Interview with John Joseph - vocalist of The Cro-Mags

  Interview by: Ditch

John Joseph was the vocalist for the Cro-Mags on their seminal, "Age Of Quarrel," album, a record which has been repeatedly named as one of the greatest hardcore punk records of all time. Recently his memoir, titled Evolution of a Cro- Magnon, was published by PunkHouse press. He has also been touring with AOQ era drummer Mackie, under the name Cro Mags Jam with AJ Novello of Leeway on guitar and Craig Ahead of Straight Ahea and Sick Of It All on bass. This interview was conducted after a show that they played at a pizza shop in Pomona, Californa on October 9, 2008.

What was the motivation behind writing Evolution Of a Cro-Magnon?

Sometimes you don't plan shit out and things manifest. That's the way creativity works. As soon as you start the ball rolling things come out of other things and I actually was writing movies and stuff based on the book and it was my writing partner, Priscilla Summer, who I give credit to.  She was saying "You should start compiling all of these stories; It would make a great book." I never intended to write a book, [but] she kept telling me to write it and once I started typing the first words I never stopped. But it was definitely a cleansing [experience]. . . It was a very. . . I just kind of locked myself down and shut relationships off [with] my girlfriend at the time; I just needed to be alone to do that. It was a very deep thing.


You're very vocal about being a vegetarian. What are the benefits that you see in that sort of diet?

I'm forty six years old. I'm doing Iron Mans. I'm still rocking the stage. I don't put X's on my hands but I'm straight edge all the fucking way. I have a new book coming out called Meat Is For Pussies. It's comedy  though; I'm not one of these judgmental vegan dudes. I try to always help people out and spread whatever knowledge I've gotten and spread it to other people in a way that's palatable to them and in a way that they [can] accept it. I don't like being talked down to and I never think that I'm better than anybody else. I always communicate on an equal level.

[Some of what I take from the diet is] longevity, green foods help fight cancer. The PH Miracle, there's so many books out there now;  it's just that the information like anything else is being suppressed because they're making money off of getting you sick. This is what I talk about in the book. They make money off. . . If you're healthy. . . First of all if you don't eat meat the meat business goes under. That's why they sued Oprah Winfrey when they had Howard Lyman on her show, the Mad Cowboy and he said what the fuck are they're feeding the cows. And she said "Yo, I'm never eating another hamburger again." And then she got sued. They're suppressing the information and knowledge and in turn everyone's getting these diseases like diabetes, cancer, etc. It keeps the prescription companies making billions. And nobody has insurance. Y'know God bless that I've been blessed with health and  a good body. My father was  a pro- boxer. My mother's side was all Irish and Czechoslovakian boxers and handball players. So if you take what you've been given by God genetically and you take care of it, eating the right foods and exercising. . . But it's all about what kind of foods you're eating.

Is there any aspect of it that is political or humanitarian for you?


I started out compassionate wise. HR made me vegetarian and Jay Dubley, the guy that produced the first Bad Brains record. They were like "Yo, it ain't right to kill animals. Let me show you what's going on in slaughterhouses." They don't want you to see that. They don't want you to see Meet Your Meat. If you check out that video and you watch all of this shit about how the animals are treated, their whole fucking lives and [you see] that's what's your ingesting. . . You're ingesting something that's been tortured it's entire life. Do you think that's actually going to bring you health? And they put it in little fucking Ronald McDonald packaging for little kids and "Happy Meals" and it's all. . . Let's pull the pants down on that whole shit and expose people to what they're really eating.

There's another documentary called the Future of Food about genetically modified foods and how the government is trying to control the food, the seeds, the oil, the water, every fucking thing. It's coming down. . . The New World Order's taking over. People start fucking saving seeds. You might think that shit sounds ridiculous but you watch what's getting ready to come down in the next five years. . . If it takes that long. There's a reason Rumsfield and all of these guys have these patents on seeds. They've genetically modified plants and seeds where it grows and the plant produces no seeds, so you have to buy the seeds again from them. It's called the Suicide Gene. So when you watch the Future of Food  and all of these other documentaries you see what's going on. It's some heavy shit, man.

