Interview with The Vex - Podcast 18

Hey, what's up? Thanks for tuning in to Sound Scene Revolution. We're sorry we weren't here for the last couple of weeks. We were on sabbatical. It was a holiday for our religions, various ones. But we're back, at least for a little while. So we decided we'd bring you a show, a band we've been trying to get with for a little while here. They're from the Bay Area. They're called The Vex. And we hooked up with Mike, who is their bassist. He's kind of a bald dude with a beard from Oregon. Nice guy. Looks a little bit like a hippie. That's how the Pacific Northwest does things. But we had a pretty cool interview with them, discussing things such as getting punched, going to jail, anal rape. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Just trust me on that.

But before we jump into the interview, we are going to play a track off of their EP, which you guys can pick up at their shows or at their website, their MySpace, the whole nine. But we're going to play the second track off the EP, which is They Will Be Done. And then we're going to hop into the interview. So be sure to check it out.

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So, yeah, thanks for tuning in to Sound Scene Revolution. We are sitting here today in the practice space of The Vex. If you guys can all say hello, I guess. Hi, this is Mickey. This is Mike. And Justin. And I'm Tim's twin, so I'm saying hi for him. Can you just pretend to be Tim? I can do Tim. You can do double duty on that. You're nerdy to me. What's up, Riz? It's going to be the worst interview Tim ever had. What's up, Riz? All right, so if we could just, I guess you guys already introduced yourself. Just say what you do in the band and how long you've been playing, I guess. I'm the newest guy in the band. I play bass. That's me, Mike. And, gosh, I've been in the band for almost two years now. It's been, seems like a lifetime.

So you're not very new anymore then, I guess. But I'm still the new guy. Yeah. Got to kick somebody out, though. That was pretty fun. He's at the new guy to kick him out. The guy that got me in the band, I got to kick him out. Pretty good. We got to hear that later. We'll go into that story. My name's Mickey. I play drums. And Tim and I, the vocalists, we started the band in high school, kind of messing around, which was, I don't know, almost like eight years ago, I guess. A long time ago. Some days we'd have a practice, you know, or sometimes whenever once a year. There were times real heavily. It's just been on and off, you know. And that's Justin over to my left-age. And I played the guitar. I started out on bass, like, five years ago.

And then I switched to the guitar, like, two years ago. After you got out of juvie. After you got out of Mexican detention school, or whatever it was. What? Yeah, when I was, like, 16. Parents sent them to, like, a Mexican hostel school. No. They sent me to, like, this boarding school, but it was pretty much just, like, I camped on a beach in Mexico and then lived in, like, a forest in Canada for a while. What? Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was, like, a vacation for a year. And I didn't get a fucking, uh, can I say that on here? Yeah, yeah. You can say that. Yeah, you can say piss, shit, cut, fuck, balls, all the stuff you can't say on regular radio. Why is it whenever people find that out immediately, they take advantage?

They have to say the eight words you can't say on regular radio. Because we're so used to doing college radio shows around here. And they get so embedded in you not to say that stuff. That shit. You know, see, like, I said stuff instead of shit. Cut hair. Cut, fuck, bitch, ass, whatever. The only word you can say on regular radio is vagina. I was allowed to say, can I put my sandy dildo in your wet vagina on college radio. I can under, I don't even know if that's okay. I'm a little more offended by that. Yeah, I think it was, I was allowed to say all those words, but I wasn't allowed to use them in the same context. Interesting. You sound like muttly right now. So am I going to continue on with my story? Yeah, keep going.

Go ahead. You played bass, and then. That's about it, I guess it's done. Oh, yeah. Didn't you move to a guitar? Yeah, and then I moved to a guitar, and that's where I've been. That's where I met. All right. So you got this, I mean, maybe not as the four, three of you at the moment, but the band's been around for a while, huh? Well, there's history. Justin was a fan before he was in the band, so he's been friends with the guys since they made up the band. Yeah, I seen him at Radio Free Records on, like, Union, you remember where that was? Are you guys from around here? Yeah, from around here. Yeah, yeah, on Union, like, by that Happy Days Diner, there was that independent record store, Radio Free Records, and Vex played with the Forgotten, I think Monster Squad was supposed to play, right?

It didn't show up. Yeah, it didn't show up, but I saw the Vex, and, like, it was crazy, like, the whole store was packed, it was a tiny-ass store, you know, it was, like, a little bit bigger in this room, almost, you know, like, that's exaggerating, but kind of. Yeah. A little bit. And then the Forgotten played, and it blew up, and it was, like, cops, and, like, store got shut down. They found records all the way in, like, Campbell, you know, that blew up so big. But it was a rad-ass show, you know? There were at least 15 cop cars there, and helicopters, and kids running around.

