Interview with Dr. Know - Podcast 34

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Soundcine Revolution. Yeah, en Espanol, please, for the people in Oxnard. We're Mexicans who can't speak Spanish.

What's going on? Thanks for tuning in to Soundcine Revolution. Sorry we took a week off last week to celebrate Labor Day, because I'm part of a unionized labor organization, and Sound Guy Nairman is a lazy ass. He just likes to take days off. So we're back this week, and we are back with a very special interview with a very special band hailing out of Oxnard, California, which is more than just a really cool name to say. We, of course, sit down with the well-known and world-renowned Dr. No, featuring Brandon Cruz of a late 70s TV, or early 70s TV show, I suppose, and, of course, the singer for a couple of years with the Dead Kennedys. It's a pretty fun little interview, pretty informative. If you're a fan, it's a good way to get some more information on what they're up to now.

If you're not a fan, it's a good way to catch up on a band who's pretty well-known. They established the term nardcore, which is way, way more fun to say than hardcore. So you should check it out. Fun interview. And first up, winner of the Wilhelm Scream contest dealie. This winner will not only receive a copy of Wilhelm Scream's The Benefits of Thinking Out Loud, they also get a fucking fantastic Wilhelm Scream beer cozy, which can be used to put your balls in if you don't drink beer. So, the winner is Chris L. from Redmond, Washington, our friend in the Pacific Northwest. I'm sure you will have fun playing that CD on an acorn and a pine cone, whatever you guys have there. So, before that, or later, we're going to have a Dr. No giveaway for a copy of the Best of Dr. No in a sticker package handed to us by the one and only Brandon Cruz.

And we'll give that away later in the show. But before that, we have the interview and the songs. First song is off the Best of Dr. No. We're going to be playing Fistfuck because it is a Dr. No classic. And in the interview, Brandon Cruz even mentions people get pissed when they don't play it. So we're going to play it right here and then go to the interview. Check it out.

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and favorite breakfast cereal, I guess. I don't know. Some shit like that. What? Say what you do and what you like. All right. I'm Guyark Onag, and I play the guitar, and I eat cocoa pebbles.

My name's Rick Contreras. I play drums, and I like fruity cocoa puffs. All right.

G5, God 5. Oh, never mind. I thought we were playing bingo.

That's later. He smile, and I play bass. My name is Zeus Cruz, and I sing. All right. But some people call me Brandon. Yeah. Well, we'll figure it out along the way. So, I guess the best way to get started is a brief history as you can, because, I mean, you guys have been around for 25 years now? 25 years? Yeah. So, it's not going to be brief, but, you know, kind of a brief summation of the band up to this point.

My parents came from Mexico in 1949.

That's as quick as it gets. The band formed in 1981. Quick, help me, Brandon. With Kyle Toucher, Robin Cartwright, E-Smile, and a succession of singers ending up with me. They included Ron Baird from Stalag 13, Joey Pena, and Rick Heller, who was our second drummer. But somehow they ended up with me.

George Michael. We kicked George Michael out way early. It wouldn't have worked out. Did you hear he got busted again? You got busted in England for having sex in a bush? What? I know. Luckily, I ran. A couple of months ago. I didn't get caught. That's all you can. Public sex is no good because it's really hard to run with. You've got your pants down and the boner going. It limits your mobility, really. It actually breaks the kind of wind for me and I run faster. It's kind of an aerodynamic movement there. I have a needle dick, so it works out just fine. A needle dick. Oh, you said it. Not me, so that's how it is. So you guys, what was it? In 2003, you guys sent out kind of a retirement breakup kind of notice? We kind of, well, it was right after I quit Dead Kennedys, and I wasn't quite sure if Dr.

No was going to continue, and so I did post something on punknews.org that the band was going to take a break, but I think a few weeks later I followed it up with Just Kidding. It was just kind of a transition time for me after coming down from doing that stint with DKs, and I didn't quite know what I wanted to do. But the band was still, you know, it never really broke up. I just kind of wanted to take some time and see how big my kids had gotten since I'd been on the road for three years. Oh, wow. So we, yeah, we broke up for two weeks. Yeah. Actually, I broke up with the band for two weeks, and then we kept going. Cool. How old are your kids, if you don't mind me asking? 11 and 6. Oh, wow. Do they know, I'm assuming they're old enough now they know that you, you know, sing in a punk band and stuff?

