Gimme Something Better (25 page)

Paul Casteel:
Fang’s probably the best band out of the East Bay. It reminded me of a Penelope Spheeris movie: kids all on the run, squatting somewhere, staying at somebody’s house while their parents were out of town. It was an ongoing cutting class, drinking and drug spree. It was cool and it was authentic.

Rachel Rudnick:
Loved Fang, they touched me heart. “Skinheads Smoke Dope”—I know a skinhead who was very excited, one time he was smoking dope during that song. “Destroy the Handicapped”—they would always pick somebody with a disability to come sing that. “Berkeley Heathen Scum” was considered the anthem by a lot of people.

Aaron Cometbus:
When the album with “Berkeley Heathen Scum” came out, Orlando said, “Some records shouldn’t have lyric sheets.”

Sammytown:
We started playing a lot and touring. I was 16 and in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and it was 18 and over. So I had to sit in the van until we played. And then after, I would have to go and sit in the van.

Tom Flynn:
We wanted to put out a record and I was scared someone else would fuck it up. I thought about Universal Records. They put out the first Crucifix. But I didn’t think they were really
cool
. They were older, wouldn’t really understand our music. I had money saved up. So I said, “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”

I lived on Bonar Street in Berkeley. So these friends of mine would send me letters to “Boner Street,” and they would get delivered. So, Boner Records. It wasn’t trying to be a record company, it was just a way to put out the first Fang record. I thought maybe ten people would buy it.

Hef:
I was a long-distance trucker at the time. I was in a punk rock record store in Denver and saw
Landshark
, their first LP. I had seen the band, so I bought it. The Fang guys were over one time and they were looking through my records, and they were like, “Wow, he has our record and he doesn’t even know us.”

Fat Mike:
Landshark
is, behind the Operation Ivy record, the second or third best record out of the East Bay.

Gavin MacArthur:
I got their album in the seventh grade, and I remember that song, something about getting to fuck Brooke Shields. “The Money Will Roll Right In.” I just thought that was the greatest song.

Aaron Cometbus:
Fang were the most Berkeley of all Berkeley bands. They sung about local stuff and Sam was always working delivery for Blondie’s Pizza or taking vocal lessons at Laney College. The dead-end sort of nutty stuff that was the essence of Berkeley life. Sam never liked me, probably because I was an annoying little runt.

Later, I did the East Bay scene reports for
Maximum RocknRoll
, and almost every month, I wrote that Fang had broken up, because some member had told me so in a huff. Sam was understandably pissed that I didn’t check the facts with him. Finally we came to a reconciliation of sorts. He said to go ahead and write whatever I wanted. So of course I began to make up the craziest things. From then on the scene reports were a lot more interesting. “Fang drummer gets a sex change.” “Sammy teaching preschool.” “Fang bassist run over by ice cream truck.” They got a lot of condolence cards for that one.

Bob Noxious:
I liked Fang a lot but it was hard for me to admit it because they were our competition. Fang had the East Bay and the Fuck-Ups had San Francisco.

Murray Bowles:
They had really catchy songs.

Tom Flynn:
We were political personally, but I didn’t think we were a political band and I didn’t really like political bands. Just seemed really boring to me. Writing songs about Ronald Reagan: “I hate Ronald Reagan.” There’s our song! It just seemed dumb. Do these people really feel a deep emotional response singing about Ronald Reagan?

Sammytown at Eastern Front

Sammytown:
Tim Yohannan asked us about the lyrics to “Fun with Acid,” and he kept trying to steer it towards something about Vietnam. We were like, “Dude, no, it’s just about being fucked up and paranoid on acid.”

Tom Flynn:
People figured any band from San Francisco was ultra-political. Fang was not like that at all. People were kinda surprised when we’d go around the country, that we weren’t a typical
Maximum RocknRoll
type band.

Sammytown:
We were like number three in Penn State on the college radio station. What does that even mean? There’d be all kinds of kids that knew the songs. We’d look at each other thinking, “This is fuckin’ crazy.”

Tom Flynn:
In ’84 we put out another record called
Where the Wild Things Are
. And then we went on tour again. And I quit at the end. In the fall of ’84. It wasn’t any fun anymore. We couldn’t write a good song. It just got to be a pain.

Sammytown:
He was tired of me. We went on this big U.S. tour. My girlfriend had three kids, and was living in Tom’s house while he was on the road. We were fucking strung out on heroin already. I was like 16. So he comes home to his house, and his singer, his singer’s girlfriend are shooting heroin in the bathroom while these three kids—I think he was just like, “This is fucking off the hook.”

Tom Flynn:
I really thought that I’d quit and the band would end. But Sam said, “If you quit the band can we go on?” I said, “Whatever, that’s up to you.” And eventually they decided to keep going, which hurt my fragile ego.

Kelly King:
Bill Collins was playing for Fang. He was the only person that could copy Tom Flynn’s style almost perfectly. It was excellent.