Two, I mean, like, maybe one out of three people you know got arrested there. Yeah. You know, we're all just tons of kids in that parking lot. I don't know if you know that parking lot, just drinking out front, like, in this, like, parking lot, like on Bascom and Union. Yeah. That's, that's, I guess that's punk fucking rock, right? Yeah.

It's a wild hair of his ass to go outside and break a window next door. I broke my fair share of windows when I was a kid. Or a riot or something, you know, like, I broke a couple for you. Tim always seems to get a little naked. Yeah. What? I don't know. Yeah. You know, we're not gay like the Clifton's or nothing, but Tim, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll get naked. He's not, he's not afraid to party, that's for sure. That's true. He's still got a scar on his chest where some girl went up to grab him, scraped him, and started bleeding. What? I saw that last week, because he's still got that thing five years ago. From five years ago, he still has a scar on his chest. He's maimed. Some girls couldn't contain herself. That's, oh, passion.

Jaramillo. She wanted to get a piece of the Jaramillo.

That's such a, I don't even know where to go at this point, so. It was really off track. Pretty funny. So, I want to, I actually want to get back to, you were, you kicked somebody out of the band, Mike? Well, that's a, well, we all did. That's a long, that's, that's the story of how I became in the band, or, I'm from Oregon originally. That explains the beard. I like that. This dude, yeah, exactly. That explains the beard. Fucking Abraham Lincoln. This guy that was my roommate in Oregon, we were friends, I actually had to kick him out of that house in Oregon for being a bad roommate. Not a bad guy, but just a bad roommate, you know, one of those guys that doesn't hold his own. He was hella pissed at me for days, you know, we didn't talk.

I got a random call from him out of nowhere. He was probably drunk, I couldn't tell, but he was definitely driving. From Oakland, he said, to back home to Cupertino's, where he was, he had moved back down with his dad. Oh, really? That's when he, when he called you? Because he, he. I think I picture, I put it all together. Yeah, he's like, oh, my buddy in Oregon plays bass, like when we're thinking about keeping out Weedland. He described plot that I didn't even know. He, he had told me he was in these bands and this band, the Vex needed a bass player and I, it would be good for me to move down. And I was like, well, you know, that night, that day I'd come home from work in Oregon and to find my band that I was currently in completely, all the equipment that like our studio that was in my room was gone.

And it was, everything was gone and there was some notes, some totally horridly, you know, it was written upside down and backwards by my singer and my band. Just like, he was so pissed, you know, like breaking up the band over garbage because we were landmates on some land in Oregon and it was too much garbage on our side or something. We were the, a lot of, we were punk rockers and a venue and so my band broke up. It sounded like a good idea. I decided a month later just to bag my shit and move to San Jose. When I did and I moved down here and wasn't in the band and didn't have a job, had about 200 bucks and met all the guys and was like, he was like, yeah, yeah, just play it cool. Our bass player is flaky that we have right now.

He's a good guy. The old bass player, Steve Weedlin, we're like, you know, it was a weird situation, I guess, you know, like he, I was just in the right place at the right time. He, you know, he just, anytime I went to a Vex show from when I moved down here, he would kind of blow it and just kind of. Yeah. He thought that, he thought that he got kicked out of the band because you moved down here, but he was like already kind of predestined. It was, it was, it would have been something they had been thinking about or whatever and I realized that when I had come down here. So I tried out for that, not really tried out, but just kind of played with Justin. When we kicked him out of the band that day, we came to the practice studio to try out Mike and he was up in, it was our other room that we used to be in, not this one.

And we tried to open the door, like, what the fuck, we can't get it open, you know, it was like unlocked and everything. And he was like leaning up against it, I guess, getting head from his girlfriend. Yeah. One last time. Yeah. Yeah. He said something stupid, like, oh, I just wanted one last something there. I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? We live the glory days. Yeah. And then he's like, oh, you guys are trying out Mike, huh? I was already in the band. You know, they tried me out the night before. We were going to practice. Oh, is that what it was? Yeah. We all had our girlfriends with us and beers and other stuff. You know, we were ready to party. Like, I had tried out the night before, now I was playing in front of their girlfriends and if they approved, I was like in the band.

So.