Yeah. My daughter, the 6-year-old, she says that she, her life will be complete when she meets the crew, because she already knows the band. But we don't have a crew, so. All you've got to do is hire one for one, you know, one show. I told her she could be the crew when she gets older. She's happy with that. My daughter, she's two and a half, and she will be the next Dr. No guitarist. You've got to start them young. Get the talent going. Fair enough. So, oh, I was going to, you mentioned your stint singing for the Dead Kennedys. How did that come about? Did they just ask you about that, or? It was a weird roundabout way in, this goes back away, it's kind of a lengthy story, but I'll shorten it up as well as possible.

I was at a party in 95, and DH Pellegro and Steve DePace were there, and Steve's the drummer of Flipper, and Pellegro, of course, is Dead Kennedys. And Bruce from Flipper had broken his back in a car wreck, and they were just finishing up a tour. They had three more gigs to do in L.A., and Pellegro came up to me and said, you know Flipper songs, right? And I said, oh, hell yeah, I love those guys. So, he walked over to Steve and said, Steve, you know Brandon, right? Yeah, yeah, we played together years and years ago, and I was a huge Flipper fan, and he said, so do you want to do it? So, we recorded some rehearsals, and it sounded all right. So, I did the three gigs for them, then flash forward to like 2001, and I'm talking to DePace on the phone, and he said, you hear Dead Kennedys won the lawsuit against Jello, and they got the rights to do everything again, and they're going to do a record release called Mutiny on the Bay at the Key Club.

I said, really, who's singing for them? And he said, oh, they're asking Keith Morris and Iggy Pop and just, you know, tons of like really big time folks. And jokingly, I said, well, if that falls through, tell them to call me. The next day, DH called me and said, you want to go to San Francisco and meet the guys? And I couldn't believe it. I thought it was a joke. Until he showed up to take me to the airport. Went up, rehearsed some songs. Actually, the first song Ray started was Police Truck, and I just stood there looking at him going, this is the fucking Dead Kennedys. And then he looks at me, and he goes, are you going to sing or what? And so we did it, and we learned like seven songs, went to the Key Club in L.A., played the show to a lot of skeptics.

But a booking agent was in the crowd, and he came backstage and said, do you guys want to go to Brazil? And we all kind of had a little talk, and nobody had thought about doing anything more than the one show in L.A., and we hopped back in the studio, and I learned more of the songs, and two weeks later, we were in Brazil, and never quite stopped touring until I broke my collarbone and separated my shoulder in Birmingham, England, about three years later. How did you do that, if you don't mind me asking? I fell off the stage. Don't do it. Yeah, the lights went dark, and I tripped over a monitor, and I ended up at the bottom of the stage on the ground behind the barricade, and a bouncer grabbed my arm and pulled me back up, and I was pretty tweaked, so I finished five more shows wearing a sling, and there was a lot of crap going on.

The set list hadn't changed in three years. We weren't writing new material, and I was just missing my family, and we'd squeezed in a couple of Dr. No tours with Daigle abortions and stuff, and gone up and down the coast, up to Canada and back a couple times, and I really wanted to do more Dr. No stuff, and Dead Kennedys, for me, was just kind of over. I'd done what I wanted to do, toured the world, and surfed and skated and sang punk rock, and sent a pretty good message out to people who had never heard it before, or if they had, it was only on record. Yeah. So it was time for me to leave, and I left, and I'm still friends with the guys, but Biafra wasn't real happy about me doing it in the first place, but as soon as I quit, one of the first phone calls I got was him saying, what happened?