And I just think that I don't want to kill some other living entity, some animal to torture it. And it just so happens that it's very healthy as well.

One of the thing that comes off in your book a lot is that it seems that there's always this sort of conflict in your life between the spiritual and the physical life where you struggle to survive.

It's always like that. That's why I named the band Both Worlds.  We're all like that. We all have the possibility of infinite goodness or infinite evil and the pendulum swings both ways constantly. I could have been a very fucked up individual like my father or any other mother fucker that I grew up on the streets of New York with that murdered people and were killed, or became drug addicts, but when I got good associations through the Bad Brains, or whoever I took advantage of that. I took advantage of the knowledge that people were offering me and applied it to my life. If you keep good associations in life. . . If you ain't doing drugs you ain't gonna hang out with a drug addict. If you ain't stealing you ain't hanging out with thieves. That's why they say you can tell a man by the company that he keeps. If you get good association and hardcore, in this type of music there's a lot of positive people. . . More than any other genre of music.

Earlier you mentioned that you were living kind of a straight edge lifestyle. What did you think of the younger bands coming up in New York that came after you guys?


Fucking preachy, thinking they're better than everybody else and half of them are doing drugs now. You can't judge people and think that you're better than everybody else. I accepted the positivity, but like I said I don't need to wear my shit like a badge. Like this is what I'm into and think you're better than everybody else in the movement. That shit was doomed. Ian's still fucking straight edge and vegan, but I was like "You created a fucking monster" to him. A lot of those kids. . .  I accept the positivity  of it, but a lot of them were fucking douche bags. Where the fuck are they now? Just like all of those Krishna bands that said I was bogus because I outed the bogus dudes that were running the Hare Krishna movement. Where are those dudes now? Cheating on their wives, beating their wives,  allowing fucked up shit to go on. So it's like you don't need to think you're better than  every one else. Fucking do your think and like KRS ONE says "Real bad boys move in silence." I've  got friends that are Navy Seals and black belts, world class fighters. They don't go around bragging. Empty barrels make most noise.

Why do you think the Cro-Mags have been so influential throughout the years?


Regardless of whatever went down between the band members that record captured a certain time period when . . . I can speak for me, Mackie, and Harley. We were really going through some shit and it came off on the lyrics and the record. I mean Parris was there too. He wrote the record. It just captured a bleep in time and the lyrics and the message of the band. .  .  What we were going through and it was timeless. It's a timeless thing. So as long as you come out and you respect the arts, respect the muse. You  do it right. That's why I do triathlons. That's why I do what I do. I don't want to be old saying "Sorry, my knee hurts tonight. Otherwise I'd be going off." I don't do drugs. I train every day almost. It's for that. You respect the arts, you respect the music, you respect whatever you're into.


What do you think the greatest contribution that the Cro Mags have made to music has been?

People coming up to me a lot, saying "Thanks a lot; The music really helped me." That's it. Anybody that's been helped out by my album, anybody that's been helped out by my book. We never preached at people. We just said "This is what we went through. Here's how we related. Take what you want." There's different levels of meaning for  different people. Some people ain't gonna go look into the spiritual depth of what was behind everything but that's cool too. If that's all you want to take from it that's cool. There's a lot of people that wondered what was up with the whole philosophy of it and that's what's up

related links:

http://www.punkhouse.org

Hard Times: Q&A With John Joseph

 

 

Retarded-Crippled Wheelchair Santa.....

First off, I have to admit that necessity became the mother of invention on this character that I helped create. Allow me to, as we say on the streets, "Break it down for ya." The bogus leaders of the Hare Krsna movement weren't the kind of people who wasted time, especially when it came to making money. In other words, while The Salvation Army and the other groups waited until after Thanksgiving to send their Santas on the streets, these guys had us out there in late October to get a jump on things. That's because all throughout ISKCON in every temple all over the world, November marked the beginning of "The Christmas Marathon," which by the way doesn't involve running, except occasionally from the cops.

