BOMB
Bomb's first two (and best) albums: To Elvis In Hell and Hits of Acid
Plus, how Bomb got kicked off of Warner Brothers
By Michael W. Dean of Bomb, Part 3
(December 2023)
Thoughts on Bomb's second album, Hits of Acid
Bomb broke up before everyone had a high-def camera in their pocket. Pretty much the only video of Bomb with good audio and decent (analog) video is our reunion in 1999: Bomb: All My References Are Dead - Live 9/11/1999 - YouTube.
There are two versions of Hits of Acid, the 1988 vinyl version on Boner Records:
SIDE ONE:
Because Tiffany Feels
I Loved You Then I Died
You In Romance
Healthfood And Heroin
Gigi
SIDE TWO:
Spoked Feet
Madness
Vagrant Vampires
Smile And Pose
Nineteen
and the 2021 remaster by Jack Endino: (no sides, digital only):
Spoked Feet
Vagrant Vampires
I Loved You Then I Died
You In Romance
Madness
Smile And Pose
Because Tiffany Feels
Healthfood And Heroin
Nineteen
Gigi
The reason there are two track listings is that the vinyl track list was dictated mostly by the album length. It's just over 47 minutes, a VERY long album for vinyl. That's why it's so quiet on vinyl.
The remaster by Jack Endino was for digital release only, so the music could be its full glorious original volume, and we didn't have to use the odd song order. This is one place where I can mathematically prove that "vinyl sounds better" is 1000% false (for this record).
The track order of the remaster was based on a set list I found from a 1999 Bomb show that went really well.
Hits of Acid has 6 songs that are also on To Elvis in Hell. It's not bait and switch- they're played and recorded much better on Hits, and we actually had a label to get it out. We'd been playing live a lot by the time we recorded Hits, and had become much better as a unit. Since I've already talked about the six songs both albums have in common, I'll be covering the four songs exclusive to Hits.
"Healthfood and Heroin"
I got the title from seeing a button in a "punk rock store" in New York City in 1979 when I visited there on a trip away from my religious boarding school at age 15. I thought the button was funny, and later thought it would be a good title for this song since it has a heavy part and a hippie part.
In the line "Frozen-lake orange or hell-violet, Her little dreams look purple through a spectrograph," the "spectrograph" part is just riffing on the fact that Brian Eno is the only person to use the word "spectrograph" in a song. In "Fat Lady of Limburgh," Eno sings of a drug lord sampling opium, "but her sense of taste was such that she'd distinguish with her tongue the subtleties a spectrograph would miss." I figured "Why shouldn't there be two rock songs with that nerdy word?"
(Doug Hilsinger later did a really lovely & heavy cover of that song, and that whole album. Eno actually left Doug an answering machine message saying he liked it a lot. Doug plays guitar, bass, and drums on that album.)
The "hell-violet" lyric part is remembering me having read an interview with Owsley, talking about how he was obsessed with the purity of the LSD he made, making stuff more pure than what Sandoz Pharmaceutical labs produced. He talked about using Column Chromatography with an ultraviolet light, to separate different bands into purple (D-LSD, what he wanted) and violet (L-LSD, which he would separate out and reprocess into D-LSD). Supposedly, a lot of LSD made by lesser chemists had a mixture of both stereoisomers, and it made a less "pure" and a rougher trip. So the Levorotary-LSD was nicknamed "hell violet."
The "frozen lake" part is me thinking of two things. One is a John Williams Waterhouse painting called "The Lady of Shalott."
The first time I saw that painting, at someone's house on a Bomb tour in Philly, while I was doing coke with an old friend (one of probably 5 times I ever did coke), that painting grabbed me by my soul. For one, it looked a lot like the woman I left to move to California, the one that didn't come with me, the one that my part of "Gigi" is about. But mainly, it reminded me of a series of recurrent dreams I had as a child, dreams that usually ended in me waking up trying to scream but being unable to scream. Was right before my parents got divorced. Was the silent scream of me processing/dealing with the change in everyone's mood that I didn't yet understand.
