Part I: “We’re from England”

 

I woke up in the middle of the night in the guestroom of my own house with absolutely no idea where I was. Groping around the bed, I eventually felt my phone on the nightstand. Squinting, I was able to turn on the flashlight, illuminating the framed Austin Hotel photograph on the far wall. Only then did I remember I was home…

Heck, I’d only been gone 17 days.

Maybe that’s what Europe does to an American’s brain– erases it. I sighed heavy and set the phone down, falling back into the pillow. I was asleep again immediately.

To be fair, it had been a long day– starting with a subway ride to the Barcelona airport before a flight to JFK, another to SeaTac and finally the punishing drive home to Bellingham, arriving just after 2am. I tried to stay alert on the last 20 minutes of that drive by calculating what time my body really thought it was, but that only proved to make me sleepier. I eventually made it, and tiptoed into the guestroom so as not to wake Patti– only to startle awake two hours later completely disoriented.

It was a killer trip. Like a dream, really.

SeaTac-O’Hare-Heathrow seems like a long time ago now. Longer than 18 days, that’s for sure. SeaTac was like a morgue with airplanes at 11:30 Sunday night with not only no open bars but not even a Hudson News awake. Dropping in to Chicago at dawn was a different story– O’Hare felt like Mardi Gras by comparison, with people jostling through with open cocktails and goosing each other in that godawful accent, the brilliant Monday morning light pouring in through the huge east-facing windows. The SkyScraper Bar was like a neighborhood tavern, seating about a dozen. Solid spot for a 2-hour layover.

“Pretty decent night in London,” the pilot said in his pilot voice as we began our final descent into Heathrow. I wondered what that meant and found out 90 minutes later after clearing customs and catching the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. Stepping onto Chilworth Street– my first time on European soil– I was greeted by a steady rain. “Pretty decent?” I asked aloud. “Huh…”

Didn’t matter. More authentic, if anything. I was excited to be on the ground finally, and anxious to explore Ye Olde Londontowne. It was midnight, though, and the real conquest was going to have to wait till the morning. What I could use at the moment, though, was a drink. The bars were dark, so I ducked into a small market.

“Is it possible to buy a bottle of wine?” I asked the shopkeep, not noticing any alcohol of any kind in the store.

I don’t really know exactly what he said, but I did get the gist that it was too late to buy takeaway booze and that even the rest of the pubs would be closed soon. It was my first introduction to British English and the fact that just because you technically speak the language, you’re not guaranteed to comprehend through dialect.

People around me started breaking in to a trot as I was nearing the Tube transfer to Royal Oak, and I instinctively began to run also. The last thing I needed on this first night was to be marooned after the Tube stopped running. I made it onto the empty train, though, and rode the few stops to Maida Hill, which would be my home base for the next five nights.

Nearing the AirB, I happened upon the open London Food & Wine. Couldn’t hurt to ask again, I thought, and stepped up into the small, bright shop. Like in the other one, I didn’t see any wine– but asked the Punjabi gentleman who seemed to be the boss whether it was possible to purchase a bottle.

“Wine, yes,” he said, “only for you!”

He nodded to his colleague behind the counter and colleague asked me ‘red or vite?’ I said ‘red’ and he said ‘eight euro.’ I handed him a tenner, he changed me, then raised the metal roll-up door behind the counter just high enough to pull out a bottle of Jacob’s Creek red blend. He motioned for me to open my bag and then slid the bottle in.

“What do you do?” asked the bootlegger boss.

I turned back to face him, amazed at my good fortune.

“I’m travelling,” I said.

“I can see that,” he answered, eyeing my pack. “But what do you do?”

“Oh,” I said, laughing. “I’m… a real estate agent.”

“Oh yes, very good,” he said. “Market here very down. Much worry over Brexit. Where you from?”

I was delighted to have the opportunity to deliver my rehearsed response to this question so early in my trip. Little did I know I wouldn’t be asked again for a week, and never again after that. I looked left, then right, lowered my chin and whispered conspiratorially, ‘America.’

And that was it. He wasn’t impressed one way or the other that I was from the U.S. He didn’t make a grossed-out face, or roll his eyes or say anything about Trump. He didn’t pull an American flag out of his sleeve and wave it or light a string of firecrackers. He couldn’t care one way or the other– he was just making conversation.

“My name is Gulu,” he said instead. “G-U-L-U.”

I told him I was very charmed to meet him (I was) and asked if I could give him my business card, since he had asked about my profession. He accepted it and drew a six of clubs. He seemed pleased.

