185 Miles South
A hardcore punk podcast.
185 Miles South
251. Al Barile (SS Decontrol)
We're back and talking hardcore. This week, I'm joined by Al Barile of SS Decontrol for a lengthy conversation. We get into early Boston hardcore, recording The Kids Will Have Their Say, who Al thinks played fast hardcore better, the shifting sound, playing California, and tons more.
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Episode art photo: Philin Phlash
Interview was conducted in December 2025.
185milesouth.com Smash that Patreon button. 185 miles south. a hardcore punk rock podcast. All right, it is an honor to be joined by Al Burrill of SSD. What's up, dude? How you doing? What is going on? Okay, Al, you're an original first wave hardcore dude. And so I'm always curious, how do you get into punk in the first place? And really, what is the first record or band that you connect with the most?
SPEAKER_00:It started by exploring music and really getting my license. When I got my license to drive, it opened a big... big door to, you know, explore live music and I'd say college radio, you know, like my exploration of college radio. That's how I found it, you know, and then just kept on, you know, you find stores. We have stores called Newbery Comics out here. There was like maybe two stores that sold kind of alternative music that, you know, not your typical stuff that, you know, was... You know, on big radio, small radio stuff. And so taking a ride in my car to go to those stores and then, you know, checking out singles and then, you know, album albums. And that was my way I found it.
SPEAKER_01:And what was like the first band that like you really connected with? Like, oh, this is like a punk band. This is different. And I love this. And like, I'm into it now. I
SPEAKER_00:think I was into like, you know, a lot of UK subs records, maybe. And Buzzcocks. Trying to think of the first... bunch of music uh i'd say like english stuff definitely discharge discharge buzzcocks ramones definitely uh americans you know american clash uh those are the first and then that led to you know when i when when uh when i when i uh found the first dc record you know the whole the whole uh discord records and Black Flag on the West Coast, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys. Those are the bands that I found in those record store visits that were inspirational or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:That Discord stuff in 81, that's very quick for you to get it and then want to pick up a guitar and start a hardcore band. Is that really how it broke
SPEAKER_00:down? It wasn't Discord first. Maybe I just like saying to you that you put it first. I meant I've just kind of given you the whole thing. I'd say, I'd say it was, it was like the West coast stuff. Black flag was the first band to tour and dead Kennedy. So I actually went to like, I think I went to a black flag show and that's when I, I, I met Rollins and he was selling like teen idols. I was back. I think teen idols was out and SOA, he was selling it like out front. And, uh, so that's how I, I found those, those discord records. So it was, it wasn't like sequentially that, that order, but you know, that's how, that's when I found those records.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And then how immediately do you want to pick up a guitar and like do your own
SPEAKER_00:band? I already picked up the guitar before that. Okay. I picked up the guitar maybe a couple of years before that, uh, maybe right around graduating high school or right around maybe the last, last, uh, my last year in high school. I'd say the Ramones made me pick up a guitar, you know. And, you know, we were looking, I was looking to join a band relatively quick, actually. And I'd only taken maybe a couple lessons. And I realized, you know, I didn't know how far the lessons were going to take me. I just realized, okay, it's time for me to just learn how to create my own style and move on, you know. And then, Then shortly thereafter, somewhere after that, maybe I found those Discord records. But yeah, I don't think the Discord records made me pick up a guitar. It was definitely the Ramones.
SPEAKER_01:What do you remember about SSD Control coming together, like forming as a band?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I met the bass player at a Dead Kennedy show. I met his sister, actually. And then his sister told me, hey, my brother plays bass. So it was a good connection right there. I mean, just at this one show where the Dead Kennedys played. And then I think I had also taken an ad out in the... We had a local weekly newspaper, like alternative weekly newspaper. And, you know, they took ads for bands and stuff like that. So I had taken an ad in the band for, you know, looking for a band. And that's how I found the drummer, Chris Foley. And so... That's kind of how it took off, that one connection with Jamie, the bass player, and then the drummer, Chris. And then I think we originally had another singer, but only for maybe even in theory. I don't think we actually practiced with him ever. He just was kind of around us at the time, but he never really materialized to be our singer. And then I think Jamie had met Springer a few times. in shows in Boston and he's, someone suggested Springer somehow. And that's how Springer found our way. So that, that's, that's basically it right there.
SPEAKER_01:And what do you remember about like those early practices? Like I, I, I love when guests can like, kind of like paint the, the scene, right? Like what was your practice space? Like where
SPEAKER_00:were you practicing? The very first practice was, uh, I remember at Jamie's like in his garage and it was pretty, uh, it's pretty crude. Like, uh, I think Chris came with his drum set, which just in itself was kind of freaky, is that he lugged his drums just for this one practice. And like I said, it was very crude. Jamie's garage was not set up for practicing. But I think we wrote a song or something, maybe one or two songs, pretty bad. And yeah, Springer was there for that. So that's in my recollection is the real official first practice. and then realized that wasn't gonna be, I realized that wasn't gonna be proactive. So then we started working on finding a practice space and then we had found a place in my hometown that had, there was rumors of a building there that had bands practice. So I kind of made some inquiries and we got a place there I don't think we actually had too– I don't even know if we officially even had a practice there and found that not to be too productive because there was a lot of local kids and bands that were just using it as kind of like a party spot almost. I think we got jumped the first weekend. I don't even remember plugging the amps in. Maybe we had them plugged in one day. We got jumped out front. And I realized that wasn't going to work. So at that time, I made an appeal to my mother asking if, you know, hey, could we use our cellar to practice? And that's when things get serious, you know. So the whole first month, we must have messed around and got nowhere. And then finally, when we got that practice space in my mother's basement, that's when, you know, we became serious. And Chris... took his drums and kept them in my cello, which in itself is a big commitment because I always at the time was thinking, geez, he's not going to be able to have his drums at home. It's one thing when you take your guitar to practice, come to practice with your bass or your guitar, but his drums are going to have to stay there. It's a huge commitment. I'd say that's why I give him a ton of credit because he came from a long ways away from like almost an hour, he got on the train, took him probably an hour and a half to get here. And, uh, and he had to leave his drums, my parents at my basement. And, uh, yeah. So I almost give him credit. Like if he, if he had, uh, like pulled out early on, I don't know what we would have done. I mean, we would have kept on looking for another drummer, but, uh, I'd say his, his, uh, ability to kind of stick with it is what kept the band together, you know, like, I mean, in theory, because if he, if he decides that, you know, he's not going to, this isn't working for him, it's too far away or he's not going to leave his drums there, then, then it's not going to work out, you know? And he was, he was the, by far the best player in the band. And I think, you know, if you started a band, you know, you need a good drummer. Like if you don't have a good drummer, you're, you're swimming up the Creek, you know, like you're going against the, you know, you need a good drummer. In him, we had a good drummer, so we had really the first step in being halfway decent. The next step is trying to write songs. We were trying to make a record. From the very beginning, my goal was to make a record. It's kind of crazy because we haven't done anything, but I was dead set on making a record from probably that first practice on. I don't know how to write songs, you know? So I had to try to learn how to write songs or do, I don't even call them songs, but I had to learn to do something, you know? And I took that responsibility, you know, because, I mean, I don't think drummers, he wasn't writing the song. And, you know, the bass player could write songs, but, you know, I think it's the guitar player's responsibility. So that's pretty much a quick... Quick summary of how we got to get going.
