- [Voiceover] Okay, that's Even Worse.
Downloaded from YTS.MX
We're gonna take just about a ten minute break
and bring up Millions of Dead Cops
we're running late.
We're also gonna show the movie right now.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
It's gonna be on the wall.
If you're looking at the stage it'll be
on the left on the wall.
Stage left. (laughter)
Give it a second.
(hardcore music starting up)
- [Lou] This is where this shit started.
On the inside of my first album there's
a photograph of the wall of death taken here
in 1987 at the Superbowl.
This is where it started.
Ladies and gentlemen on the floor and in
the balcony, Craig side.
Make some noise!
(cheering)
When the music starts I need you to go that way.
Can you do it?
Ladies and gentlemen on the floor,
and in the balcony on Pete's Side.
Make some noise!
(cheering)
When the music starts I need you to go that way.
Can you do it?
(cheering)
(screaming)
Craig side are you ready?
(cheering)
Pete side are you ready?
(cheering)
Is everybody ready?
Shhh, now nobody sue us if you get hurt alright?
- [voiceover] Counter Attack, the show that tries
to expose the alternative point of view.
This week's topic, Alternative Music.
With our special guest promoter, Randy Now.
And now, here's your host, Tom Schweck.
- Hello and welcome to another edition
of Counter Attack.
Our special guest this week is promoter,
Mr. Randy Now.
Hi, Randy thanks for being here.
- Tom, how are you tonight?
- I'm alright. - [Randy] Great.
- Randy, for the people that don't know,
could you explain exactly what a promoter does?
- Okay, a promoter is the person who
will call the agency in New York or Los Angeles
that represents the band that you may want
that you know who's coming over from England
or wherever they're from.
And you set up the show, you set up the
guarantee, you make your promise of what
you can pay the band, and you see to it that
everything is fulfilled that's per their contract.
You make sure that the band has the right sound,
the right riders, right advertising,
and you just hope that you can get enough
people to pay the admission to pay the band
and all the other expenses.
- Could you explain like, the type of music
that you book at the shows you do?
- [Randy] Okay a lot of people like to call the
music that I book "alternative music",
mostly 'cause it's only played
on college radio stations.
Bands that I book you won't hear on the
50,000 watt stations, the WMMR's or
the WPST's, it's alternative music.
It's also, we do hardcore, or reggae,
or new wave, all aspects of the underground
movement is covered with our booking policy.
- Why do you feel it's ("Furniture" by FUGAZI)
important to book this type of band?
- To rid ourselves of dinosaur rock
like Led Zeppelin.
A lot of people, you can't believe how many people,
17-year-old kids that still think Led Zeppelin
rules and the first album came out and
they were three years old.
Ya know, it's kinda like me listening
to 50's music and saying like you know,
"Yeah, yeah, yeah that's the real music."
- Do you feel that promoting is
a good business to get into?
- Not at all, nope.
Not at all, not one bit.
I don't know why I do it.
🎜 Fugazi - 'Furniture' music plays 🎜
I must be insane.
🎜 Nobody can hear the missing 🎜
🎜 They just look at my mouth and look in my mouth 🎜
🎜 and look in my mouth and say hey man 🎜
🎜 I know where you're comin' from 🎜
🎜 Yeah bullshit 🎜
- One thing's interesting about my world
is that with a lot of the venues,
because I was in the band and we would load
in early, I actually never went to the front door.
I never went through the lobby if there was one.
I just don't know it, I only would know...
I know most venues by the backdoor.
Usually we'd get there at say, one o'clock
in the afternoon, front doors are locked.
So, my relationship with most clubs has not...
I don't have any idea of, you know,
what their popcorn stand looks like
if they even have popcorn stand.
What I think about is just like,
the dressing room, and the stage area.
And as I remember, and I could be wrong,
I seem to think, was the dressing floor was on
the second floor, was there a second floor
for the dressing room?
It was a really filthy club.
- One night we were playing and the drummer,
we go out to put the drums in the car to leave
at like two o'clock in the morning,
and his car was stolen.
That was like, devastating to me but that was
not uncommon in that environment,
and I know plenty of bands that got
their equipment stolen out of that parking lot.
But you know, that was the environment.
That's what it...(laughs)
That's what it was.
In fact, we were real proactive that night
we all jumped in my other guitar player's car
and we drove around until we found the guy.
We actually saw him driving up Calhoun Street
in my friend's Galaxy that he had gotten stolen,
and he was some kind of a druggie that had like,
hemorrhoids or piles or something.
He had all these diapers in the car.
He didn't really want that car back.
- So at one point there was probably maybe
400 people in the place, and I would say
at least 75 to 100 are involved in this fight
where everyone is basically throwing chairs.
And they had these little plastic chairs that
you would almost see in grade schools.
Like, the little plastic chairs and chairs
were flying everywhere.
The band is playing for about 45 seconds still,
while we're all running around grabbing
people and throwin' 'em out.
Then they just stopped and watched.
So it was...
- [Director's voice] The band did?
- The band did, yeah.
- I know who the fuck you are!
You're the guy who fuckin' showed up
eight hours late, and didn't fuckin' call
'cause you were too busy doing coke
in New York last night after your fuckin' show,
and you're also the fuckin' guy who's gonna get
the fuck of my stage so that I can get the
opening band on, get all your stupid fans in here,
and get this fuckin' show over with.
- What was the band, The Exploited
we were talking about, the guy came out.
You know, they were maybe band two
out of five one night.
Song starts, grabs his mic of the stand,
sings the first verse, "blah blah blah blah
blah", guitar interlude
he swings his mic around on the stand and
smacks it in the I-beam, pulls it down
it doesn't work.
Grabs this mic over here,
second verse.
