A Brief History of Panic (Part III)

 

At the urging of Russian journalist Konstantin Chilikin, I accidentally wrote an exhaustive history of the rock group Panic, the third installment of which is printed below. It was fun to write, even if I’m the only one who actually read all the way to the bottom. Perhaps there will yet be another chapter…

Now let’s skip a couple of years: Record II, Medocine, California. You’re doing you vocal parts for the “Fact” album. This time Marc Senasac is in position of producer. What can you remember about the atmosphere in the studio? Would you say that you saw the beginning of the end already? The album “Fact” sounds to me more matured in terms of music and heavier in terms of production. Would you agree with me? How important were cover artworks for you? Did you pay attention to them? Did you have a chance to say your word and share opinions with Metal Blade Records about what you’d like to see on the covers? Did you play enough shows in support of your albums? Were there any tours with bigger bands? Did you play outside your area? Did you get any offers to play live in Europe? Why did the band split-up? Was it because of Grunge or were you tired of constant struggle for survival in music business? Tell me please about your life after Panic. As far as I understand you own construction business. Does it mean that you quit music entirely?Do you still stay in touch with Marty, George and Jack? Is there any chance to see re-issues of both CDs by Panic? Feel free to say anything you like to round up this interview:

 

 FACT

We seemed to be finished with long tours by Christmas 1991. Bill Graham had died tragically while we were on the Nuclear Assault tour, and BGP was a bit of a mess. Toni was having trouble enough getting support for Exo. We were not her priority…

So we went back to doing what we knew best—namely writing kickass songs and killing it live locally. By that time, we were established enough to get opening slots on the better touring metal bills, and we had the good fortune to share Seattle stages with White Zombie, Heathen, Suicidal Tendencies, Soundgarden, and Dee Snider’s Widowmaker. We did a leg of dates in California with Testament and even opened for Pantera at the Stone in San Francisco.

Cowboys from Hell was easily the most-impactful record ever on Panic’s development. George had been into Mach I , before Phil was in the band. They were good even then, but what happened to them between their first record with Anselmo and Cowboys was a pretty stark transformation. Phil cut his hair, they ditched the spandex, and proceeded to craft this sound that was unlike anything that had come before it. It seemed like every five years or so– in that particular golden age of heavy metal—a band would come out that would set a new standard for heavy. In the late ‘70s it was Motorhead, the early ‘80s Iron Maiden. Late ‘80s Metallica. And then in the early 1990s here was this record that was so loud & sharp & punishing that it sounded like a hyper-coiled version of the band was inside your speakers playing it live. The production on Cowboys from Hell made everything that had come before it sound 3rd World. And it wasn’t just the sounds. The songs and the performances were so good—we could hardly believe it was real.

I wouldn’t say that record influenced our writing as much as it did our sonic aspirations. Our new batch of songs was already taking shape and it definitely sounded like the second Panic record and not like the follow-up to Cowboys from Hell. We knew where we were going musically. But we wanted those tones.

Very unfortunately, we were not able to get them. Pantera had years of experience experimenting in their own studio. They had a major label budget and they had Terry Date. We didn’t have any of those things.

We went to Mendocino in October 1992 to make Fact. The studio, Record II, was supposedly an exact replica of Quincy Jones’ Record I in Los Angeles. It was a nice room—great space. There was lots of space outside the studio, also. The overall atmosphere could not have been more different than the one in which we recorded Epidemic. Mendocino is a picturesque coastal town of 700 people, on the northern shore of California. The studio was on a sprawling acreage in the woods, which was also dotted with cabins which served as dormitories. In San Francisco, we had slept two-to-a-bed for three weeks. In Mendocino, we each had our own cabin, hundreds of feet from the next guy.

This might have been a productive atmosphere for some projects. It wasn’t for ours.