I found the apartment, opened the wine, drank half a glass, and fell hard asleep.

Every day is garbage day in London. But Tuesday is the morning they drag a dumpster the approximate size of Westminster Abbey itself across the ancient cobblestone courtyard behind my Maida Hill flat at 7am. It was a sound and volume I had never heard anything like. The beeping truck accepted the contents and made its way down the lane– but by then I was awake, after a mere four hours’ sleep. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back. I closed my eyes and prepared to rise. Then I woke up at noon.

Oh well, I’d needed the rest. I hadn’t slept since Saturday night in Bellingham, because I don’t sleep on airplanes. I hadn’t showered since Bellingham, either, or eaten since Seattle. So I showered and made myself a cup of tea to start my first day in the UK. I turned on the telly (that’s what they call television in England!) and opened the London Times that I’d bought from Gulu. I tried the crossword but couldn’t get more than a couple of answers. Cultural bias up the ass…

Teeth brushed and a pocket full of pounds, I descended the stairs to the street. I looked down the street, then up before turning down and then left at the corner. I had no plan, and every intention of getting as lost as possible today. Edie would be arriving tomorrow afternoon from Croatia, but today was all mine. I had no agenda whatsoever.

Eventually I struggled through ordering a cup of coffee in Bayswater and, after skirting Hyde Park, some fish ‘n’ chips in Mayfair. A pint in Paddington where there was actually Cricket on the telly. It rained lightly through the mid-afternoon, but by the time I’d looped round back to Little Venice, the setting sun was peeking out and the water on the canal was sparkling, sort of. It was quite a lovely scene.

After walking six hours, I was close enough to the flat to pop in for a glass of Gulu and a few more layers for my evening adventure. I got on the Tube a few stops to Soho, where I tried running down a bar called CroBar. Never did find the damned place. I wandered a few more hours, eventually grabbing another basket of fried fish and potatoes, not terribly much better than the first.

If it sounds like a fairly dull and uneventful first day in Europe, hardly worth writing down let alone reading through, that’s because it was. I had held high hopes for this day, unique in that I’d be solo and free to go where my whims took me. Unfortunately, my whims weren’t very skilled at navigating Google Maps and were generally unlucky when guessing in which direction to turn. Inevitably when emerging from a tube station, I would turn left only to discover later that the cool stuff I’d have hoped to stumble upon was mere meters to the right. This left/right guessing game would in fact be a theme for the entire trip.

So after more than 38,000 steps, I had little to show for my first day in London. Luckily every single other day of the entire trip was wikked awesome…

I didn’t sleep nearly as well that second night, but still rose optimistic about day 2. I’d be seeing Edie in a matter of hours after two months apart. She’d been having her own bitchin’ adventure: two weeks in Ireland, two in Northern Italy during Carnival, three on the Island of Sardinia working on a farm, and a week in Croatia. I wondered whether I’d even recognize my little girl after all her worldly experiences.

As I waited in the cavernous Victoria Station for Edie’s arrival, a lone busker worked over a menu of melancholy classics creating a perfectly bittersweet traveling soundtrack. “Stand by Me” on any day brings a tear to my eye, but on this particular occasion, in a strange land, preparing to meet my wandering daughter, maybe still a little sleep-deprived/jetlagged– the lone tear brought along its mates and I had a pretty decent little mid-day cry, standing alone in a bustling London train station, travelers whizzzing past me dragging luggage and looking down at their phones. When dude got to the call on me brother breakdown in “Lean on Me” I heard myself clapping in the right spot and I enjoyed a discrete giggle only an inside joke can bring.

Eventually Edie & found each other outside the station, and when I saw her I started running– almost getting creamed by a red double-decker. “The red ones don’t stop!” I shouted as I finally reacher her, and we shared a series of deep hugs with tears on both sides. She looked radiant– maybe a little sunburnt. Her voice was hoarse and she actually seemed taller. Her shoes were trashed. She’d been on the road…

I shouldered her pack and we wandered toward Chelsea, starting up a lively, tangential conversation that did not let up until we parted in Barcelona two weeks later. On this first afternoon, though, we both just wanted something to eat, maybe a glass. A number of places were closed for that British siesta between lunch and dinner, so we eventually just slipped into one of London’s one beelion pubs and had a perfectly serviceable meal that fully took backseat to our animated discourse. After some browsing, we Tubed back to headquarters where I introduced Edie to her couch. She showered and though she was tired, I convinced her to rally for one more outing. It was a pretty long walk to Abbey Road, but totally worth it. We had the most famous crosswalk in history all to ourselves.