SPEAKER_01:What was pushing Chris to drum so fast? Because if you think about 82, SSD is basically the fastest band. Maybe the negative effects demo at the same time.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we started off, yeah, I don't know. I think when you can't play that well, playing fast isn't that bad. I don't know, it's a blur, you know? So I think that directive came from me, the songwriter, the guitar player. Like, you know, I'd play, okay, here's where you're going to go, you know, whatever like that. And he'd just, you know, when you're working with a drummer to come up with the speed or whatever, a tempo of a song, you know, he can either say, okay, no, play it this slow, you know, because later on I formed one more band after that. And I learned, you know, similar technique working with a drummer, but I would like, you know, give him the tempo that I kind of felt the song needed, you know. So it was like just experimenting with tempos. And, you know, he could play fast. But I'll tell you, we didn't stay fast very long because I, you know, when we started playing out with Gang Green and Jerry's Kids, I remember thinking to myself, man, they play fast a lot better than we do, you know. And I immediately pulled back the throttle. And I said, this isn't what we do best. Maybe it's my guitar playing or whatever. But I didn't think we were that great. But I know what you're saying. We definitely started off pretty fast. But it wasn't that. As soon as we got exposed to those other local bands, I pulled back the throttle. I remember consciously seeing them at this place, the Media Workshop, and saying, This isn't going to work. You know, like I can't I can't compete with these guys. These guys play much better fast than I do. You know, and later on now, I learned 40 something years later that they were practicing like every day, you know, like four hours a day or something, you know, like we were. We would practice maybe I think two or three times a week, maybe two would be the goal. I'm not sure if it was three times a week. Somewhere in my head I think it was three, but I don't think that would have worked because the day came so far away. I know Sunday was a big day for us to get a lot done, and then I think we had one day and one weekday that we practiced. And we were pretty good about making those. We didn't blow off. I'd say spring might not show up for some of the practices, but the three of us, the guitar, bass, and drums, we were pretty good about making all the practices. That's why I give Chris the big credit. And then Jamie gets a ton of credit because he had to pick him up. He would meet him at this station. I mean, it's like our train station is called MBTA. And he would meet him at this station called Wellington. And so Jamie would have to wait there probably for an hour sometimes because the train wasn't always reliable and Chris had to commute so long. So he had to wait there to wait to pick him up. I just had to wait at my house, waiting for those guys to finally get here. My job was to sit there and wait for them, which wasn't a big deal. I used that time to try to write, but they had to get there to get there. I think any band, that's a big thing. It's like how you make sure everyone gets there. You got to have people that are committed to making it there.
SPEAKER_01:Do you do demos before the first 12-inch show?
SPEAKER_00:You might call it a demo. We go to record at this place, Oak Grove Studio. That was to make a radio tape, let's say. That was kind of a disaster. The equipment was speeding up and slowing down. They had bad equipment. That was like a throwaway. We maybe recorded like three songs. I think How Much Op might have been one of them. I'm not sure. I think for some reason that sticks in my head, and a couple other ones or whatever that I don't think ever made it to the record. You could call that a demo, I guess. Because I remember, I think from that, radio stations, they had these things called carts, which I was always trying to outthink everything. So instead of like... I didn't know what to hand them, but I asked people, what do radio stations get? And they said, oh, they take carts. So I remember going, and I went to some store and I bought these carts. They were like big 8-track tapes almost. And so I remember recording those carts. That's actually the first demos I would say that we had on these carts.
SPEAKER_01:Do you still have those?
SPEAKER_00:I don't think so. I think I gave those to Curtis when he was making... Power. Power was a compilation of a lot of recordings. I think I gave them to him. Someone got them. I remember where they were for the longest period of time. I know they weren't there. My mother died a few years ago. I know they weren't there anymore. I assume I gave them to someone.
SPEAKER_01:What do you remember about recording The Kids Will Have Their Say?
SPEAKER_00:The Kids Will Have Their Say was interesting. Pretty much, like I said, we were We were trying to make that record from the very, you know, that was our goal. We didn't like, you know, just go and screw around. I mean, we were always trying to make this first record. I mean, it didn't have a title then. So we recorded maybe one, two, maybe three times at the studio called Radio Beat. And I didn't hear like what I was thinking we should sound, you know, what I thought we sounded like wasn't coming out on tape, you know. So I was like, geez, I don't know about this. This isn't really, you know, I could have said, oh, yeah, put this on the record. But I was like, I don't think this is good enough to go on the record. So we kept on trying. That's why the first time at Radio Beat and the second time at Radio Beat, finally, I was kind of almost giving up on it. But I don't mean giving up, really, for real. I just meant I gave up on Radio Beat and I said, let's go to another studio. We picked this other studio. I think it's called Active Sound. It was really in the guy's father's house. We have a lot of house things running through our background. So we recorded at this guy's house, and that's the recording on Kids Love to Say.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's recorded over kind of a few months, right? How are your feelings throughout it? No?
SPEAKER_00:No, I don't think so. I think it was recorded over a couple, maybe... I think it was pretty quick because his father was yelling at him, I remember, when we were recording. So that wasn't going to keep up. I remember we're downstairs. He's upstairs. This guy's name is Larry something. I can't think of his last name right now. And he was upstairs with the machine. Actually, I don't even remember seeing the tape machines. I've stayed downstairs, which is kind of messed up, thinking I didn't even go upstairs. when I think about it now. And he's fighting with his father about, you know, what's all this noise being made and stuff like that. And we're just trying to get this record made, you know. And we plugged away and, you know, it sounded better. So that ended up being the kids will have to say. It was a tough thing. It was a tough thing to do. You know, we took us, like I said, three or four recording sessions to get it done.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you do it as a split release with Discord. How does that come about?
SPEAKER_00:Well, that just comes about... I figured I was going to do it on my own record label. That was never in doubt. But I just asked Ian. I said, hey, for some reason I got this idea. I don't even know if people were doing split records at the time. Maybe I got the idea from... If he had done it, maybe... I don't know. Did Discord Records do a split record at that point? I don't know. I just asked him to kind of lend his name to us to... to give, would give us like instant credibility. I felt, you know, he had already put out a couple of singles and he didn't put any albums out yet. I don't think at the time, I don't even know what, did it have a number? Like, was it discord something and a half? I think it's like
SPEAKER_01:seven and a half.
SPEAKER_00:Is it? I
SPEAKER_01:think so.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So whatever he had up to that point, whatever, I just thought it was going to lend credibility. So I, and I figured when I went to go sell them to distributors and stuff that, you know, having that imprint, next to us would be helpful. That was really the only, you know, there was no financial deal and there was no, I think I just gave him a box of records in trade for that. You know, like I think I sent him a pretty much, pretty sure I just sent him a box of the kids who have the says in return for using that. And I don't think that was even negotiated. Just, you know, when the record finally came out, I sent him a box of records, you know. I wonder if I did because maybe he's got the whole box still. I don't even know. He probably does.
SPEAKER_01:How did you feel when that record was out and it was in your hands? Because this is something you said you've been working to make happen since the very first practice. So now you have it in your hands. How do you feel?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I felt relieved, I guess, would be the best description. I mean, it certainly wasn't– we didn't think it was the best. I don't know. I didn't go around the room and ask everyone, hey, what do you think about it? What do you think about it? I just know what I felt about it. And I didn't think it was, you know, it wasn't my proudest moment. You know, I just felt like it was, I was, I was proud to put it out, you know, like I was happy to put it out, happy that we finally, you know, you know, you hold it in your hand and, you know, and I remember going to pick the records up. We went and picked them up at the record plant, which was in New Jersey and definitely get a sense of accomplishment, you know, huge sense of accomplishment. But as far as like what was on the record, you know, I wasn't so thrilled with the recording and the way it turned out, but I was thrilled that we had a record out because that's what our goal was. And we did it pretty much within, I think, six months of the band being together or maybe a year. I have to look at the dates. I don't know. I just know that that was our goal and we accomplished our goal. And we didn't have much help. Definitely a little bit of help as far as our producer, Mike Basterash, gave us the names of the record plant and things like that. It was a do-it-yourself project. You're
SPEAKER_01:saying you're not thrilled without Sounded at the time. Has that shifted in the last 40 years now that so many people have affirmed to you that it's a classic American hardcore record?