I didn't really tell him what had happened, I just said I quit, and now I probably talk to Biafra more than anybody. That's cool. I was going to say, did it bother you at all? Because there was, one of the largest critics, it seemed like, was Jell-O, because even in the last album, Sig Howdy, where it has those dumb punk kids will buy anything, it kind of mentions you singing for the Dead Kennedys. Was that hard at all? Yeah, he called me and goes, you know, after the fact, I kind of did this lyric that you may not be happy with, I'm like, I don't give a shit, you know, you've called me much worse in public and in print and, you know, radio and whatever, so it was what it was. I did it because I felt strongly about the message, Dead Kennedys had a lot to do with me when I was a young punk and, you know, growing up and learning about what politics were all about and, you know, studying really great front men and it was a real honor to be able to go up there and sing the songs that he had written.

And I sang him from the heart and I did it because I believed in him, not because I thought I was going to make a lot of money or because I was going to be a rock star or anything, because it's punk rock and there are no rock stars, but certain people have been elevated to a pedestal that's kind of ridiculous because in the old days, four guys would walk out of the audience, get up on stage, play, and then hop back in the audience and then four more guys would go up and play and that was black flag, circle jerks, middle class, fear, whoever, you know, there were no rock stars and there shouldn't be still, that's kind of one of the things about punk rock is that anybody can do it and anybody should do it if their heart's in the right place.

I felt mine was and still is, so that's why I did it. Cool. Even after all the criticism that, I mean, certain people have thrown at you after the Dead Kennedys thing, would you have done it? I mean, if knowing all that, would you have done it again? Not like now, but for the first time. Well, right when I was approached to do it, there were a lot of people at the party and they immediately started telling me, no, no, don't do it. Dead Kennedys are sacred. And Flea was one of the people that walked up and said, no way in hell should you do that. Dead Kennedys mean too much to me. Punk rock means too much to me. And I looked him right in the eye and said, well, why aren't you still in fear? And he shut up.

You know, I did it because I wanted to do it and I wasn't doing it for anybody else but, you know, myself. So, you know, fuck everybody else. It was a personal thing and I wasn't doing it to please anyone. Very cool. Well, I mean, that's probably the only way to go about a situation like that and come out, you know, with anything but, you know. Yeah, I took enough shit over the internet and in person from people that were supposedly my friends and, you know, it kind of helped me weed out the people that were talking shit and the people that really believed in me and knew that I could go up there and do it and not make an ass out of myself or the band. You know, I knew if I would cheapen the band, I wouldn't do it.

Yeah. And I felt I did a decent job. And the guy who's doing it now does a great job too, Jeff Penalties. Yeah. He's a great guy. I think he's better in his new band, Black Fag. They're like a pseudo-gay cover band. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're fucking hysterical. He sounds more like Jell-O when he does Black Fag than he does Dead Kennedy stuff. Dead Kennedy stuff. Yeah, I can't please everyone. One of the things that keeps coming up, at least in my mind, is you guys were one of the original bands who coined the phrase nardcore, right? Am I getting that right? Well, actually, the man who coined the term nardcore is sitting right next to me. That's Ismael Hernandez. Oh. It rhymes with hardcore. So I heard. So I've been told by certain people.

Is there any sort of definition you would go with that? Just our friends at the time, that's all. Just all our friends. Yeah, we were from Oxnard. Yeah. And he said it as a joke. And Tony Cortez from Melry Pugh ran with it. They wrote a song called Nardcore. And Ismael used to write the O and the X symbol, what, on your peachy folder in 72? Yeah. So it just kind of grew out of that. And it kind of was a joke at first. And then people took it seriously. And the scene was so strong in Oxnard with Aggression, Us, Stalick 13, False Confession, Ory Pugh, who else?

Sir Thungle.

The Danny Hanks Power Trio. There were amazing bands that came out of that scene. And a lot of them are still around. You know, we're all, well, Ismael and I are in our 40s, and we've known these guys for 25, 26 years, and we're all really good friends. Cool. Except for the people we hate.

Which is only one of them. And Kevin Lemberg will remain nameless. Oops! No, we like Kevin. Fair enough. There's a lot of bands right now that are from that area that somehow have kind of picked up the, I don't want to say, I don't know, term or genre. That, I don't know, like bands, have you heard of bands like No Motive and stuff that are currently from that area that people call Nardcore? Do you guys have any feelings towards that? One way or the other? If they're from the area, and they've hung around, and they've been to shows, and they've thrown shows, and they've, you know, dealt with all the shit that we've dealt with. Because, you know, jocks used to beat us up and chase us and heckle us, and, you know, jocks and cowboys and all, just anybody in Oxnard that wasn't a punk just hated us.