Swings the mic into the I-beam,
that one doesn't work.
There's third mic over here, he grabs that one.
Same thing, swings that in the I-beam
that one breaks.
I have to run back to the office,
"Hey Tut, I need to get some more mics
"I need to get under the stage to unlock
"the thing to get more mics out",
'cause we would set up for five bands
and you'd set up two guitars, bass, drum,
three vocals across the front,
maybe a drummer vocal, that's it lock
everything else up 'cause you don't know
what's going on backstage with bands
coming on and off.
"Tut, I need to get more mics out,
"the band just broke."
"Why what happened?"
"The band just broke three vocal mics."
- Every time that we played City Gardens,
that was a time when my stage fright,
which I carried everywhere we went,
was at it's most intense.
And I don't think there was a single time
that we played there that I didn't throw up
right before going on stage.
Just out of sheer nervousness.
The funny thing is that, the crowds there were
probably more into what we doing than
any place else we ever played.
I think maybe it just came down to
the people who came to City Gardens
were people that you really wanted to please,
because they were so
willing to take a chance on a band.
They just loved the idea that someone was
gonna go up on that stage and try to
give them a good time.
("Old School" by The Bouncing Souls)
- [Randy] How's everybody doing tonight?
(cheering)
(guitar strum) (applause)
Now welcome to the Record Collector,
and happy Fez Day.
I need to say a couple things before
we get rollin' here.
Tomorrow night, Raymond the Amish Comic
will be here in the house. (applause and cheering)
Listen to that applause for
Raymond the Amish Comic.
He's damn funny, let me tell ya.
If you're not doin' anything tomorrow night,
he'll be delivering his Good Friday sermon.
Tomorrow night, Raymond the Amish Comic.
No cameras, please, no cameras
for Raymond the Amish Comic.
Nobody gets that joke.
I had an uncle who's passed now
he said, back in like '63, '64 we had the old
RCA Victor 45 RPM player,
you only played 45's you'd stack 'em.
He says I'd have a stack of 45's and I could
just like, pick by the label.
Maybe even at younger than '63, to the age where
I wasn't even old enough to read,
and I was just pickin', you know, this red label
meant that it was you know whatever, Johnny Cash
or Buddy Holly, and I would put 'em on this
record player and play the records.
We had a comedy record, it was kind of like
a real risque double entendre record,
and they were called "Cornbread and Biscuits".
And my brother and I would reenact this routine
it was called The Great...
What was it called?
I forget what it was called.
I have a copy of it, The Great Bartender
or something, but the two guys speaking
were Cornbread and Biscuits,
and once again, we mimicked this whole...
You know, back and forth in a bar of these
two guys, never realizing they were talking
about sticking needles in their arms
and smokin' pot.
And I also remember probably in my
early teens, sponsoring a bike race.
Behind our house was a blacktop and a park,
and the blacktop had a couple basketball courts.
It was just a rim and none of the string
was ever left, everybody stole it all the time.
But we would have bicycle races this one summer,
and we started just innocently, you know,
have four or five kids on their Schwinn Stingray
bikes at that time.
Kids on bikes would just collide into each other
and really wreck their bikes and their spokes,
and broken arms and broken necks.
I can remember ambulances coming down through
our yard actually pickin' up kids and takin'
'em away and you know if we were to do
that now we'd probably get arrested,
and sewed, but I was only about 12 years old.
I guess that's probably one of my earliest
promotion things other than having cool-aid stands.
This was probably around 1988.
Course a lot of punk bands started stealing
the Converse Chuck Taylor logo,
but I betcha I was the first to do that.
This is the coolest one here.
This is my company Other Side Productions,
'84 to '88, and then on the back of the shirt
I had all the bands listed on here that
played in '84 to '88.
- [Tom] How I met Randy was
quite by accident.
A friend of mine from school told me that there
was this guy, DJ'ing at this club way out
in New Egypt, New Jersey which is completely
rural and not a rock and roll destination
by any stretch.
Me and like, two other friends we went out there
probably for three months, I think it was
Thursday nights that he was doin' it,
and the bar was called The Central House.
- And it was just like blue collar, rednecks,
the guys from the New Egypt Speedway would
come out there and drink their beers and stuff.
And we're out there playing like,
Ian Dury and the Blockheads,
Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll,
and Graham Parker, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello
and maybe even throw in like a Dirty Water
by the Standells.
And they hated us.
I had bought these Klipsch speakers by then,
these huge, monster, La Scala speakers.
I was probably the greatest sounding DJ
playing to them, the shittiest music in the world,
but to me it was the greatest music in the world.
- He also DJ'ed at other places,
he would be a guest DJ at Emerald City.
He DJ'ed for Alice Cooper.
Emerald City was a beautiful club, beautiful.
It was the old Latin casino.
(🎜 music plays 🎜)
- [Tom] Not only was he playin' all this
current stuff, but he was also playin' a lot
of British invasion, some soul like Shirley Ellis.
- [Trish] He'd be up there flippin'
through 'em as fast as possible, just thinkin'
like, you know, I don't know how he thought
about it, but he'd be able to pick
the right songs.
- [Tom] All these different records but it was,
all makin' sense, like it all worked.
- [Randy] There was a kid in Trenton named
Tony Nini, he was like a disco DJ.
Of course he played all the hits and
he was popular, and he actually invited me
to a dance on his turf or territory.
I went in there and I, once again I'm breakin'
out my Plastic Bertrand, Ca Plane Pour Moi,
or The Stranglers.
The Dead Kennedys at that time,
and I got spit on I remember being spit on
by some kid, "You suck [SPIT]".
- He said, "Hey I got this new gig,
"it's at this place in Trenton.
"Do you wanna go?"