I'm sure he was a little butthurt. Like, I saw him, you know, fuck, a month ago. We were having drinks. It was cool, you know? So, and now it was like the band was, I was in the band and the other guy, my friend from Oregon had another band. He's like the super, had this other screamo emo band. He screamed. He played bass and screamed in. They had a singer. So since I wasn't in the band. He didn't sing, it was all screaming. He's all, well, why don't you just play bass in this band too? I'll just go straight to screaming. We'll have this two singer thing and then like, we'll just work it out in the vex. I really wanted to be in the vex. The vex was more my style, you know? To the other band, it would have just been fun to do.

Like, I think I played one show with them, did a couple practices, but basically got a call on the same day from these guys and from that band saying, yeah, you're in the band, you're cool. And I was like, rad, you know? All of a sudden, now I'm in San Jose. I'm in two bands. Yeah. But then I realized I had about $12 and no job. Ouch. You know? So I was like, now then what am I supposed to do? You know? It's like, I have all these band practices every night of the week and all this shit.

I was like, all I had was a bass, I didn't even have an amp. I moved down here with my bass and like some clothes, you know? Ouch. And so I told the other band, I was like, you know, sorry, I made you kind of change your lineup around, but I'm not going to do it, I'm going to concentrate on this because they kind of kicked somebody out for me, you guys just kind of moved people around. They got super butthurt and it kind of worked out and they practiced in it. We moved them in here and they practiced in here with us for a while and everything was going good and then my friend got in another band. So now he was in the vex and this other band. Shocker. Yeah, this other band called the Shocker, that was Jennifer Finch from L7's other band.

So this is like some LA band and he's going to make all these hookups and do all this shit and we're just like, cool, we're like, right on, you know? And the way he puts it to us is like, you know, I'm going to make all these contacts for people for us and like, we don't deny it. We're like, fuck yeah, you are. You know, cool, we were supportive, you know? Yeah, for sure. His dad even tried to tell me, oh man, Nick, he was talking to Jennifer about you guys. They tried to feed us all those lines of shit, but we didn't care. Honestly, we're just like, whatever, let him go do whatever. We'll play without him if we have to. That's what his dad said like a month ago. Yeah, so we basically... That was recently.

Yeah, like trying to make us a thought field band. We put our whole summer aside and he went on tour in Germany with this other band. And the other band, his emo band, kind of like got butthurt about it and were all weird and like played a bunch of shows with the Phillies. They got all mad at him and we were still friends with him and he was just kind of like... We played one show without him, but he was already back from Germany. He was back and he had practiced with us once and we had set the show up thinking it would be cool, but he was like, I'm not really ready. And he had booked, his other band had booked a show that same night and they'd done this a lot. I get antsy in the band, so I'm the one that usually picks the confrontations with, you know, if the practice room is messy or if you double book with, you know, with Steve in the band, you know?

So they had done that and he had, I'm just going to go with this band and play this show because all I do is scream and that's fine. He showed up at our show and it was the best show we'd ever played. We had played at a four-piece because we had practiced all summer as a four-piece but never played a show. So we finally did it and it was fucking intense. It was rad. He showed up. He was having fun in the crowd. So we're just like, nah. So we had another practice with him. He just wasn't into it again and we could tell like we had another show coming up and then they booked another show that double booked on us. And he told me he was going to play our show. Don't worry about it. The day of, he calls and cancels.

I was like, whatever. So we go out to Santa Cruz and we play the show. It was super fun. You know, like he played his show. So then we are all, we talked about it though because we, he got mad. He called me saying, you guys don't play the show in Santa Cruz because I'm playing the show. Don't play without me all of a sudden. So I'm just like, Steve, we're not going to do that. You know, like we, you made us a deal. So don't make us back out. You're making us look like a fucking asshole. You know, there was a band coming all the way up from Long Beach to play the show. We said that for him, you know? Yeah. So he was like, whatever. So that was his, I think his way to, he knew we were going to kick him out. He's a, he's very non-confrontational.

He didn't want to quit the band. He had said to me, you know, like I was playing in punk bands when I was, you know, 14. I was like, kid, I'm over this shit. You know, he's all into his emo band. He told us image was almost more important than band practice one time when he was going to get his, he would cancel band practice to go get his hair cut and die. It took him four hours. Because it takes a long time because image is just as important as the music. More important. And we said it was all good with Whelan, but it's not all good with Muscatel. Yeah. And like, we had just finished recording our new EP. You know, he helped us record it. He was on the, he did a lot of the music, you know, like was there with us.

