ATL MUSIC NEWS: Slaughter Que returns
Photo credit: Chad Radford
On Saturday, September 21, the 8th annual Slaughter Que returns to the Masquerade for a full day of food, live metal mayhem, and fun for the whole family. Kenny’s Alley is the scene for a circus grotesque and a wild September prelude to Halloween as performance artists, sword swallowers, and more let their freak flags fly. Slaughter Que was born in 2012, when thrash/death metal band Legion X’s vocalist Syd Howell, his bandmates, and friend Rene Arriagada built the day-long festival around five bands, one pig, and 150 people. Howell has since taken over the festival, and handles production under the banner of Syd Howell Presents.
“We started the festival in the first place because I was frustrated by watching local acts never getting enough opportunities to play larger shows, and I realized, if we all work together and hammer down a plan, this could be a way to get the local acts to perform in front of hundreds of people,” Howell says. “Now it’s become a metal family reunion, or holiday if you will. I have actually heard people wishing each other a happy Slaughter Que!”
As Howell goes on to explain, whenever Legion X played out-of-town shows, the group never asked for prepared food as part of its hospitality rider. The band instead chose to barbecue meals themselves, killing hours of downtime backstage. “So when the idea to do a festival became real, it seemed like a no-brainer for us to make it a giant barbecue festival,” Howell says. “The ideas and scope have grown tremendously over the years, with the added carnival and sideshow aspects. We want to keep adding more and more things, and making it as outrageous an experience as possible,” he adds, “not just a music festival.”
Music, however, is still a driving component of Slaughter Que: All three Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory stages, as well as an outdoor stage, boast a marathon of headbanging performances from a blend of classic thrash, stoner, hardcore, and otherwise metal bands. Legendary acts such as Exodus, Kataklysm, and Exhorder share the stage with local shredders Sadistic Ritual, Misanthropic Aggression, the Callous Daoboys, Dead Reckoning, Prime Mover, and dozens more.
And while, BBQ is on the menu, there’s plenty of vegetarian fare on the menu as well. “We never want to leave anybody out, or have any feel unwelcome, so we make sure we have a variety of vegan and vegetarian options as well,” Howell says. “This year there will be portabella mushrooms, sweet corn, vegan beans, and mustard coleslaw.”
The bottom line, however, is that the Slaughter Que is always a good time, and an excellent opportunity to break bread with Atlanta’s metal scene. “If I had to pick one favorite part about the festival it would be when the headliner hits the stage, the crowd roars, and I know that we made it,” Howell says. “The work is done — or the fact that I laugh all day at the number of smiling faces, families, and more heavy metal dude hugs than you ever have seen. Basically, it’s really nice to see nine months of grueling work come together and 1000+ people show up and have a blast, like we intended.”
On Thursday, September 26, full-throttle rapper and VHS and breakfast cereal enthusiast Michael Myerz takes the lead on a co-sponsored event at the Plaza Theatre with local video rental store Videodrome, and VHS and zine label Lunchmeat.
Myerz, Videodrome, Lunchmeat owner Josh Schafer are co-hosting a screening of director Gary Cohen's 1987 horror film Video Violence, which was shot entirely on a VHS camcorder.
“We are hooking up my VCR and playing it straight off VHS onto the big screen,” Myerz says.
In recent years, Lunchmeat has released two of Myerz’s VHS tapes, titled Booger Boys 3D: Revenge of the Plaque and Michael Myerz Mega Media Pack. Label owner Shafer also booked the release party for Myerz’s recently released album Dumpster Pasta, at Slim’s in Raleigh N.C.
The event at the Plaza Theatre kicks off with a VHS market in the lobby and concessions area from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Local vendors, Lunchmeat, and Retro Release Video from Washington D.C. will be selling everything from anime to horror films on VHS tapes. From 9:30-9:45 p.m., Myerz will host a Q&A with Schafer, and will probably perform a few songs as well. The evening closes out with the Video Violence screening from 9:45-11:15 p.m.
Before Bob Glassley succumbed to cancer in October of 2017, the Atlanta-based lineup of the reignited West Coast punk and hardcore outfit the Cheifs — featuring Glassley on bass and vocals, drummer James Joyce, vocalist Brad Castlen, and guitarist Scott Hedeen — went into the studio to record a four-song 7-inch EP featuring new recordings of both older and newer material.
