YOU THINK YOU'RE PUNK? YOU DON'T KNOW JACK!

By Jeff Penalty

(Interview with Jack Grisham, originally published on Hurley.com)

The following are some highlights from my recent conversation with lead singer of TSOL, California gubernatorial candidate, and friendly neighborhood psychopath, Jack Grisham.

On getting in trouble at the Warped Tour:

Some kids were throwing condoms up on the stage, so I said, "Hey, I'll give you 50 bucks if somebody gets up here and jerks off and puts a condom on."  And some kid jumped up on stage and pulled his pants down and started masturbating.  So then the police wanted to get me for soliciting prostitution, ‘cause I offered the kid money for it.

On making bombs:

During 4th of July we ripped off a fireworks stand.  Half of them we had a fireworks fight down on the beach.  The rest of them, I took a hacksaw and cut them all open and took all the powder out and I had like a bomb factory set up in the garage.  Just making bombs, blowing shit up, going home, making more bombs...

On bombs not going off in his face:

Are you kidding?  Do you think I don't think about that?  ‘Cause I know friends of mine whose did blow up on ‘em!  Guys that lost fingers.  Here I'm tamping down black powder with a carriage bolt and a hammer!  It's like you're just asking for it to blow up in your face.  I would’ve just basically got shrapnel all in my chest and everything.  I would've been dead.

On never getting caught:

One time I blew up the side of this building and the police were up there and I'm standing there as a kid going "Wow, what'd they use here?"  I'm surprised they were so stupid to not say "Hey, probably this kid did it…why don't we just run a set of fingerprints on this little idiot?"  There were guys going to jail for stuff that, to me, was like an afternoon of fun.  The longest I ever did in jail was like 5 days and it was on a trespassing charge.

On where he was trespassing:

Disneyland.  We had machetes and we were getting into Disneyland at night to chop up the rides.  We were just over the fence and they were on us.  It was so quick.  One time I tried to break into the Naval weapons station to do the same thing, and the MPs were on us before we could get over the fence.  I actually thought the Disneyland guys were quicker than the Navy!

On driving backwards down the PCH:

It was nine in the morning on a Saturday.  It was early and I was hammered and I got mad at some guy because he was on a motorcycle and he didn't have to back up, so I got in an argument with him about backing up and I just decided I was gonna back up for the rest of the day.  So I hopped in the car and I drove 13 miles backwards, through Saturday morning traffic, right through two towns.  And never saw one cop.  Looking over my shoulder, going backwards, 50 miles an hour in a Honda Accord.  I did the speed limit, I stopped at red lights, just it was in reverse the whole way.  All the way into the driveway at my mother's house.

On his own mental condition:

Before punk rock they'd just call you anti-social, or borderline behavior disorder, or whatever.  Then when punk rock comes along, it's like, "oh yeah, it's punk rock."  But I've been “punk rock” since I was in kindergarten. As many times as I tried going straight it constantly went foul because I was incapable of being straight.  And I'll tell you right now, if I could’ve went straight I would’ve done it, man.  I would've LOVED to have sold out!  There’s some times when you just look back and you just wish that you weren't the way you are, you know?

On whether he’d ever run for public office again:

I don't know, maybe.  But the trouble is they're gonna pick up an interview like the one I'm giving you right now and then they're gonna go, "Is this what we really want?  Do we really want this guy?”

On my opinion that a person who snuck into Disneyland with a machete is more suited to public office than most career politicians:

That's probably a good reason why you also are not in public office.

BRENDAN MULLEN

By Jeff Penalty

(Originally published in the Swindle "Icons" issue)

It’s easy for any punk rock fan to rattle off a list of musicians who left an indelible mark on the genre, or for any hip hop fan to explain the valuable contributions made by the oldest of the old school artists.  But neither genre would’ve progressed to the point we know it today if the artists involved didn’t have one simple thing: a stage to stand on.

Brendan Mullen provided that stage for a long list of influential artists at very critical points in time and, in doing so, unwittingly secured himself a place in music history.  He is not one of the shining stars or the beloved martyrs of punk rock or hip hop that you have read about dozens of times, rather he is an unassuming little Scotsman who made the careers of those stars and martyrs possible.

And all he really wanted was a place to bang on his vibraphone.

Brendan is known in punk circles as “the guy who ran the Masque Club,” an infamous practice/performance space in Hollywood that was the lynch pin of the early Los Angeles punk scene.  Nearly every L.A. punk band worth remembering played a show there, and numerous bands, including The Dickies, X, The Bags, The Skulls, The Go-Go’s, and Fear, can claim the honor of having played their very FIRST show there.