And no one talked shit about this guy before. The whole time. We were not netting him about the guy. Nothing. And then all of a sudden. He's a good friend of mine, a guy I've known for years. He's like trying to write songs about us. Yeah, I sent him an email when I had kicked him out of my house in Oregon. So he's going to steal us? What? Like, yeah. He came at us. I told him, I emailed him saying like, don't shoot the messenger, dude. You know, like, obviously you're not going to be in the Vex anymore. Yeah. Like, we had made a joke at practice when there was a pedal in here called a harmonizer pedal. Which when you hit it, it makes it sound like two guitars are doing solos. And a lot of our little punky solos are harmonized solos.

Yeah. And I was like, Steve's all, this is going to be my replacement. He kind of did it. So I emailed him, oh, you were right, dude. The pedal replaced you. We wrote your name on it. You know, like, just joking around. The funny thing is, the dude that owned the pedal actually gave it to me. Yeah, he's like, hey, you can have it. I don't use it, too. I try to figure it out. You know, we never ended it. Yeah, we don't use it, though. It just sits in my house. And we didn't hear anything back for a while. And this was like, you know, a month before our CD release. And we start putting out all these MySpace blasts and on our website and hanging up flyers for our CD release. We booked a show at Streetlight Records, you know, an in-store performance, all this shit.

We get an email, like, the day before the show from him saying he's going to sue us if we release the record because his track's on there. We don't have consent, but, like, I work at a record label and a music magazine, so I'm sitting in an office with all these guys. So I ask, well, how do I reply to this to all my friends? And it's just like, do they know? They've dealt with all this. It's like, so I replied to him the right way, you know, by saying, like, what you say. You know, like, he gave intent by recording and all the legal bullshit. Like, there was nothing he could do, you know? If we were to all of a sudden sell these 1,000 CDs and make a bunch of money, when you do all the math, we were in the negative.

We were losing money on the thing. He actually owes us still money now. He never paid for it. He never did this. Yeah, he never paid his share for the recording. You know, it's a bunch of, we were, we were, we didn't go into that. His royalties come out to negative $3,000 or whatever. We should sue him, motherfucker. He's sending that back, and then he comes back, I'm still, meh, you know, this. And we just kind of ignore it, and we leave it alone, and he goes away. So it's like, we've never replaced him. Now we're a four-piece. We just talked about it. We were joking earlier tonight, like, Justin's like, ah, it'd be rad to have another guitar player. I'm like, dude, that'd set us back a year, you know? Justin's like, that'd set us back five years, you know?

Like, it's just, it became really messy, and he's still around, and he plays, his other band still plays, but it's just, it sucks, because, like, he had this big dream of making it this big scene, and we had an apartment where all our bands would hang out, and everything was fun. That was pretty fun. It was a rad summer, like, the first summer I lived here, when I first got in there. Down on 7th Street. We played some fucking rad shows, and just down on 7th Street, right by the event center of Rutgers College, like, I could throw a beer and hit the college. And we weren't students, so cops would come out. Yeah, and if you'd seen this place, you'd be like, how does this many people hang out? We'd fill a driveway in an apartment complex with 150 people up their shows, and when cops would come, they would, I have an Oregon ID, they'd think I'm a fucking student.

And they finally showed up, this cop, finally, one night, I was blacked out drunk, it was my birthday, I don't really remember talking to the cop or anything, our power had been out for three weeks, the cop was super hot, like, I'm flirting with her, like, she's like, I've been to your house, like, six fucking times, what's your deal? So, she's like, are you a student? I'm like, no, I'm in a band. And she's just like, oh, shit, like, it finally all made sense to her, it made complete sense. And she's like, all right, all right, I'm gonna see what I can do to keep you out of jail tonight. Because her boss was there to take me to jail. They were done, they were done, writing me little tickets, like, and the next morning, I'm taking a shit the next morning, and I was like, damn, that was crazy.

And, like, I looked down, and her house was a pigsty, and there was this, like, thing with my social security number on it, and, like, all this shit, and I was like, what is this? And I was all complaining of noise and all this shit, and I kind of threw it back down, and I was like, what the fuck? And I walk out of the living room, and I was like, what happened? Steve's like, you almost went to jail, you were handcuffed, and you're like, you were fucked last night. And I was like, oh, wow, I don't remember any of this. Like, this is gnarly, but that'll never happen again. You almost went to jail, you almost got laid, but, yeah. Horrible. All right, so we're just gonna take a little break here, so your brain can recuperate from Mike's fucking ridiculously long story there that involved 40 different characters and three Keebler elves, but it was a good story, but I had trouble following it, so it took me a couple of times before I fucking figured it all out, so you may have had the same problem.

So we're gonna play another track off of the Vex's EP, which you guys can get wherever the Vex are. We're gonna play a track for, which is called Gold Teeth, so I hope you guys enjoy that. When we jump back into the interview, we'll talk all about more fun getting arrested, pornos, and the general type of fun that makes up a band like the Vex, so be sure to check it out.