 Now, instead of pitting devotee against devotee in your local temple, it became a global competition to see who could collect the most money and give out the most books. Although they tried to make it look like the books were the real emphasis, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what it was all about. Like the Wu-Tang Clan said, "Cash Rules Everything Around Me… C.R.E.A.M. get the money, dolla' dolla' bill, y'all!"

Most of the leaders could care less about helping anyone get out of their suffering material condition by giving them spiritual knowledge. It was all about the C.R.E.A.M. baby, and the reason I know that is because a lot of that money we collected found its way into the secret bank accounts they set up all over the world. One so-called guru even spent $10,000 to buy his gay lover a Persian rug for them to have sex on in the Trump Towers, while "Bank Account Swami" (Ramapada), who's nothing more than a crook, had and still operates a loan-sharking business. His scheme involves hustling money from the temples and his disciples, then lending it back to them at astronomical interest rates. Nice gig, huh?

What they set up in the Hare Krsna Movement around the world is still going on as we speak. It's a type of pyramid scheme where the guys at the top of the pyramid (gurus and senior devotees) profit from all the hard work done by the guys operating on the bottom. The only reason some of these cats at the bottom stay in the movement is because they hope to one day reach the top and exploit the others now at the bottom. I know for a fact that the temple president in New York opened a recording studio after his fall from grace in the '80s. His cohort Vakresvara Pandit (from Puerto Rico... dude gets around right?) bought sports cars, guns and condos in Virginia with the money he stole and got from Bank Account Swami. Believe me, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface because hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen in the last twenty-five or so years, all of which was tax free! Their current money making scheme (which is making them a killing) is selling green cards to people from India trying to get in the country. See, religions can get them in on religious visas and get the ball rolling.  I just hope an Al Qaeda terrorist doesn't figure that one out. Now that you know just a little of what was going on behind the scenes with the money we collected, all unbeknownst to us of course, you'll really get a sense of how we were being hustled. That's why, as of late, the temples all over the world (except those in Poland because they're a little slow to catch on) are pretty much empty. The rigorous collection schedules burnt everyone out.

In New York, The Christmas Marathon was an all out effort, where seventy devotees worked for a month and a half straight. If you didn't work the streets, you had better be part of the support team which cooked, cleaned, did laundry or whatever else needed to get done for those who were pounding the pavement. I heard through the grapevine right before the marathon started that you could really rack-up out there as Santa Claus. Since there were no events in the area for the Sticker Pick I decided to give it a try. They had me go out to the strip malls on Sunrise Highway on Long Island and people just didn't want to see no motherfuckin' Santa Claus' in October. Cars honked their horns and people screamed, "Hey asshole, you're two months early!" Storeowners threw me out and told me not to come back. It was so brutal out there that some kids even egged me.

But, being the persistent monk I was, I never gave up. My rebuttal to the storeowners became "We had a lot of backed up orders at the North Pole, so we had to start early this year." They obviously found it funny because it started to pay off in large dividends. My donations went from a $100-a-day to $200 then $300, then $500 and before I knew, it was the middle of November. I was in full swing on the marathon and then the Indian summer hit. For three straight days temperatures soared into the 70s and I baked out there in that red Santa suit and white beard and wig combination. By the fourth day, I had the worst jock itch and rashes running up and down my legs from sweating profusely while I walked the five to six miles collecting donations. To make matters worse, the knee I hurt while I was in the Navy swelled to the size of a small grapefruit. I couldn't walk and just when it seemed like my gig was up and my marathon over, our resourceful Pick Leader told me, "You can't walk, no problem. Here's a motorized electric wheelchair! You can go work the lots in Staten Island as an invalid."

