here are excerpts:
(hi. i can't form sentences right now. now can't right sentences form i.)
Mike: When I was five I felt a need to escape. Music provided that for me. It made everything all right. I grew up with your basic Beatles and Stones [records] long before I ever heard the Sex Pistols. I wasn't on the varsity football team and had no interest in that. I wanted to play music and do cool things.
Mike: [What happened in] the late '70s was the same thing as what happened in the '50s. You got youth culture being fed stuff by their parents and society. Every now and then, there's an uprising. We were not settling for mediocrity. There was a commercial for Miller's Outpost that used to tell you, "Be a star! Shop at Miller's Outpost." We all thought, "F*ck this! We're not gonna be told by anyone what to do." You can shut up and be a puppet or get off your ass and change it. That's what we set out to do.
Mike: There was a band called the Mechanics from Fullerton who never did anything cause they were so far ahead of their time. I think probably out of all the bands, they influenced me the most. Had I grown up anywhere else, I wouldn't have been surrounded by that kind of musical community. There was the Mechanics, the Adolescents, Agent Orange, T.S.O.L. and my band Social Distortion. We were all looking at each other and without copying each other, thinking, "Wow, that guy plays guitar pretty good." You were feeding off each other in a positive, competitive way.
Mike: In 1979 being a punk rocker in the streets of Orange County was dangerous. We would go to the Cuckoo's Nest, find a place to drink in the alleys or the industrial parks and these guys' masculinity was threatened by our mere presence. The Cuckoo's Nest was an Orange County club. It was very easy to get in if you were under age. Right next door there was a cowboy bar and these guys would come out at two in the morning right when the punk rockers were getting out. It was like, "Hey, I don't like you." "Hey, I don't like you." It was very volatile. If you walked down the street in 1979 with a leather jacket, black shoes and colored hair, just to the liquor store, chances were you're gonna get into an altercation. I was trying to look like Bela Lugosi. Your average family would pull their kid away when I was walking down the street. A lot of us were from broken homes, so we had a lot of rage inside. It was the difference between me and the guy who was the quarterback for the football team who shaved his head and after three beers gets all macho and wants to wrestle.
Mike: There was a public alarm about kids supposedly slashing swastikas in their arms and vandalizing things, and I remember an organization called Parents of Punkers on these talk shows. This was fueling us. If you want to start a band, just turn on your TV. On one channel you’ve got Phil Collins, who makes you want to kick in your television. On the other channel you’ve got this Parents of Punkers stuff. They thought it was satanic, and they were really trying to save these kids. Some of those kids were messed up. I was in jails and psychiatric wards, but I admired these kids who dressed in black and listened to punk rock but during the daytime went to UC Irvine; they had their lives together. For me it was a real lifestyle that almost killed me, and killed some of my friends.
Murphy: Bands like Social Distortion set the tone for great rock to come from Orange County. I saw them at UCI and watched them from the side of the pit like a scared little child going, “Oh my god this is bitchin’!”
Mike: It’s very surprising when you see a new band doing stuff that you and your friends have been doing for 10 or 20 years suddenly “make it.” After Nirvana broke, the whole music scene changed completely. All of a sudden 20 years later, the masses decided that punk rock was okay after all.
Mike: Korn represents their circle, Sugar Ray represents their circle, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the same as what we are. I imagine there are Sugar Ray fans who like Social D and vice versa. But I’m in Social D, so I don’t know.
Mike: I love Orange County but it’s a love-hate thing. I love to go down to the beach and go surfing but every now and again, I’m reminded about where I live. Go one mile south and you’re in gangland. Go four miles south and you’re in Irvine. I need stuff to be discontented with. That’s how I write songs. There’s still plenty of it left in Orange County, believe me.
the prize for getting to the end is. . . The Creeps - Social Distortion
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