- [Randy] I finally saw an ad for this
bar in Trenton, and it was called City Gardens,
it was called King Tut's City Gardens,
got the number called them up, "Hey, how ya
"doin', my name's Randy", and I was still
Randy Ellis not Randy Now yet at that point.
And I said, "I'm a new wave DJ", and he said,
"A new what?"
- And we went to this place, City Gardens,
and I was never to Trenton before and it was
kind of a culture shock.
- We had a blast even though it was on
Calhoun Street in Trenton.
It was an area I'd probably never even been
to before.
- And that was the very first night
of City Gardens.
(🎜 House of Others - "Memento Mori" plays 🎜)
- [Johnny] It was very modest in the beginning,
there was just Randy, a handful of people.
The venue City Gardens was this enormous
commercial space, but they were only using
a very small portion of it in the back.
- [Randy] On top was a US One Motors neon,
was still up there, but it was so old
and hadn't been used for years it was just
fallin' off, when the wind blew pieces of it
were fallin' off and they were fallin'
right down where the doors were right below you.
- [Trish] City Gardens had two rooms.
One at the back bar, and the front bar.
In the beginning, the front bar was not open
it was just the back bar.
- It's like this, this big empty space here,
there was just a big empty space,
and the club was in the back.
- [Randy] And when I started DJ'ing there
on that Sunday, that was probably pretty much
when I said, "Hey you know, I got a couple of
"friends that are in bands. Let me see
"if I can bring a couple of bands in here",
that did original music, not the whole
cover thing.
(cheering)
Tonight we have two bands,
we have Plainfield Slim & The Groundhogs,
and we have from Germany,
their first night performing in America
right here at the Record Collector.
Please welcome Space Rangers.
From Germany. (applause and cheering)
(🎜 Space Rangers - 'Cold Blooded' music plays 🎜)
- [Jack & George] So, hi I'm Jack and...
- I'm Gorgeous George Messina.
- From The Shades.
We started at City Gardens in 1979.
We think we're the first rock band to play there,
and Randy brought us over from a little club
called "Brothers" in Mercerville
where we were packin' the house twice a week.
- [Johnny] Brothers was this suburban
very safe, Top 40 Disco Room.
And on the weekends they would have some
national acts and they would have all their
A-List bands, and they gave all of us the
off nights, they would give us
Wednesdays, Thursdays.
One of the bands I worked with, The Shades,
had a lot of original material and they had
bigger plans, they wanted to open for people
and they wanted to tour.
Randy Ellis, Randy Now, was a drummer in
a band called Rock Slide, and he also played
there, but he also was DJ'ing.
- When we got started there were no clubs.
There's was nothing, it was the beginning
of that sort of new wave thing.
And then after about a year or so,
clubs started opening up.
- Yeah at first we were just playing private
parties, trying to play something at
- the university. - Right.
- [Johnny] And then he opened up this room
in the city limits, in the city of Trenton
on Calhoun Street, this placed called
King Tut's City Gardens.
- [Jack] And we jumped at it,
I think Scott went there first, our bass player.
Took a look at the room, and it wasn't the
room that it ended up being it was
the room on a left.
Smaller stage, and I can't even remember if
we brought our own sound system
in, we probably - I think we did.
- brought our own sound system.
- And somewhere in the midst of that,
- Yeah. - Clubs started opening
in New Jersey and City Gardens was one of them,
and they were like, "Oh man, this is great,
there's actually something right in our backyard
and it's big and it's good
- and all that sort of stuff. - Because there was also the
issue of the New Jersey scene was filled
with clubs but they were all cover
- band clubs. - Right.
- We had a sound company in Trenton
Joe's Sound & Salami Company,
City Gardens approached us to help them with
their sound, and we good at helping people
get the most sound out of their dollar
and not getting ripped off really by showing
people how to buy top notch pro gear
on the used market and stuff.
So they had a world class sound system
that they basically picked up at a bargain.
So around '82 I went in there.
My first show I think was Thompson Twins.
Or The Members for USA Hotspots.
- [Female Voice] Good evening, and welcome
to USA Hot Spots.
Tonight we take you to one of the larger
clubs we've been to so far.
City Garden in Trenton, New Jersey.
Two four six eight - 🎜 N.Y. Citizens 'Rude Girls' - music plays 🎜
- [Johnny] Once we started going over to City Gardens
and Randy you know, he built it up with the DJ
thing and then he started booking his friends
over there, it was different.
Calhoun street, for those who don't know,
Calhoun Street, Trenton was an incredibly
dangerous place, not unlike CBGB's in the Bowery.
It was not some place that you went out
of your way to go to.
- If you've never been to the club,
going there your first time...
You get lost.
- [Milo] Gah, I just remember it being
hard to get in Trenton too. (laughs)
I don't know if was they way the turnpike
was laid out then or anything like that,
but we'd get lost a few times just getting
in to Trenton.
- [Karl] It was probably about an hour
from our house once we actually learned
how to get there the right way.
- It's confusing, it's a hard place to find
if you don't know where you're going.
- [Harley] Every gig outside of New York
was usually just a van ride in to some ghetto,
somewhere, because hardcore shows for the
most part were always in shitty neighborhoods
or run down areas, so it was never like...
You were never pulling up to some nice you know,
up to a good neighborhood and a nice club
with a good PA and nice monitors (laughs),
and friendly fuckin', "Hey, alright!"
- [Rob] It was really nothing that
showed you what it was except for the little
tag with City Gardens up on the upper corner
of the building.
Wasn't any big murals or any giant music
notes or anything like, "Hey, check out
"our cool fancy club."
It was just a big, giant, crazy warehouse
surrounded by a soccer field and woods.
- [Jon Stewart] You know, it was surrounded by
like, half a chain link fence.