Yes folks, I was to play a cripple who never lost the meaning of what Christmas was all about - giving. I was going to be out there braving the elements collecting money for starving children all around the world. As I climbed aboard the motorized wheelchair, which would be my home for the next week or so, I brainstormed. Wait a minute, I thought. What if I went out as a crippled Santa? That would even be bigger than just some regular old invalid. Even better, what if this particular Santa was not only crippled, but retarded as well? This would be FUCKIN' HUUUUGE!!! When the person in charge of collections walked out and saw me in full Santa attire, in character, in that wheelchair, his mouth hung, his eyes bulged out of his head and he cracked a smile. "Wow," he said. "No one's ever stooped that low." He was thoroughly impressed.

The van dropped me off at the back of the mall parking lot in Staten Island so that no one would see me not only walk, but lift the two-hundred-pound monster of a wheelchair out of the van. The driver parked up front in between a few cars and if I got nipped I was to whistle and he would come and get me. As I drove my wheelchair up to the front of the lot where most of the cars were parked, I played it off to a 'T'. I used the bent portion of my left wrist to work the joystick and even cocked my head to one side. I had an empty paint can wrapped in Christmas paper, with pictures of starving children all over it. As I passed a few cars that were exiting, I saw the look on the faces of the people inside. They were totally fuckin' shocked. The parents and the kids were equally devastated. The horrified children then burst into tears as their mothers hid their faces. Hmmm, I thought, that's my angle. I went from car to car as the people left the mall, only hitting up mothers with kids. When I would approach the kids would cry, "Mommy, mommy! What's wrong with Santa?" Then I would reply in my best retard voice, "Santa says please help the starving children," and hold up my can. The mother would hide the kid's eyes and give me ten bucks just to go away. It worked like a charm, car after car and lot after lot. That first week I hit up all the stores around Staten Island, Long Island and even New Jersey. No security guard ever had the heart to throw me out and in one week I did close to 3 Gs in collections.

A week or so later I went back to that first lot on Staten Island and got ready to start the second round. Well, about an hour into it a black security guard who looked like he just got out of Rikers Island came out and told me to get out of the lot. Staying in character I answered okay, but I had no intention of leaving. As soon as he went inside I started working again, but that's when the snowstorm hit. I didn't mind getting wet, but the problem was my wheelchair's tires lost traction and were now just spinning in the snow. Since I couldn't catch my victims and corner them before they got to their cars (most ran as to avoid having their kids see me), I wasn't making any money. That's when I decided to go in and work the aisles of the stores. It was hilarious. Moms with their kids would be looking at stuff on the shelves and hear the motor of the chair from down the other end of the aisle. They would turn around, spot me coming and just stand there in shock. Then came the crying from the kids and of course, the money. I even got bold and worked the checkout line at a supermarket. While I was hustling I had an old lady pat me on my head, talk to me like I was a five-year-old and tell me what a special Santa I was as she put five bucks in my can.

I was doing bigger business than I ever was out in that cold-ass lot. As I made a beeline for a group of shoppers in the frozen food section I heard someone yell, "Hey you!" I slowly spun my wheelchair around and it was that same black security guard running toward me at full gallop. "I told you to get off the property!" he said.  "No… no… no you did not… you…. you…. sai… said to get out of the lot." I said stuttering, but the brother wasn't having it. "Your honky-ass ain't no retard, so cut the bullshit. You got your motherfuckin' warning now I'm callin' the cops." I was out of there like Vladimir. I put the chair into high gear, got outside and whistled. The van came screeching up to a halt and its doors flew open. I jumped up out of the chair and sure enough the lady who gave me the five bucks was standing right behind me. She was stunned as I picked up the heavy wheelchair, threw it in the back of the van and jumped into the front seat. "You piece a crap. You should be ashamed of yourself," she screamed. As I closed the front passenger door I pulled off my Santa wig and revealed my shaved head. "Have a Merry Krsna and a Happy New Year," I yelled as we burned rubber and chanted all the way back to the temple.