On the way back to the flat, we picked up some supplies and saw a fox. A real honest-to-goodness urban fox. Who’d have thought? I did not know London foxes were a thing.

Quality sleep for both of us that night, and we got a decent start the next morning toward Portobello Road. Saturday is the big day on the Road, of course, but there are ample vintage shops on any old Thursday morning, plus the mind-bending Red Lion antique mall. We had a quaint brunch experience and eventually grabbed the front top seat on a double-decker bus to the British Museum in Bloomsbury. There was some cool scale historical art in there– huge, noseless Greek sculptures and Egyptian sarcophagus’ plus the Rosetta Stone and an interesting exhibit of ancient money.

We were pretty thirsty after that hibrow shit, so we walked up to King’s Cross in search of a refresco. The pubs in this neighborhood were overflowing with white-collar Londoners just getting off work. It was a completely mad scene, with punters (that’s what they call people drinking in a pub in England!) spilling into the streets– cigarette in one hand, pint in the other. Pub after pub, block after block. We’d been on our feet most of the day and at this point wanted to sit a spell. So we settled on a Mexican place which was also super busy but that did have two seats at the corner of the bar. Absolutely perfect.

Londoners:

• smoke
• drink beer
• when not drinking beer generally prefer gin to vodka and scotch to bourbon
• wear black
• … except the businessmen who wear high ‘n’ tight navy blue suits with brown shoes
• prefer cricket to baseball of course, but when supporting baseball they prefer the Red Sox to the Yankees
• really do say “cheers, mate” at every conceivable opportunity and sometimes even when it’s not seemingly appropriate
• don’t generally smile at strangers

Of course the main thing in London is not getting hit by a car. It seems simple to remind oneself  ‘they drive on the other side of the street’  but until you’ve walked 23 miles in two days, you don’t realize how deep your American bias really is and that it absolutely does endanger you as a pedestrian. I’m a jaywalker. I generally cross any street at any point if there’s not a car coming. But in England, your instincts can deceive you– especially if you’re jetlagged or maybe a little drunk. The streets are narrow and heavily parked and everyone drives a thousand KpH. I am actually very surprised more foreigners aren’t hit and dragged by tiny British cars more frequently. At first I thought it was kind of silly that painted on the ground at each intersection were the words LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT. But, you know– that stuff did actually turn out to be useful…

Lots of Indian food in Mayfair, so we headed back down there after our Modello’s for some dinner. It was alright. London has not been traditionally known for its food, though it seems that’s changing. It is known for its healthy Indian population of course, and the curry houses that come with. There are tons of excellent Indian restaurants in London, apparently– we just didn’t choose one of them this night. We didn’t eat great in London in general, to be honest. The best meal I had was a bowl of Bulgogi from a street vendor in Soho on my way to Victoria Station to pick up Edie. Walking around that neighborhood on a sunny weekday morning, the delivery trucks double-parked and merchants jockeying for position was a very cool experience. Plus Bulgogi!

Almost any community looks diverse (less white) when compared with Bellingham. Most of the people vacuuming SeaTac Airport after hours on Sunday night were brown. Likewise the mix in Chicago was deeper than what I am accustomed to at home. And even the most-touristy neighborhoods in Northwest London feature startling diversity, not even including Chinatown or Golders Green.

But then we went to Brixton.

Emerging from the tube station stairs, it was if if we’d travelled to another country altogether. Though more than 100 languages are commonly spoken in Brixton, it is definitely the Caribbean capitol of London, with lots of reggae, lots of dreadlock tams, and lots of da kine. We had a delicious brunch at a jerk joint and wandered through Brixton Village and Market Row, a rich omni-cultural outdoor marketplace not seemingly expecting many tourists. Brixton Village featured small eateries, merchants of every kind, and a range of food markets including fruit stands, spice carts and live butchers selling still-dripping chickens. The browsers were shopping for dinner here, not souvenirs.

But we couldn’t hang around Brixton all day. We had to beat it back north of the river and check out the MEGA motorcycle rally in the shadow of Westminster Abbey!