There was like, there'd be two panels, then there'd
be like a break, be a couple more panels
and a break, and a hole, and another panel.
I think if you went there and you drank
and danced long enough, they just assumed
you worked there.
- The club had the nickname of Shitty Gardens,
but to us, it wasn't a club.
That was the area around it.
I don't know how it really was, but we were
driving through there, "Man this place is such a shithole".
(laughter)
- [Rob] And once you went inside it had
the checkerboard floor, a big bar,
and these weird little statues hanging
from the walls and stuff, and you're like,
"Okay. I'm in a club."
- In some ways it was kind of a unique culture
experience, New Jersey compared to New York
and The Big Apple and whatnot.
It was a big ole warehouse.
Big kind of barn painted black inside.
Punk, and rock 'n' roller proof.
- [Ian] I kind remember like,
the stage being covered with pieces of tape.
It never got cleaned.
Probably was a bathroom in the backstage area,
which I think deeply,
actually I know was deeply appreciated.
There's nothing worse than having to go
to the bathroom in the general bathroom.
Especially if you have to take a shit
and people are talkin' to you and they're like,
"Oh my God, dude I love your band." Great.
(laughter)
- [Henry] And then if you walked off stage left,
along the venue there was another dressing room
up a flight of stairs, way down the venue.
That's the one I was always in.
- I'm short and those,
couple of the urinals when you first stepped
in were kinda high up and it was like,
I don't want my junk to touch that urinal,
so you kinda had to arc it,
and stand back, and it was just not
good for me at all, that bathroom.
It was disgusting any way, but it was really bad.
- I'd never seen so many Trans Ams.
- The shape it was in was like the shape
that would survive.
- The first time I actually went to the club
I was in high school, and it was only
the back room, the front room wasn't open at all.
There was a band called Bricks Mortar
playing there I think.
And then I guess I came back in high school
when they had moved the stage to
the front, sorta the building, it was like
long ways facing across the room.
And that was 999.
- I brought in 999 from England.
What happened was, they were supposed to play
a club in Passaic called Hitsville,
which was doin' 999, they were doin'
Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Squeeze,
and probably even Elvis Costello very early
like '79 or so.
And they closed down, so there was 999 sittin'
lookin' for a gig somewhere.
So I found out who to call.
It was an agency called Frontier Booking, FBI,
and was run by Ian Copeland.
- That was Randy's big achievement that he
booked this band, and it was packed.
- [Randy] We probably paid $2,000 for 999,
we probably paid too much but we didn't know
a thing, we didn't know how much, who was what.
They said, "We need $2,000", and we said, "OK."
And 999 played to probably 600 people,
it was probably a $5 door.
It was 18 years old to drink back then,
and believe me that mean that you were
15 in there drinking.
Ya know, it just didn't matter back then.
- [Tom] Probably five to 600 people,
and that's when it was like, "Oh man we
"can really do this. We can really actually
"pull this off."
- [George] We always had this feeling,
I liken it to The Little Rascals, our gang
putting on the show with the...
He had this vision of what he wanted
and how the show should run,
and he emceed it, and ran it well.
🎜 Kevin Seconds - 'City Gardens Bound' music plays 🎜
🎜 Pittsburgh and Delaware 🎜
- [Randy] After the success of 999 through
Ian Copeland, he gave me Wall of Voodoo,
and Joan Jett, and REM was another one.
I remember paying REM $500,
and I remember the contract rider was
a 6-pack of beer, and four towels.
- [Jack] To me, City Gardens was the
immediate vanguard of what began in the 80's.
Things we just getting going.
The thing about New York is they had
a history already.
They had the Velvet Underground
obviously in the 60's.
The Stooges, and the MC5 came to New York often
and played at Max's Kansas City
and some of the other venues,
and had done famous things here like
when Iggy Pop tore up his chest at
Max's Kansas City I think in 1973.
The New York Dolls.
They were extremely popular throughout
the mid 70's.
So by the time the CBGB scene began
circa 1974, it wasn't completely
out of the blue.
All it needed was a regular venue
and the right guy running it who could
tolerate all kinds of weirdness happening.
And once you had Patty Smith and
The Talking Heads, and The Ramones,
and Richard Hell and all those people.
Television.
It became like this great dumping ground for
people from everywhere to come to New York
and become part of that 'cause that's
the scene they were looking for.
For us to come from places like Cleveland and
play there was just how we ended up with
The Dead Boys moving to New York.
By the time you get to the 80's now there
are scenes pretty much in about 20 cities.
This little touring scene that starts up
becomes an actual way for independent rock bands
to make a very small go of it.
- What do you feel is the high point
of your career as a promoter?
- After this interview with you, Tom,
well there's a lot of things.
A lot of bands I really take pride in that I booked.
The Thompson Twins first show in America,
Flock of Seagulls, even stuff like Billy Idol,
Dead Kennedys, I'm the only person to have
booked them seven times in the last six years
every year and not get closed down by the police
doing a Dead Kennedys show.
Lot of bands, lot of things.
Mostly I guess the British bands, The Public Images,
The Thompson Twins, the Billy Idols,
the Duran Durans even, booked them
and nobody wanted 'em.
- [Jello] People who take the underground,
and punk, and Indie rock scenes for
granted today sometimes have no idea
what it took to build those scenes.
When punk started it was a very
visceral reaction against the sheer
stupidity of the 70's, you know.
We didn't want adult rock, soft rock, Eagles,
Hotel California, let alone disco.
And punk brought back the spirit of rock and roll
in a way that was a really good way to shock
people we wanted to make uncomfortable.
- The farther the top 40 bands moved in
that kind of a dance direction and everything
getting thinner, and losing any kind of a
root of rock and roll, the farther we
moved in the other direction.
- [Randy] So this is downtown Cranberry.
