Rhino 39

We all grew up together in the same middle class neighborhood and we first got together as Rhino 39 on August 16, 1977. It happened to be the day Elvis was found dead on his toilet. Having never been an Elvis fan that didn’t mean much except to remember when we started. At the time, we were making up songs like Shut up, Dead Little Brothers, Junkfood, and I Wanna Be A Hari Krishna. As it turned out, Dave Dacron our lead singer tricked us into being a punk band. He told us we were going to see Led Zeppelin but instead took us to the Whiskey to see the Skulls, Controllers and Avengers. We loved it in a disturbed kind of way. It was raw. It was loud. It was insane. Bruce Barf (Skulls bass player) kept pulling his pants down past his ass crack and Whiskey management kept stopping the show and demanding that he pull his pants back up. The Avengers were in your face. They had serious attitude and Penelope the lead singer gave us boners. This stuff was real different from the over polished, puffed up, untouchable rock stars and arena concerts we were used to. We knew this punk rock thing was something we wanted to be a part of. Plus it seemed like it might be a way to get laid. Meanwhile, Dave set up our first live show. It was at a dance for retarded kids. They kept asking if we could play the theme from the Lone Ranger. I don’t know what they expected but they hated us. Not that you had to be retarded to hate us but they all were and all did. Except for one guy that came up afterwards, and told us that he could ride his bicycle a hundred miles an hour. We also had some other memorable early shows like the backyard high school jock party where we got drenched in beer. Then there was a high school dance hall gig that looked like it might be good. Actual punk rockers were starting to show up but the cops shut it down. There was college fraternity that was desperate because the band they had lined up cancelled. So they guaranteed some amount of money for us to play. We showed, they took one look at us and changed their minds on the spot. But at least we got paid. Things were looking up. For those that don’t know, have forgotten or just want to forget, back around the late 70s, punk was hated by much of the mainstream and punk rockers were truly despised by most people. It may have been people were fearful and threatened by what they thought we were up to. It was considered sick and bizarre just to cut you hair short in punk fashion or color your hair green. Not like today where a 12 inch purple Mohawk barely gets noticed. It’s interesting to see how popular punk has become, because it wasn’t like that back then. Sometimes shows like X or the Avengers, Bags, Dickies or the Weirdos might be half empty. And if you even had to pay to get in because you didn’t know someone or couldn’t figure out how to sneak in, the cost was usually something like $2.50. Next we went to the Masque. There was no show scheduled that night but we just wanted to check it out. The Masque was really the basement under a porn movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee Avenue that had been designated a civil defense nuclear bomb shelter. You entered the Masque through the alley, down a long narrow staircase. It was all concrete with punk graffiti everywhere and smelled like piss. There were lots of rooms off to the right and left and a large central area with a stage at the far end. We could hear bands playing in the various rooms that were used as rehearsal space. We when to the first room went in to see Skulls rehearse but they told us to get the fuck out. We went to the next room and it was Geza X with a clear see-though guitar and Stan Lee from the Dickies and they told us to get the fuck out too. So we left. We met Linda Bomblast. Linda’s name fit her perfectly. She’d just as soon kick you in the nuts as give you the time of day. She lived in one of the smellier rooms at the Masque and managed the venue for founder Brendan Mullen. For some reason she took a liking to us. She must have had a soft spot for complete wankers. So she invited us to come back with our equipment. She later became our manager in those early days. So we started rehearsing our fucked up shit at the Masque. So for a while we would show up in the afternoon and start playing, drink beer, beat off and make up new songs. We’d hang out all day then catch the show at the Whiskey that night if we didn’t spend all our money on beer. I remember seeing the Screamers and Weirdos for the first time one of those nights. They were awesome. I wanted to be like Tomata, except for the fact he was brilliant and I was a dork. Our first show at the Masque was really an after-hours party. We had been hanging out and playing all day. Then I think some of us went and caught the Nuns who were playing at the Whiskey. After the show everyone came back including the Nuns and we played our set for the first time in front of people who seemed to like it. But then what was not to like. It’s 3:30 am, you’re drunk and there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to do except watch four dip-shits pretend they are a punk band. We would continue to play at the Masque. But by now it was officially shut down. Unofficially there would be shows occasionally. One in particular stands out where we played with the Bags and the Germs. The place was packed, the toilets were overflowing and Bobby Pyn announced that he had just changed his name to Darby Crash. That’s cool. We also started to play some shows