Halfway to Gone, Milligram & The Hangmen

Halfway to God :

The Halfway to Gone story

Exploding like a sack of boiled man gravy from the tail end of a split single with Virginia’s kings of muscle riffed redneck pummel, Alabama Thunderpussy, last year, Jersey’s Halfway To Gone have quickly established themselves as snarly rock and roll motherfuckers of the highest order. Boasting a sound that melds the heavy waves of sunbaked southern stoner rawk with the rats and ambulances knife fight roar of 80’s street metal, and a look that screams Biker gang on a rampage, HTG are a lethal dose of pure American Bad Assitude. Their debut full length, "High Five" has just been released on Small Stone records, and a US tour, complete with flamethrowers, chainsaws, and drunken metal chicks will ensue this summer. I caught up with bleeding light Lou Gorra on the eve of High Five’s release to talk about these snake spitting earth shakers…

New Jersey?!

It’s great , man, there’s so much going on here, The Jersey shore is like the hub of great rock. People seem to think you have to go all the way to New York, Philly, or Boston to catch some cool rock and roll, but we’ve got Solace, Solarized, Atomic Bitchwax, Core…Zakk Wylde’s place is 15 miles from here…so you’re never too far from a good rock show. On the weekend, at least. I mean, New Jersey’s still a pretty blue collar state.

Halfway To Gone strike me as a working class hero kind of band.

Definitely. I drive a truck, Stu teaches, and works at a guitar store. Nobody’s getting fat off of being in this band.

It’s all for the love of rock and roll.

Yeh. Rock and roll and whiskey.

So you started out in Solarized.

I did two records and a tour with them. But while we were on tour, I started writing songs that were a lot different than the stuff Solarized does, so that’s why I formed Halfway To Gone. Solarized have more of a space rock sound, We have more of a southern tinge to what we do, with some Motorhead kind of British metal thrown in.

You are raw, filthy street metal, if you ask me…

You can’t the metal out of a metal guy from New Jersey, that’s for sure.

But Halfway To Gone will, of course, be labeled ‘stoner rock’.

I don’t really care. I mean, if it’s going to get you to buy the record than it’s cool, but the fact is, if you like southern rock, or metal, or rock and roll, you’re gonna get the Halfway To Gone record anyway. Plus, you know, what music doesn’t sound good when you’re stoned?

Right on. Still, I think it’s the lamest media tag ever.

People keep talking about stoner rock being the next big thing, but I saw grunge come and go in the space of 6 years, and I’m still playing the same kind of music. Heavy music’s been around since the 60’s, and it’s always been obscure, and you’ll always have to look to find the good stuff.

I don’t think any of us care if it ever gets ‘big’. It just means that everybody’s gotta be an active participant in the music they love.

Oh, yeh. It’s incredible how cool everybody’s been, and how willing people are to help each other out. I think the internet is great for that. If we were some indie rock band 15 years ago, we’d never be able to pull this off.

Things have been going pretty good for Halfway To Gone so far.

Peaches and cream, brother. Great support…our first split was on Game Two records, but we didn’t know who the other band was gonna be. We were thrilled when we found out it was Alabama Thunderpussy, those guys are like our brothers, and it was great to be paired, right off the bat, with a band that already has some notoriety on the scene.

Speaking of the split, what was ‘Darktown Strutter’ about? I mean, besides the obvious?

Rotten women. If I think about it, that’s pretty much the theme of the whole new record. That song’s about some stupid motherfucker that finds some girl and beats the shit out of her, and convinces her that it’s her own fault. It’s not autobigraphical.

So, you wouldn’t suggest using it as a life philosophy?

Well, you can do any stupid fucking thing that you want, I suppose. But guys like that don’t usually need my help.

How’s the new record sounding?

Killer. It’s got full throttle meth rock, doom, tons of slide guitar…we’ve got one track that’s full on swamp rock-acoustic guitar, harmonica, and foot stomping. It runs the gamut. After the record’s out, we’re gonna do a US tour, and then this summer, we’re probably going on tour with 5 Horse Johnson in Europe.

That’s a lot of road work.

Yeh, I love it, tho. What other job do you work for an hour and a half per night? A tour is like a 30 day vacation…whiskey, smoking, women, and rock.

More rock than women on the heavy end of the spectrum.