This used to be like maybe three businesses
and an old deli up the street there.
But now there's a pizza place,
the other's a shoe repair.
This is actually a little weepy here
because I worked here.
I guess about ten years, nine, ten years.
(🎜 Luscious Jackson - "Did you forget me?" music plays 🎜)
All those years of bands and DJ'ing
in clubs 'til two in the morning,
I was a mailman.
- [Amy] It did shock me that Randy was
a mailman because I thought, "Well where
"does he have the time. I thought he was
"at City Gardens all the time.
"How is he delivering mail and doing
"this at the same time?"
And I was shocked that he didn't make enough
money to live on doing what he did at City Gardens
that he had to also have a regular day job.
I remember kind of being really sad for him
that that wasn't, that he was doing the coolest
job in the world and still it wasn't enough to
sustain him, he had to have a real job.
- So he was like the living embodiment of
Bukowski, who needed a day job, but what
he really lived for was his art.
- [Randy] It's funny, if I'd never quit
the Post Office I could probably be retiring
now with what, 30 years in?
I'd probably be happy in that regard,
like, "Oh I have a pension".
But I never woulda been able to have kept
doin' what I was doin'.
I did leave the Post Office.
And actually I'll tell you the story right here.
I was just down the street and it was a
snowy February day and I just had a successful
show with, I seem to think
it was a Dead Kennedys show,
and it was Monday morning, I was walking
in the snow and it was bitter cold,
five, six degrees.
And it was so cold, and was so tired
'cause I had walked about, who knows,
three, four, five miles with mail on my back.
And it was so windy and it was snow,
but I was just like, "Why am I doing this?
"Why am I getting up at six or 6:15
"and be here at 6:30, seven in the morning?"
I was just probably out 'til one, two, three
in the morning, I just had a successful show.
I was making enough money there where I could
live off that money, and I was like,
"Why am I doing this?"
All my friends are like, in the music business
are home, you know, Jello Biafra
and the Dead Kennedys just left town
they went to New York or Philly or DC, wherever.
Why am I getting up and doing this?
I just said that's it.
And I thought about it for
probably not even more than a few days
and I betcha that Monday I probably
said on Friday or Saturday to my Postmaster here,
"I'm resigning in two weeks, I'm gonna
"pursue the club."
Funny thing, that's when I had the Motorhead show,
and Motorhead canceled.
- So we're just hangin' out in line drinkin' beers,
and Randy gets on top of this car hood
with a little portable PA, and I had my
tape recorder, and I used to tape shows back then,
I used to trade tapes all over the world.
And I told my friend Brian I said, "What,
"I'll turn on my recorder. See what he's
"probably gonna announce some upcoming shows."
- [Randy] Okay. (people talking)
Please, can you listen for a second?
Motorhead has decided not to play.
(audience fussing and booing)
- We're sorry... - [Male Voice] Holy shit.
- [Randy] We've done everything for 'em.
They've decided not to play.
- [Male Voice] Fuckin' ripoff!
(booing)
- Oh my God, I just quit a career in the
Post Office to do this punk rock music DJ
bullshit, and the first show I do is Motorhead
and they cancel on me.
And I can remember saying at the show,
"But don't worry, next week (mumbles)
"is gonna be here", and everybody's like,
"You suck", and "Fuck you".
Aw man in my head I'm just like,
what did I do?
I just lost a career, my benefits,
my retirement.
It was pretty scary to do that.
- The mailman, the other job his nine to five
wasn't ever who I thought of him as.
- A mailman?
But then he was still bookin' all these shows.
You know, I'm a nice guy.
Like, doin' business with me is generally
pretty pleasant, I can't imagine what he
was up against with some of the people
because there are a lot of fuckers
on the road, man.
There are a lot of people who are not cool at all.
A lot of band management people are just
not nice at all.
- [Al Jourgensen] It's funny, like, we have a
nickname for Randy, we used to call him
"Goofy Grape".
Because he had this like,
big ole smile on his face while the owner
was always yelling at him,
and Randy was having to deal with like,
so many egos.
That sort of roster like, just one week that
you printed Circle Jerks, Black Flag,
and all that, I can't even imagine.
(laughs) He was in over his head.
(🎜 Bigger Thomas - "Super Moon" music plays 🎜)
- Hey everybody, 91.3 FM WTSR,
Trenton, New Jersey.
Randy Now's Capitol Garage Radio Program.
Oh, yeah, ah!
- [Mickey] I moved up to New Hope,
Pennsylvania from Yardley, Pennsylvania
in, I wanna say 1982 or '80...
It was about '82, '83.
It also coincided with the same period
I was really getting into music.
I was getting into weird music too,
I started with my parents' record collection
like most people.
I met Scott Lowe, was one of the first guys
I met in like, sixth grade.
And he had like,
The Never Mind the Bollocks Sex Pistols record,
and I had some Devo records,
and we were both into The Beatles.
- I've known Mickey since elementary school and,
we got into a lot of the same music together.
A lot of the same kind of underground music
of the day.
Everything from Adam and the Ants,
to the Dead Kennedys.
- [Mickey] Which wasn't normal sixth graders
and seventh graders, most kids were into
like, BMX bikes and stuff like that.
Then started
listening to the radio.
- [Radio Announcer] And now for more of today's
top hits, it's Randy Now!
- [Randy] Music from Toxic Reasons.
Once again they're gonna be coming to City Gardens
sometime in late May, probably on a Wednesday
night, the song is called Power Craze from
their new LP called "Killed by Remote
"Control" I think.
Who cares? Anyway, before that GD Job and
Color Me Impressed, live music from
The Replacements, recorded live at City Gardens.