around town. Occasionally, there were shows billed as benefits to raise money to reopen the Masque. They had a lot of those benefits back then but it never did officially reopen. One such featured us playing with this new all girl group that called the Go Gos and this other new group from San Francisco called the Dead Kennedys. That night stands out because Dave got hit in the face with a mannequin leg thrown up on stage and I remember the Go Gos bass player crying on stage because someone stole her purse. Another hotspot at the time was a place called the Rock Corp. in Van Nuys. There also was the Elks Lodge, and Parkview Hall near Macarthur Park and not many but a few other hellholes. Meanwhile back in Long Beach, there was this popular surfer dude that just cut his hair and had an interest in punk rock. He invited us to play a party at his mom and dad’s house. His name was Jack Grisham. He of course would go on to form TSOL. There were a lot of newly formed punk converts at the party and it was a real good time, since nobody wanted to kill us. Soon after, a group of students at Long Beach City College got permission from the administration to have a punk band play on campus and we got the invitation. Among the majority of stoned face teachers and students there were a few punks and a few interested others. It seemed punk rock was starting to catch on in the suburbs. By now, the Masque now was completely closed and vacated. We needed a place to rehearse and hang out. What we found was a couple of one bedroom apartments side by side above a machine shop near the corner of Atlantic and PCH in Long Beach. This place was trashed and stunk, but it was all ours for $125 a month. It also happened to be in the middle of the blackest part of town and featured the Green Frog bar and restaurant next door. We fixed it up a bit with sound proofing and turning its big front room into a rehearsal space. One wall was covered in flyers from what were some of the greatest punk shows up to that time and maybe ever. Now that we had our headquarters the party was on. The place became notorious for wild parties. We’d have our friends from the growing local punk scene and Hollywood scene down for an evening of drink, drugs and debauchery. This was about the time we met Black Randy and David Brown the man behind Dangerhouse records. Flipside Magazine would sometimes attend and occasionally write small blurbs about the parties. There was a girl named Mary Rat who was very much a part of the punk scene and would come to our parties sometimes. I remember walking with her to our local ghetto liquor store and the only thing she was wearing above they waist was electrical tape over her nipples. There was this other girl who would hang out pretty regular. She showed up the day after a night of insanity with a large quantity of cocaine she ripped off from her sister's drug dealing boyfriend. We were all pretty hung over including Black Randy who was still passed out on the floor. She spilled a pile of it out on a table and carefully chopped and manicured the precious shit. We hovered around as she took forever to work the powder into a number of perfectly formed and portioned parallel lines. Just then Black Randy comes in the room, and as if sleepwalking heads directly to cocaine, shoves his face down in it like Al Pacino in Scarface demolishing the whole setup. You gotta love a guy like that. We continued to play a bit more frequently and went to a bunch of shows to see our favorite bands. There was a crazy dude that we would see all over named Keith. He had this band that was going play there first show at the Moose Lodge in Redondo Beach. They were called Black Flag and Keith asked us if we would be on the bill with them and the Alleycats. This gig got a lot of publicity and it was packed. I know people still talk about that night. I guess it was historical. We didn’t give it a second thought at the time. David Brown was in the process of putting out the Yes LA compilation album when he asked us if we’d be interested in recording a single. That seemed like a pretty good idea and we went over to the Dangerhouse headquarters which was really his apartment. I remember albums, jackets and sleeves laid out all over the kitchen in some kind of disorganized assembly line. So we partied and talked about how we would make the record. A little later we found ourselves at Kitchen Sync Studios were Dangerhouse recorded much of their stuff. We were in and out in one evening and we had our single in the can. That single turned out to be the last new release for Dangerhouse and after listening to it we all knew why. Prior to the record coming out Flipside asked if we would do and interview. Well we were all pretty cool with that idea since we had been reading Flipside since the first few issues. Al came over with some other Flipside folks, we talked a bunch of shit, took some pictures on the roof out behind our studio. When we saw the magazine in Zed records, we were on the cover and realized we made complete asses of ourselves. That was pretty bitchin at the time. We also did an interview for Slash Magazine around the same time. We met them at the La Brea Tar Pits and again just talked shit, took pictures and made asses of ourselves. We weren’t very quick learners. Black Randy had his album out and we had our single so they hooked it up for us to play a show at the Whiskey. This was a dream come true for us. After all this is where we were really introduced to the scene and