To be fair, we didn’t realize that’s what we were walking in to. But clearing the doors of that Westminster Station, with Big Ben looming just outside, we were overwhelmed by the roar of motorcycles echoing through the corridor. Parliament was expected to again extend the Brexit decision that very day, and this rally– best we could tell– was a Veterans-for-Brexit motorcycle parade, with literally thousands of two-wheeled vehicles of every kind, from 50cc Italian scooters to Japanese crotch rockets to American Harleys. They were all cruising across the River Thames from the south, revving up their engines past Ben, curling around Abbey and through St. James’s Park. The route was lined with flag-wavers who looked vaguely familiar. Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, was entirely covered in scaffolding, undergoing four years of restoration work, and we weren’t going to wait in-queue (that’s what they call ‘waiting in line’ in England!) to go inside Westminster Abbey. So we decided to flee the red hat scene and make it down to the Ecuadorian Embassy to see if Julian Assange was home. We thought he was always home– that was exactly the point! But as it turned out, we’d just missed him…

If Londoners were very concerned about Brexit, it wasn’t obvious. Of course, the longest conversation I had during the whole visit was the one with Gulu after I’d been in-town for 45 minutes, and he did actually mention it. So maybe I just didn’t go deep enough with people. Most bartenders didn’t broach the subject in the course of pouring me a drink, and the red bus drivers were generally pretty busy driving the big red busses. I really had hoped to get into some conversations while in London, but the truth is that unless you strike one up, you’re not likely to get there. I’m generally a pretty good at chatting up strangers, but London seemed indifferent unless I really wanted to be that guy, which I didn’t.

London is cool. You certainly can’t do everything in four days. But the Tube works so great– it really helps to make a big city smaller. The weather wasn’t bad for us once Edie got there, and actually the lilacs and cherry blossoms on-display were the nicest blooms we’d see the whole trip. Crowds weren’t bad, and with the exception of the larger-profile tourist attractions, we didn’t wait in a queue the whole time. And other than a handfull of peace-keepers at the bike rally (real live Bobbies!) there was almost no police presence, which was quite refreshing.

I don’t know where London keeps its homeless, but they were not visible in the neighborhoods we were in. We didn’t go everywhere, of course, and we were certainly in some touristy locations– though not exclusively. But London’s core is a mix of commercial and residential uses. I don’t know if there is such a thing as ‘zoning.’ There are no vast commercial blocks without residences, and likewise there are no dense residential areas without commercial. It’s all very finely integrated. You can’t be more than a block from a corner market or a pub– it’s impossible, at least in the core. We saw a tent here and there and there was some old-school begging (different from American panhandling) but not much. In a want/want-not capitalist economy similar to what we have in the U.S., there’s got to be some people outdoors. But they’re not hanging around downtown…

On Saturday morning, we packed up and caught the Tube to St. Pancras Station to make our chunnel train to Paris. In the movies, it seems like Americans always board trains in Europe at the last minute, running down a platform and jumping onto a moving coach– blowing kisses to some weeping Euro Strange, waving from the platform. In reality it’s as gummy and chaotic as any American airport and we missed our train by a mile. No matter– there was another one 90 minutes later for a 30-Euro penalty. Paris has been there a long time. It will wait for us another 90 minutes. See you there…

 

OMENS AND OTHER SIGNS, LONDON 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball on the Radio 19

 

Nobody cares about baseball anymore. The kids just wanna hear a good beat…

Oh, I’m used to it. It’s just that I don’t expect the chalk rubbed in my eyes this early. I don’t expect it on the first day of a seven-month season.

And not only do I not not expect it, I actually understand it. I don’t agree with it. But I do get it, intellectually. Baseball is a game starkly out-of-step with American culture. In a society driven by violence and 140-character presidential press conferences, most Americans don’t really have time for baseball. It takes too long. It’s too slow. It’s so fucking boring. There are no cheerleaders.

And so baseball is dying if not a justified death, then at least one that can’t be convincingly argued against. Once known as America’s Pastime, professional baseball is now not only the least-profitable of the ‘big three’ but also is probably not even in the big three at all. Major League Soccer is a much bigger draw in the North American markets in which it competes and even dim ol’ hockey—once discreetly considered the laughing stock of professional sports—is demanding more attention. Baseball is dying on the vine. The death is a slow one—almost as slow as the pace of its games. But it’s dying just the same.

And on most days it’s just fine because there’s more room for me. Plenty of places to park and sit. An older, generally more-dignified audience without drunken wave-starters or violent visiting team bully fanatics. Fewer little kids coming down off sugar and screaming for their parents’ phones. There are actually a lot of benefits to being the fan of a dead sport.

Unless the media indifference is so comprehensive that you can’t even listen to the game. At that point, it starts to get a little limiting.