And we heard about 80 or 90 songs from
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles first LP,
and I'm not even gonna name the songs
'cause I didn't have a chance to write 'em
down and I don't even care.
You know what I mean?
- Randy had a show called, "The Other Side".
The beautiful thing about it was that it was comedy.
It was like, punk rock and comedy.
- [Randy] I am the Riot Reverend Right on Brown
here, yes, that's right.
You might know my brother.
He's the godfather of soul, James Brown.
That's my brother, super.
Everybody say "amen". (people saying "amen")
Say "yeah", hah!
- [Jeff] Randy absolutely believed at this time
that Howard Stern totally stole his show.
- You know, when I was like 17 years old,
my friend and I used to go down when he was
on the air, and we would hang out in the lobby
and just listen to the show.
- [Randy] Okay, Flipper's on the east coast,
you're playing tonight at City Gardens,
WTSR party.
This is your third time to City Gardens.
- [Male Voice] Yep.
- [Randy] You like the room or not?
- [Male Voice] The first time Ted got smashed,
the second time the truck got smashed.
- We knew that he was affiliated with the club,
so we imagined that he was the ambassador
of all this music that we were just discovering,
and getting really interested in.
So we would just hang out in the lobby
and listen to whatever he was playing.
- [Mickey] So we started tapin' music of their
shows, started calling in to like, Randy's show.
And I think he thought it was really funny that
these little 12, 13 year olds with high,
squeaky voices were callin' in,
and he asked where we're from.
- [Randy] Hi, you're on the air.
(dial tone) No you're not.
Hi.
- [Mickey] Hi, Randy?
- [Randy] Hi, how ya doin'?
- [Mickey] Hi, this is Mickey.
- [Randy] Mickey, how you doin'?
- [Mickey] I'm fine.
- [Randy] Mickey the Dickie.
- [Mickey] That's me.
- One day, this little kid who I don't know,
maybe he was like 13 starts showin' up,
and his name is Mickey the Dickie.
He's this kid who is obsessed with punk rock,
and he loved my radio show and just starts
hangin' out, ends up on the air with me
all the time and he's spinnin' records with me.
And the reason he's Mickey the Dickie is
because he's obsessed with the band The Dickies.
And who could blame him?
And I remember one day, he shows up and he's like,
"I started a band and here's my first cassette.
"We're called 🎜Ween🎜".
- He'd make a recording of himself playing drums,
and then bass, with all these boom boxes
he would make these really crude recordings,
and then he'd play guitar on top of that
and record it and have his friend sing.
- [Scott] Those first couple of performances
were with tape.
They had bass and drums on a tape,
and then Mick would have a guitar live,
and then Aaron would just be singing.
He wasn't playing guitar yet.
- [Jonathan] They'd put out one cassette after
another cassette, I had piles of cassettes.
And I wouldn't even listen to it I was like,
this is the most horrible crap garbage.
And just was like, this guy's such a weirdo.
I liked him but I thought he was a real weirdo.
- [Simeon] I mean, Ween had this ability to fill
a room as an opening act, mind you, of people
who absolutely hated them, but three years
later were buying their record.
I mean, they were really brave. (laughs)
- We opened for The Ramones.
Randy put us on the bill with Foghat.
We played with Butthole Surfers,
played with Mojo Nixon, we played with
7 Seconds, we played with Fugazi.
- I think Randy had a lot of guilty pleasures
when it came to music, and there's a lot of music
like myself being a hardcore kid,
there's things I don't want people to
know I listen to.
I think Randy had that.
- The film Yoko made called Erection,
they showed a part of on the Mike Douglas show.
(laughs) No, good guess though good try.
No, it was a building being constructed.
It was just a film like, they shot three
seconds a day over the course of a year,
and you see this building being erected.
But once again, they didn't censor
him and her when they...
- [Lon] Well they couldn't because
it was about a building.
- Exactly, and remember John performed
"Woman is the Nigger of the World".
- and Mike Douglas... - That was 19...
before 1980 right?
- [Randy] Oh my gosh, it better have been.
- I would say like '69, '70. - Late 70's?
No, it was when he was solo,
so it wasn't that early.
- [Randy] You talk and I can look it up.
- Why don't you talk and I'll look it up?
(Randy laughs)
- He's the original iPod Shuffle, ya know.
(laughs) He just did it with actual bands.
- (laughs) It's hot in here, damn it!
- [Henry] In 1986, I'm forgetting the
exact month, maybe April.
April or May of 1986, Black Flag was
doing it's last ever tour.
We didn't know that we were breaking up yet.
That was to happen a few months later,
but we were on the east coast and I think
we were circulating around the Hoboken,
Jersey area, and we got a call from Randy
and he said, "I see on your itinerary
"you guys have a day off coming up",
and we said, "Yeah", and he said,
"Well, how would you like to make some money?"
"Well, what are you proposing?"
- I really needed a lot of sound rental,
and Black Flag was on the road with this
absolutely amazing, freakin' wall of
you know, power.
- [Henry] "So it will be Overkill, Black Flag,
"Venom. We'll pay you to play,
"and we'll pay you for your PA."
Which is so much better than a day off for us.
You know, we need to pay for that PA,
the truck, et cetera.
So, we ended up spontaneously going to
City Gardens in this middle band slot.
- So I had a chance to put together this
Venom, and Black Flag together.
Venom was just, they were so full of themselves.
The typical heavy metal.
You know, Black Flag and Henry was the vocalist
and walked around, "Hey man how ya doin'?",
Cronos and Venom, they were in a dressing room
and I had to have a security guard
walk 'em to the stage.
- We played and I remember asking the audience
"Is Satan here tonight?
"Did Satan show up? Anyone.
"Satan. No one, Satan? Okay."
- These guys took it so so seriously,
and you know they're like trying to actually
be this ultra Satanic kind of like, entity.