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Most of the times you end up going to jail, you don't normally remember too much of it. I've never been to jail, lucky for me. I've been lots. You've been to jail lots? Yeah. What have you been to jail for? Should I ask? The last thing? Can I ask? Oh, they're all little things. The last one was that. He almost killed somebody with a car. Yeah, attempted vehicular manslaughter. What? That was something to hit him! That's not really a little thing. I don't even think that's a real word. Hey, you ever been to the Britannia Arms in San Jose? On El Camino? Is that what it's on? I drove through there. You know the back patio? If you were sitting back there when Mickey was out there one night, you'd have been dead. You drove into the back patio, Britannia.

You drove over the guy that was hitting him! He happened to be hitting him. No, Mickey got pepper sprayed and fucking took off. Punched by a guy that was eight of me. While he was driving away. Mickey got pepper sprayed and punched and then drove into somebody, basically. I mean, hit him. He jumped into the car. So, let's back this up. So, what did you get pepper sprayed and punched for that involved? Hit him in his car! See, that's the lame part. That's the gray area. Wasn't really drinking. I had two or three beers. My friend had too many. And the bouncer just kept... He walked out with his beer. Mm-hmm. And I was wondering what this commotion was. We were in a patio. And I see my buddy getting slapped around by this huge guy.

I mean, my buddy just talked. Oh, I just need to go in and get my ID. My friends are in there. I got my credit card in there. And the guy, every time my buddy John would go towards the door, he gets smacked. You know, hit around. Ouch. Open hand slaps. Kind of weird thinking of this huge guy, you know. And then, spent like 10 minutes trying to calm John down, saying that, you know, I'll go get it. And then I wasn't allowed to get it. And I started getting pushed around. It's like, well, we'd better just get out of here, you know. If we even had 10 people, I don't know if we could stop this guy. It's huge. My car didn't even.

But, so, we get in the car. And I got a Monte Carlo. And it's, you know, a little old school. It's 86. So, it's got T-tops and they're off. And it's super beefed up, too. It's like super fast. And it's really loud. And it's gnarly. So, we're in there. And I start the car. And my buddy gets some courage and stands up. He's kind of standing up. There's no top on it. And spits towards the guy. He says, fuck you. And he doesn't even hit him or anything. He comes out there, I mean, quicker than I could even hear John have that saliva hit the ground. He goes fast. And he starts throwing his punches and pepper spraying him. So, I put my car in drive and roar towards him. And he comes on my side. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how fast he got around that thing.

But he started punching and pepper spraying me. So, I blocked the pepper spray, you know, with my arm. It turned out to be a very bad idea. Let it go over my hair. I couldn't tell. So, he started punching me, you know, dodging. So, I put it in reverse. Backed up. Put it in the driver. And, you know, I went up the curb and hit over this huge cement garbage can and inside a little bit of the patio and peeled it out. And he's running after us. I was scared. He was going to catch up. And so, I started taking it down Blossom Hill. I see all these cop cars and sirens going towards the area where he's left. It's all crap with us at back streets. And my buddy's screaming and yelling because he's got pepper spray in his eye and everything.

He jumps in the pool. He's all flopping around. His mom's there trying to hold him. He's throwing punches. And my eyes started to tingle a little bit. I said, oh, I better dunk my head in there. All that pepper spray from my hair went all in my eyes and I couldn't see anything. Holy shit, dude. So, after a half hour, an hour, I decided, okay, I'm going to go home. But what I didn't know, I went to my girlfriend's house. I guess the cops, they went to my parents' house and said, Mickey was involved in this accident. We really need to see if he's okay. Is there any place he might be? You know, like lying to him to tell him, oh, he might be at his girlfriend. So, I was giving him the address. So, I pull up, park, all kinds of crazy back streets to get there.

And right when I got out of the car, I see lights on. And then I ran inside to tell Catrice I'm going to jail. And when I go out there, I can see the shadows. She has big, long, big windows up front and blinds. But you can see through them. And the cops with their guns out. Oh, my. You know? Because they thought you ran in to get a gun. Probably thought you ran in to get a gun, dude. And I said, I'm coming out. And, you know, I'm not going to cause a fuss. Right on that cement in my face. Oh, dude. Dragged me around. I guess they must have told them some hell of a story down there. Because they thought I was the, you know, most horrible person in the world. I was getting tossed around in the cars. Like you tried to hit somebody with your car.