After a week had passed, my leg was healed and I got out of that wheelchair. The devotee, Adi, who was in direct competition with me for marathon collections, now had passed me. The race was now on. During the last week of the marathon, I donned the Santa suit, traveled around and averaged eighteen-hour days hustling. We were doing huge amounts of money running into malls (kids would go nuts at the sight of us), bars, shops, gas stations, McDonald's and strip clubs. Shit, we even worked traffic lights at busy intersections. Anywhere there were groups of people, we were always there. Finally, it came down to the last night and we knew by counting our money that it was almost dead even all the way up to the end.

The night before Christmas Eve we were somewhere upstate in Dutchess County, New York. It was freezing cold around 11 p.m. and we found one last bar to hit up for all the marbles. It was the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded and whoever hit the grand slam was going to be the hero for padding their guru's bank accounts. His was the homosexual who blatantly stole money and got blowjobs in gay bars. Mine was the child molester who raped a fifteen-year-old girl and split with millions of dollars. As we pulled up in the van we noticed that the parking lot of this particular bar was full and that meant only one thing; it was packed. We stared at each other for a second as if we were two prizefighters meeting in the center of the ring before the first round. We both jumped out of the van. As he ran in the front door, I decided I was going to go through the back door and work the bar toward the front. I saw another parking lot that was empty on the side of the building and ran down the embankment to cross it. As I got about fifty-feet out on the lot I heard a cracking noise. I then realized that this was no parking lot, but it was a small pond, which was frozen over and covered in snow.

I crashed through the ice and sunk to the bottom of the freezing cold water with my can of candy canes. I sunk about fifteen feet and couldn't see anything other than my entire life flashing in front of me. What a way to go, I thought, as a bogus Santa in some scummy pond upstate. But, instead of panicking I crawled along the bottom of the pond and finally reached the shore. I climbed out and crawled up the embankment. My Santa suit was completely soaked and felt like it weighed two-hundred-pounds. My beard was waterlogged and hung off my face by the elastic band. My Santa wig, as well as the rest of me, was covered in algae and pond scum and my can was also full of water. But I still had candy canes and that meant the competition wasn't over yet. I ran to the front door, burst in and yelled, "Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Christmas!" The noisy patrons who were gathered around my competitor, forking over the dough, turned and looked at me. It was dead silent in there and finally someone shouted, "What the fuck happened to you Santa?" I yelled, "I missed my landing and the sleigh fell through the pond outside." The entire bar erupted in laughter and they all ran away from the other Santa and came at me stuffing bills in my can in exchange for my soggy candy canes. I won the Christmas Marathon and, just as a foot note, after all the devotees worked so hard that year on the marathon, the scum who ran the temple stole the entire collection. Oddly enough after the last night of the marathon, when all the money was in the treasurer's office he somehow forgot to lock the hundred and some odd-thousand dollars in the safe. All the thief had to do was break through a thin sheetrock wall, open the door and all the money was conveniently just sitting right there. It was so obvious what had happened and even the cops said it was an inside job. Real spiritual, huh?

As my search for knowledge and truth deepened I would get the answers to my questions. Even as a little kid I knew life was about something bigger and something deeper. I wanted something more than just a normal life which basically involved going to high school, then college, finding a job, having a wife and kids and then death. My life was anything but normal and I constantly had this feeling as early as I can remember. I had to figure out the puzzle and answer questions like, who am I? Where am I from? And most importantly, where the hell was I going? Even from age nine when I saw a dead body, my first reaction as I looked at him in that coffin was, "What's the difference between the guy lying here and the guy I saw two days ago running around?" I constantly looked up to the heavens and asked God why I was being put through this hell. As I found more answers at 171A, I realized that things were happening exactly the way they were supposed to on this bumpy ride called life and it couldn't have been any other way.

Not all the punks on the scene were so dull spiritually. I met this really cool dude named Tomas from Spain. He was a real political-type and a thinker. We would get into some serious discussions about everything and one of our rituals was going down to St. Mark's to panhandle so we could get money, buy weed, smoke it, talk philosophy and meditate. Tomas had a Mohawk that was 100 percent natural. He didn't need to cut it that way, because he was suffering from Alopecia Areata, a disease where the hair on your entire body falls out. Bottom line, if God gives you a Mohawk, you know you're punk!