Sammytown:
I did a lot of drugs. I started dealing acid. I made my own blotter. I would get crystal and put up 20,000, 100,000, 50,000 hits at a time. Going on tour made it really convenient because we’d hang out in town for a couple days, I’d find the local pot dealer and ask, “Well, what about acid?” I’d end up mailing acid all over the country.

I remember going through Nevada and taping our pot underneath the fucking body of the car because the drug laws in Nevada were so intense. It was ’85, I got busted in Texas with a roach worth of weed and I had to spend three days in jail. So I moved the band to Europe for awhile in ’85.

The last few tours, I ended up kicking on tour. I would just deal with it. “Yeah, Sam’s got the flu.” I’d go out and play shows, they’d think I was punk rock ’cause I was running, puking offstage. But I was fuckin’ kicking heroin.

We played with Operation Ivy in some weird valley outside of Las Vegas, way out in the fucking middle of nowhere. This band called the Atomic Gods had somehow gotten two flatbeds that they’d stacked back to back, and just left them out there because it made a good-sized stage. They would bring a generator truck, and charged by the carload because there was only one road in and one road out. All these punks would come and they’d bring three-wheelers and four-wheelers. There was vast quantities of fuckin’ Everclear and punch and acid, and guns.

Tim Armstrong:
Everclear and Mountain Dew. He had a fuckin’ can of this drink, man.

Sammytown:
I only remember bits and pieces, but at some point I’d been riding this three-wheeler and I think I fucking rolled it. I staggered out and somebody came up and handed me a big fuckin’ handgun, like a .44 or a .357.

Matt Freeman:
They were shooting targets. So someone had the bright idea, let’s have Sammytown shoot targets, too.

Sammytown:
We were out there behind the stage and the Oppers were trying to play, or were about to play. They saw somebody giving me a gun and they knew how fucked up I was.

Tim Armstrong:
We were all behind them. And he was out in front of us about ten feet.

Matt Freeman:
With a real gun, okay? And he just—
bam!
Totally missed the target. The whole crowd just busted up laughing.

Tim Armstrong:
He turned around and went, “Who the fuck’s laughing?” We were just like “AHHHH!!!” and we scattered.

Matt Freeman:
We literally dived behind the end of the car. All of us, me, Tim and Dave Mello, all crouched down. We knew Sammy was no joke. It was, like, not funny at all. It was pretty intense.

Sammytown:
I was just too wasted to even fuckin’ play. It was a few days later before I was actually coherent enough to talk again.

I think it was that same tour, we played with Crimpshrine in Baton Rouge or someplace. There weren’t a lot of East Bay bands that toured. I don’t know if it was Aaron, or some other guy in Crimpshrine—we ended up giving each other tattoos. That was kind of a moment. The next generation. It was, “Wow, you guys are now out here on the road. Some other hometown East Bay idiots dragged themselves out to this godforsaken fuckin’ place!” It definitely was cool seeing the young kids coming out. We’d done many tours by then. I was probably 19 or 20.

We were supposed to go back to Germany to record. It was cheaper for Tom to fly us to Germany and record over there. I’d been dealing a lot of drugs and acid in Germany. My girlfriend over there had been dealing for me. She ended up getting busted. Then Interpol wanted me, and they knew I was supposed to be coming to record. So we had to scratch that whole trip to Europe.

We ended up recording in San Francisco, and by that time the habits came home. Drugs were always a huge part of the scene. But it wasn’t really until ’87, ’88, ’89 when heroin exploded. People started dropping like flies. It was a really sad time for the early punks. Will from Flipper died. And John, who ended up playing in Flipper after Will, died as well. I got real strung out. I never ripped anybody off or ripped my friends off. But given what happened that’s hardly the worst thing you can do, obviously.

Tom Flynn:
Some Fang shows they played without a singer. They had other people onstage. They had one guy singing off of the lyric sheets.

Sammytown:
I started concentrating on dealing. I had people all over the U.S. It was probably 95 percent mail order. I made 30 grand in a month, and I’m 22 or 23, thinking, “I’m making more money than my dad.”

James Angus Black:
I did a U.S. and partial Canada tour with Fang. That’s the only time in my entire professional life of roadying that I took a band to the wrong place.

Everybody went to sleep in the van and I thought we were going to Roanoke, but we were actually supposed to be going to Chapel Hill. Me and Petey went to a party, where we met Dixie Lee. She was like, “Oh, you’re here with Fang? I love Fang. I’m going to go see them on Thursday. Is Sammy in town? You got to take me over to meet him.”

The Money Will Roll Right In: Fang logo

So we introduced them. They hit it off and she followed us to Chapel Hill, then back to Roanoke. At the end of the tour they got together. It was all fucked up.

Sammytown:
She started dealing for me and she went from buying like 100 to 500 hits every couple weeks to 10,000 hits every two weeks. She had a good head for business. I moved her out to California.

She wasn’t a drug addict. I was a fucking mess. I kept telling her, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna quit, I’m gonna quit.” And I had no intention of quitting. I felt that if I was a drug dealer and I wanted to spend all of my money on drugs, then that was my god-given right.