In the dream, I'm looking at a lake or pond that actually existed, by the William Seward house on the hill just north of Westfield NY, where my dad and I lived for a while after the divorce. It was a pond near that house, in the woods behind it. In real life, I liked that pond a lot. In my dreams, it's sinister and there's a woman in a small boat on the lake, wanting to "take me to the tower," some real witchy shit.
By the way, when you look at online discographies on sites like AllMusic and others, often there are Bomb albums listed under "Bomb" that were not us. A few other bands stole the name after we had it. Several hip hop albums. And the stupidly named post Naked Raygun project from some of the same guys, "The Bomb" is often nicknamed "Bomb." Those guys knew we existed. We opened for them twice. That one is even more confusing because there's a guy in that band with the last name of Dean. I've heard of people going to see that band thinking it was us. Weird.
"Nineteen"
Tony wrote the entire lyric, all 19 words (thus the song title):
"We are the fire on the candles on the cake at the party for the end of the world."
Part of the "what made Bomb Bomb was laughing at death" is well on display there.
I wrote that song's music. It's upbeat 3-chord punk 'n' roll disguised to be something else. The whole band filled it out and made it great. We did two versions of this song, one on Hits of Acid,and one for the B side of the only 45 single we ever did, our cover of "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode (way before Marilyn Manson covered it, but I think he's covering our cover). That B side one even has a 12 string acoustic guitar- Hilsinger played that. We recorded and mixed both songs in about 4 hours in a studio in Munich, Germany, while on tour. Was fucking freezing, was 48 degrees F (9 degrees Celsisus) in the studio. Suffering for your art indeed.
It's a nice little anthem/theme song. I like the non-Hits of Acid version better, because it's just Jay, Doug, and me singing, whereas Tony "sings" on the Hits version, and kind of messes it up. Gang vocals should either be in tune like on the later version, or shouted, like old punk rock bands. Mixing both is firmly in the uncanny valley of audio.
Both sides of that single are on our post-breakup reuning EP CD on Wingnut Records in 1999, Lovesucker. We didn't have the master tapes for those songs. The 45 was put out by a junkie in Berlin- we never heard from him again after that session. We got paid for that in the form of 25 vinyl singles.
We took those songs for the Lovesucker CD straight off the vinyl using a turntable in the studio. The very good engineer for Lovesucker, Jason Carmer, was laughing about it because doing that was so punk rock.
"Spoked Feet"
Good punk rock with smarter-than average punk lyrics. Also has the "Bomb laughing at death" thing again: "When the bombs start dropping I'll be stroking your hair. Kisses are better fate than wisdom, I am told. The end of the world is just our light show."
"Kisses are better fate than wisdom" is borrowed, though I added "I am told" to make it clear, I didn't claim I made it up. Turns out it's in the e.e. Cummings poem "Since feeling is first" but I never read that poem. I saw it on the sidewalk across from City Lights Bookstore when I first moved to San Fran and lived in a crappy hotel for bums. It's in the concrete- someone put it in with a finger when the cement was wet, apparently sometime before I first saw it in 1985.
"Spoked Feet" also namechecks the main neighborhoods we lived in/hung out in. "Life is so much fun. Sometimes I just cannot wait. I'll love you in the Mission, and I'll love you in the Haight."
Title is all Tony- him making a joke about me being a bike messenger, and being on a mountain bike all the time. Yes, I did have a job during a good bit of Bomb despite Jay forgetting that in a recent interview. Jay doesn't lie but his memory isn't great- he smoked a lot of pot in Bomb, not sure if he still does.
But my memory is better for little details like that from a long time ago. I tried to correct it but the interviewer unfortunately said "print the myth not the truth," so I quit being involved in that interview and decided to do my own article, this article.
"Because TIffany Feels"
Tony wrote the lyrics. As I've said, he wasn't always forthright with what his lyrics were, even with his own band members. But sometimes I'd ask him about this or that to get a better feel on how to sing it. But he wouldn't tell me anything about this song except that it was something like he couldn't define what he was, so he defined what he wasn't.