Again—I am totally accustomed to chasing baseball around the radio dial in the late summer once middle school flag football pre-season starts, because my local radio affiliate understands very well that the audience for any football game or show is much larger and more susceptible to target marketing than the dusty old baseball fan worn down and advertised numb after 100+ games.  This affiliate is contracted on some level to broadcast not only all Seattle Mariners games but also the other higher-profile baseball events of the season– including Sunday Night Baseball, the All-Star Game and the World Series (if not the entirety of the MLB playoffs). It’s surprising, however, how many of these events they do not end up broadcasting in favor of high school football, college football, NFL football or even the motherfucking NFL draft. KPUG actually pushes contracted live sporting contests to its flat-chested sister station in order to broadcast an indulgent, droning 48-hour circle-jerking sports business transaction, regardless of how well the baseball team is performing at the time.

The draft is in late April. Early in the season– but it’s an isolated event. The real football pre-empts are still months away.

But this is the first year I can remember Opening Day being spun off to lil’ sister, and the fact that it was in order to broadcast March Madness is just icing on the turd for me.

Forget sports. There are few cultural phenomena of any root that I loathe more than the Final Four. I oughtn’t get into it here, but I do dislike it even more than the football nonsense. That’s never before been out of envy, because I can’t remember it ever interfering. Until this year.

Still, I don’t blame college basketball. As much as I enjoy torturing my understaffed local radio station dudes, I can’t really even find it in my crackerjack toy heart to blame them. There’s no sense in blaming football—it’s too dumb to know or care.

And really, there’s no actual need to blame anyone. I don’t think anyone is intentionally killing baseball just to spite me. Not even the game itself is rooting for that. MLB is doing what it can to salvage a shred of its shrinking audience by speeding up the game and cranking up the walk-up music. The Russians aren’t involved, I’m sure. No: blame has no role in this pickle.

I just want to listen to the damned ballgame. And it irks me when it’s not there for me when I turn my AM radio on for the first time since October. And when I do actually find out where the Cascade Radio Group has hidden the broadcast, they don’t even play the pre-game show! As if 60 more minutes of Men At Work and Wham! is going to matter one way or the other to the casual ‘80s spitbubble rock radio listener at 3pm on a Thursday.

The average age of the modern baseball fan is 59. Incredibly, I am young for the sport. Hard-fought efforts by the league including limiting mound visits and kind of instituting a pitch clock have shaved

minutes off the average time-of-game. Ultimately does it make any difference? I doubt it. I still roll my eyes when a player walks to first base without four wide ones being tossed his way. It’s going to result in a 40-second reduction in the time of the average game? Big deal. Play ball.

I’m sure you’ll just be doing backflips to learn my dilemma is solved—ironically through technology. When I did turn on my radio at the top of the pre-game show hour Thursday and heard not the familiar French Horn fanfare of the Seattle Mariner’s pregame broadcast, but the braying nonsense of some aged-out jock analyzing some other jaggov’s analysis of a college basketball game– I did what I’d known for many seasons I should have done. I picked up my cellular telephone and downloaded the ESPN app. Ninety seconds later, I was listening to the soothing sounds of Shannon Drayer navigating the first of 162 pre-game shows as only she can. Now I’ll be able to just walk around my house with the phone in my pocket, and the game (and pre and post game shows!) will just follow me around as magic. No more turning on and off the five AM radios stationed strategically around my house and yard. I’ve gone wireless and I’ve got my local radio station to thank.

See you down the road when the internet get outlawed, fellas. In the meantime you won’t have Jeff Braimes to kick around any more…

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I did with my summer vacation

Dear Summer 2018: Please do not let the door slam repeatedly on your ugly ugly ugly head on the way out, pulverising it into a gritty, grey powder. I say good riddance to you, foul season. Fuck off at once and never return.

It is an understatement that I did not see you coming. I knew September might be a little melancholy, packing the kids off to their new lives in out-of-town universities. But I really thought July & August would be all steaks and pints, unicorns and roses. But that’s not how it played out.

It wasn’t the weather. It wasn’t the market. It wasn’t the Mariners. I can smile through those maladies and often do. No, dude– you were so much more…

Not only did so many of the cool summer things that happen in the best imaginary summers not happen, but lots of things that happen in the worst imaginary nightmare summers actually did. Friends died. Forests burned. Neighbors went mad and threatened to kill me. Governments failed and our entire social structure collapsed.

To be clear & fair: my health and the health of my family remains very solid. I’ve had this weird pressure behind my left eye since mid-August, but otherwise we are all extremely well. They say you don’t have anything if you don’t have your health, so I guess that is actually pretty important. And there’s been no cancer or AIDS or strokes or pancreatitis.

Everything else, though, sucked vigorously.

I suppose it’s worth noting that there’ve been no unwanted pregnancies or automobile accidents

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