You know, we got thrown lettuce, people threw lettuce at us in a, you know, Ralph's right by the beach that we all grew up on and played at. Lettuce? Because we looked, you know, different. And this guy's, this guy's daughter was a punk rocker, and he was mad at us because we turned her on to drugs. We had no idea who the hell she was or who he was, but, you know, people call No Motive Nardcore, but in, in print, they will say they aren't a Nardcore band. And I respect that, because they had little to do with the formula years of the scene, and then when it kind of had a resurgence later on with bands like Burning Dog and Missing 23rd, and Annihilation Time, and what was Forrest's band? Caught Off Guard, and Ill Repute kind of carried the flag for a long time.

If it wasn't for Tony Cortez, Nardcore would probably be in a pretty sad state. But there's so many young kids that are still really adamant about it, about it being a scene and it being a community. And it's, it's a really great punk community because it was basically 75% minority, you know. I mean, most of us are Mexican or Filipino or black or whatever, and, you know, the main guys in the scene were, were not white. And when we'd go to L.A., and, you know, it really, we were a bunch of hit kids from a beach community, you know, with farms in our backyards. But we kind of knew what was up because we grew up in such a diverse area, and nobody knew what color was. I mean, we could tell what colors were when we saw them, but it didn't matter what the race of a person was.

It mattered if they were, you know, a punk. But that's all that mattered.

All right, so thanks for sticking around. We're going to have another song up from Dr. No. Before we jump into that, I want to remind you, we had the contest for the Chuck Reagan live CD, which is a version that Chuck's wife recorded when he opened for Greg Graffin at the Troubadour in L.A. What we're going to do is we had so many people who were interested in that, and we got the okay from Mr. Reagan. We're going to be contacting those people on what we're going to be doing regarding getting them that CD. It's all Chuck Reagan approved, so we're happy with it. So, if you want to get some hands on some Chuck Reagan material and you're not already aware, he's going to be doing a 7-inch of the month through No Idea Records.

You can check them out at noidearecords.com. And it's about $40. It gets you 7 7-inches, a CD, and a bunch of other cool stuff. So if you want to get more Chuck Reagan solo stuff, check that out. It's a good way to get your hands on it. So, we'll be right back with more Interview with Dr. No, where Brandon Cruz calls you a pussy, because you use the internet, and a couple of other things, but mostly Brandon Cruz just calls you a pussy. So you don't want to miss that. That'll be the highlight of your day. But before that, we're going to play another track off their best of. We're going to be playing Circle of Fear, and yeah, this is it.

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Now that it's kind of, I mean, especially it's been so commercialized to the mainstream, do you think it's easier for kids growing up these days? Yeah. It's pathetic. They don't have to deal with a tenth of the shit we dealt with, but, you know, it is what it is. You can download anything you want now. You can find out who the bands are on the internet. When we wanted to find out what was going on, we either had to go to the gigs or, you know, just search music bands with, you know, import records and used records, and it was a lot harder back then to connect with other punks, and now you can just get on and talk to somebody in fucking Botswana. Right. So. Do you think that it's helped the scene, or do you think, like, the advance in technology and stuff has kind of, like, watered it all down a little bit?

Very diluted. Yeah. My feeling is that it's really diluted the scene because the underground has been brought above ground, and, I mean, I'm not a fucking punk policeman or anything, but I don't remember anybody ever saying that that was okay. Yeah. And I'm kind of of the mindset that it's not okay and it should stay underground because that's where pretty much most of us belong. Fair enough. One of the things I want to ask you guys is, I was reading about, reading up on you guys, making sure I didn't ask, you know, anything to repeat, and I kept coming upon an album called Father, Son, and Holy Shit that is supposed to be recorded but hasn't been released. Is that true? Do you guys want to speak about that?