At the end of the day, they're these
European guys wearing leg warmers
and red boots and stuff, who just kinda
just didn't get it.
- Well Henry, drew with a magic marker on
his hand the Satanic pentagram, I guess it's
called, and he would hold it up.
Well he would walk up to you like this,
he'd go, and I don't know if he did the Spock
thing or not like that, but he'd go,
"Hail Satan". (laughs)
- Venom, in 1981 releasing Welcome to Hell,
did something so extreme that no one else
had ever even come close to doing,
they went as far into the corner with
the Satanic stuff as possible.
- Combining Black Flag with Overkill
and Venom, I mean that just complete insanity.
- Venom gets on stage and you know their doing
their thing, and the crowd is completely into it.
Jersey metal maniacs are just die hard!
- And they screamed and hollered at me,
"I walked through the crowd and I didn't
"have a security guard with me". (laughs)
Like, fuck you.
- And they sucked!
They sucked really really bad,
they couldn't play, the didn't know what
to say in between songs.
(laughs) And it was just horrible.
Our sound man, Dave, Rat of Rat's Sound
put a cassette in to the board we had,
we had a cassette deck and the board to
make recordings.
- [Randy] Dave Rat recorded every Black Flag show,
so he's doin' the sound for Venom,
so he records the whole show.
- And we played the tape later,
and it became legendary to us.
- The tape was duped, and given to other bands.
One of them we made a copy for Thurston Moore,
of Sonic Youth.
He immediately made...
He edited all the raps from the between song
banter of Cronus and made a seven inch.
- They cut out all the actual music and
just put out a seven inch of all the banter.
It's crazy because to listen to that,
I would never think I would get to hear that
stuff ever again.
To hear it again and just laugh at it,
and people to really be like, "You were
"there for that?", and I'm like, "Yeah I was."
- [Randy] From that show, a lot of metal heads
were there for Venom were like, "Holy shit,
"this Black Flag band is fuckin' powerful."
And I kept yackin' on the microphone,
"Hey, Black Flag's back here in two weeks."
Maybe we started the whole mixing of the metal
and punk right there at that show.
(phone ringing)
- [Female Recording] Hey, you've reached
King Tut's City Gardens, leave a message for
Frank or Randy after the beep. (beep)
- [Jeff] Listen, my name's Jeff.
The Bad Brains are playing there I see,
and listen, you don't have to pay us.
I said, "I'll pay you to let us play".
Please, please get back to me.
Randy called me back in like, an hour and half
two hours later and was like, "Yeah.
"You guys want it?"
- Another GWAR legend, the walk of shame.
This is the first time I ever heard
the phrase walk of shame, now later it went to
become the walk of shame is obviously
when you're walking home from your boyfriend's
apartment or whatever, and you couldn't find
one of your shoes.
But for us it was a show we played.
We'd been playing at City Gardens a lot,
probably too much, and we played a show.
The turnout wasn't all that great, and it was
a show where we hadn't really rehearsed very well,
and for some reason I was trying a new mask
out that night, and just for some reason
we came off as really flat and the performance
just didn't have any pizzazz to it.
- [Bob] And it was New Year's Eve.
- [Dave] And it was like New Year's Eve
as well to make it even worse.
And then so after the show was over with
we had to walk back to the dressing room for
that one it was like...
Usually we were up above the stage in
that weird little cubby hole,
but for some reason it was way at the back
of the club this time.
So we had to like, walk after this show
all the way back through the crowd.
And I remember people saying stuff to me like,
"Yeah, not very good this time."
(laughter)
"Didn't do a very good job this time."
- We were cleaning up the stage,
Ween was supposed to open for us that night,
and they were already over us and they
had a party at their house, - [Dave] Yeah!
- [Bob] and people went to their house for free
and didn't come to see us.
We were cleaning up the stage, - Thanks, Ween.
- We were cleaning up the stage and I remember
a couple of guy at the front row were standing
there against the barricade and they were
thinkin' there was gonna be something else.
They were like, "That's it?"
And we were like, "Oh, damn."
- [Chuck] Randy put on reggae shows,
he put on ska shows,
he put on funk shows, and anybody that
would come in and play, Living Color played
some of their first shows there.
Talking about ground breaking bands that
went on to do something outside of punk rock.
- We opened up for Henry Rollins there
in like, '92 or '93.
I guess later someone told
us he had written about us in one of
- his books. - Randy told us.
- I think it was '91 or two '92. - Yeah, Randy told us.
- And like he wrote...
Whatever like, November eighth, 1991.
City Gardens, opening band was so bad
that it inspired me to like, really rock,
really, really hard.
- He kinda dissed us in it. - Yeah.
- But, we were kinda dicks though too.
- We were little pricks that day.
- Little snot nosed kids.
-🎜 Bigger Thomas - 'Telling Time' music plays 🎜
- You guys owe me ten minutes alright.
Randy was like the dad, he'd tell you,
"Hey, that was okay", or "That set was okay,
"here's what I would change",
and he really wanted you to get better.
So I felt like it was gonna fun,
it'd be a lot of people, we're gonna have to
bring our A game, and Randy, whatever Randy
didn't like, Randy's gonna tell us.
But not in a way like, "You guys suck",
but like, "Next time you might wanna think about
"doing this and doing that."
City Gardens was, that was my
performing arts school.
(🎜 Bing Satellites - 'Motif Four' music plays 🎜)
- [Randy] This is where I lived in
I guess the mid-late '80's.
And we were paying like only, $100 a month.
And this is where a lot of bands stayed
and where I made a lot of friends with bands.
Mojo Nixon stayed here, he stayed here quite
a few times and he had these
little firecrackers he tied to the two
drawers of my desk drawer, so if I opened
one or the other one they snapped.