In November of '81, I was invited to my mom's house for Thanksgiving, but I didn't really want to go because I still held a lot of resentment toward her. Tomas said we should go and I realized I had to learn to be more forgiving about the past in order to grow in the future. As we sat at the dinner table chatting away and about to say grace, my grandfather told Tomas to take his hat off. When he did, there was dead silence. Then my grandpa being the class clown he was yells out, "Holy shit, Pilgrims. It's the Last of the Mohicans!" They couldn't stop laughing and neither could Tomas and I.

Tomas was very intelligent and had a really cool vibe. He was soft-spoken and very humble. He was squatting in this empty apartment on 10^th Street between B and C, and offered to let me move in. Since 171 had no shower or kitchen facilities, I jumped at the opportunity. He said he didn't know how long we had until we would get evicted, but I figured what the hell, I'll stay here until the landlord comes knocking and then I'd figure out something else. What was really cool about staying with Tomas was we were both on the same path in life. We were searching. We talked philosophy for hours on end, went to yoga classes almost every day and spent our nights hanging out at 171 or going to gigs. I still remember our first yoga class at the Integral Yoga Institute on the West Side because I was sitting next to this old lady and every time she bent into a stretch she ripped the loudest fart, which broke my meditation and made me laugh my ass off. After class the instructor made an announcement that for the benefit of the others, it wasn't a good idea to eat before class and I said, "Yeah, especially when you got no BMC (bowel movement control)."

We even went out to Queens once to hear Krishnamurti speak, or at least that's what I thought was going to happen. All he did was walk into the room, sit down close his eyes and then every one else followed suit. I looked at Tomas like, "What the fuck is this?" After about forty minutes had passed the dude next to me, who was asleep with his head on my shoulder, started snoring. I so wanted to push him off, but I didn't. After an hour Krishnamurti opened his eyes and the dude up front rang this little bell signaling everyone else to break their meditation, or in other words, wake the fuck up. The guy whose drool now covered my shoulder looked at me and said, "Did you feel it?" I pointed down at my soaked shirt and said, "What? Your hot-ass, bad breath on my neck?"

This dude Krishnamurti had some racket going. He charged twenty bucks, never said one damn word and then sold a shit load of his books in the lobby. I truly felt like I just got hustled. It was like the more we kept looking, the more we found that these people posing themselves as spiritualists were full of shit. The sannyasis in the yoga centers, who are supposed to be in the renounced order of life, were having sex with their female disciples. The so-called philosopher gurus charged twenty plus dollars to hear them speak, or in Krishnamurti's case, sleep. It just seemed like everywhere we turned on our search we ran into snake-oil salesmen. We saw the most bizarre example of this from Michael Cesa on 10^th Street who called himself "The Pope" (who was later known as the "Pope of Pot"). He ran a storefront called, "The Church of the Realized Fantasies," and get this ravers and club kids…he gave out hits of free ecstasy (which was still legal at the time) as the Blessed Sacrament during Mass. The Pope was a blatant homosexual and he would invite boys back to his church, get them high on X and have his way with them. Sounds a little like the Catholic Church, doesn't it?

It's said that this is the age of the cheaters and the cheated. If you want to cheat spiritually then you'll join a bunch of cheaters and the leader, who's the best cheater of all, will cheat you too. But, if you truly are searching for the truth you'll find it. Well, I was and so was Tomas. After all the meetings and seminars we went to, we knew our search had to go on. But in the meantime there was a punk rock revolution happening, and this time, this revolution was going to be televised.