The music is more on the metal side than most pre-Doug Bomb. Bass and drums are largely repetitive throughout, as in "No Color in Utah," allowing Jay to really shine here, playing what I'd describe as "lead rhythm guitar." It's mostly chords, but he's playing a metal melody. This song was powerful live and usually well-received. It's upbeat while trodding somewhere good.
"I Loved You, Then I Died"
The very first guitar chord of this song, where it's just Jay, you hear an ugly short in Jay's guitar distortion pedal. It sounds like the guitar is dying, then it finds its place after a couple more chords. When I hired Jack Endino to do the remaster for this song, I actually considered overdubbing one hit of me playing guitar there to fix it, but didn't, because it's kind of a document of some cool things.
The pedal Jay was using used to belong to Pink Floyd. He used it on Hits of Acid and on To Elvis in Hell. It was big, noisy, orange, and had no brand name on it. It looked homemade. Jay's dad bought it from someone who knew someone on Pink Floyd's crew. I don't think they have a yard sale, unlike the Peter Frampton joke about the inflatable pig in The Simpsons. Pink Floyd was known then in the industry for offloading their old broken down gear to other musicians, since Pink Floyd were constantly buying new gear to experiment with. That old Floyd stuff would probably sell for a lot on eBay now.
Jay kept his pedals in a really cool old leather doctor's bag, like a doctor who makes house calls would use to carry his drugs and stethoscope. When we opened for Gwar at the Fallout Shelter in Raleigh NC (Gwar had more people on stage than in the audience), and Jay's bag somehow ended up in Gwar's truck. We were friends with the woman who booked Gwar, and she got them to FedEx the bag to us at the next gig. Nothing was missing except Pink Floyd's fuzz pedal, which Jay had been showing to Gwar. Not saying anyone stole it, but it's the one thing that didn't come back.
My first paid writing gig was actually an editing gig, editing the novel, Whargoul by Dave Brockie, the singer in Gwar. He paid me 500 bucks to edit it. Kept me from getting evicted. He thanks me for it here: "Special thanks to Michael Dean for helping me get this together."
Dave and I were friends going back to Virginia, even had a couple women in common. I hung out with him at The Dairy in the early '80's while tripping when the tropical storm hit Richmond and flooded everything.
My band Baby Opaque played with his pre-Gwar band Death Piggy. While they were playing, I jumped into the audience with SockerBoppers on my fists (inflatable boxing gloves for kids). I was playfully bopping my friends in the mosh pit. Brockie jumped into the pit with his bass and hit me in the head by accident. It stopped the show, blood everywhere. I had go to hospital to get stitches. As I was leaving the club, Brockie said "PLEASE don't sue me. If you don't sue me, I'll give you guest list for life with backstage passes for any band I'm in." I said "I wasn't going to sue you but I'll take you up on that" and I did.
Saw Gwar free many times in many cities and always hung out backstage. I got to see Dave yelling at people a lot, herding his alley cats. I told one of his crew that I first thought his stage name "Oderus Urungus" was pronounced "Order Us Aroundacus." They liked it and used it for a while.
Dave died of drugs in 2014. A couple years before he died, he called me from somewhere on tour, said he remembered I was sober and wanted help. The phone number he left was some motel- he wasn't there anymore when I called back the next day after hearing the message. I emailed him a few times but never got a reply.
He got an actual Viking funeral, and deserved it. Boat lit on fire with flaming arrow, some of his ashes on the boat.
Some people have his autograph. I still have the scar on my forehead from his bass. That's better than an autograph.
Me at my worst on junk was more responsible (and even more punctual) than a lot of musicians.
Everyone in Bomb had day jobs, but other than that, I did a lot of what it took to hold a band together, even on junk. I was still out hustling for things, booking shows, making sure bills were paid, basically getting us signed, dealing with the manager, dealing with the label. You know, the kind of hustle that Jay says made him want to be in a band with me, from the night he met me and I tried to sell him my old band's album in a bar.