Some bands are just too damn heavy for the ladies. Warhorse would crush any little girls that were around when they play. When I toured with Solarized, though, there were some women at the shows. But the music’s pretty testosterone-heavy, don’t you think?

Yeh. But it’s not Limp Bizkit date rape music either.

But it is pretty macho. Songs about snakes and evil chicks.

Solarized toured with Alabama Thunderpussy, right?

Those guys are total road dogs. Nobody in Solarized had toured before, so they showed us the ropes. It was pretty amazing.

Anything to relieve the boredom between gigs?

Inter-band boxing matches in the parking lot.

Cool. Ever have to fight your way out of a gig?

Not yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

For more info on HTG, check out their website…www.halfwaytogone.com

I Got a War

I walk into the Design Center, surely the most sinister and God-awful building in Boston. For one thing, the doors open just from looking at them, which is beyond creepy. And the ostentatious interior, with it’s marble floors and smoked chrome walls, is enough to irk the working man to distraction. All I can think about is that these screwheads are busy peddling their hotel lobby curtain fabric at 200 bucks a square yard when people in my neighborhood are going hungry. 20% of the homeless population in Boston work full time jobs, and these creeps sleep in safety. Obscene.

So here I am on a delivery, standing by the brass elevators, staring at the wall like it’s the window, plotting some ill-conceived revenge. Along comes another proletariat, squishing through the shag, looking equally surly. Only he’s got his jeans rolled up too high, he’s wearing big ass Docs, and he’s got no hair. Just what I need. Usually,I can ignore such mundane vulgarity, but this guy’s sweatshirt causes me to audibly snort. In bold white (natch) letters, it’s says "ARA- Anti-Racist Action" .Oh, brother.

"C’mon, man, what’s with that shirt?" I ask him.

"I’m anti-Nazi". He deadpans.

"Listen, if you have to go around publicly proclaiming you’re not a racist, it probably means you are one."

"That’s Bullshit", he says, "There’s a small segment of skins that are racists, and that’s where the stereotype comes from. But that’s not what skins are about. Skins are about working class pride."

"Dude", I tell him, skins are about getting drunk with your lookalike buddies and bashing in some gay guy’s head with a pipe."

"That’s not what I’m about at all."

"Yeh. Well, you’re flying the flag. I call that guilt by association, at best."

"Fuck you, man", he brilliantly counters. "You even know any skinheads?"

"No. And I don’t know any vampires either, but I’m pretty sure they’re not my kind of people."

This circular conversation continues all the way to the 8^th floor, when the elevator pings open to the movie poster design company that I have to deliver some porn to. But I don’t want to leave this guy as stupid as he was when I found him.

"Listen, man", I tell him, "the problem with you, and the Goddamn Muslims, and every other racial extremist in this city is that none of you are living in reality. The reality is that this is a big fucking city filled with all different kinds of people trying to get through the day without hurting themselves too much. You don’t have anymore right to call yourself anti-racist than you do being racist. You don’t make the rules. Everybody’s already here doing their Goddamn thing just fine without you or your opinions, and all your shirt does is agitate people. So grow up, get on the fucking bus like everybody else, and grow some hair."

Undaunted, he says, "Let me ask you something, big mouth. You’ve got long hair, a beard, and a leather jacket. Does that automatically make you a biker?"

"Abso-fucking-lutley".

"Well, aren’t bikers one of the most racist segments of society?"

Well, he’s got me there. Of course, I’m not really a biker anyway, it’s just that Zodiac Mindwarp taught me how to dress.

The History of the Bruise:

Milligram

"Our guitars are so overdriven, they distort even on record. We play fierce rock and roll that’s as stripped down as it can possibly be." - Jonah Jenkins

"I think there are other bands people would be less comfortable throwing things at. Milligram, for example." - Ian Adams, Rock City Crimewave

"Tough it out with the big boys, nobody holds your hand when things are super real." – Zodiac Mindwarp