where we started by going to see most of our favorite bands. Plus we got in for free. The guys from the Metrosquad got the idea to set up show at the Green Frog Bar and Restaurant next to our studio. This was a place where older black men and women would congregate and we would occasionally hang out for drunken sing-a-longs and just general drunkenness. They also had an awesome menu of soul food. The idea was to rent the place for the night, have us open the show for Black Randy and the Metrosquad and record the whole thing. A recording crew and sound truck was arranged. There was no stage, so we just set up at the far end of the restaurant. Everything was in place. The small restaurant was packed. When we went on, the crowd thrashed around sufficiently enough to dislodge the recording mikes and knock over some equipment. Then Randy went on and what a great show it was hilarious. Unfortunately, the recordings were a waste. That might have been the last show before Dave was killed. Dave had this huge snake cage with a couple of pythons. Dave always had strange pets. Like the Tarantula that got loose in our studio. We could not find that damm thing anywhere. Then a month later I’m laying down and see it casually crawling up the side of the bed. Anyway, he went out to buy live baby chicks as snake food. Crashed the fucking car and was dead. Fuck. At that point in our lives I think I can say that was the fuckedest thing we had ever experienced. It still ranks right up there as the fuckedest thing ever. A couple nights later we decided to visit the auto junk yard were the car had been deposited. I think I took acid or maybe it just felt like I was on acid. Anyways, it was a pitch black foggy night. Real spooky. We arrived and there it was, all by it self, Dave’s wrecked car. It was surrounded by piles of other trashed cars. As we looked it over, we heard this chirping sound. The baby chicks were still alive in a paper bag. We laid lower than usual. But since we had a bunch of songs, mostly written by Dave, we decided we should get these things recorded. We met this strange loner. He was like a mad scientist with a recording setup. For the next few weeks we’d show up at his underground dump he called a recording studio and recorded this shit. We never did anything with those recordings until now. Back at the Rhino 39 headquarters we offered up one of the two apartments we occupied to a new all girl group called the Speed Queens. The Speed Queens would later become the Super Heroines and included Eva O. one of the pioneers of the Goth thing. The parties and insanity only got worse or better depending on how you look at it. The police now were frequent uninvited quests, as the shit would spill out on the street. There were some other fucked up people showing up, as the whole thing seemed completely out of our hands. The neighbor hood gangs were also taking notice and occasionally someone would get beat up. I remember finding this sweet innocent girl Dave knew from school in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. She was passed out drunk and someone had pissed on her. Tim and I started to carry her up the stairs to relative safety when a cop came up to us and said I hope she doesn’t die on you. Some months later, I get a call that we had a small fire at our studio but I am relieved to hear our place was undamaged. True, but the rest of the place including the electrical is completely destroyed. Smoke and soot everywhere, walls caved in, doors busted in and everything soaked from fire hoses. Time to go. We packed all our shit including our cat Tunafart and abandoned the place. Now as luck would finally have it, we got an offer from a friend of a friend to look after this large well equipped home in Orange County while the owner was away for six months. So we went out to take a look. It was a five bedroom home with pool and Jacuzzi and the most amazing bar. I would say over a hundred bottles of various liquors. We are told help ourselves to the bar and while on the verge of cumming in my pants, I assure the owner six months would not be too long. As it turned out, that bar lasted almost the entire six months. It was a glorious time. Friends, women, pool parties, and lots of booze. There was a girl named Sandy. She proclaimed herself our fan club president. I’m not sure if we had any fans, but we had a fan club and she was the president. She would usually pass out at some point in the evening. Well this night, I noticed a crowd of people surrounding something in the living room. When I investigated, there was Sandy, face down and bare-ass up draped over the lap of a famous Hollywood personality. He is using his two fingers as a rectal probe. I’m not sure why this was going on or why I’m even telling this story, but it happened. We started playing shows again as a three piece. The Starwood on Sunset Boulevard was a happening place at the time. We played there and I remember getting paid by the owner Eddie Nash. His real name was Abdul Nasarallah or something. Unknown by us at the time, this guy was a gangster and big time drug dealer who would later be remembered for the Wonderland murders. He supposedly ordered the hit where four people were killed in retaliation for something and somehow involved John Holmes the porn actor. He seemed like a pretty nice guy at the time though. There were new places to play now like: The Stardust Ballroom, Hong Kong Café, The Vex, Kings Palace, Blackies, Godzillas. However, we really only played