The 7-inch is finally off to the pressing plant and is slated for an October release via Missing Fink Records. On the A-side, “1988” and “Heart In Chains” were originally written by Glassley’s pre-Cheifs band, Portland, Oregon’s the Rubbers. “Alienated” is a brand new song, and “Mechanical Man” is loosely based on a forgotten early Cheifs number, partially reconstructed from memory, and reenvisioned by the Atlanta-based Cheifs. Bill Stevenson of the Descendents mixed the songs, and the Descendents’ cover artist Chris Shary created the cover art. [Full Disclosure: CL Music Editor Chad Radford wrote the liner notes for the Cheifs 7-inch].
In other new releases news, Shantih Shantih plays the Someone, Anyone? LP release party on Friday, September 27, with the N.E.C., Amen Sister, and the Irrelevant Music DJs at 529. With Someone, Anyone? (out in the U.S. via Dusty Medical Records and in Europe via Italian label Wild Honey Records.), rhythm guitarist Anna Barattin, singer and drummer Julia Furgiuele, lead guitarist Anna Kramer, and bass player Nikki Speake return for a deep dive into songs cut from a cloth of psychedelic garage, country, and ’60s pop songwriting brought into a modern context. Press play below to hear a podcast interview with Barattin and Furgiuele.
Victory Hands’ first proper LP, titled Bishop is out September 27. Victory Hands was born in the summer of 2014, when bass player Jimmy Ether convened with Haricot Vert alumni drummer Kip Thomas and guitarist Shawn Christopher to write songs built around lyrics pulled from redacted Richard Nixon tapes and speeches.
Over the last five years, the group has slowly amassed a glut of material rooted in the dynamics of ’90s noise rock and post-punk, and displaying a truly avant-garde approach to modern paranoia. Press play below to hear a podcast interview.
Imagine Music Festival returns for the 6th annual Aquatic Fairytale at Atlanta Motor Speedway September 19-22, bringing a weekend-long EDM extravaganza under the sun and stars. This year’s lineup features performances by DIPLO, Marshmello, Alison Wonderland, Leah Culver, and more, playing amid a scene that includes a pool, circus acts, yoga, camping, and various other activities.
Festival founders and IRIS Presents promoters Glenn and Madeleine Goodhand stopped by CL’s Short Notice Studio to talk with Chad Radford and Ema Carr about fostering a homegrown music festival that draws more people each year. Press play to hear the conversation.
The Southern Surf StompFest! returns to Little Tree Art Studios in Avondale Estates on Saturday, September 21, with a day filled with pure kerrang and sci-fi-fueled rock ‘n’ roll.
The festivities begin the night before (September 20), with a Friday night pre-party at Trader Vic’s in the Hilton Hotel Downtown. The Disasternauts, the Manakooras (feat. Jeremy DeHart formerly of the Aqualads), and DJ Big Tiki Dude set the weekend in motion. Press play below to hear a podcast interview with festival founder Chad Shivers.
Send local music news to chad.radford@creativeloafing.com.
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string(6464) "Michael Myerz wrote his first song when he was only six years old. The now 27-year-old Jewish rapper is preparing for the arrival of his latest album, Packard Bell 96 — his 23rd full-length release. By the time this story hits newsstands he’ll have two more albums ready to go, titled Mazel Tov Cocktail and Myerz and Meatgrinder — the latter a fuzzed-out and bass-heavy collaboration with Tyler Jundt, Ben Presley, and John Restivo of Atlanta’s creepy cabaret punk outfit Material Girls. And there’s yet talk of another album on the way with Seattle-based electronic music producer Damocles, called Dumpster Pasta.
Myerz, born Michael Schwartz, is a conduit for a never-ending flow of musical ideas, and he recalls with exact detail the moment when it all began.
He remembers sitting in his parents’ basement in suburban Roswell, Georgia, a bright-eyed young boy playing “Donkey Kong Country 2.” He was so moved by the music he heard in the game’s “Bramble Blast” level that he composed his own lyrics to go along with the melody.
“I didn’t write down any of the words,” he says. “But I remember singing this one line: ‘I’m all on my own, I’m all on my own, going on a journey into the past.’”
He recites the lyrics, fully aware of their irony.
“What that even means, me writing those words when I was six years-old ... I have no idea.”
But with so many releases filling up his Bandcamp page, scrolling though albums with titles such as 2014’s The Many Masks of Myerz, 2014’s Rawzwell, and his debut album, 2011’s Nightmare from the 90’s, feels like just that, a journey into his past. It’s also evidence of the evolution of Myerz’s deceptively sharp writing and delivery masquerading as absurd humor, matched only by the feelings of social outrage he keeps at bay.