As with the first record, the band was prepared. Basic tracks were slain quickly and we settled down to vocals and sweetening. There was more improvisation in these sessions—more experimentation with sounds, effects and even arrangements. As with the Epidemic experience, I had a little

A Brief History of Panic (Part II)

 

At short last, here is the second wordy, cloying, indulgent installment of a not-so brief history of Panic. Questions up-top; responses below. Pack a sandwich… 

Tell me about the very early days of Panic. What influenced you to get in touch with other guys and form a band? What can you say about your first demo from 1988? Was it any good? Would you play it to your children nowadays?

I won’t bother you with questions about each demo but can you say a few words about that demo-era of Panic in general? Was it flooded with live gigs, new friends, business contacts, parties and whatever or was it pretty steady?

Why did Rondo Middleton quit the band and how did you get to know Jack Coy? Am I right thinking that Jack is older than others in Panic and already had some experience of playing in a band?

How did you get a deal with Metal Blade Records? Was this label your main goal? Did you send your demos to other companies? Do you remember your feeling when you got positive answer from Metal Blade? Was it like a dream came true or were you confident and ready to conquer the world?

And now the time machine brought us in San Francisco, 1991. You’re in Alpha Omega Studio with Gary Holt and Rick Hunolt, Steve “Zetro” Souza is scheduled to record back vocals for you, Marc Senasac is the guy who will mix the album. How cool was that?! I bet you were like children in a candy store! How did you like famous San Francisco and Bay Area? Was it still a kind of thrash metal Mecca by the time of 1991? Did you get a chance to meet other bands and musicians like Paul Baloff, Kirk Hammett etc.?

How do you view the album “Epidemic” nowadays? Do you still listen to it once in a while? How substantial was contribution of Gary Holt and Rick Hunolt to this record?

Can you comment on the lyrics on this album? They sound a little bit strange to a non-native speaker like me. What kind of message you tried to express on this album?

What can you say about the response on the “Epidemic” album? Were you satisfied with the level of promotion of your debut effort? Was it possible to see your video for “Blackfeather Shake” on MTV?

 

 

Early personnel changes

Rondo had quit college by the autumn of 1985, and one day he & George drove to Bellingham to tell me they wanted to fire Gary and get Marty in the band. I told them they were crazy. Gary Allard was a great guy and a solid player. He had a car and a job. He came from a supportive family and was really cute and totally reliable. Marty was a dirtbag dropout who barely even had a guitar, let alone a car. I was outvoted, and the change was swiftly made. It turned out to be the right choice, of course. Marty is a gifted musician—the best guitarist I’ve ever known let alone played with. He’s also a great songwriter with a wide range of musical interests and one of my closest friends for more than 30 years. You can see him now alongside another Seattle legend, Eddie Spaghetti in the Supersuckers.

It wasn’t too long afterward that George & Marty drove to Bellingham to say they wanted to fire Rondo and get Jack. After Marty’s departure, Strychnine had shuffled some personnel and reformed as Myra Mainz. As with Gary, I was reluctant to change members. I was friends with Rondo– he’d introduced me to the band. But it was also true that he was a single-bass drummer in a double-bass genre. And though he was certainly no tapper, he also wasn’t an animal like Jack Coy. The change was made. Rondo briefly joined Myra Mainz, but largely out of spite, I think. Panic was again a stronger band for the switch.

Kent, Washington was a small town. We knew those Myra guys and would see them at parties. Bad blood was costly, but George was ambitious. I’ve never known a more pure guy in my life than George Hernandez. Dedicated craftsman, disciplined student of the genre. Driven, and fiercely loyal—unless he needed to dismiss you from the band to get someone better, in which case you were a stone goner. Nothing personal, just business. He’s now a fully-vested member of Sanctuary always touring Europe.

