the hell did we make all of our songs that fast? And shouldn’t we be playing lounge versions at our age?

There’s been a lot of nostalgia in the punk scene over the last 10 years, and several bands from the ’80s have reformed, even after well-publicized feuds between members. It may seem cynical, but many of these reunions are probably nothing more than quick cash grabs. PTL doesn’t have that luxury, never having made any money in the first place. The way a touring band makes any money at all usually relies on merchandise sold at shows, but the only thing we have to sell is a handful of leftover EPs, and the outdated vinyl format just gets confused stares from the kids these days. Knowing we have to spend money to make money, we decide we’ll need to make CDs, which presents a problem. PTL made studio recordings about eight times for various projects, but most of the master tapes and reels have gone missing. We painstakingly go through our collections and lift the recordings directly off the vinyl in some cases, and after much frantic searching, we have an 18-song CD covering various points in our career. The sound quality, along with the songwriting, varies from excellent to atrocious. Good enough for punk. We decide to name the album Last Call.

In the meantime, we rehearse, rehearse and rehearse some more. The newest (and, in my opinion, best) songs are declared too difficult to learn with the limited time we have. Our set is up to 13 songs. Considering the average song clocks in at two minutes, that’s not much of a set. But the buzz about the show is increasing. Our singer, whom we’ve dubbed Stinky Rich, has learned a thing or two about promotion since PTL broke up. Full-color posters and fliers are printed. The local alternative weekly newspaper calls us for an interview and sends a photographer. Radio stations are sent copies of the forthcoming CD. The upcoming show has brought upon a wave of nostalgia as people discuss their favorite PTL experiences. Oddly enough, nobody seems to mention the music. People focus more on the debauchery that followed the band and the places we played, from all-night drunken parties in our basement to the 12-car caravan that followed us down the California coast to Tijuana.

I’m beginning to wonder if it was ever really about the music, and this is troubling for the upcoming show in Honolulu. People there have no halcyon memories of PTL. It’s possible that we’ll be playing for some very confused Misfits fans who can’t help but wonder about the old men in the opening band.

But I’m excited anyway. Rich shows me around the club we’ll be playing in San Jose. In the hundreds of shows we’ve played, we’ve had a backstage area perhaps a half -dozen times. He waves his hand over the private bar for the bands, where he tells me it will be fully stocked on the night of our show. “That’s not all,” he says, smirking, “they have an apartment upstairs that they give to touring bands. They’re going to let us stay there. There might even be a deli tray.”

This is part of an ongoing joke. For a punk band, the notion of a club supplying food was laughable. It just didn’t happen, even in our prime. Now we were promised a fully-stocked bar, a place to party afterward and the fabled deli tray. So this is what it felt like to be Green Day.

“I’m a washed up has-been, I’m a used up never-was”

It’s the day of the San Jose show, and people start streaming in the doors. It’s not sold out, but it’s a good-sized crowd, and it’s still early. Good enough for punk. I move around, talking with people I haven’t seen for five years or more. I’m trying to avoid the bar. Too many shots before a set has derailed us before, including one show when I ended up on my back in the middle of the set. The other members aren’t as restrained as I am, however, and when we finally take the stage at 12:30, Rich grabs onto the microphone and starts mumbling incoherently. We get though the set, and it goes–well, it goes all right. Then there’s the matter of the backstage area, which is not fully stocked, save for a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boys, along with a few bottles of water. I ask Rich if the apartment that was promised is still going to be available. He can’t offer me a straight answer, or any kind of an answer, and it’s astounding that he can still manage to stand up.

I’m irritated. Having skipped out on drinking with friends all night, I try approach the bar, but they’ve decided to close down for the night, and the house lights go on. I walk backstage to discover that punks stole all the beer out of our private refrigerator. Now I’m just shy of furious. After 25 years as a supporter and participant of the punk scene, just once I wanted to see how it was to be treated like a celebrity, and now I can’t even get a beer.

I head outside to smoke a cigarette and an old friend walks up to congratulate me on a good show. “Was it?” I ask, not expecting an answer. “Rich could barely stand up, I couldn’t hear the rest of the band and the entire set was mediocre at best.” I mention the things that were promised and never delivered.

He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Everybody had a great time,” he told me. “And really, isn’t that why you’ve done this for all those years?”

He’s right. But when the show with the Misfits happens, I’m going to steal all the beer while they’re onstage. And if you’re there, make sure you buy some merchandise.

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