SPEAKER_00:No. No, just like, cause it didn't sound like I, I, you know, I, what I hear and this is probably, I would think other bands feel the same way here. You know, when you practice, when you play together or when you play live, but you know, you just practicing, you hear something, right. And it's, it's usually very loud, you know, it's a turn it off pretty loud, but it didn't, it didn't translate to the tape, you know, or the vinyl, uh, It's not what I heard. That's the best way I can explain it. I think people in bands would know what I'm saying. Some people might have had more help in making the record and maybe it sounded better for them or something. Put it this way. Albums that sounded great to me were like the Adolescence record or something like that. I don't know. Black Flag might be I don't know if they were happy with their records or not. But I'm sure the adolescents must have been very happy with their first record. Maybe not. I don't know. So it's really sounding what you hear with your ears. And I didn't hear with my ears what was on that record. So that will never change. It doesn't sound like what we played live.
SPEAKER_01:Is that just a feeling you have, or is that something that you can... If I was the greatest engineer in the world right now, and we were still working on that record, could you say, it's missing this. Can we figure out how to do this, or no?
SPEAKER_00:It's a good question. I don't know. I've learned a lot more about recording. The people I produced for an engineer at the time, I don't think they... This is no reflection on them, but I don't think they knew... that much about what they were doing. I was concentrating on playing. I wasn't concentrating on recording. When I walked in that studio door where the tape machine was, that was so far over my head. I wasn't even ready to take that on. I had to just take on playing the music, and that was a big challenge in itself. I wish I had, you know, if we were maybe taking a little bit slower and I learned, you know, and I had taken time to learn the recording process, maybe it would have been different. Because I think the use of compressors and things like that, there's things that, you know, I would have done differently, you know, knowing what I know now about recording. You know, because I think in my records I made with the band Gage, I recorded those and I learned a lot about recording. So I'm not sure that we knew what we were doing or the guys that had helped me knew what they were doing. There was a studio engineer there, but he wasn't really familiar with our music necessarily. So I think if you're dealing with an engineer who's not really familiar with the music, then he can kind of steer it in the wrong direction. I think those West Coast bands had... good engineers and good producers and a lot of good sounds came out of them. You know,
SPEAKER_01:I think the difference is none of those bands are playing as fast though. So like literally if you think about when you go in to record this record, no one knows how to record something that sounds like that because it's never been recorded before. Right? Like you literally are the blueprint that people are going to base off how to record fast music on.
SPEAKER_00:maybe I never look at it as a fast, slow thing, you know, because I mean, we had slow, slower songs on that first record. How Much Odd, Please Be, you know, we had a lot of, you know, we didn't, you know, we wrote some songs that was all fast, but there was, you know, there was some other songs that had slow parts to them, you know.
SPEAKER_01:That's true.
SPEAKER_00:I always, I always thought we were a powerful band, you know, like that's, that's how I describe this. That's why the record on Tang was called Power, because if you would ask me how to, how I would describe us, you know, And what I was looking to get from those recording session was to capture the power. OK, so it wasn't speed. It was to capture the power. So if you want to say, you know, you want to link power and speed together, but it was to capture the power, you know, and I don't think I did that in that first record. You know, I think the second record captures it a lot better. You know, that's my opinion, you know. Second record definitely captures it better. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:we'll get there. I have that almost exactly word for word written down like that. But I want to stay in 82. So what's your take on the this is Boston, not LA comp that comes out
SPEAKER_00:in 82? I don't even own it, to be truthful. So I can't really speak for it that much. I don't own it. And we were asked to be on it, you know. And I chose not, I chose just to concentrate on what we were doing. And, you know, at the same time, I wasn't happy with what was coming out of our, like I just said about what was coming up, other tape reels from our recording session. So I certainly wasn't prepared to give them a bunch of songs that didn't sound right. You know, you know, on hindsight, maybe, maybe I should have taken some of their money to kind of go into a bigger studio or whatever, give it a shot with their money. You know, I could have played it different. And I'm not saying I wouldn't have, on hindsight, I wouldn't have played it differently. But I mean, just early on, I decided, you know, we're going to concentrate on our record. I mean, I'm sure we were the first band they asked to be on that record, you know. Later on, you know, when it took shape with that name, you know, I would have never been on that record if that was the name of the record, you know. No way. I would never have been on that record with that name. But just initial discussions.
SPEAKER_01:Why is that, Al? I
SPEAKER_00:don't like the name. It's stupid. It's a stupid name. Why are we trying to compare ourselves with LA? It's just so stupid. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I feel you.
SPEAKER_00:It's like, we're who we are. We're not... You know, we're not comparing ourselves with anyone. It's the stupidest name I ever heard of, you know? So there's no way we would ever, the name of that was, if we had decided to be on it, that would not have been the title of the album. So, you know, it would have had a different title, I guarantee you that, you know? And I probably would have had some saying picking it, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. What was a regular, like, SSD show like in Boston in 1982? Like, how many kids were showing up? What was the crowd like? What was the vibe?
SPEAKER_00:Uh, some of the, you know, these are really DIY shows, you know, we're talking like, uh, in places that didn't have sound systems or anything, you know, we had set out, like we weren't going to play any clubs, you know, we were going to do strictly all ages shows. So it was only like two places that we started out playing. We played this place called the gallery East, which was, uh, an art gallery, but it was in a space that really wasn't even set up for an art gallery. It was like just, uh, all concrete. It was a warehouse really, you know, way too much concrete. And if you know anything about what concrete does to music, it just, the waveforms just bounce all over the place. So it was a terrible sounding room, you know, uh, just the reflections of the waves bouncing off the walls. So sounded terrible. I knew early on, it was kind of a sacrifice we had to make, you know, uh, to have that freedom and that great feeling of our own space, but it just didn't have the acoustics, you know. But it made up for it in feeling what it lacked in acoustics, you know. And then there was another place called Media Workshop, which was like on the like 12th floor of a kind of like a, I don't know what you'd call it, like maybe another art gallery maybe, kind of warehouse type deal. And that had better acoustics. This was so hard to get to. It was like up so many flights of stairs. I don't think they even had an elevator to carry everything up. So those were the two DIY spaces. And then trying to think, they carried us through the first bunch of years. We played the Rat. There's a couple of clubs. We played the Rat once. One time, I don't even know why we did it, and it didn't work out well. I think we played the channel a few times. They started doing all-ages shows. We kind of got that worked out there. Once they started doing all-ages shows, we played a few clubs, you know.
SPEAKER_01:There was also a spot called Streets in Austin.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was going to do that while I was uttering those last few words. I was thinking of Streets. Streets, we played there. There were some successful shows. It wasn't an all-ages space. So, you know, we had to make some compromises because I think Black Flag had played there. And... either we were on the bill. Like I can't even remember if we have a headline in place,
SPEAKER_01:but you played with bad brains on, uh,
SPEAKER_00:yeah. So I wasn't going to give up playing those kinds of shows, you know, like when a black flag played in bad brains, when they asked us to play, I was going to play them, even though they weren't all ages shows. So, you know, I definitely made some compromises that other, I guess other people weren't, didn't make compromises, but we made them. If there was show was a great show, you know, and I do it again today, you know, uh, It wasn't going to, you know, I thought, you know, who are we to make a stance and just say, oh, we're only going to play all ages shows? It was like a process to get these club owners, the bookers at the clubs to kind of open up to that concept, you know, because there was none of it before us, you know. There was no all ages shows, you know. Like, I know before I was in the band, when I wanted to go, you know, I wasn't even old enough to get in the club. I would have to go to, like, one of these arts programs, art gallery spaces to see you know uh call it alternative music you know so um you know certainly i i knew it was going to take a take a while to get them to open up to all age shows you know
SPEAKER_01:yes so in in september that year it's with bad brains and the undead and then in december it's two shows like a matinee show and a night show black flag and bad brains so that's insane
SPEAKER_00:okay
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah um
SPEAKER_00:I'm not sure if we made every one of those shows. I might have been sick one of those. I'm not sure. I know I remember for some reason I look back on it. I think there was like a couple of shows that I got sick on and I couldn't play, you know, like in our whole career, I would call it career or whatever, a whole thing. I think there might have been one or two shows that I couldn't make it, you know.