It was Halloween '81 and Tomas and I were wondering what the hell we were going to do that night. That's when I ran into Ian MacKaye and some of my boys from D.C. They told me that, Fear was going to be on Saturday Night Live that evening and they could get me in if I showed up to NBC studio inside Rockefeller Center. I invited some of the New York punks and later that evening as we waited on line to get into the studio hallway, the scene was complete and total chaos. A few of the normal audience members were absolutely terrified as we screamed punk lyrics, slam danced and basically raised hell. Some NBC producer-types came out, saw what was going on and separated the two groups. They were led into the studio and allowed to take their seats as a small contingent that included me, Tomas, Ian MacKaye and a bunch of the D.C. posse, were taken backstage to the dressing room. When I walked in, John Belushi was hanging out and drinking with Lee Ving, the singer of Fear.

As it turns out, they sent those producer clowns to get us because Belushi wanted to meet everyone and make sure we really showed America what punk rock was all about. The way this whole thing went down (as I mentioned on MTV's news documentary, Social History of the Mosh Pit) was Lee was friends with Belushi and he convinced the SNL executive producer and creator Lorne Michaels to let Fear be a musical guest. Lee invited the D.C. punks, they invited me and I invited the NYC punks. Belushi was a really cool dude. He was like a ball of energy that could explode at any moment, kind of like that scene in Animal House where he stands up in the cafeteria and yells, "Food Fight!" I shook his hand and introduced myself, hoping to jog his memory by telling him I was the guy with the Black Flag Kills Ants On Contact shirt at their last New York show and how he sent me flying across the dance floor. He just laughed and said something like, "Yeah, man. I was really fuckin' wasted that night." We hung out with him for a little bit and assured them that this country was about to witness history in the making - their first slam dancing.

After about twenty minutes, the producer dude came and got us and led us and the forty or fifty other punks into another room, which was empty except for a piano and a few chairs. There was this window that faced the studio and you could see all the sets and the stage where Fear was about to play. The NBC dude told us that for the first song and the duration of the show we were to stay in this room. When Fear played their final song at the end of the show we would be led onto the set where we had to behave ourselves. Well, that did not sit well with us and as soon as he left the room we trashed it. We practically ripped every string out of that piano, broke chairs, walls, sinks in the bathroom and slam danced down the halls only taking a break to cram against the window and watch Fear play their first song. Then it was back to raising hell and after a while a guy came and locked the door to the room so we couldn't leave at all.

Finally, it was time. Our moment of glory was upon us. We were led down some stairs, then a hall and finally stood in front of a huge door that read: studio entrance. The door opened and the bright stage lights blinded me like one of those UFO landing scenes from a movie. We were given some more instructions on how to behave by several very nervous NBC studio personnel. As we were led inside I thought to myself, " How fuckin' funny is this? I'm AWOL from the Navy and a wanted man, and here I am about to be on national TV."

As we walked onto the set, our chains, spurs and steel cap boots clanked away. We must have sounded eerie as hell to the straight-laced audience. Once they got a glimpse of us the audience collectively gasped and then some big, scary-looking punk rocker pointed at them and yelled, "You motherfuckers are gonna die!" This had them cowering in their seats and a few were so worried they even got up and left. We went to the front of the stage and waited anxiously for Fear to emerge as Belushi joined us. He looked pretty high and was slamming people around before the music even started playing. The stage was covered in dozens of pumpkins and at first I was like, "What's up with the pumpkins?" Than it hit me, "Oh, shit that's right. It's Halloween."

What's bugged-out though is I'm sure some of the audience members probably thought we were some kind of Halloween gag and were part of the show. Get it? Fear = scary punkers. Fear walked out on stage and grabbed their instruments and when they did we went nuts, screaming and yelling. People started slamming into each other, and everyone, including myself, looked for the cameras. Punks always talk shit about posers and this and that, but let me tell you, when a punk's got a camera rolling on him believe me, they know how to ham it up with the best of them. At that point actor Donald Pleasence, the host for the evening, came on and announced Fear and more importantly, warned the audience that this was no Halloween gag. I got a copy of the tape from Spit Stix, Fear's drummer and Pleasence's exact words were "They're really nice people ya know." Pleasence laughed and continued. "They uhhh…look very frightening, but they're really very nice…our Halloween guests. By the way tonight…look out for surprises. Ladies and gentlemen, Fear." With that Fear broke into "Beef Bologna" and I hit the stage, launching out over the crowd in perfect stage dive form.