Tearing hair-splitting genre definitions asunder, Milligram’s brand of feral, gut punching rock and roll only needs one word to describe it – intense. Equal parts of stoner rock and speed punk morph into a saw-toothed , fire breathing, supersonic murder machine with wheels greased to meet Jesus in triple time. Recruited like Berserkers from the trenches of the hardcore, punk and metal sweat wars ,these highly specialized rock assassins carry scars on their souls like medals, and a legacy of brutality that includes the likes of Only Living Witness, Roadsaw, Slapshot& Stompbox. Since their debut 2 years ago at Boston’s annual biker rawk apocalypse, The Redneck Fest, Milligram have continuously scorched the coast with blinding live shows, and their debut ep, ‘Hello, Motherfucker’, managed to contain the biting and the bleeding for a brief, but glorious, 8 song assault. With their first full length (tentative title: Death To America) due this summer, and a cadre of empire building gigs to burn through, Milligram are cocked and loaded for the revolution. I talked to their twisted genius frontman, Jonah Jenkins, to find out what fuels this infernal machine…

Deranged Faith Scored on Hungry Skin

You started your rock career in ‘Only Living Witness’…

Yeh, back in ’89. I t was a hardcore band, but we ended up a lot more rock/metal, like SSD…I was in Milltown in ’94, which was much more of a rock band.

I’ve heard the term ‘Emo’ thrown around…

So have I, but I think that’s kind of absurd really. I hate that term anyway, but I think it came from a lot of the hardcore fans of Witness checking out this new rock band, y’know, and saying ‘well, it’s more melodic, the vocals are real emotional’…but I when I think of ‘Emo’, I think of things like Rites of Spring’, and we didn’t sound at all like that.

Milltown broke up because…

Milltown was a democracy, which is unfortunately the least efficient political system. I had a certain vision of the band that didn’t fit in with everyone. I’m sure I was called a dick more than once, but there was a lot of record label involvement, and on a major label there are certain compromises that you’re supposed to make, that I really wasn’t into.

So you got Milligram, the Super Band together…

People always say that, it’s a lot to live up to. But it was great to find a group of people who were on the same page musically, who were interested in playing devestating music. Minutemen were an immediate influence, because we had short songs, the lyrics were gonna be succinct, the song structures were gonna be precise…Black Flag, the Stooges, we saw the parallels that we’d known for many years gel when we started playing together. It was somewhat melodic, but totally feeding back the entire time. The louder, faster, more ridiculously intense we played, the better it sounded.

And the songs are pretty simple…

That’s one of our goals, to keep it as simple as possible. Some people have complained, in reviews, or wherever, that there aren’t enough lyrics in the songs, there’s only 3 lines…well, fuck you, same as Discharge, same as Black Flag…

Even so, they’re pretty thoughtful. You seem to be channeling ‘The Pain’…

The whole aesthetic of Milligram is escapist, but I think we’re all reluctant intellectuals, so I can’t really dumb it down. I work at MIT, I’ve worked at Harvard, I’m around people all day that talk about things like politics…we try not to be heavy handed in Milligram, so we try to take the things we see and strip away a lot of the heaviness. In other bands we were in, there was a lot of finger pointing going on, and I don’t really believe in that anymore. So although the songs come from a similar aesthetic as our old bands, we try not to be judgmental…we’d rather look inward. Unfortunately, when you start looking at yourself, you start seeing your shortcomings. So my lyrics have become more personal and self -deprecating, I guess, because at this point I realize that all I can do as a vital member of the human race is to try to make myself a better person. What can I do? We’re a bunch of fuck-ups. So we write songs about it.

Milligram have a reputation for being too smart for rock and roll.

Really? Because I work at MIT? I just work there, I could just as easily be pushing a broom. The bands we hang out with – Cracktorch, 5ive, Quintaine, RC Crimewave… these are brilliant people, with amazing minds who don’t want to tell people how to live their lives, but know they’ve got to get some shit out, so fuck it, let’s have a good time with it…and some people dismiss it as bar room rock. I did the same thing when I was young, I couldn’t understand why anybody wanted to listen to anything that didn’t talk about how fucking angry they were. But all these bands tap into something base, primal, and I think we do the same thing. There’s a certain element of people in rock music today that appreciate things a little more fuzzed out, a little more freakish, a little more sub-culturally oriented, than the stuff that’s striving to be on MTV. It’s like Scissorfight. Again, Chris [Iron Lung] is a brilliant guy, but he chooses to write songs about fucking people in the ass and monkeys with sticks, chooses to tap into some carnal instinct… he’s just not interested in rolling around in all his degrees, although, had he chosen a different life path, he certainly could’ve done that. Unfortunately, what that would’ve meant was being fake for a bunch of phony people. When I was working at Harvard, people would always ask about degrees, you know ‘do you have a degree?’ Well, who gives a fuck, I have a life. I’m a creative member of the human race, what’re you doing? Are you just striving for acceptance among a bunch of people with similar backgrounds? I want to meet new people, go new places, I want to read, see new movies, hear new music, I don’t necessarily care about how intellectually elevated somebody is, I’d rather know what’s going on inside someone’s head, especially if they can filter it out creatively.