Brendan found the Masque while looking for a place to practice on his varied collection of percussion instruments, which included bells, gongs, shakers, a vibraphone, two trap drum sets, and a set of tympanis.  “After being thrown in jail following noise complaints from a neighbor who lived above me,” Brendan claims, “I was out looking for a storefront, a warehouse, a garage or something…anything where me and my friends could be left alone to blast music really loud and have insane freeform jams.” His search resulted in the leasing of a basement of an office building on Hollywood Boulevard.  He rented out the space he wasn’t using “at such rock bottom monthly prices even punk bands could afford them.  Within a month or so the basement morphed into a performance space.”

Like punk rock itself, the Masque’s expiration date came around quickly.  But before the doors closed for good, the club became a focal point for the local scene and a series of shows would occur there that would provide fodder for the punk rock myth machine for decades to come.  Without Mullen and the Masque, it’s difficult to know whether or not the legend of L.A.’s punk scene would’ve ever grown past the city limits.

For two years after the closing of the Masque, Brendan tried his hand as an independent punk show promoter, which left him flat broke and homeless.  He managed to beg, borrow, and literally steal his way into a DJing gig at L.A.’s Club Lingerie, during which time he discovered the effect early hip hop records had on the crowd.  The amorphous nature of hip hop’s history may allow dozens of people to lay claim to booking the first hip hop show in L.A. county, but Brendan claims to have put on “the first full-spectrum hip hop event NY style—including MCs, DJs, graffiti writers, and b-boy breakers—probably in Southern California.  All of ‘em flown out specifically from the South Bronx.”  The lineup included Grandmixer DST, Afrika Islam, Mr. Freeze, and Crazy Legs, among others.  “The place was mobbed by curiosity seekers.  I remember trying to explain that it was sorta like a black version of punk rock, their own D.I.Y. thing […] Nobody was dancing; instead, many at first stood with their arms folded watching Islam and DST DJing,  looking at their watches for the first hour or so, saying ‘so when’s something gonna happen?’  I had to go around literally explaining to all who’d listen that in N.Y. hip hop is a dance thing […] but when they started scratching many people just lost their shit.”  Also in the audience that night: a skinny 17-year-old named Andre Williams.  “To this day I’ll never know how he slipped by our door security,” Brendan says of the underage kid who would later become known to the world as Dr. Dre.

From ’81 to ’92, Brendan served as the in-house booker at Club Lingerie and concurrently devoted time from ’86 to ’88 booking the Variety Arts Center, a 5-story complex in downtown L.A. with “shit happening on every floor on weekends, including film fests, live theater, hip hop/R&B, dance clubs, live rock n’ roll, etc. […] One night the Beasties and Run-DMC jammed together during one of the weekend dance promotions on the ballroom floor—100% spontaneous.  We didn’t know they were going to do it ahead of time, otherwise I’d have pulled together better production […] Afrika Islam DJing, hence only one DJ mic from his mixer available, they were just passing it around one at a time.”

Between the two venues, it is certain that Brendan saw more than his share of magic musical moments, and he booked enough bands to compile the Ultimate ‘80s College Radio Mix Tape.  Black Flag, Husker Du, Buthole Surfers, Lydia Lunch, Schooly-D, Sonic Youth, Red Kross, Hole, Rudy Ray Moore, Jane’s Addiction, Ice-T, Blowfly, Guns n’ Roses and a zillion more.  The list even includes the L.A. premieres of The Replacements, R.E.M., Soundgarden, and The Flaming Lips.  Brendan also had the pleasure of booking an opening band for a Bad Brains show that had only played two previous gigs and had just changed their name…to Red Hot Chili Peppers.

With his place in L.A. music history firmly established, it fits, then, that Brendan has also put forth great efforts to document that history.  Brendan has co-written several books: “We Got The Neutron Bomb”, a historical overview of early L.A. punk, “Lexicon Devil”, about L.A. punk icons The Germs, and “Whore”, a biography of Jane’s Addiction.  As of this writing, Brendan has also begun work on a book about the history of the Masque club, which will include photos and testimonials from those who were there.

You may not know his name, or his face, or the sound of his voice, but Brendan Mullen’s status as an icon was cemented long ago by one simple thing: his ability to be “in the wrong place at the right time…or is it the other way around?”