SPEAKER_01:You start playing out of town really early. Even in 81, you played A7 in New York. What was that like playing out of town at that time? It
SPEAKER_00:was great. It was great. We loved getting out of town because it just expanded our reach. That first show at A7 was awesome. It was kind of wild loading up a van and heading to New York and stuff. But it was fun. It was exciting. We were always looking to expand where we played. So anytime we got the chance to play outside of Boston, if it made sense, we played it. We didn't take every offer, but if it made sense, we took it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you played New York a bunch in 82. How much truth is there to the Boston-New York rivalry at that time?
SPEAKER_00:I don't think there was any rivalry, you know, like if, um, you know, if there was any rivalry, it was like, uh, you know, to me it was always a sports thing really, you know, like, uh, Boston and New York, you know, you're coming off of like some, some tough, uh, Red Sox, Yankees series and stuff. So I don't even know if the other people were into that, you know, other people in my crew were into that, but it, you know, I have lasting images of, uh, of Greg Nettles punching Bill Lee and ruining him and stuff like that. When I think of the rivalry, that's the rivalry I think of. It wasn't a rivalry with us in New York, hardcore scenes or something. If I caused any of that by talking about the rivalry, but to me it was a sports thing.
SPEAKER_01:The SSD control sound shifts kind of from a more speed approach to a more power approach in 1983 with your 12 inch get it away. Like out of those seven songs, only one has like that fast blazer, you know, speed on it. Was this a conscious effort or was it a natural evolution? And then now with you speaking about the kids will have their say that way, like wanting it to come off more powerful was like the moving away from speed, like a reaction to that. You're getting more power in the more mid-tempo songs?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I told you that I had those moments at this media workshop shows where I saw Gangrene and Jerry's Kids playing really fast. And I said, I'm going to slow it down. So that's when it happened. I don't know if that was the point where I started writing the Get It Away album. Probably right around that period. So that's why... We slowed down because of that conscious effort that I didn't feel like... A bunch of other bands started playing really fast and doing it well. So that's when that change happened. It wasn't when we had the second guitar player. He had nothing to do with it. He would have played fast if I had said, hey, we're going to write... And if I had said, hey, we're going to write an album and play faster than Jerry's Kids and Gang Green, they would have all went along with it. It just... I felt... it wasn't what we did best, you know, like the, the goal was always to do what we did bet. Well, you know, to maximize what we did, you know, the best, right. You don't want to, you don't want to stick with something. You don't think you're doing that great, you know? So that was really when that thought happened. So, you know, I'd say, I mean, if I'm trying to look back on that record, um, trying to think which song in order I wrote first or something, I can't really remember, but, uh, That batch of songs, they still, when I look back on them, they're not slow. They're still pretty fast. But they're more controlled, I would say. They're not out of control. And they just feel in control. They're
SPEAKER_01:rhythmic. You're moving into this rhythmic, powerful, almost like a tribal feeling on them, as far as just being blazers. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's a good description then. I mean, that's, that's what we were after. You know, we're after a powerful sound, you know, not, not just going to go in there. Other bands are still thinking like those bands. I don't think they thought about this, you know, but I did, you know, I said, I just don't think I can play, you know, gang green was still ripping it as fast as they could. You know, that their goal is to keep on playing fast and fast and fast. I was pulling it back at that time, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. What do you remember about the recording sessions for get it away?
SPEAKER_00:We had moved up to 16 tracks, 16-track studio. I look back on it. It's not that I didn't think I needed the extra tracks, but now you probably put eight or nine tracks of drums on there. Before, when you're an eight-track, you're probably putting four tracks of drums. The drums were probably recorded better. And at that point we had a second guitar player. So there was more layered guitars. Now we had him and me and, you know, much more laid guitars. So we got, we got to kind of create more of a wall of sound with the, with the guitars. And then, you know, vocals probably just one, we didn't have any backup vocals. So probably just one track of vocals. So that's what 16 tracks allowed us, you know, you know, would have been nice to get more ambitious and try, you know, now that I had 16 tracks, you know, I still wasn't like feeling comfortable in the studio. So it wasn't like I went in there and said, wow, now I get it. I got 16 tracks. Let me explore because the whole, here's the other thing, the whole time that this recording is going on, I'm thinking about the clock. And I think the studio is now like probably like, Probably like 30 bucks an hour or maybe 40 bucks an hour or something like that. I don't know. Not 50, but somewhere between 25 and 40 a bit an hour. And I'm paying for it. It's coming out of my money. I'm working my ass in a machine shop. So that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I can't waste money here. We got to be somewhat efficient here. Of course, if the band made any money playing out, which we didn't, that would go into this recording fund, you know. But in general, I think I used a lot of my money, my own personal money to record, you know. And so I was thinking that, you know, that was in the back of my mind that I didn't want to, you know, it's hard to use your own money to record when you know how blood and sweat you're working for, you know.
SPEAKER_01:That first yell that Springer does on the song Get It Away is so iconic. Do you remember? Is that first take? Did you do a bunch of takes?
SPEAKER_00:I don't remember. Yeah, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01:How does it come together with having Pusshead do the art for the LP, the 12-inch?
SPEAKER_00:Good question. I believe I made that connection from Glenn Friedman to Pusshead. I came into contact with Glenn Friedman from we played I mean, I could be wrong on this, but this is what I believe, from playing some live shows. And then I think Glenn put me in touch with him, and I asked him if he could draw the cover. I kind of came up with the concept of that first album cover, but I didn't really have anything for the second one, although Get It Away was an anti-smoking song. So I wanted the title to be Get It Away. So I knew that. So I needed something that was fitting for an anti-smoking song, you know, or like kind of that kind of grimy feeling, you know. So I said to him, hey, can you draw something? Now, he was mainly known for his like monsters and things like that. So I wanted to kind of put him in a different place, you know. So I said, hey, can you draw a street in New York with all a bunch of grime and, you know, empty beer cans and trash and just like, you know, cause it was funny. I used to get this of all our trips to New York. I used to get this impression that like the streets would never change. They'd always be dirty. You know, like I never, I would come back like six months later in the street, same street would be the same trash would be in the same exact spot. You know, it never moved. And I used to think that was funny, you know, that, uh, how, uh, It was such a big city that they couldn't ever clean up a street. They had so much to concentrate on, they never could clean up a street. I got that impression. I said I wanted to draw this street in New York. That's what the street is.
SPEAKER_01:Do you think you captured it well?
SPEAKER_00:I love it. I love the cover. I remember seeing it. I thought a lot of people might not like it or might not understand it. how else am I going to capture something that's get it, you know, like around the concept of get it away, you know, it had to be grit, grimy, trashy. And that I couldn't take a photograph of that really, you know, I mean, you could have, I don't think it would have come out that right. I mean, we could have went to that street in New York and just take a photo, but I don't think it would have really translated that well. So, you know, it's somewhat cartoonish, you know, and I liked it, you know.