Bad Addictions From The Fifth Dimension

You’ve got a whole Choke/Rollins stage stalker image…

Well, Daryl was in Slapshot, y’know…all of us come from bands that were more aggressive than Milligram. Not that Milligram shies away from aggression…

Are you a punk rocker, or what, Jonah?

I grew up punk. The first metal band I got into, strangely enough, was Nuclear Assault, because they played so fuckin’ fast. As the years passed, and everything started to blur, I got way more into metal. There are metal records that are just essential…Slayer’s ‘Reign in Blood’, Mercyful Fate’s ‘Don’t Break the Oath’ and ‘Melissa’, here’s a guy singing in falsetto the whole time, a total dork, really, but those are amazing records. Certain Maiden records, certain Priest records, you can’t deny that those are major influences on what’s being played now. Of course, I was also into Seige, Freeze, F.U.’s…

The line’s always been that punk somehow has more integrity than metal…

People thought that, and it was probably true at one point, but the Sex Pistols admitted they sold out, and that was the whole premise of the band, so where’s the integrity in that? I don’t think there was that much difference between a band like the Sex Pistols and GunsnRoses except for musically. They were essentially the same thing, except the Pistols took it way too far, and unfortunately Guns got sucked into their own excesses and couldn’t pull out of it in time. They got sucked into the money machine, whereas the Pistols retracted from all that, they were repulsed by it…Some people call Milligram punk, some call it metal, but it’s just stripped down rock and roll. It’s loud, it’s heavy… do you like it? That’s what really matters.

Right on. Which brings us to Stoner Rock. There’s a lot of long haired, bearded freaks that love the Milligram…

The majority of the people involved in stoner rock, whether it be the labels, the distributers, the artists, the fanzines, the people that run the websites…these are people that truly love the music, not because they’re trying to make a buck. Sure, some people might be driven by the money, but that’s because they’ve spent a lot to get to that point. I hope that labels like Game Two and Meteor City get the money they need to keep going, because they’re putting out the most amazing records. That’s why we’re working with Tortuga, because they really fucking love the music. The same spirit that drives Stoner rock is what initially got me involved in the punk scene, the sense of community…once you’ve connected with an audience, even just an audience of one, you have this commonality to work with in a conversation, and there’s always branch-offs that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Y’know, I would challenge anyone in other circles, for example business or academic circles, to truly be able to tell if the person they’re hanging out with is a good person. I can usually tell. Not necessarily by the bands the person likes, but by the way they interact with me, or the way they discuss the music or shows they’ve seen, what kind of person this is, whether they’re gonna fuck me over or not… I’ve been pretty lucky that way, and I think a lot of my friends have too.

I think the rock community is a lot like the Biker community, where it’s one of the last places where they’re really is an established code of conduct, where people treat each other like bro’s. A band comes to town, you give them a place to stay, something to eat, a beer. You might not know them, but you already do, really…

Absolutely, I think that’s a very important connection. Most of the people in my life have been that way. I’ve run into situations where everybody thought they were the same page, and problems resulted because somebody broke the code, and nobody really knew what the code was to begin with. In fact, I’ve done that. But as a whole, I think it’s better that the rules aren’t written down, that we make them up as we go along, and that you just don’t fuck with other people. I used to tell people in high school, they’d say ‘I listen to punk,’ or ‘I listen to hardcore’, I used to say, ‘I listen to don’t fuck with me music’ .And life was good.

Milligram release schedule?

The full length? It’s about half written, and hopefully we’ll have it out this summer, if all goes well. It really depends on Tortuga’s release schedule, but we’ll be done recording it by spring.

Still thinking about calling it ‘Death To America’?

I don’t think so…that was one of Zeph’s brain storms, and it pissed everyone off, so we said ‘ok, we’re gonna use it’(laughs)…

I still think the T shirts would’ve looked awesome, though…

Well, then we were going to use that title for the ep, but we figured, since it’s just leftovers from ‘Hello Motherfucker’, we’re not going to call it anything it all. There’s not even going to be anything on the cd, maybe just a picture, or something, but really it’s just a companion cd…

So, why didn’t you just release all the material together?

