8.04.2005
You ever wonder why Rod Sterling had that evil grin?
An interview with the Sun City Girls, August 14, 1984, Sacramento, CA
Back when I was teenager, I had a fanzine, Sacramento's first. First it was called Spamzine, later Spamm. It was a cut and paste zine with interviews of local and touring bands, record reviews and rants. The reviews read something like "An excellent example of quality radness" (in reference to Venom's At War with Satan) or "sounds like alot of experimental noise to me, witch isn't too bad" (Flux of Pink Indians' The Fucking Cunts...). My younger brother would help me out with the interviews and we'd ask such probing questions as "What are your influences?" and "How is the tour going?" We had a standard question about cows that every band would get asked. I'd get one done and run over to the local print shop and get 300 printed up for $100 (which seemed like thousands back then). Then I'd take them to shows and make my brother and his friends sell them.
Of course, one of the perks of doing a zine was getting records in the mail for review. Unlike today's zine editors, I'd spend all day Saturday mailing out sample copies of Spamm to record labels asking for review copies and if they wanted to take out an ad (I think ads were $5). Soon I was on the mailing lists of SST, Placebo, Subterranean, and other labels. The pleasure of receiving a package from Subterranean with both the Negative Trend 12" and Flipper's No Fishing is one hard to match. Or, when out of the blue, Independent Project Records sends a promo of Savage Republic's Tragic Figures? My god, I'd never heard anything like it? It is a record I cherish to this day.
Luck had it that one day I went to the mailbox and in it was a box from Placebo Records. Inside were the debut albums by both Mighty Sphincter and the Sun City Girls. Hearing the Sun City Girls back then was another mindfuck for young Scott. So "weird" were they that I'd never thought they would come to Sacramento, but they did.
In 1984, the Sun City Girls toured the US with JFA. It was back in a time where such pairings were allowed to happen, when punk rock was still wide open, before genre ghettos became the norm. I am sure many a misfit had the evening of their life showing up to the JFA show and seeing something they only thought existed in their mind. When the Sun City Girls took the stage that night, dressed in piles of burlap sacks, looking like demented desert nomads, I was one happy pup.
After the show, armed with my trusty tape recorder and a tape of Anthrax's Fistful of Metal that was begging to be recorded over, my brother and I found the band in their van and asked for an interview. The band was kind enough to say yes and to suffer through our lame questions. Midway through the interview there is an interruption by Mike AKA Thopper Jaw of the Tales of Terror. The interview took place in the parking lot of the Entertainment Factory in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael.
# posted by Scott Soriano : 14:35
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Gee, sounds like all of the mostly unintelligible interview tapes that I've heard before. A few of which I still have laying around, untranscribed.
Hey, you could've transcribed it and posted it to be read in long form! (Easier for us, more work for you)
Hey, you could've transcribed it and posted it to be read in long form! (Easier for us, more work for you)
Ah you can understand it! Hell, I could understand it when I was recording it to this thing. Transcribe it? Silence!
Well, I suppose it's more of an artifact in its original state (as audio)-- I guess I can give you that much.
I caught that 1984 JFA/ Sun City Girls tour in KC, MO (w/ COC thrown in for good measure) & did indeed have my little brain expanded. My main regret is that, though it was my habit at the time to tape a lot of the bands I saw, I didn't figure out that I shoulda been recording the Sun City Girls 'til after they were already finished (I did get JFA though, and they weren't bad at all).
Oh, and my crummy zine was ALSO on Subterranean's promo list -- man, I can remember the day I got that same double header!
Oh, and my crummy zine was ALSO on Subterranean's promo list -- man, I can remember the day I got that same double header!
"What do you think about Wally George?". Man, that gloriously dates this interview!
miller
miller
# posted by 
: 14:46
: 14:46
Yeah - when I was recording it to the harddrive, I thought the same thing. Wally George?
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# posted by : 16:26
: 16:26<< Home