Dragged around. You think you're tough, huh? You think you're real tough, huh? You're like, oh, no, dude. I was scared of my life. Oh, man. So I went to jail and, you know, did a whole thing where they find out a violent crime. And it's a felony. So, all of a sudden, like, you're, you know, you're a bad guy, extremely, you know. People are shoving around here. Oh, and they're waiting, you know, having to go to separate rooms. And then I get to go upstairs and time to get naked. It was a little intimidating. There was, like, three black guys there. I've been told they have bigger ones. Like, looking straight ahead and you, like, eight of us naked. Spread your asshole. They got the flashlight looking around in there and this and that.

And the dumb part about this thing is they get you in the jumpsuits and then they hand you your underwear. So when you're upstairs, a lot of guys, if you want to get that underwear, you got to take off all your clothes. It's just one zipper thing. It's like they do it on purpose. Oh, dude. You do it on purpose. Those sons of bitches. I'm never going to jail. I have to go out and they ended up throwing it out. But that's just one. When I got a DUI a little while ago, they were all nice to me compared to when I got that. DUI is just irresponsible, man. Oh, I got an assault and battery. And it's another thing where I was actually defending an ex-girlfriend who said she was getting raped. And I was in one getting punched.

But since they called the cops first, I was the one again. Yeah, I was going to say, you seem like a really mild-mannered, easy-going type of guy. That's why he's still not in jail because he always gets out of this shit because it's so nice. I was being safe in my DUI. I used to drink and drive for years all the time. Fine. Drove good. I've been pulled over at least eight times when I was under 21, maybe 18. And if they even smelt it, you know, automatic DUI right there. So even like that, I never really got it. I got a couple tickets just for speeding, but I was drinking heavily before, too. So for two years, I didn't drink and drive at all. I figured I'm going to push my luck here. And I do the DMV math.

They say a beer an hour, calculate it out. I've never been here with John Rice. 46 years, and we were there for a while. I was thinking, I'm fine. I didn't feel even drunk because we drink a lot more than six. If it's not a 24-pack, it's anywhere close to 30. Puking half of the time. No, I'm kidding. We're down to 12s now. We're nice and responsible gentlemen with girlfriends and future wives. Very good. I was thinking waking up on random stairs. There was barf all over there. So I had my couple, and I just blew right over the limit. DUI. See, being nice there, too. Didn't he say he didn't even want to give you? He didn't want to give me one, but a superior officer pulled up behind him, and then I was right by the book from then on.

He didn't even apologize that I was the nicest person they ever arrested. I'd like to meet your parents. They did a good job raising you. Oh, wow. That was nice. You know, I'm not a nice asshole to anybody, really. That's great. Except for the big guy. Except for the big guy who sprayed you with pepper spray. I tried to get him, but for years I told people that, well, I got pepper spray in my eye. I didn't know if I was in reverse or dry. And eventually, now that there's not much they can do about it, you're like, no, I tried to. And then, you know, buyers and possessions, those are just given to you because we're young and we drink. We drink a lot of those. Yeah. I think those are pretty common, though. So nothing too bad.

Now, you mentioned you guys have been thrown out of a few different, or like you're not allowed in certain venues. Some venues, yeah. We're banned from anywhere in Campbell, like the Gaslighter. Really? No-Go. Oh, man. San Jose Skate, a newer venue off of Blossom Hill by the Mall. My friend, a band that practices in here, has been trying to get us to play there, and the guys love the band. Their crowd's too gnarly. That was just stupid. Is this like for just stuff your fans have been doing? Yeah. Our fans are no different than anyone else's, though. And it's not even now that they're going crazy. They're young kids. They're young and they're drinking on the front. I think we're just unlucky in it. Yeah, we are.

We're very unlucky. That things happen to our shows. But then again, too, we promote a lot of heavy drinking, so. Yeah, we do. There's been like one time we played at the Gaslighter and we brought like, we thought it would be a fucking great idea to bring a couple of cases of cans of beer to throw out to the crowd. To throw out to kids. We just brought a 12-pack. You know, to throw it while we're playing. I think we just brought a 12-pack to throw out. But we do, you know. Halfway through, we're like, it's a. It's a free-for-all drunk fest with little kids drinking beers. Like, I full-on softball pitch a beer, like shotgun it next to me, and hit a kid square in the face, pushed up against the thing. And he's so pissed off.