occasionally. I think we were just basically lazy and not real good at or interested in self promotion. Our friend Tab Effit told us The Hong Kong Café was a great place to play because you got free dinner. Later we found out he meant you could eat the leftover Chinese food sick slobs left on their table and he was serious. I think it was Blackies and we were playing with the Circle Jerks and Redd Kross. While walking back from the liquor store this guy in a van side swipes about five parked cars and bursts into flames. We see the driver slumped over with his silhouette back lit by the flames. We are stunned, watching in amazement, holding our beer, as the van burns. Now this is where one of us runs up to pull the guy out and save his life, right? Wrong! I’m no fucking hero. That van could have exploded any second. Turns out the guy got out ok on his own. Steve Sinclair was a guy we know from early on and even played some shows with his band back then. He would wear a pocket protector with a bunch of pens in it. Well he was putting together a compilation album and asked we wanted to be on it. It would later be titled Hell Comes To Your House. So we go to the studio that Steve set up and we’re ready to record a couple songs. Things are going pretty good. We finish a take and look toward the control booth wondering if it was a keeper. Although we can’t hear anything in the sound booth, through the glass we see there is an all out brawl. Steve, the engineer, some of our people, arms flailing, red faces, everyone’s going at it. So it turns we didn’t get much done that day and ended up with one fucked up song on the album. Never did understand what the big argument was about. We rented a house in downtown Long Beach. Joel who was Dave’s younger brother started hanging out with us. Having realized that being a three piece band was a lot of extra work and being that we were generally lazy; we asked him if he wanted to join. Plus he seemed to have alot of energy and enthusiasm and some good ideas. So we rented rehearsal space at this studio that was run by the lead singer for Great White. Now Great White would years later become infamous for using pyrotechnics that caught a Rhode Island nightclub on fire killing more than a hundred people. So we came up with a bunch of new songs to add to some of the older ones we could still manage. About this time we meet Peter and Dean. We knew Peter’s sister back in the very early days. As found out later, Peter was at that early college gig back in 1979 with a super 8 movie camera. These two were starting a recording label called Triple XXX. They must have been real hard pressed for talent, because they asked us to be their first release. We wanted to do a full album and having the songs and Joel onboard we were ready. We were already familiar with the recording studio because it was where we did a few tracks for the Men were Men compilation. It was in Hollywood behind an Asian gambling joint. Except for the owner and recording engineer being taken hostage in a car jacking at gun point, things went pretty smooth. We finished the album. It was released and we continued to play some live shows from time to time. There was something called Self 86. This reminded me of the crazy half-assed punk shows in the early days. It was a big warehouse in east LA. Kegs of beer and a big crowd of people. Joel introduced me to El Duce who I all ready knew of and in a way admired as the lead singer for the Mentors. This guy was a lovable lunatic who was reciting the lyrics to this new song of his called Sandwich of Love. “The sandwich of love, one below and one above. She hasn’t been laid in days. Now she’s covered in mayonnaise.” Our good friend Marco who had been with us throughout from the very earliest days offered to manage the band. Immediately, he got us this fantastic gig with the Weirdos and Deadboys at the Variety Arts Center in downtown LA. Then he set us up at this place called the Country Club in Reseda. Here we played with the Dickies and Alleycats. Two very good shows we enjoyed as fans as much as being on stage. Next was a show with a new band called Jane’s Addiction. An unfuckingbelievably good band. About this time, we were invited to play a backyard party with a bunch of bands including some unknown band calling themselves The Offspring. It was fun. No big deal at the time. I barely even remember. Then come to find out later, here was another band that we played with in the beginning that would later go on to sell millions. Joel left the band and Jason joined almost immediately. Jason was the brother of Roger Scharback, a local icon, sometimes promoter, writer and fan. Jason was a great talent and full of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the rest us didn’t have much left. Now, we mostly played shows in Long Beach like Fenders, Bogart’s and the occasional gig at the Lion’s Club in Belmont Shore. Jason was friends with Sublime and we went out to the desert with generators, alcohol and guns. Always a good combination. By this time, we had all the best equipment, a small arsenal of guitars, amps, extra amps our own fully equipped recording studio, a five bedroom house some of us shared. Everything we ever thought we needed and most of the stuff we ever wanted. Except the desire. After all of this are there any great wisdom or insights?: Not really. Do we have any regrets?: Nope. Would we do it again?: Not sure. Would we have done anything different?: Probably. Did we have a good time?: Oh hell yes.