SPEAKER_01:In 1983, you play your first show outside of the East Coast. It's August 6th, 2024, Santa Monica Civic, opening for GBH. But before we get to that show, what are your memories of your trek out to California?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's like other bands do tours. My idea was just to drive straight to California. I don't know. I'm a weird guy or something. I get a lot of crazy ideas, but I just was thinking like, if we play a couple shows on the way out there, something will happen and we'll break something or I'll break my hand or something. Because every time I played, I always thought that might be the last time we played. I always had that mentality that this might be our last show. I just felt like it was so chaotic that it might be the end. And something might happen. I had that same mentality going to the West Coast. I was really hell-bent on making it to the West Coast. And I didn't think playing to the West Coast was a good bet. So we were just going to drive there straight. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:what are your memories of that first show, Santa Monica Civic? It's a legendary venue. When the English bands came out, those shows were huge.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we made it there in, I think, two days from Boston. Maybe three the most, but I think it was two days. And, you know, just, you know, first time I had been to California, just seeing California and like palm trees and everything. We, when we showed, you know, we got there at nighttime, I remember. And we pulled up on Santa Monica Beach because we didn't know where else to go. You know, we just went from East Coast to West Coast. So we went coast to coast. You know, we pulled up on that beach. And then I remember, you know, the morning came up. And I'm just like, wow, we made it here. This is amazing. Then we went over to the venue that next morning or whatever and just saw this big hall. We're like, wow, man, this is incredible. We're going to play this big place. So it was just very awestruck by it that we were going to play this big show in California.
SPEAKER_01:And then what was the show like?
SPEAKER_00:It was a great show. We played really well. I just know we played well. I was happy with the performance. We held our own against GBH. We played with
SPEAKER_01:GBH, I think.
SPEAKER_00:We held our own and did pretty good, I thought. That's what I remember from it. Big crowd. They liked us. I felt a lot of love. I didn't feel like they were mad. I don't know. Has Boston not come out by that time?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It came out in 82. This is 83.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so I didn't feel any negative feedback from that. Yeah, I felt a lot of good feelings from it. It was a good show.
SPEAKER_01:You play a bunch of shows in that run in Southern California and Northern California, and you're out here for a couple weeks. What are your memories of that time?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we drive off the coast. That was the whole deal. So I think we went to Santa Barbara next. And then, you know, these were all like kind of do, you know, after the Golden Boy show at the at the Santa Monica Civic. These were all more do it yourself shows like in in halls, you know. And then we finally got to San Francisco. I think we played a club, a couple of clubs at Ruthie's Inn and maybe some other club or something. So it was just a run up the up the coast. You know, it was great. You know, all the shows are great, you know. I don't remember any real stinkers. So it was a very successful way we did it. If I was to do it over again, I should have done more investigation on the West Coast. Maybe there would have been some other places to play. It was very do-it-yourself. But maybe I should have played some of those clubs that were there or something. to get a better feel for the L.A. kind of thing. That big place was great. I'm saying I think there was a lot of– I hear that club like the cuckoo's nest. I don't know about it now. I didn't know about it then, but I hear about it now. Just clubs like that, let's say, the cuckoo's nest. Maybe I should have explored trying to play places like that. I don't know. That's my only regret. is I didn't try some of those places. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:the smaller clubs, like the Cathay de Grand and Hollywood, stuff like that. The Cuckoo's Nest might already be done by 83. Is it? Okay. I don't know. I don't have it in front of me, but I get your, what you're going for is you could have played some clubs, like smaller shows.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like, well, these were all kind of, I guess this was all set up by me just getting phone numbers from people, you know? Maybe I could have done more homework. I didn't know what was going on in the West Coast, really. You know, like I didn't know. You know, I think we got the offer from Golden Voice, you know, based on a phone call or something. I don't even remember. Maybe Glenn Friedman helped me. I think Glenn Friedman helped me get that show. You know, but people were helping us get the shows, you know. And then I think we got some of those, you know, from like Maximum Rock and Roll, we might have got some connections in the Northern shows, you know. And the Santa Barbara show, we might have got from a band, you know, one of the bands. uh, I can't really remember, you know? So I'm just saying maybe I should have done more homework and really understood, you know, what, you know, only because that we drove all the way out there. Maybe I should have, uh, got more of a feel for like, um, some more of those shows, but I kind of think I'm trying to think maybe I was on a deadline. Like maybe I think I had to get back to work. It wasn't like we had forever to do it, you know, but looking back on it, maybe I could have taken another week out there. Um, and play some more shows, you know, because we drove such a long ways, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, Al, this question is kind of like an arrogant one, so we can skip it if you want. But what hardcore bands do you personally think were as good as SSD in like that 1982, 83 era?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, we can never judge ourselves because, you know, it's just the way, like even to this day, we all look at each other like, you know, we don't know. how good we are or what we were. We don't know. We really don't. I'm saying that with sincerity. We don't know. We put these records out and stuff. I don't know. I'm flattered that people like them and put us and place us in some high regards maybe. But in all sincerity, I don't know how good we were. The one thing I can say I do know, when we get off stage, many times I thought that we were good enough to hold our own, you know, that, that feeling, I definitely know, you know, so that's the only thing I do know. Uh, like, you know, a couple of times we played with, um, like, like say play with a black flag or play with minor threat, you know, some of these humongous bands. I want to say that, you know, the bad brains, like, I don't think we ever held our own on stage when we play with the bad brains, but we, we weren't flat. We weren't, we weren't embarrassed off the stage, put it that way, you know? Whether we held our own when they were there, I don't know. But we weren't completely embarrassed off the stage. So I do know that when we came off stage that we did pretty good sometimes. That's the only feeling I can say. As far as the record goes, we were always trying to do our best. And I'm glad 40 years later people look at the records and say nice things about them. But we were always trying to capture that live sound, that feeling that I just told you about coming off stage and saying, all looking at each other like, wow, we did really good. That's the feeling that we were trying to get from the record. And I can't say we ever, after making a record, all sat around and said, wow, we did really good. I don't know if we ever had that kind of feeling. But But we did get it from a few live shows. That Civic show, we know we did pretty good. And we played with the Dead Kennedys a few shows. And they were a very good band. And I think we held our own with the Dead Kennedys. That's a good one, I guess, to use as a measuring stick. We played a couple big shows in Boston. We played a show with them out in New York, in Long Island. And I thought we... we didn't get blown off the stage. When you're in a hardcore band, these bands, they could blow you off the stage easy. If you weren't on top of your game, you could easily get wiped off the stage where you looked embarrassing. I can say that we didn't have that feeling often. I can think of maybe a couple times where I didn't think we did that good.
SPEAKER_01:Can you remember specifically what were they?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I remember one, and other people might think it was okay, but we played CBGBs with the Bad Brains, and I remember breaking my guitar and just a lot of technical difficulties. I jumped and came down, smashed the guitar, smashed my body, and I remember leaving the stage thinking, oh, man, we didn't do so hot. That's one of the only ones that really strikes me that I can think of that I'll always think of. But I don't know, maybe other people saw that show, liked it. But it was around Christmas time. I remember after the show laying out in the van and just had a bad feeling like, ah, we didn't pull it off. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:your mind kind of went right to comparing yourself to the Bad Brains when that question was asked. Do you think that the Bad Brains were the best hardcore band?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And I don't compare myself to them. I'm just using them as a measuring stick. It's like the greatest live band. I think they struggled to make a great record. I think some of their early recordings, that raw cassette probably got them the best. But it wasn't perfect. If you saw them live back then and then listened to the recordings, I don't think they captured them as well as they could have, you know? And then, then they went to record in the big studios with Rick Ocasek. And I don't think he did. I don't think he captured them as well. I mean, I remember when they went in with him, I remember thinking like, well, he's going to, he's going to get them, you know, he's going to, he's going to nail it. You know, they're going into 24 track recording studio. I'm like, he'll get it done. You know? And then I remember listening to him when they came out and thinking, nah, he didn't get them, you know? So, I'm interested in what they would say. I talked to them a lot around that period, but I never sat down with them and analyzed their recordings. I wonder if they thought that they were happy with all the recordings.