Craig?

That album sucked. It's an album that we recorded and ended up sounding like a demo, so we never released it. Do you have any plans or urge to re-record it, make it sound any better? Some of the songs will be re-recorded, but not all of it. Yeah, there was a song in particular I wrote that they will never play again. Never let the singer write.

That's good, though, that you guys have enough of a relationship where you can kind of sit down and go, that song that you wrote, not so good. Probably don't want to go with that one. Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it. I heard it a bit differently. I'd try and throw it in the set list and surprise them with it. They'd just go right over it. You're like, what about the song? No, no, we're past that now. Yeah, we're running short on time. Look at the sound man saying two more. That's cool. Do you guys have any plans for recording in the future or just kind of as it gets the time? Yeah, actually, we're writing a new album right now, actually. We've been writing a new album for five years, but we're really writing a new album now.

Is this the one that's supposed to be coming out on Malt Soda eventually? Maybe. Yeah, we're a little iffy about what the hell we're doing with it. Rick is our new drummer. He's been with us for just a short time. That's one of the reasons why we haven't put the album out. It's because of drummer problems. So I think now it's pretty much set. So I think we'll be putting it out pretty soon. So hopefully we can get it done. Well, it's really hard to write new material because Craig writes like math rock. He thinks he's in Rush or something. And he'll play a song and we don't record it at rehearsal. And then the next rehearsal, he doesn't remember exactly how it went. So then it's rewriting all over again. And I don't even go to rehearsal.

Because I work at night and they rehearse at night. So I'm just going to let him record it. And when it's done, I'll write words and finish it. Actually, he met our new drummer on stage. That's right. Yep. It's nice to meet you. I walked up to a gig and I was like, oh, this is the guy. Okay, cool. Let's see what you got. You were all excited. You thought you finally had roadies and stuff. And he's like, no, I'm the new drummer. Pretty much. I was like, here, carry this. He's like, dude, I'm the drummer. It worked out all right, though. Oh, he's great. He's amazing. Awesome. It's too bad that we have had so many delays. And it's not just drumming issues. It's the songwriting and the direction we want to go in. And we were talking to Scott Hall from Pig Destroyer about producing.

And all of a sudden, the word got out that Dr. No was going, you know, Pig Destroyer style and agoraphobic nosebleed. And it's like, no, we're not going to be a band like that. We're not signing to Relapse. I love those guys. They're two of my favorite bands out there. But I doubt we could ever sound like that. Who the hell started saying that anyway? Huh? I got all these people coming out saying, you guys are going to be grindcore now? I know. I heard that, too. And I'm like, what? You should do one song and just put that out there and let people see how that goes. And then nothing else like that for the rest of the album. But, yeah, we have no idea what the new album is going to sound like until we record it.

That's good, though. Keep people guessing. It changes and changes until it's recorded. But hopefully sometime, eventually, one day, there'll be a new album. The album's tentatively titled Killing for God. And, you know, we're just trying to mesh together as the four of us into a band again. And, you know, when we play live, we do basically what the crowd comes to hear. We throw a couple of new ones in there once in a while, but they kind of stand there looking at us like, play Fistfuck, play Fistfuck. And, actually, we didn't play it a few gigs ago, and not many people were happy about that. So I think we're doomed to play that song forever. There are worse songs to play forever. No, there's not. No? That's the worst song ever written by a punk rock band, I think.

Oh, man. I can't say that. But you could always be Journey, and you could be doomed to play Journey songs for the rest of your life. I would rather sing a Journey song than Fistfuck at this point. Oh, I don't know. We'll see. That's what you guys should do. Throw a Journey song in your next set and say, that's why we can't play that song. We had the Journey cover. It took up too much time. That's true. Or we'll just do Freebird.

There's no amount of money I can tell you what I would pay for that, but it would be a lot. Kind of wrapping things up here, because I think we're running low on time. But you guys started doing this when you were how old? It was 25 years ago, so early 20s, late teens? I was 7 when we started. Seems like that. No, I was, what, 19? I don't know. I'm 44, so. Yeah, about 19. So you were 18 because I was 19. Did you guys ever think, you know, in a million years you'd be doing this 25 years later still? No. Uh-huh. No. No. I knew I'd probably still like the music and go to shows, but still performing it. Yeah. And actually to people who still enjoy it, no. No way in hell, but some people just, you know, stay drunk enough to stick around.