Myerz fully embraces the nerdcore label with which he is often pegged. But nerdcore is only one aspect of the Myerz persona. Press play on Packard Bell 96, and it’s clear that he has come light years from the naivete of his childhood, and from the Poindexter aesthetics couched in nerd rap’s naive imagery. For more, look no further than Myerz and Meatgrinder’s video for the song “Cheeze,” a two-minute journey steeped in grotesque and hypersexualized imagery using cheese as a metaphor.
In the song “Movie Night” from Packard Bell 96 Myerz raps, “Some will go against the man, some accept the savior. God won’t remove the shit from your bad behavior.”
In many ways, that lyric is a thesis statement for the album, and for what drives much of his full-throttle musical output. “I wrote that song while watching one of those True Life shows, like, ‘I weigh 600 pounds,’” he says. “The lady was complaining to her doctor saying, ‘God’s going to get me through this.’ And the doctor says, ‘Yeah, but you are not practicing your diet. God isn’t going to excuse you from your bad behaviors.’
“That’s how I feel about my generation, and the world in general,” Myerz goes on to say. “People complain all day long, thinking it’s going to solve anything, or they’ll turn to an activist group and say ‘I’m going to be a militant person now, and that’s going to excuse all of my drama.’ But until you fix yourself, nothing is going to change.”
It’s a subject that packs serious weight for Myerz. In conversation, he talks at length about spending too many years of his life as “an angry miserable person.” His state of mind is exemplified by the lyrics to “Let’s Go,” his 2016 collaboration with producer AyOh. In the song he delivers the line, “I’m the most insecure guy out there, I’m very nervous. I’m angry, but I hide it like people in food service.”
Before he could find true change in his own life, however, what Myerz calls a particularly “toxic” relationship in his personal life had to come to an end. He was also tired of hearing derogatory labels such as “snowflake” and “millenial” thrown his way. He accepted a corporate day job, took charge of his life, and let his creative flag fly with confidence. He also honed in on his desire to make music from a place that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Jewish identity is part of his persona. And with album titles such as NuJewbes and Jewnami in his catalog, he tackles Jewish stereotypes by adding a dose of personal realism. And while he’s coming from a place of humor, it’s no joke.
At its core, Packard Bell 96 is an album that’s all about blending styles, and it is Myerz’s most varied offering yet. “Space Banjo” blends the worlds of country and rap, whereas “Green Woman,” a reference to the classic “Star Trek” episode in which Captain Kirk gets up close and personal with a soft-focus extraterrestrial, is his take on a Sade/Lovers Rock dose of romance. “Ghost Culture” channels the spirit of hardcore punk with breakdowns and a nihilistic mantra into a Cardi B trap-style lyrical triplet, spouting “All my friends are fucked.”
Packard Bell 96 is a collaboration with Delorean Gray singer, keyboard player, and producer Jacob Chisenhall. Chisenhall is also a regular CL contributor. For his part, Chisenhall helped bring to life various concepts for songs. “Michael would say, ‘Help me write a country rap song,’” Chisenhall says. “We’d get the bass and the drums going and that would kickstart his creativity to the point where we asked ourselves ‘Are we going too far with this?’ Michael’s response would always be, ‘Why can’t I?’”
It’s that spirit of unrestrained, try-anything musical flow that lies at the heart of Myerz voluminous body of work. It’s trial and error. Each release marks a clear step up as his lyrics, his voice, and his concept become more focused. It’s evolution in real-time for the music and for the man.
“I make music for me,” Myerz says. “My end goal is to reach nirvana in the sense that I literally do not care if a single person listens to it or likes it, just as long as I like it. I think I’m getting closer to that point, but I don’t believe I’ll ever make it,” he adds. “I don’t believe in perfection.”
Michael Myerz plays the Packard Bell 96 release party on Sat., March 30, with Delorean Gray, Shouldies, and the Wreck Shit Club. $8. 9 p.m. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. S.E. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com."
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Myerz, born Michael Schwartz, is a conduit for a never-ending flow of musical ideas, and he recalls with exact detail the moment when it all began.
He remembers sitting in his parents’ basement in suburban Roswell, Georgia, a bright-eyed young boy playing “Donkey Kong Country 2.” He was so moved by the music he heard in the game’s “Bramble Blast” level that he composed his own lyrics to go along with the melody.
“I didn’t write down any of the words,” he says. “But I remember singing this one line: ‘I’m all on my own, I’m all on my own, going on a journey into the past.’”
He recites the lyrics, fully aware of their irony.
“What that even means, me writing those words when I was six years-old ... I have no idea.”