SPEAKER_01:What do you think about that? Such a storied engineer wasn't able to capture the sound of hardcore like how people thought he might have been able to.
SPEAKER_00:Looking back on it, I remember when All of a sudden, he showed up. They played this club, and all of a sudden, he showed up. I remember we're all going, oh, that's Rick O'Kazick. Oh, that's Rick O'Kazick. I don't know if he had made contact with him or he was just surprising him at this club. I don't know. But it was a day show, I remember. It wasn't even a night show. He just showed up and went in the side door, and everyone's whispering, oh, that's Rick O'Kazick. Something's going on. Something's going on here. And then I remember they were recording with him. maybe he didn't, you know, like there was part of me that always wondered if he was going to be able to connect with the music, you know, like, I didn't even know how much of a recording engineer he was, you know, like how, how he was a dedicated, you know, he was more of a producer record, you know, recordist than, than I'd known at that point, you know, I just knew him from the cars and, you know, the cars made great records, you know, like, I mean, as far as, as far as getting the cars, capturing the cars, I think they did a great job. But that really wasn't him. I think that was another producer, that Roy Thomas Baker, I think, might have been the guy that recorded him. I don't know. But anyways, yeah, it just was disappointing. It didn't capture the ferocity of them. I thought it was like it was tamed down somehow.
SPEAKER_01:You came out to California again in 1984. You played one show at the Olympic Auditorium with Suicidal Tendencies. Yeah. What were your memories of that trip? And did you have any impressions like before and after about punk shows at the Olympic? It's kind of like a legendary venue.
SPEAKER_00:So we got that. There was a new, a new promoter, uh, popping up on the scene at that time. And Glenn Friedman goes to that show. I look back on, I'm not sure I should have, you know, I'm not going to like, uh, ever say I shouldn't have done something, but I mean like golden voice was nice to us and maybe I should have, uh, I should have waited for another show from them. Every opportunity that came up, I was going to take it. We were going to fly for this show. This promoter was going to fly us out. That was a special opportunity. Golden Voice never had mentioned doing that. I'm like, fly us out? That's going to be pretty cool. We had to do it on a budget. Don't get me wrong. We weren't just going to spend crazy money, but Uh, we flew on a budget airplane. I remember it was like people's express at the time. So it was, they were like a low cost carrier. And, um, but we flew out there for it. And so that's what I remember. That was like, uh, uh, you know, we flew out, brought our guitars on the, on the plane and everything. And we rented a drum set and, um, yeah, it was pretty cool, you know, to do it that way. I remember the show is chaotic on stage. Uh, A lot of people on stage. I didn't remember that from the first time around. All of a sudden, the stage had become like a playground for everyone. And I remember I found it a little bit difficult to play with so many people on stage. It just seemed kind of chaotic.
SPEAKER_01:Do you feel that there's a shift there then, like between... You know, between 83 and 84, like, is L.A. turning? Is there, like, a different vibe?
SPEAKER_00:I can't say because definitely there was more– I won't call it another wave, but, you know, definitely the suicidal wave was coming, you know? So would you call that another wave? Maybe. Maybe that was another wave, but definitely there was a suicidal thing on the move here, you know? I mean, they came out of the– you know, came– really out of nowhere to, it had, it had a big following to play that. That's a big, no, that's a big arena too, you know? And, um, yeah, so that was a big, a big sign that they were, they also, and they were a big band on the, on the scene.
SPEAKER_01:I read an interview in MRR that, uh, was done at that show. I don't think it was with you. Um, cause it didn't seem like it was you answering. It just put SSD as the, the, the person answering. But, uh, that person who did the interview was saying that, uh, like someone had asked you, like, why don't you play any songs off the kids will have their say, um, at that time. And so I want to ask you, like, what was your mentality like to not play like the original songs in like 84? I'd
SPEAKER_00:say it probably was me, uh, because I, I made those decisions, unfortunately, you know, one of my faults I made was, um, so I never, I never thought really about the people in the audience, you know, but we were always one album ahead, you know, like, like, so we had already say, we already had written, get it away. And that's maybe when, you know, I don't know the timeframe, I'm just saying, but I'm using an example here. So by the time we had the song from get it away, written and ready, we had already started to give up on right. Not playing the songs from kids. And it wasn't because, uh, we're trying to like stiff the fans or anything. It was just that we're all ready to make the next leap, you know, as far as like, you know, our musical journey, let's say, okay? So rather than play, go backwards, I was already thinking like, these songs are clearly better. You know, we recorded them better or whatever. It's time for these songs. So that was the mentality, but it was wrong, you know? I know I made a mistake, you know, because the people are there, you know, as a fan, the people there to hear the songs that they get the record on, you know? And, um, I can't even take that. I can't even go back to, to the fact that I, I become less of a fan when I, when I, um, when I really was getting into this band thing, you know, I stopped buying records, um, because I, I thought I found a tendency that bands would like, um, hear a record by another band and all of a sudden they would change their sound and it would sound like that. You know, like I really was after the purity of like the organic purity of like what our sound would be, you know? So I had to like stop being a fan, you know? So those great days of me buying the Discord records and, you know, buying the Black Flag records ended like somewhere like in 82 or whatever, you know? And, you know, it kind of sucks because I was, I really enjoyed those days of going hunting vinyl, and discovering new bands and new music. But I had given up on that already because I had to, in order to kind of write the records for SSD, I did not want to fall into the trap of listening to the new Black Flag record and having that affect my writing. So because I made that sacrifice, and it was a sacrifice, I was also so entrenched in what we were trying to do that I didn't want to go backwards and play the songs that I thought we'd already kind of like, we kind of already obsolete, you know, we're already writing better songs, you know, like, you know, we started off not knowing what the fuck we're doing. And we started to figure out a little bit of what the fuck we're doing. And it made more sense to kind of play the songs that we knew what the fuck we're doing on and go backwards. But, you know, looking back on it, because I lost in touch with like that fan mentality, That's where I was trying to go with this thing. Because I lost touch with the fan in me, you know, like I'm saying, where I was like buying records and stuff. I kind of lost that. I lost that thing that I should have kept, you know, that these people, you know, only know you from the records that you have out. And that should be a concentration, you know. But unfortunately, the way it worked with us, we were always one ahead, you know, which... you know, like regular bands don't do that. You know, like big commercial bands, I'd always not want to head there one behind, you know, like they, they, uh, they, they don't outpace themselves, you know, like they, there are no rush to release a record, right? Most bands like on a commercial entity or whatever, there are no rush to kind of get the next one out. Sometimes it's like two or three years, you know, before, like, you know, before a record comes out. And I was, we're in a rush to, you know, we recorded it, boom, it was coming out, you know? Uh, so it just was the whole wrong way, you know?
SPEAKER_01:It's pretty insightful, Al, right? Like, you know, you saying you kind of, you stopped being a fan. So you kind of lost empathy for like the
SPEAKER_00:fans. Like what the, what it meant to be a fan and how I should have been, uh, thinking more on the line on lines of that. Like I was thinking, here's what I was thinking. I was thinking like, I know what's better than they know for what we're doing here. I'm going to give them the best stuff they got. I do believe that. I do believe the next album was better, the material was better. I used to think, I know what's best for them. I'm going to give them the best we got. It was the best we got. I wasn't wrong, but they just weren't ready for it. They didn't know it. That was the mistake. You can't be like that. Even though it's right, I'm sure every other band in the world thought the same thing, you know. I'm not unique to this. I'm sure Guns N' Roses probably thought their, whatever, record was better, you know. And I'm sure every band, whether it be like independent or a big band, always thinks their next record is better, you know. I know that trap you can fall into because on my next band, Gage, in the 90s, I watched the other members of my band try to take me in that trap. The same trap that I came from, I watched them try to take me in that same trap where the new material is better. And I used to sit back and laugh, kind of like, wow, they're trying to drag me back into that same trap. And I think it's an easy trap to fall into. Unless you really remember what this thing is all about. It's about the fans, really. You're playing for them.