I am about a week older than Jack. I didn’t know him very well before he joined Panic, but we became pretty fast friends once he did. Jack really liked alcohol, and he & I really pushed each other in those early days. George & Marty weren’t 21 yet, so Jack & I would spend some time drinking in the bars. Jack is the happiest cat I’ve ever known—always a nice word and he thinks everything is a goddamned laugh riot, which is true if you want it to be. Jack was a foreman on a concrete crew in those days. Still is. He always had a killer tan on his huge tattooed arms, but if you ever saw him in shorts his legs were pale because he had to wear long pants at work even in the summer.

 

Metal Blade

With the line-up in place, we turned all our attention to the band. We all worked day jobs, but every spare minute and every spare dollar was spent on building the Panic brand. With Jeff Gilbert’s help, we started to get better gigs. We were just breaking into the bar scene, which at the time did not yet feature the anchors of the OffRamp and RockCandy– the two places where the metal/heavy grunge scene really thrived later. The Crocodile was just getting started and though we were welcome at Pioneer Square bars like the Colourbox and Central Tavern, the central city bars like the Vogue, Squid Row and Ditto were not as interested in us.

We recorded another demo in about 1989, called Morbid Curiosities. The song later

A Brief History of Panic (part I)

In the autumn of 2016, I got a Facebook message from a headbanger in Moscow (Russia, not Idaho!) asking some questions about Panic. In itself, this was not unusual. Once every few months I hear from someone asking about the band. I figure it’s easiest to track me because I have an uncommon name…

Konstantin Chilikin has an on-line metal magazine called Stay Heavy and wondered if I’d agree to an interview. I said of course, and gave him my email address to send the questions.

What he sent was the most-exhaustive list of prompts I’d ever seen. How this guy from the other side of the world could even know about some of the shit was beyond me. It sounded like he was writing from Burien! For a second, I actually thought it might  be someone from within the Circle of Trust playing an internet prank on me– because some of this stuff bordered on inside jokes. And it’s not like this guy has just been sitting in his parents’ basement in Moscow obsessing on Panic since the 1990s. He’s clearly one of these guys who enjoys research, and he has accumulated this level of knowledge about hundreds if not thousands of American metal bands from the last 30 years.

I was pretty overwhelmed at first, and hastily shut down the email– trying to forget about it. Occasionally I’d open it back up and eventually I started pecking away at it. More than a year later, I’d finished what had become an 10,000 word history of the band, using Konstantin’s questions as an outline. It was actually a real gas to write, with lots of trips down memory alley and more than a few fact-checking sidetrips. It’s fun to research yourself– you can find out some stuff you’d forgotten.

Anyway, it’s far from ‘complete’ but it is accurate. Also, it is not for everyone. I’d say for completists only.  Some of you will find yourselves in here. A few of you might not find the light in which history has recalled you to be very flattering, in which case maybe you shouldn’t have been such a fuckin’ dick at the time. History aint pretty…

In order to keep as much of your attention as possible, I’ll break this into three movements. I’ll add Konstantin’s prompts at the top of each section for context. Jack, George & Marty have already read this and issued their fondest endorsements. I hope you like it, too, although truthfully I don’t really expect you to read it…

Stay heavy,

–Braimes

 

Well, Jeff, let’s imagine we have a time machine and now we are ready to jump in the past. Location: Seattle, Year: 1987. Ronald Reagan is still in the White House, Starbucks still is a local company, Def Leppard has released “Hysteria”, while Guns ‘n Roses have unleashed “Appetite For Destruction”, “Slippery When Wet” is the most selling album in the USA and Nirvana is doing its first steps. And what about you and your band mates? What were you doing in 1987?

What about music scene in Seattle in the late 80’s? For many people this city is the cradle of Grunge but was there any interest in heavy metal? Were you close with guys from Forced Entry, The Accused and Sanctuary? Were you influenced by local heavy metal heroes Culprit? Did you have any troubles with hardcore / indie bands like The Melvins, Beat Happening etc.?

Tell me about the very early days of Panic. What influenced you to get in touch with other guys and form a band? What can you say about your first demo from 1988? Was it any good? Would you play it to your children nowadays?