Right in my freakin' hand.
(clucking)
(🎜 gentle music plays 🎜)
This was here when I was here.
George made this refrigerator and so I guess
there's a keg probably inside,
and that was the tap and all the
bands would drink.
Well it's not hooked up anymore.
There's still a lot of beer in here though.
This is probably a 250 year old house,
300 year old house.
I remember The Dickies staying overnight.
Leonard had some girl with him and they
were up on the third floor.
Did you see from the outside?
This is the way it was, no steps here.
- [Peter] He loved the music so much,
he wanted to spread word around,
he wanted to help out kids who were making music,
he wanted to help out bands that were coming
through, and he thought, well the only way
he could do this is if he just takes it on
and does it himself.
- This is the desk I did all my
calls, ya know, on it and did all my work.
This is the desk that booked a million shows.
- And to have someone who was so clearly
enthusiastic and so clearly compassionate to
these kids, who otherwise wouldn't have
had a chance.
People were just...
Their minds were blown by that.
(🎜 gentle music plays 🎜)
- Hey, it was really cool livin' here,
and just workin' with all the bands and stuff.
That's one of those things that nobody really
even knows about, the bands used to stay
at my house instead of a band going
to a hotel for whatever, 40 bucks a night.
You know, two rooms or three rooms.
They would stay here.
It was all free for the bands.
(horn honking)
Bye.
The farmhouse was so big I could accommodate
GWAR, 14 people, and you know, Dag Nasty
stayed over, and Suicidal.
And when I moved to New Hope, Fugazi stayed
over a couple of nights.
Fugazi, when they came over I don't even know
how I got into it, I just started showin' 'em
Ernie Kovacs videos, who I don't think they
were familiar with, and then we started showing
Spike Jones videos.
(drum beating)
They'd never heard of this guy before.
- I'd never heard of Spike Jones.
You have musician, but then you have a guy who
just played like shooting a gun in the air.
Just like very, jacked up and
strangely punk in it's own way.
I really, really appreciated him.
We just watched, we couldn't believe it.
We were watching it, and then he just gave me...
I have the video tape still, he just gave
me a Spike Jones video tape.
- He had a fascination with things,
everything musical, but he had a fascination
with things outside of music too.
And he was always so willing to share.
Unfortunately for me, one of the things that
he shared was the video tape that
he had managed to procure from I guess
a friend who worked at a TV station.
- [Peter] He gave me my first experience of
watching someone die on TV.
- [Randy] But I remember like The Mentors,
El Duce was like, "Oh fuck man, I got a video
"of a guy sticking his head in an
"elephant asshole, I'll let you have that
"if you let me have a copy of Budd Dwyer",
I was like, "What?" (laughs)
I was not a collector, believe me,
I wasn't a collector, I just happened
to have it.
Have you ever seen it?
- [Jello] Some of the promoters were clearly
clinically insane, and if they didn't start
out that way, the stress of trying to put
punk shows on would make them that way.
Some how Randy never got quite that far,
but he had to have a few screws loose
or he wouldn't be doing this in the first place.
Especially not year after year after year,
and inviting the likes of Dead Kennedys
back into his club again and again.
- We might have like had three motel
rooms in our nine year career or something,
while we were on tour we like slept on floors
next to like, dirty cat litter boxes.
And when we were in Europe we stayed in
squats that had no heat and hot water,
and we were just freezing in the middle
of Europe in the middle of winter.
The warmest thing in there was like a dog
that you're like wrapped around the dog,
like, "Pass the dog".
- City Gardens really for me, you know,
at that point define Trenton.
But I don't know the city that well.
Or at all really.
We'd show up at the club and then here we
are in Trenton, and didn't really have any
feeling and need to go out and
see the city or anything like that.
Part of it's what you hear cause you roll
into town and...
Someone would get some crazy wild hair
up their ass to go and have dinner somewhere
and I don't know if it was Randy,
but someone would always be like,
"I don't know about that.
"We can just give you some food here.
"We'll give you the food, you don't need to
"go out and get it."
So it gives you this feeling of
"Just stay here!" (laughs)
- [Doug] When you grow up in the
suburbs around Trenton, there are a couple
of stories about Trenton that you hear.
One is the story that you hear when you
go on the capitol tour
as a fourth grader and they show you
the Governor's offices and the big gold dome.
A lot of state workers work in Trenton,
that's one story.
But then there's this story that you hear
from relatives and older people who've
lived in the area a long time.
And that's a sadder story.
And that story goes along the lines of,
Trenton used to be this great town.
Trenton used to be this wonderful place,
and now it's not.
That you were taking a risk by going there.
Now, granted when you say that to an
adolescent, that makes it attractive.
(laughs) That makes it adventurous.
- Trenton was one of those towns that was
founded by a Philadelphia man.
William Trent was a well known merchant,
business man in Philadelphia,
who basically came here to summer.
He had purchased the land from the original
founders of the area, they were Quakers who
had come here in the late 1600's.
Trenton started to grow as Trent took over.
He started laying out streets,
he named the place Trent's Town,
but as the country began to grow so did the city.
And when the American Revolution takes off
the powder keg, or really the defining moment
occurs right here in the city of Trenton.
(musket shots)
There's two battles that are fought here
within a week of each other.
The first battle of Trenton is the first
victory for American troops at that point.
They've been going through defeat after
defeat after defeat, and prior to the battle
of Trenton that summer is when the
Declaration of Independence is signed,
the book Common Sense comes out.
People are starting to rally behind the whole idea,
and Washington's troops make their way through
New Jersey from upstate New York and other places,
and then it's Washington's crossing,
the famous crossing of the Delaware River.
And then the surprise attack on the
Hessian troops here on Christmas