The night before we flew to NYC to make the Warner Brothers album, Doug held us hostage by threatening to quit if we didn't pay him for future album sales on albums he didn't play or write on... albums we made before we knew he existed. We should have let him quit. Bomb was better when Jay was our only guitarist, and that was not a brotherly "we're all in this together" move. Even as contentious as Tony was with Jay and I, we never fought over money or divided up imaginary future money anything but 3 ways, even though Tony and I wrote the bulk of the lyrics, and historically that is 1/2 of songwriting royalties.
It was easy enough for me to keep the train rolling for the band on junk too. I didn't like to get wasted. Tony did. Tony did enough junk to OD several times when I knew him. He wanted to shoot enough every time to be in a coma, forget the world, and get close to death. I'd spread out little doses all day to be able to function but take the edge off. I did get addicted, but I kept my act together.
Jay showed up late, played brilliant guitar, then went home. I was doing this band 24/7. He drove the van too but that's because they wouldn't let me drive the van, even though I owned the van. I was always the little kid to them. Shit. I was born the same month as Tony. I think Jay still looks at me that way, even though he does love me, and I him.
I had a job while shooting junk. Was a bike messenger 4 years- started 6 months before Bomb started. I worked 45 hours a week as a messenger the first 3.5 years of Bomb.
I quit the band, but I was basically fired without cause. It was an ultimatum from Jay and Doug saying "get off junk or we're through." I basically said "Why not just do junk and music?" and they basically said "Because" (honestly what they did was probably illegal- when you have a for-profit business, you have to pay to send someone to rehab before you fire them).
It really was a prejudice. My drug use wasn't affecting the band. It's just that heroin was the Devil to those two. That's common with potheads, and neither of them would deny being lifelong potheads. Jay even recently described himself in an interview as being a pothead back then.
I got off junk on my own and went on to do very cool things. I'm now 59, have been retired for four years... but still have interesting hobbies that keep me busy. I've made 85 good albums with BipTunia, I'm doing astrophotography and sheep farming.
When Bomb played near my home town and we spent a couple days at my mother's house, my dad took us out to dinner. Tony tried to freak out my dad by saying "You know the picture on the back of Hits of Acid, the naked woman? That was made by my wife, she has sex with the woman in the picture, they're lovers, Jack." Tony was just trying to be a dick and freak out my dad. My dad pretty much hated Tony for it, but my dad was polite about it.
Some could say I am just dishing old dirt with this, but to really understand Bomb, it's important to know the dynamic we were living under with Tony. Especially me, remember, I was the "kid brother."
There was a similar vibe when Tony sat in my mother's living room, looking around at the nice things she had from a lifetime of work. Tony put his boots up on her antique coffee table, leaned back, and told her "I could get used to this." It was a really crass move, but typical Tony.
My parents were farmers before I was born and my dad was fond of the saying "Don't curse farmers with your mouth full." It sounds a little cheesy, but now that I've spent a couple years on a farm helping things grow for animals and humans, I believe it 100%.
Jay Crawford mentioned in a recent interview that I was often too sensitive to deal with. Yes, I'm a sensitive artist. And it's a bad combination to work with someone like Tony who's cruel and actually gets off on causing emotional pain.
Never been diagnosed, but I'm 100 percent sure part of it is I'm autistic (as many who deal with me have guessed, I'm "On the Spectrum"). Being on the Spectrum makes people easily irritable. Also makes them capable of a lot of innovation. There's a theory that the reason our species lived and Neanderthal died out was that some of us had that particular neurotypical gene.
Not that I'm as great as these guys, but this is a list of people known to be, or suspected to be, on the spectrum: Steve Jobs, Oppenheimer, Einstein, Jefferson, John Lennon, Emily Dickinson, etc..
Spectrum-ness is a big reason I don't interact with many people much in person anymore. I am a lot happier and get more done away from society. I CAN interact in public, I have no fear of it, I just find it annoying.