He thinks he gets punched or something. And he looks at what he's got in his hand, what hit him in the face, and he sees that it's a beer, and he looks up at the stage. It was like the coolest thing that's ever happened to this kid in the whole fucking life. Like his man up from heaven. Yeah, dude, and he opens it up and he drinks it, you know. And like, I look over on stage and there's literally like this 8-year-old kid drinking a beer. You know, and I'm just like. They always sound like a bunch of nice guys. At that point, I'm like, oh, fuck. And I have a wireless little thing on my base, and I'm like, fuck. I run to the other side of the stage, and I'm kind of freaking out and playing. I'm like, I look back at this kid, and I'm all, dude, if a cop were to walk in.

So I'm like, if a cop were to walk in back there, we'd be fucked, you know. So I just run across the stage, and I kick the kid off the stage all the time. So he goes into the crowd all, you know, mellow, you know, stage dive or whatever. I look, I'm playing. I look at the kid. He fucking comes back on stage, looks at me, walks to my amp, grabs a bottle of beer, opens it, and just stands by my amp now because it's safer. But we're our girlfriends and shit are hanging out, and she's drinking my beers. And my girlfriends and stuff, they're just hanging out. They don't know to tell him stop or anything. He's sitting there getting trashed. He's wearing a Vex shirt somewhere. He bought it at the show. I see him an hour later leaving with his dad tanked, and his dad's just, like, yelling, I'm getting into, like, a brand-new Mercedes.

I was like, oh, my God. He emails us on MySpace probably six months later. You know, it doesn't even look like him. He looks like a young guy now, you know. He was actually an underdeveloped 14-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he wasn't eight. He was, like, a 14-year-old kid. Yeah, but he was, like, turning his feet. I don't feel that now. He was 14. He was dropped, hair started growing. He was a man. But he was literally, he was wearing a small shirt, and it was huge on him, baggy on him. Oh, my God. This is a girl's shirt. Well, so where are you guys still allowed to play around here if someone's trying to book you? Oh, bars. Yeah, we play a lot at the caravan. Almost not anymore, though. Johnny V's. Well, the caravan's so sweet to us that we like to play there, like, you know, just, it's so awesome, like, once a year, twice a year.

But then there's this new place, Johnny V's, is awesome. We've been playing there a lot. We tried to play the cave, and we got banned from there. So that's a no-go. Was that the night we were, you guys got banned from the cave? After that show, I guess some of our fans graffitied the church or something. So, and there was even cops there and shit. So it's like. What show was this? The first on New Year's Day. No, the horror movie was our show. I know. We were just asked to play the headline of that show. These are the shows we put on. These are the shows we get asked to play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we don't have a guarantee, you know. I was going to say. We have a good draw, but. Because the cave is no cursing, no blasphemy, no alcohol.

Yeah, we were good at that. We were good at that.

Oh, excellent. Well. San Francisco, we were playing at the Parkside. That's fun. Blank Club, you already mentioned that? Yeah, the Blank Club's been good to us. Yeah. Those are like the two staples in downtown, mostly. It's the Caravan and the Blank. That's it. That's all that's left. It used to be a lot of Characters Club. Yeah, Characters Club. That was so awesome. That was an incredible place, especially when we were just starting out, and you get up on the stage, it's actually a lot bigger than a foot. They mic the drums and everything. You get a sound check. We're like amazing. Oh, wow. What are these speakers around us? Those are your monitors.

This is totally new for like a new band like that. Tells you I don't need to bring a PA. That was incredible. Yeah, I still have videos from four years ago when we played there with like the Forgotten and Pressure Point or something like that. Four years ago. Huh? They've been out for a while, right? What's up? They've been closed down for a while, I think. I guess four or five, yeah. Yeah, because it was right when I came back, so. All these guys were in a porno, a DI. Yeah. What? We had to be extras. We were hanging out in L.A., and they said something about a free DI show. We're all, wow. Yeah, you guys like DI, and then they hit us a flyer that says, XXXDI video shoot. Well, maybe it's XXX Records. That's their record company.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're hanging out there, and we're in this waiting room signing some waivers. We're all, this is kind of weird. They haven't been to a show like this before, you know? And you just hear these girls all of a sudden orgasming. We're looking all around each other. Naked girls are walking around eventually. Yeah, the girl comes on Naked Girl. So, what are we going to do here? I was like 18, it was like right around my 19th birthday, I think, too. And like, oh, that producer guy. No, they were giving us beer. Yeah. But the. They were getting you guys drunk at DI was playing. Yeah, they were getting us drunk. And then all of a sudden they looked around, and there's like girls sucking guys' dicks and like all this weird shit going on.