It's great. And that, if anything, will hopefully prove to be the longevity of punk, is people staying drunk enough just to stay there. But, um. Not that we're condoning alcohol use, but. It doesn't hurt. It helps for a Dr. No gig. It enhances the experience. Um, all right, before we, uh, uh, wrap this up, is there anything you guys want to plug? Shows, websites, uh, benefits, anything coming up that you guys want to talk about? Uh, we got a MySpace page, join it, I guess. By the way, you gotta change the drummer. Oh yeah, we gotta put Rick's picture on there, it's got our old drummer on there. Yeah, we, I just looked at that to get, you know, kind of an updated info on it. Then he showed up and I was like, oh, who is this guy?

Yeah. He's totally unprepared for that. Yeah, we, we, we don't have, we don't have Nick anymore. He's, he's in three bands now. He's a little band whore. Oh wow. He's only 17 though, so he's got a long punk rock career ahead of him. 17 is when you can be in three bands. The older you get, the harder that becomes.

Yeah, that's very true. So, got the MySpace, uh, any shows coming up or anything like that? Uh, there's a Narcotics Anonymous gig in the South Bay that we do every year that's coming up in November. L.A., South Bay. South Bay, whatever. Yeah. Because we're in the South Bay right now. So L.A., South Bay area. Yes, Los Angeles. It depends on who you would talk to on whether they would define this as a South Bay. For us, maybe. Yeah, and, uh, I don't know, we're just, uh, mainly concentrating on doing the new album. Uh, take gigs as we can get them. We've got a new booking agent that has gotten us some decent shows, so we'll see what, what that leads to. I'd rather kind of take a live break and, and write this record and get it fucking out there.

And then, uh, then we can play songs nobody knows to, you know. It's always the best. To a bunch of 15-year-olds that don't know the difference. Because our crowd's getting younger and younger, which is pretty cool. That's good, though. It's like my son's friends are coming to see us play now. That's good, though. Keep kids interested. They're the ones with the money, too, so find that out. Yeah, too bad we don't sell any merchandise.

Just gotta get a flashy logo design with barbed wire. I don't know. We recommend people make their own shirts. It's very cool. That's probably the only... Until we, until we come up with new ones. Until you come up with better designs. All right. Well, awesome. I want to thank you guys so much for taking the time. And, uh, good luck with everything. And hopefully, next, whenever, we'll see, uh, the new album from you guys. So good luck with that. Thanks a lot. Rock on, Don Dokken. All right. Well, that's a wrap on the interview. And, like I said, we have a contest where you can win the best of Dr. No. And a couple of stickers from the infamous Dr. No. Uh, how do you win? Well, I hadn't really thought about that.

Well, obviously, what you're going to do is you're going to send us your name, address, pertinent information to soundscenerevolution at gmail.com. Put Dr. No as the subject line. And, uh, well, Dr. No, of course, is the name of an infamous Bond villain. I want you to give me a name for a Bond villain or a Bond girl. You know, like, they all have names like Pussy Galore and Octopussy and Vagina Monologue. So, uh, pick one for a Bond villain or a Bond girl and include that with your name and information sent in to us with Dr. No contest in the subject line. And we will hook you up with the Dr. No CD and some stickers. And, uh, I don't know, maybe some other shit. We got some crap laying around the office.

Coming up next week, we have an exciting interview that you're not going to want to miss. It's probably likely to offend everybody, uh, but that's what makes it so fucking cool. Uh, so enjoy and, uh, tune in next week and, uh, stay cool, I guess. Oh, yeah. Reminds me. Sound Guy Nairman reminded me. Because I fucking suck at my job. So, closing track, we're going to be playing Mr. Freeze, uh, because it's a fucking Batman villain and it was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movies and it gets no cooler than that. So check it out and, uh, tune in next week.

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