"Vagrant Vampires"
Another re-do from Elvis. Fun fact- "I won't hurt you... much," one of the best lines ever, was an accident. On To Elvis...in Hell, it's Tony saying, "I won't hurt you."
We'd gotten a lot tighter from playing live by the time we recorded Hits of Acid, and we'd speed this song up a lot. We recorded the basic track of Guitar/bass/drums for most of this album all at once, then Jay added another track of guitar, then I did my vocals, sometimes double tracked. I'd been doing that since my early '80's band Baby Opaque... in Inner Ear Studio, the same Arlington Virginia studio where most of the Dischord stuff was done, and where we were now recording Hits of Acid on tour.
We were faster and tighter, and I was barely doing guide vocals while recording the basic tracks, to save my voice (We even played a gig in DC at the old 930 Club on F Street between recording the basic tracks and me doing the vocals). So we left the old length of time for "I won't hurt you" when recording basic tracks live.
When Jay went to sing it, there was too much space. There was a quick discussion in the studio, and we decided we needed another word. Jay said "I won't hurt you... baby"? Tony and I groaned.
Either me or Tony, I don't recall who, suggested "Much."
"I won't hurt you... much" kind of became of a signature line for the whole band vibe. It also became a big audience participation thing. Sometimes we'd make that break even longer live, a bunch of people would yell out "MUCH!" at different times... THEN Jay would say "MUCH" and we'd go back into the music. Was cathartic and fun.
We all hurt people, but Jay and I would know when we hurt someone, feel bad, and apologize. Tony never once said "I'm sorry" to me and I never heard him say it to anyone.
Tony's selfish bullshit got us kicked off of Warner Brothers right as our album came out. This killed a dream I'd had since I was 12. He also wouldn't compromise and would bully us into doing something he wanted to do, even if it was a bad idea. The album cover of Lovesucker is a perfect example.
It's a horrible cover, visually. It's an ugly purple photo of a man and a woman. It's meaningless. Until you find out it's some serial killer couple. I don't find that good or even cool. I find it cliche and it was already a cliche in 1999 when that album came out. Jay, Doug, and I were against it, Tony was adamantly for it, so his single vote won. The band was already broken up and doing a reunion gig, so we were done with him already and too exhausted by him to argue anymore. Just get it over with...
I wouldn't put up with someone like Tony for 5 minutes now, let alone 7 years like I did. I even wrote a book, A User's Manual For The Human Experience, about getting bad people out of your life (and then making a living doing what you love).
Tony made playing in a great band a sad hassle. Looking back it reminds me of that Iggy Pop line in "Turn Blue" on the Lust for Life album.
"There's one guy...He was always taking
things that could be alright, that could be nice
And make them ugly, so damn ugly"
I don't, and won't talk to him anymore.
HOWEVER: I will say this: in the 1/3 of Bomb's lyrics Tony wrote, and his drumming, and his artwork designs (executed by Richard Carse, before Richard was executed), were a big part of what Bomb was.
Without that, if Jay and I had been in a different band with a different hard hitting and original drummer who didn't write lyrics and didn't come up with album cover and poster ideas, it would have still been a very good band, but it would have been a fairly different band.
At the end of Bomb, we replaced Tony with a different drummer and did one more tour. When we played The Off Ramp in Seattle, Dave Grohl was up front, singing along, he knew all the words. After the set, while I was still on stage, Dave shook my hand and said "Where's Tony? I really wanted to see him play."
Just so you know exactly who we're talking about, the drummer from Bomb used to go by Tony Fag.
His real name is Tony Short, and that's what he goes by now. His full legal name is Anthony Paul Short. There are a couple other people in America with that name, I'm not talking about them. This one lives in or near San Francisco, and was born in May 1964. I don't want anyone with the same name to be confused with this guy- I make that clear because I know how the Internet works.