Well, when we were putting the first cd together, we knew creatively how we wanted the record to hit people. Songs like ‘Not Ok’ and ‘Altamont’ hit people differently, they’re not quite as concise and concentrated as the songs that we had on the first ep. So we’re releasing this one to show people the other stuff that we recorded at the same time, that maybe shows a different side to what we do. And since we’re only charging, like 4 bucks for it, nobody should be calling us up and complaining…

It’s highly unlikely that anybody will. The Hello Motherfucker companion cd is a swirling vortex of enflamed muscle and low tone crunch that’s guaranteed to boil the blood. For more information on Milligram, check out their website at www.milligram.com

Rope Burn and Empty Bottles:

The Hangmen

"The thing of all this is, you gotta go with your guts…" - Supersuckers

"You’ve got bleed a little while you sing, or the words don’t mean a thing." - The Cult

"I’m from Boise, so shooting holes in the walls doesn’t seem that dangerous to me." - Bryan Small

In the late 80’s, Los Angeles was a flurry of 3 chord extravagance; the Sunset Strip was like some neon Babylon, death-tripping glitter babies flashing pearly whites dripping with venom, and the dollars burned brightly in the endless night. Spandex fascism was the order of the day, cocaine tongues and Chinese takeaways ruled the airwaves, sincerity took a back seat to sin…But there were back alleys in these glam ghettoes as well, where the night creatures lurked with bones in their hair and boots caked in blood. Mutated holdouts from another dimension...punks, they used to call them. They partied in cardboard and slept at dawn in the murder district. It was in these shadows that the two worlds came together in a gushing climax of sweat, leather, and evil. And out of the murk crawled a new breed of anti-hero – part rock star, part vampire, all cowboy. The most virile of this breed was a black-eyed rattlesnake named Bryan Small. And he had a posse. And they were called the Hangmen.

Feeling lucky and slinky, the 4 man gang inked a bloody, ill fated deal with a plush crew of devils at Capitol records sometime during the flash metal gold rush, nobody’s sure exactly when; but a rip snorting self titled debut quickly followed. Sneering from the cover like the meth and Harley Davidson addicted cousins of the scarf mafia down at the Troubador, The Hangmen obviously meant serious business. And within the grooves of said record, a fearsome cabal of diamond-hard raunch and blistering cowpunk clinched the deal. The Hangmen found themselves running in the same circles as authentic, true blue bad asses like the Cult, The Four Horsemen, and Circus of Power. And the bar was always open, and all the drinks were free. Then, the Hangmen were given a bus, and told to get on it. And every thing went all to Hell.

The tour was a war campaign that nobody expected to survive, and very few actually did. The next decade was a hazy one, at best. There was another record deal, this time with Geffen, and even another record…but unless you have $30,000 to retrieve it from it’s prison in DGC’s vaults, you’ll never hear it. Mostly there were drugs. Drugs and booze and madness. But even though it seemed like Bryan Small was no longer a contender in the ragged rock hero game, he was still watching the pretty pictures through bloodshot eyes, waiting for the perfect moment to jump back into the ring. As the clock ran out on the last century, he made his move. Shanghaiing Jimmy James, the ex-gutter guitar slinger for the criminally under-rated sleaze metal giants Comatones, Bryan formed the nucleus of the Hangmen, mach 2000 . This leaner, meaner version signed to punknroll upstart indie label Acetate, and the return to form blazer, "Metallic IOU’, was released late last year. Sober and older, Bryan and the boys have proven that it’s a long way back from Hell. And to the top, if you wanna rock and roll…

So let’s talk about the early daze…

Well, I moved out to LA from Boise, Idaho…

Moved to the jungle to be a rock star. Cool.

Naw, it was never my intention to be any kind of star, I just wanted to be in a band, write my own songs and play some rock and roll. If I wanted to be a rock star, I would’ve quit a long time ago.(laughs) But I put my ad in the paper, with my influences, which were the Gun Club, Tex and The Horseheads, and the Rolling Stones. I put the first two in on purpose, because I knew it would weed out the people I really didn’t want to play with. So from that I got my first guitar player and bass player, Johnny Holiday and Billy Macoy, and my drummer, Lenny, we used to kick around together in Boise. That’s how it all started. I’ve had about a million different people in the band since then.