I won’t bother you with questions about each demo but can you say a few words about that demo-era of Panic in general? Was it flooded with live gigs, new friends, business contacts, parties and whatever or was it pretty steady?

 

Summer of 1987

First of all, Konsantin, thanks for this very comprehensive questionnaire! Your perception of what it was like to be a PacificNorthWestern American headbanger in this particular era is very keen!

Panic was two years old and transitioning from the name Cold Steele at this point in time. We were experiencing something of an identity crisis, torn between a few competing styles of metal. We were definitely more interested in Appetite for Destruction than Slippery When Wet or Hysteria– the latters of which we heartily despised. What we were listening to most at that time, however, was the best of the contemporary thrash metal of the day. Overkill’s Taking Over was a favorite and of course Among the Living. We were still squeezing the glory out of the previous year’s Master of Puppets, but the release of Garage Days Revisited in August really was a game-changer. Except for Marty, we weren’t much into Slayer—and we mocked Exodus openly which is ironic since they ended up mentoring us years later. We dug Trouble and Loudness and Accept. But the grunge movement hadn’t achieved liftoff yet and Cowboys from Hell was still three years away also…

Terry Date had the hot hand in Seattle at the time, and though we weren’t unanimously nuts about some of the local stuff he’d done (Sanctuary, Soundgarden, Fifth Angel) we admired his tones and sought to attach our name to his. We saved our money and went into Steve Lawson Studios with him that summer and did four songs. It’s a beautiful demo and it was really the first time we’d heard ourselves properly recorded. After the Saturday night sessions, around midnight, we jumped the 8’ chainlink fence that surrounded the festival grounds of Seattle Center, where the famous Space Needle is. It was Labor Day weekend, when the city hosts its Bumbershoot festival. It’s a much bigger deal these days, and in the post-911 security culture of the US we probably would have been arrested if not shot. But this was 1987, and instead security just escorted us off the grounds. We were pretty full of ourselves that particular night…

We worked this demo hard, sending it to radio stations, magazines and record labels. George had designed a killer logo and we took some photos on a stone staircase off Green Lake in Seattle. I pasted up some liner notes with lots of special thanks. The initial run of 100 cassette tapes was financed by a local record store manager named Lance Goodwin. Bubble Records was a great outlet for the latest in heavy metal, and Lance was a fan & friend. After exhausting our budget on studio time, we didn’t have enough money to pay for production!

The demo didn’t get us a record deal, but it did get the attention of Jeff Gilbert who at the time was still hosting his Brain Pain radio show on Sunday nights at the University of Washington’s KCMU radio station (now the commercially-popular KEXP). Jeff was very supportive of Panic and played the tape every week. Jeff Gilbert was definitely the first and most-important Seattle media to get behind Panic, and really helped us graduate from suburban booger pickers to downtown Seattle legitimacy in a very short time.

Late ‘80s Seattle

As you astutely point out, the late 1980s was the pre-grunge era in Seattle. It’s not as if that music hadn’t been invented yet, because Green River was certainly playing and recording as were Crisis Party, Catbutt, Malfunkshun and a bunch of other bands that would wear the grunge label later– after it was identified. The scene back then was more integrated– with the possible exception of metal. Metal is metal is metal—that has always been the case. People who don’t specifically like metal often go out of their way to avoid it; and by the same token metal fans often only consume metal shows and records. That said, Panic was always embraced to an extent by the unmetal community, and we billed up with lots of bands from outside our genre. It wasn’t a Thinking Man’s Metal shtick like BÖC—more like Drinking Man’s Metal…

I’m sorry to say it, but in those days there was quite a bit of self-aware competition between the bands in our class. Sanctuary, Queensryche and Metal Church had already graduated, of course– they had major label deals and tour support. Panic and Forced Entry and Bitter End were left to jockey for position and though there was much comradery (much of which endures to this day) there were also