The place went absolutely nuts as the dance floor exploded into complete and utter chaos. Some punks were running in the aisles and diving onto audience members sitting on the folding chairs. Those poor bastards ran for cover along with the NBC staffers as Belushi went wild, skanking across the dance floor and laying people out. The NBC cameras only shot what was happening on stage, but out on the dance floor a fight was brewing between the D.C. and New York punks. It left a couple of the D.C.'ers hurt (I believe one even suffered a broken nose) and by the time Fear played their last song, "New York's Alright…If You Like Saxophones," fistfights broke out all over the studio. I was neutral because I was cool with people from both camps. Besides, I was way too busy trying to get on camera to get caught up in dumb shit like that. NBC security people were trying to get us out of the studio and a few of them made the crucial mistake of coming out onto the dance floor. Not a good idea and towards the end of that song the fighting got worse. That's when Ian MacKaye grabbed the mic and yelled live on national TV, "Fuck New York! New York Sucks!"

Even Lee tried to cover that one up by saying, "Awe, he don't mean that," and Fear quickly went into, "Let's Have a War." Sure that'll help the situation Lee. NBC cut the show off the air as soon as Ian cursed (I believe that was the first time that ever happened) and they ran a tape of an Eddie Murphy skit, but back in the studio we were still going nuts. We now had ten security guys in NBC jackets trying to get us out of the studio and screaming that they were going to call the cops if we didn't leave. Since Fear was still playing, we weren't going anywhere.

As a way to defuse the situation, the head honcho of security came on stage, grabbed the mic and told us that the police were on their way and blah, blah, blah. It didn't matter, because Tomas picked up a pumpkin and threw it, hitting him in the head and knocking him down. That's when the pumpkin fight started. Pumpkins were flying everywhere. A camera was knocked over, monitors were smashed and mics were thrown. The fisticuffs died down and we were still laughing our asses off when the cops rushed in with riot gear. The D.C. and N.Y. punks took off running side-by-side with the cops in hot pursuit who were trying to take our head's off with their billy clubs. They chased us down the halls of Rockefeller Center and out into the NYC Halloween festivities where we easily blended into the crowds of ghouls and goblins walking the streets.

On the following Monday, the New York Post front page headline read: "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE RIOT DESTROYS $250,000." SNL claimed in their book that it was a lot less, but I just think they didn't want to look like a bunch of schmucks for not seeing that disaster in the making. I mean c'mon guys, you let a band named Fear play on national TV on Halloween night and invited seventy-five or so of their craziest slam dancers to the set, Belushi included. Smooth move. One thing's for sure though, we definitely gave the good old U.S. something they never saw before. To this day that is the one episode of SNL, NBC has vowed to NEVER re-air. (Elvis Voice Here) "Why thank you very much

Where are the revolutionaries to come from in this next generation?  The Illuminati has cleverly boggled the youth and filled their minds and senses with so much useless, imagery, information and gadgetry.  They are simply satisfied to log on, IPOD up, text message, tune out, and download their days away.  Any sign of stepping out of line and they are immediately offered a variety of mood controlling prescription medications.  They poison their bodies with fast food which is nothing more than innocent animals that have met cruel lives and died at the hands of ruthless butchers, their karma injested with every bite of that Bic Mac or Whopper.  Yes the world is slipping further into darkness and the powers who control every aspect of life materially have the youth right where they want them.  Controlled.  But, there are higher powers and THEY WILL let the message of light and truth make it's way through.  So wake up sleeping souls, wake up because you're sleeping in the lap of a cruel master.  A master called MAYA (illusion).  There is knowledge out there meant to awaken our real consciousness which lies dormant under all the layers of crap we've been fed our entire lives.  From the cradle to the grave you are just meant to be a cog in the machine.  Wake up.  Read Bhagavad Gita As It Is.  Check out:  Zeitgeist The Movie... google that one kiddies.