Were you always called the Hangmen?

Yeh, right from the first gig. Which was with the Replacements. We’ve gotten to play with most of our heroes over the years…

Like Johnny Thunders …

I remember playing with him in like, ’87 or ’88, and just blowing him off the stage. (laughs) He just sucked that particular night.

Yikes. Did you apologize to him for showing him up like that?

No, I had too much respect for him for any of that. Plus he probably would’ve…well, I don’t know what he would’ve done…

Unfortunately, he spawned a vast legion of kids that used to be in hardcore bands that grew their hair out, ripped off some Chuck Berry riffs, and are now proclaiming to be genuine rock and rollers…

Well, man, that’s all right. I just hope that some kid in his early 20’s knows that it goes a little deeper than putting on a cowboy hat. I hope they actually listen to his songs, because Johnny was a lot deeper than all that. It wasn’t just a cool look, that cat had soul. I think the real stuff, the honest stuff, outlasts all of that anyway.

Who else was big in town at the time?

Jane’s Addiction, Guns and Roses. We played with them once, too.

Did you guys hang out together?

No. I don’t know what street they think they came from, but…I mean, I’m friends with Duff, but I was just never a fan of those guys. I remember being at Geffen, this was before the Hangmen were signed to Geffen or Capitol. We were doing this Scream compilation, it must have been ’86, and they’re going,"We got this band, they’re called Gunsn’Roses, what do you think?", and I thought, I don’t like it.

So you didn’t see the star potential.

No. I mean, I like their songs better now, but at the time I thought it was just too methodical and cliched…

So the Hangmen weren’t part of the La glam rock scene?

No, we were playing with bands like L7, the Nymphs…

The Nymphs. Now there’s another major label tragedy.

Yeh. I’m friends with Inger Lorre, she’s a great talent. She’s got a new band together that she’s working with. Hopefully, we’re all a little smarter now.

How was it recording the first record for a major? Did you abuse the privileges of having a luxury studio and lots of time to record?

No, we were really dedicated to making a good record. And Vic Maile was our producer…he produced Motorhead , y’know? So we were sort of in awe of the guy, and we didn’t waste a lot of time getting drunk and shit. The same for the Geffen record. And this one, really. We’re pretty serious in the studio.

Looking back, can you see a natural progression in your songs from the early days?

I haven’t evolved much as a songwriter. (laughs) I’ve just pretty much stayed the course…

How long did this one take to do?

It took as long as the major label records, actually. We just wanted to get it right…we left a couple of songs off the record, that might turn up later, maybe on an e.p…I also want to get back in the studio to record some of the earliest Hangmen songs, from back in the day when we were straight up cowpunk…

How’s the early Hangmen stuff sound?

Pretty much exactly like the Gun Club. I wanted to be Jeffrey Lee Pierce. But there already was one, and he lived in LA too, so I started writing songs that were less like his…although I still let some of that sound creep in, the Hangmen have eventually evolved out of that. But I still love those old songs.

Do you have any favorites from ‘Metallic IOU’?

Yeh, ‘Loners, Junkies, and Liquor Stores’. I really like the energy in that one.

Yeh, that’s a great song. So what was the inspiration for that one? Just walking around the neighborhood?

I was in rehab, actually.

That’s fucking perfect.

How The Supersuckers Became The Greatest Rocknroll Band In The World

You guys are friends with the Supersuckers, right?

Yeh, they’re great guys, really down to earth.

Y’know, Eddie Spaghetti got punched in the face on stage at the Middle East here in Boston?

Oh, no…

Yeh, by a member of the Outlaws biker gang…some kinda cocaine thing…

Jesus Christ.

I know, it’s weird, right? I mean, who wants to hit Eddie Spaghetti?

Exactly. The Supersuckers are like, the nicest guys in the world...Crazy. Y’know, long before they were the Supersuckers, they lived in Tucson. We went down there to play, and they were in some glam band called Thai Pink…

Thai Pink?!

I know, pretty hideous. But later, Eddie told me that after they saw us, they changed their whole thing. He said that the Hangmen were a big influence on what the Supersuckers are today…that’s really cool, because I think they’re a really fucking great band…

"The day is gone, the night is long, love is dead, I can’t go on/lonely streets, walk on by, I don’t think, I’ll survive/Can you see, the pain inside?/ I know this is bliss…."