Here's a bit of background: I was very dorky and naive back then. I admit that I was very annoying in that band. I moved to San Francisco from small towns. I'd never lived in a big city. I was 20 years old, wide eyed and amazed by it all. Tony was a little older, taller, much more street smart, and immediately took the role of big brother to me. He was the Eddie Haskell to my Beaver Cleaver. He also called me a "hick" because I grew up in small towns.
He was conniving, evil, and controlling. It didn't just slip out of him in a rage, he quietly planned it. He embraced it, he loved it. Tony was fascinated with evil. He read a lot of books about serial killers, and fantasized about being one. Sometimes we'd stop for gas at a remote gas station, very rural America, with only a young woman behind the counter and no one else there. This was before there were cameras everywhere. Was pre-cell phone. No way to even track or prove we'd been there. So back in the van, he'd say, "We could have killed her and gotten away with it." He said that several times at several remote gas station stops over a few years. He dug that it shocked us. Wasn't just an act. He was feeling it (what he didn't think about was that the young woman might well have had a gun behind the counter).
He didn't talk a lot. I talked non-stop. I was amazed with life. Still am. He was jaded, intelligent, charismatic, and used his big brain to meticulously plot how to hurt and squeeze the joy of life from everyone around him. He stewed in his hatred, refined it, sharpened it to a laser point. He loved making people feel bad, and he could do it with very few words.
He never once in 7 years said the words "I'm sorry" or anything like that to me. Though he bullied those words out of me a lot.
One time, I took acid before a gig, a night where there was a lot of that floating around. Other band members were on it, roadie was on it, promoter was on it, audience was on it. Tony wasn't on it. He was drinking whisky. I was overwhelmed at sound check, my bass felt like it was alive, I could barely control it, even though I was a decent pass player. I couldn't even tune it, had to have Jay tune it. I needed a big-brotherly hug. I told Tony what I was experiencing, and I said "What should I do, Tony?" He said "You shouldn't fucking take acid before a gig" then he spun on his boot heel and walked away.
That was our 3rd gig (at a warehouse party at 101 South Van Ness in San Francisco, for anyone who was there). After that we played over 700 more gigs in 43 states and 7 countries.
Tony's actions kept three talented people (me, Jay, and Doug) from having careers on ANY major label ever. If Tony hadn't done what he did, there's a good chance that Jay and Doug would be making a living doing music still.
Tony killed several dreams with his bullshit. He screwed up the career trajectory of me, Jay, and Doug. All of us had been working toward making a living at music since we were teenagers, and Tony killed our careers just as we were starting to have real breaks.
It's Tony's fault that Jay Crawford and Doug Hillsinger are having to do manual labor to survive instead of making a living as musicians. Doug and Jay are both such good musicians that if we'd had the little bump of doing a couple records on a major label that didn't throw us under the bus, I'm convinced Jay and Doug would be making a living as touring support musicians, doing session work, and making soundtrack music for movies and TV.
I really looked up to him. He stuck the first needle in my arm early on in our "friendship,"and took pleasure in corrupting me. He said that. I was later a junkie for years. Not his fault, I take full responsibility, but all that suffering was the fruit of a tree that started with Tony.
Tony used to shoot homeless people out the window by his second story apartment with a CO2 pellet gun using metal pellets. That hurts a lot, can break the skin, and can literally put an eye out. He did this if they were making any noise... even noises he had to open his window to hear.
Our first night of European tour, we didn't have a gig, we were getting over jet lag. I stayed at the hotel. Tony went out drinking with the other guys and our videographer/roadie Charles Cohen (who was later one of the camera operators on Dig!, the Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary). They came back at dawn, they'd spent the night in the hospital. Tony angrily threw a glass at Charles in some bar, glass shattered and cut up Charles' face. Required stitches.
If I had this all to do over, I would have fired him on the spot. There were many "should have fired Tony on the spot" moments, but the big one was yet to come.