SPEAKER_01:How We Rock and Break It Up kind of get lumped unfairly together, I think. And How We Rock definitely has some big moments. If you had a chance to redo that record, would you change anything?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. I think How We Rock's got a lot of flaws in it. I was messing around with my guitar sound on How We Rock, and I had this effects rack that I was playing around with, and I think I screwed my guitar sound up. When I think about that, that's the biggest thing that comes to my ears. That record was definitely a really good example of being one record ahead. That record, when you think the record On the Road, that was from our experience driving to California. That's really what captured that. That song was written On the Road pretty much right after coming off that 83 or 82, whenever you're saying we took the road trip, you know, out to West coast. That's so, I mean, I, I, I just know, uh, kind of the pitfalls that I, I felt, I felt it was just mistakes made, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Do you feel like maybe if you would have trimmed the record a bit, like it would have been thought of like on the level of the first two records?
SPEAKER_00:Uh, No, I just think it was always going to be flawed, you know? Like, just the timing of everything and what I was thinking and stuff. Yeah, it just was a bad time to put a record out. I think it was just a flawed time, you know? I don't know if it ever had a chance, really. I mean, I'm not going to say... I mean, I respect people that say they like it, you know, whatever. I'm just saying that I look back on it at a time that... I was messing around with my guitar sound. So I can't help but think about that. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:I mean, 84 is kind of a strange year, right? Because I look at it as the year that hardcore is kind of totally blown out. There's finally a million generic bands that are just playing fast. And so it kind of is a weird year for an original great band to put out a record that doesn't sound like straight hardcore. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's a good description. I mean, there was a ton of bands coming, you know. They were coming quick, you know. You look at the Max Moroccan Roll and stuff, you know. A lot of bands coming out. And there was, you know, I'll tell you, a lot of thoughts were like, I don't want to be a generic band, you know. I want to make sure that we have some type of original sound. And I don't want to be part of the generic, like... fall into the trap of being a generic band. You know, I remember that. So you're right. There was a lot of bands coming out around that time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Cause it seems like 83, everything is still like pretty notable. And then 84 is just, you know, there's, there's a lot of bad stuff. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. You've got it nailed right there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Ian, I saw a show listing that you played two shows of the Olympic auditorium in 1985 and they are two weeks apart. Is this accurate? Do you, do you remember that at all? No, that's not accurate. Played one show out there. Yeah, so one must have been canceled. Let me tell you what they are and maybe you remember. So it's listed as March 15th, 1985. That's Angelic Upstarts and Wasted Youth and You. And the other one is Social Distortion, Red Cross.
SPEAKER_00:So Angelic Upstarts couldn't get into the country. So that show was supposed to be, they were supposed to, you know, that was supposed to be the show. It ends up, it ends up getting rescheduled to be social D, you know? So that's, that's that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And do you get a fly out for that one?
SPEAKER_00:We did get, we did fly out on that. Yeah. Yeah. We got lazy, I guess after that, we didn't want to take, you know, yeah, you know, we've become positive and that was a golden voice show. So they were, they bought our plane tickets then. And, um, I don't remember that carrier. Yeah. Probably another cheap carrier. Um, but, um, Airplanes weren't that, I mean, I think those flights weren't that expensive back then. They were like maybe a couple hundred bucks round trip to go to California. I don't even know what it costs now.
SPEAKER_01:What do you remember about that show compared to the 84 show?
SPEAKER_00:People thought we were metal. People weren't digging it, you know, I guess. Yeah, we weren't feeling the love that we felt in the previous shows, you know. Like the one or two style tendencies, we started to kind of get a little bit of, you know, not great. It certainly wasn't the feeling of that first Santa Monica Civic show. So it was like slowly going downhill, you know, as far as the love goes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But it was still people that came out to see us, I think, you know. I mean, I definitely remember people coming out to see us, you know, but we might have disappointed them, you know. And we had already decided to break up at that point pretty much. So it was like a swan song almost. We just wanted to kind of go out there one more time.
SPEAKER_01:Your last show is in Boston after those two shows. It's April 6th, 1985 with Executioner and Spike Raven. Why did you decide to break up and what are your memories of that final show?
SPEAKER_00:I just remember being down in our basement. I mean, if I do it over again, I don't think we should have broken up like that. But it just was a feeling. At this point, that West Coast, we didn't get a good vibe from it. People weren't taking the same journey that we were musically at that point. The music didn't seem like it wasn't super well-received. I just felt we weren't embraced, you know? And I also thought the guys might have been kind of wandering with, I think maybe they were questioning things, you know? So I thought it was like almost like a freedom, like if we broke up or something, like it would give us freedom. And my plan was to kind of keep on going, you know? Just like retool a little bit, you know? And keep on going. I never planned to stop playing music, really. And unfortunately that's what it became for me. So that's why I say I look back on it and I wouldn't have done that because I, I didn't want to stop playing music really, you know? I mean, I did feel the need to kind of quote, take a break or recharge my batteries because, you know, uh, we weren't well, you know, we weren't super well received, uh, at that point. And, you know, maybe I needed to reflect back on and, and, uh, you know, figure out what we're doing right and wrong or something. But, uh, But I, you know, instead we chose to kind of break it up, you know. And, yeah, kind of a low point, you know, breaking it up. I mean, it's too bad, you know, because I missed– there's a lot of things I missed, you know. And I think a lot of things I could have– if I could have done– you know, I shouldn't have just walked away from it so easy. You know, I should have tried to fight for it harder, you know.
SPEAKER_01:That night, like how did you write the set list? Do you remember that at all? Like did you– was it just– The last night? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it like a normal SSD show from 85 or did you kind of write like this is our final show. Let's like take everyone through like the history of the catalog.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I didn't– I don't remember that detail. But I used to write the set list quite a bit. I'm not even sure if I wrote the set list that night, you know, like maybe I let Springer write it, you know, whatever. I didn't put as much thought, even though I knew it was our last show, I didn't put as much thought into like, wow, this is our last show. Like we pretty much were in this rut of where we were, you know, of where we were kind of like, you know, like what songs we were playing. Like we're probably playing, I told you how we were always one album ahead. We probably were playing all of Break It Up, you know, like a majority of... What, do you have the set list? Was there a lot of... No, I
SPEAKER_01:don't. I wish I had it. That's why I'm asking.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I don't know. But I mean, it probably was a large concentration of the last songs we were working on, you know, which was a mistake again, you know? And, like, you know, we always played songs from Kids With A Say, but it was probably, you know, it probably just was the same song, you know? Like, I mean, we never went deep... going back you know so anyways uh yeah i i think i should have worked if i go back on it i would have went back and kind of worked harder on making this the set list set list more fan based you know uh audience based you know
SPEAKER_01:you you did advertise that as the last show though so like what was it an emotional night for you or and and was it an emotional night for the people in the room
SPEAKER_00:I don't think so. I don't remember it was emotional. It was like a, I felt it was like a relief almost, you know, like, and I don't know why, but I, I just remember the feelings that, you know, maybe, maybe it just, we needed a break, you know, cause people weren't really, you know, people weren't really digging us, you know, like it was like a low point for like, you know, that record had come out and no one really loved the record and, I think the record came out before that, right? Did it? I think it came out by then. I mean, I could be wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:okay. Anyways, people weren't digging the song, you know?