So I’m at this seedy strip club earlier tonight, and they’re playing Thrill Kill Kult and all that jive, and I’m thinking, ‘you know what would sound perfect right now? The Hangmen’s ‘Bliss’’…it just crystallized the whole atmosphere. I say, fuck sending the record to radio stations, send it to strip clubs…

That’s a good fucking idea, man. Y’know, Jimmy’s ex-girlfriend was a stripper, and she used to dance to ‘Broke, Drunk, and Stoned’, and she said everybody would really get into it, singing along and shit. That’s pretty funny.

That’s what I love about the Hangmen, man. You can dance to it. I mean, I don’t find myself having to do it very often, but if I did have to dance, I’d play your fucking record.

Right on, man.(laughs) Do whatever you have to.

The State That I’m in is wearing rather thin

So you’re planning another tour…no luxury bus like in the old days, this time.

We acted up a lot on that tour, people would quit a lot. The bus driver quit, the tour manager quit…

What do you do when an integral member of the road crew just splits like that?

Just get another one, y’know, off with his head.

I don’t get it. Where do these labels get all the money? You’d think that you’d have to be selling a lot of fucking records…

The majors make so much money off of their heavy hitters that it doesn’t matter. They just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. We had riders, guitar techs…it was just ridiculous…

All that shit doesn’t seem very rock and roll.

It’s not. That’s why I’m excited about going on this tour, going out to clubs on an independent label, I’m ready for it all, man, good and bad.

What kind of critical response have you gotten from ‘Metallic IOU’? Because the thing is, since the debut album, there’s a whole new breed of people writing about rock and roll, and I don’t think most of them were even around to get reference points like the Gun Club…

Yeh, it’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, I’m glad you get where we’re coming from, but it’s definitely strange to read other people comparing us to something like Gunsn’Roses, because we’re not like that at all. But even if they don’t exactly ‘get it’, at least most of the press has been favorable so far. Especially since we play a kind of music that people really just don’t do anymore.

Maybe not here, but look at what’s going on in Sweden…

No shit. That’s why I can’t wait to get out there to play.

The kids go nuts for balls out rock and roll there.

Well, we’re ready to give it to them.

What’s your idea of a good audience reaction?

Fervent worship. (laughs) I just hate people standing around with their arms crossed. I’d rather have people fucking hating us than that. I mean, here in LA it’s hard to gauge. We do really well here, but we haven’t been out of this fucking dump in years.

How long are you going to tour for?

As long as we can. We’ll probably do a few trial runs first, before we launch a full scale…Jesus, ‘full scale’, that sounds like we’re going on an arena tour…but y’know, all over the country, anyway.

Was there ever a time when you just said, ‘fuck it, I can’t do this anymore’?

No, even when it got real bad I knew we wouldn’t give up. Even when all my guitars were in the pawnshop, I’d just borrow somebody’s guitar to play the show.

We do you think drives you to keep doing it?

I don’t know. It’s either a blessing or a curse, whatever way I happen to see it in that day…it is a blessing, actually. I mean whatever happens in my life, I can still pick up the guitar and play some songs, and then the other shit doesn’t really matter.

If somebody finds themselves digging the Hangmen, who else would you suggest they listen to ? I’d say Gluecifer, Backyard Babies…go back a little and check out Motorcycle Boy and Gunfire Dance…

Yeh, but you know, I hate to catergorize things… hmm… Country music. If you like the Hangmen, go and listen to some country music.

What’s the Hangmen message, Bryan? What are you bringing to the people?

What are we bringing to the people? The Real Thing, man. That’s it. For once.

For tour schedules and tales of terror from the Hangmen, go to www.acetate.com

Sleazegrinder’s current top 10:

Buck Cherry-"Time Bomb"

David James Motorcycle- "Motorcycle To Heaven"

Halfway To Gone- "High Five"

Nova Driver- "Void"

Bloodshot- "Velveteen Fields"

Rock City Crimewave- "Rise Motherfucker Rise"

Foetus- "Flow"

Roachpowder- "Atomic Church"

Swamp Witch Revival- "The Date Rape Anthem"

Jill Kurtz- "No Moleste"