On top of all this, Tony got us kicked off Warner Brothers, by trying to put a swastika on the front cover of our major label debut album. That was his idea of a protest, he wanted to put it sticking out behind the four corners of the parental advisory sticker art. We were one of the first albums to have that. Tony had suggested his "protest art" to us, we said "No fucking way!" Tony asked our manager. Manager said "No fucking way!" Tony went behind the band's back, called up the art department at Warner Brothers and asked some low-level graphic artist there to "Make a mockup so I can see it."
Our manager later told us he heard that the CEO saw it on someone's desk and said "Who the fuck are Bomb and why the fuck are they on my label?" CEO of Warner Bros' father had fled Europe for America when the Nazis started smashing store owners' windows.
After that, no major label would touch us. Any opportunity for film soundtrack work was gone. People at labels talk. We got "canceled" in 1991. Tony got us canceled before cancel culture existed. This fuck up was all Tony, but it poisoned me, Jay, and Doug in the industry too.
The album came out but to zero promo. Warner Brothers didn't say "You're fired" because at that time the label was making a big deal of being "anti-censorship," because of Jane's Addiction album covers, also Ice T's "Cop Killer" song. So WB technically put our album out, but it barely got out. We couldn't even get promo copies sent to radio stations if we got all the info on our own and called the label. And they stopped returning calls.
We weren't technically fired, no one at Warner/Reprise told us we were fired. Our manager actually found out from our lawyer that the label had angrily dropped us.
Because of Tony, Bomb is currently residing in the "where are they now" file, and so are the music careers of all the members.
We had great songwriting, talented players, and a singer who could actually sing. We had an original, genuine cool look, lots of style, a fuck of a lot of drive, everything a band needs to hit it. This was 6 months after Nirvana's Nevermind came out. We were good enough and organically weird enough that all three members of Nirvana were hardcore fans of our band and talked us up. We had fans in Soundgarden, Sonic Youth and the Flaming Lips. Not bad fans to have if you're trying to be heard as a rock band.
Labels wanted to push weird cool "alternative" music. The world was hot for it, we were the perfect "product."
So Tony also robbed all of us of millions of dollars in potential (and likely) income.
The band did one more tour with a different drummer, but it wasn't the same and we basically went overnight from on the way up, fast, to on the way down, fast. The wind was knocked out of our sails. The thing we'd been working daily on for 7 years together, and separately since we were 12 and 13, was killed overnight.
All in all, even without Tony's huge fuck up, touring the world making great music that many people deeply loved should have been a beautiful joy. Tony made it a constant drag. He stole that from me too.
First year of Bomb, Dirk Dirksen, famous punk rock scam artist show booker of the Fab Mab (Mabuhay Gardens, Filipino supper club by day and launch pad for Dead Kennedys and most SF punk bands at night) booked Bomb to play some outdoor festival that he described as going to be "like some new version of Woodstock, with bands, vendors, amusements, circus performers, everything." This was five years before Lollapaloza but it sounded like it was going to be like that. He said there would be thousands of people there, and we'd get paid after we played.
We showed up on the correct Saturday afternoon, on time, and played. We were the only band. There was no PA. Dirk was nowhere to be found. It was in a parking lot South of Market on the Embarcadero, across the street from the Bay.
There were a bunch of flea market vendors and food sellers with tables and booths set up. They were pissed that there was no audience. We were pissed that there was no audience. Vendors told me they'd paid Dirk several hundred dollars each to be there. Our music annoyed the vendors, they said we were chasing away the customers. But there were no customers. Blue Angels planes were flying overhead. That crowd was several blocks away. We took acid and played while our loudness was being drowned out by the Blue Angels. Dirk never showed up.
#Dirked #JustDirkThings
I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but Dirk loved being known as the used car salesman of punk. He made a big show of paying Social Distortion in rolls of pennies in "Another State of Mind" documentary film. Since San Francisco loves quirky "personalities,"Dirk got an alley named after him for all this.
Bomb promo photo 1989: Front. Tony Fag. Back, left to right: Jay Crawford, Brian Childers (RIP, roadie), Michael W. Dean