They took away the beer at first, though, because the bass player of DI punched his girlfriend, or the drummer or something, and she called the cops or something. So, like, anyone under 21 couldn't drink or something, and we were all under 21 at the time. Wow. And they remember, too, we played with Manic Hispanic at the Blank Club just recently, and the bass player in Manic Hispanic is in DI. And he's like, I still have my Vex shirt. How are you guys running that porno with us? So, pretty much, they played, though. Do you got a copy of me? Yeah. Justin has a copy of me. I have one in my house. There's a raddest scene everywhere. Mickey's rocking out and watching the band, and then you see Mickey, like, look over his shoulder to see what's going on behind him.

And then he turns back around to watch the band, and you see him realize there's people fucking behind him. And he turns right around and gets a better view, and you're just sitting there, and you're watching the people do it. It's so rad. Yeah, so bad at a party, he called me out on it. I saw you in a porno. Yeah. I was right at that. How often do you get to hear that, though? I know. No, it was great, though. It was free beer. Rad band. Yeah. And rad band, yeah. And everybody was punk or chicks. Yeah, and they just kept playing, like, a bunch of songs, and, like, you know, they're fucking, they would have sex, and they would have sex over here. They would have, like, film the chicks doing it. Oh, oh, the great part is that the skinhead guy.

Oh, yeah. He's going up to us, are these, how are you supposed to wear these? Yeah, the actor, the porno actor's asking the punkers how to dress punk rock. And we, uh, cuffing the pants and the boots, and he had braces on, you know, suspenders. He's, oh, and you guys keep these, uh, off or on? Yeah, and that one chick with the blue mohawk, they had her all done up as a little punk rocker chick. Yeah, it was pretty funny. Oh, that's, oh, that's definitely one of the weirdest stories I think we've had on here. All right, well. It's in a porno. Yeah, there you go. I think we're going to start wrapping it up. We've got about a half hour or so of shows. So, uh, you guys got anything coming up? Uh, you guys want to make known, websites, shows, releases, anything?

The only shows we've got booked right now are this, well, this Friday in Sacramento. We've got April 1st in Sacramento at the Junta. Uh, and, uh, April 9th in Gilroy at the Crazy Coyote with Sad Boy Sinister, Last Chance, Something for the Broken, and Touch My Rash. Excellent. And, uh, other than that, I don't know. Oh, Parkside. Oh, yeah, the Parkside made 12 at SF at San Francisco, and hopefully a new record within the next year. That's a good deal. Full length. That'd be cool. Yeah, you can check out our EP. Uh, yeah, you can go to, uh, orangepillerecords.com and pick up our EP online, or, and you can get a link from that through our MySpace, just, uh, myspace.com slash thevex or thevex.com. Or you can pick it up at Streetlight Records.

At Streetlight Records in San Jose. It's the only place where you can buy it besides maybe, I think Amoeba probably still has some in San Francisco because nobody knows where they are. You can buy them on our shows, which we don't charge any. Yeah, come up just for a show, tell us you're going to buy a CD, and we'll give it to you. How's that? Yeah, that's how the way's been going. You're willing to pay money for this? Here you go. So, that could be really good. Well, we'll make sure, make sure to make note of that. All right, well, I want to thank you guys for taking the time to sit down and talk to us. Yeah, thanks a lot. Hope we didn't botch up his interview too much. No, it was great. Hopefully we'll see you, uh, sometime soon then.

All right. All right, man. So, I hope you guys enjoyed our little interview this week. Uh, Vex, really good band, nice guys. Not sure I'd want to see any of them in a porn, but, uh, you know, hopefully, God willing, I'll never have to do that. So, again, if you guys got comments, questions, recommendations, you can hit us up at soundscenerevolution at gmail.com, our comments section, or you can check us out on MySpace. I think it's like myspace.com backslash soundscenerevolution, uh, tomsucks.org, edu, html. I don't know. But you can find us. We're pretty, we're pretty easy to find. And we have, I think, about a dozen friends now. So there's at least six of you out there listening right now, which is pretty fucking awesome.

So, be sure to tune in next week. We have some exciting things supposedly in the works. We can't say anything about it now, because chances are we'll fucking jinx it. But it should be good news for everybody who likes music, and, uh, maybe even people who like Mexican food. There's always a little bit of hope on the horizon. So, before we take off, we're going to play one last track off of their EP, which is called, uh, The Vex's EP, and, uh, the song is called Beer Camp. And they said they should hope to be recording later this year, so, uh, keep your eyes out. Check out the local Streetlight Records, the Rasputins, the Amoebas, uh, the Bargain Bands, and, uh, Garage Sales, wherever they sell fucking CDs.

You're probably likely to find it. So have a good week, and we'll see you next time.

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