SPEAKER_01:What were the last hardcore records that you listened to, like, kind of before you lost interest and withdrew from the scene?
SPEAKER_00:That's early on. Like, you know, like, it wasn't... Like I said, I had to consciously make that decision. Now, I think other... You know, I'm not going to say they're right and I'm wrong, but... I know that there's other bands that never stop listening to music because they use the other bands for inspiration for their band. Like I said, I wasn't going to go down that road. I mean, I can definitely hear other bands and I say, oh, wow, they must have been listening to the last Circle Jerks record or whatever. Or I can hear the Circle Jerks or whatever and say, wow, they were listening to this record, whatever. So I wasn't going down that road. So I can't, I'm trying to think like really my last band really great time of being a fan. I mean, I can tell, I can skip over some periods. Like I, I know from hardcore, like, you know, loving hardcore, uh, definitely checking out those bad brains records, you know, the okay. Okay. I said records, right. There was probably like 85, 86, maybe rock for light, I think is 83. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and
SPEAKER_00:then, so definitely was checking out all the bad brain stuff, you know, I, I, I checked out all their stuff, but then, um, you know, my next big leap of like what I thought was like, wow, I was like guns and roses, that type of destruction. I thought it was like an amazing record, you know, like that was the next musical point in my life where I was like, wow, this is really special, you know? Um, and then the next big musical jump was that was Nirvana, you know? Uh, I didn't hear many hardcore records that, and maybe I should have like looked out more cause you know, I'm, I, at that point when we broke up, I was concentrating on, on my engineering degree, you know, and it was getting really, really intense, you know, at that point, a lot of, quite a lot of time on my part, a lot of right, like just a big concentration. So it wasn't really, I had a good, good excuse to not be like listening to music a lot, you know? Um, but, but, uh, whenever the date was mixing in those points, I remember when the Nirvana record came out, I started really listening to what was happening up in Seattle. And I, you know, I really, really liked what I heard. I was like, wow, this is exactly what I was kind of shooting for. You know, like I, you know, you could really see that we were trying to, we were trying to work on the vocals, you know, during our musical journey, you know, and that's pretty much it. I'm trying to work on it on the vocal evolution kind of, you know, like if you listen to the first record to the last record, you can see how we tried to work on Springer
SPEAKER_01:really, you know? Yeah. As an original dude from like the first wave, what is your opinion on hardcore, like becoming a legitimate genre of music that like never went away? Um,
SPEAKER_00:It's pretty cool. You know, like, I mean, I, I'm not saying I, I didn't think it would be, or I did think it would be, I'm glad, you know, maybe I'd credit New York for that because like, I don't consider New York really being part of that first wave as much, you know, uh, like New York hardcore started maybe, maybe in that 80. I don't know. You guys would know, like, you know, there's, uh, those, uh, 85, 86 kind of period. It became more metal-y. People used to think we were metal. I think the New York Hardcore was the metal kind of period. Which is strange. We got sacked with the tag. I think they were doing it more than us.
SPEAKER_01:You're merging different types of metal, right? You're a little more on the hard rock side and they're a little bit more on the speed metal side.
SPEAKER_00:I definitely think we were hot. We were tagged with metal. Yeah. I would have accepted the hot rock tag, but people weren't seeing it that way. I remember people going, metal, man, saying those words to me.
SPEAKER_01:In 1992, you released the Power CD, which is basically the SSD anthology. But instead of putting the songs in chronological order or together as records, you mix them up. What was your thinking with the sequencing of Power?
SPEAKER_00:So the thinking was, I mean, I picked the songs that were going to be on. It was just supposed to, you know, pretty much get what I consider the best songs that we had, you know, like almost the greatest hits, if you want. I would never call it that because we're not a hit band or whatever. But take the best songs. As far as the sequencing goes, I'm not sure if I had a hand in the order. I don't think I really cared about the order. I cared about what songs, you know. work on it, but I don't think I had too much of an interest as the, uh, as the order. So there was no, I don't think there was any reason to kind of, you know, make them in a certain order. We weren't trying to like doing the anthology or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:It's, it's a, It can be kind of an abrasive listen, right? Because it jumps all over the catalog. Ah,
SPEAKER_00:I get you. Now I see where you're going with
SPEAKER_01:it. Yeah, well, you're well aware of the different eras of SSD. You wrote them and you were there, right? I
SPEAKER_00:never thought of that, to be honest. Now you're putting me back in that fan seat where the jump might be too rough. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:it's like you're listening to something on shuffle almost, you
SPEAKER_00:know?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that was a mistake then. Now you're calling out a mistake. I didn't think of that.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not trying to put you on the spot, Al. No,
SPEAKER_00:no, that's a mistake. That's a big mistake. Blame Curtis for that one.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, we'll put it all on Curtis and his layouts too. Although, we've got to give him credit. This is one of the greatest album covers. You know what I mean? What's the
SPEAKER_00:greatest album cover?
SPEAKER_01:No, I said it's one of that power thing. like that photo on the front, like it's a great cover. Like if you're a kid going through CDs and you pull up that SSD power CD, you're like, yes, I am interested in this. You
SPEAKER_00:know what I mean? Great. I'm glad. I don't know if I had a hand in picking that one out, but I mean, yeah, we tried to, yeah. I don't remember the cover selection process at that point. I was kind of, I should have been more involved in that record. And that's another little bit of regret I have, you know, like, I mean, I definitely, I, I definitely picked the songs, and I definitely picked the title, and there were certain things I took an interest in, but there were things that I should have taken interest in that I didn't. I regret about that.
SPEAKER_01:Al, before we get out of here, I wanted to ask you about the SSD book that came out, How Much Art Can You Take? Everyone can find it on the internet. It came out, Radio Rahim put it out, and it rules. So what went into putting out this book, and what else do you have going on now?
SPEAKER_00:One of the biggest things that I took serious from the day that the band ended was to try to keep the band alive as best as possible. That's why we put out the Power record. I noticed that albums had vanished from the shelves and it was important that we remain alive in a sense. We put out power. That's how power came about. And then to continue, you know, to keep that, uh, to continue, you know, uh, we, we were trying, had the ideas about this book for a long time, you know, and it took a, took quite a ways to find for it finally come to fruition. But, uh, um, you know, we thought we were always, you know, had a lot of great photographs, certainly Phil and Flash, who Springer's brother was in, was kind of an embedded photographer with us. And, You know, I really had hoped that at some point we could get these photos to see light. And it took like probably 30 years for it to happen. But, you know, it finally happened. And Nancy did a great job interviewing the band and trying to piece together, you know, some key moments in the history of the band. I think she did a fabulous job. And that's about it. You know, we also have xclam.com, which is our website. We sell everything. some merch, you know, in the last few years. And then we recently did the reissues on trust and there's actually going to be some interesting stuff in the next few years. I'm not sure if I'll be around for it. Hopefully I will be because I don't know if I said, but I mean, I have cancer and hopefully these things come out, but there'll be like some type of a further look into all the records of SSD, you know, and, um, some type of a box set kind of thing coming out maybe. And, uh, so it should be interesting, interesting time, you know, and trust records, uh, just going to keep on keeping SSD alive, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And Al, Al, how can the people follow you? Uh, you're on Instagram.
SPEAKER_00:I'm on Instagram. Uh, you know, we have our official band, uh, sites, uh, SSD control official. I'm, uh, Al Baril, uh, on IG and Facebook. Certainly people can join me or join the official pages. Nancy usually keeps running history in the life of SSD. On this date, this happened, this happened. We've tried to do a good job of keeping the band alive. That's definitely an important thing. for what we're
SPEAKER_01:doing. Al, I appreciate your time. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.
UNKNOWN:If I embarrass you, I'm sorry! If you're ashamed of me, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Oh, my God.