But with so many releases filling up his Bandcamp page, scrolling though albums with titles such as 2014’s ''The Many Masks of Myerz'', 2014’s ''Rawzwell'', and his debut album, 2011’s ''Nightmare from the 90’s'', feels like just that, a journey into his past. It’s also evidence of the evolution of Myerz’s deceptively sharp writing and delivery masquerading as absurd humor, matched only by the feelings of social outrage he keeps at bay.
Myerz fully embraces the nerdcore label with which he is often pegged. But nerdcore is only one aspect of the Myerz persona. Press play on ''Packard Bell 96'', and it’s clear that he has come light years from the naivete of his childhood, and from the Poindexter aesthetics couched in nerd rap’s naive imagery. For more, look no further than Myerz and Meatgrinder’s video for the song “Cheeze,” a two-minute journey steeped in grotesque and hypersexualized imagery using cheese as a metaphor.
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In many ways, that lyric is a thesis statement for the album, and for what drives much of his full-throttle musical output. “I wrote that song while watching one of those True Life shows, like, ‘I weigh 600 pounds,’” he says. “The lady was complaining to her doctor saying, ‘God’s going to get me through this.’ And the doctor says, ‘Yeah, but you are not practicing your diet. God isn’t going to excuse you from your bad behaviors.’
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“That’s how I feel about my generation, and the world in general,” Myerz goes on to say. “People complain all day long, thinking it’s going to solve anything, or they’ll turn to an activist group and say ‘I’m going to be a militant person now, and that’s going to excuse all of my drama.’ But until you fix yourself, nothing is going to change.”
It’s a subject that packs serious weight for Myerz. In conversation, he talks at length about spending too many years of his life as “an angry miserable person.” His state of mind is exemplified by the lyrics to “Let’s Go,” his 2016 collaboration with producer AyOh. In the song he delivers the line, “I’m the most insecure guy out there, I’m very nervous. I’m angry, but I hide it like people in food service.”
Before he could find true change in his own life, however, what Myerz calls a particularly “toxic” relationship in his personal life had to come to an end. He was also tired of hearing derogatory labels such as “snowflake” and “millenial” thrown his way. He accepted a corporate day job, took charge of his life, and let his creative flag fly with confidence. He also honed in on his desire to make music from a place that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Jewish identity is part of his persona. And with album titles such as ''NuJewbes'' and ''Jewnami'' in his catalog, he tackles Jewish stereotypes by adding a dose of personal realism. And while he’s coming from a place of humor, it’s no joke.
At its core, ''Packard Bell 96 ''is an album that’s all about blending styles, and it is Myerz’s most varied offering yet. “Space Banjo” blends the worlds of country and rap, whereas “Green Woman,” a reference to the classic “Star Trek” episode in which Captain Kirk gets up close and personal with a soft-focus extraterrestrial, is his take on a Sade/Lovers Rock dose of romance. “Ghost Culture” channels the spirit of hardcore punk with breakdowns and a nihilistic mantra into a Cardi B trap-style lyrical triplet, spouting “All my friends are fucked.”
''Packard Bell 96'' is a collaboration with Delorean Gray singer, keyboard player, and producer Jacob Chisenhall. Chisenhall is also a regular CL contributor. For his part, Chisenhall helped bring to life various concepts for songs. “Michael would say, ‘Help me write a country rap song,’” Chisenhall says. “We’d get the bass and the drums going and that would kickstart his creativity to the point where we asked ourselves ‘Are we going too far with this?’ Michael’s response would always be, ‘Why can’t I?’”
It’s that spirit of unrestrained, try-anything musical flow that lies at the heart of Myerz voluminous body of work. It’s trial and error. Each release marks a clear step up as his lyrics, his voice, and his concept become more focused. It’s evolution in real-time for the music and for the man.
“I make music for me,” Myerz says. “My end goal is to reach nirvana in the sense that I literally do not care if a single person listens to it or likes it, just as long as I like it. I think I’m getting closer to that point, but I don’t believe I’ll ever make it,” he adds. “I don’t believe in perfection.”
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string(6905) " Music Myerz1 1 20 2019-03-01T20:42:16+00:00 Music_Myerz1-1_20.jpg With 23 albums under his belt, the Atlanta rapper looks beyond nerdcore 14319 2019-03-14T17:12:00+00:00 Michael Myerz returns chad.radford@creativeloafing.com Chad Radford Chad Radford Chad Radford 2019-03-14T17:12:00+00:00 Michael Myerz wrote his first song when he was only six years old. The now 27-year-old Jewish rapper is preparing for the arrival of his latest album, Packard Bell 96 — his 23rd full-length release. By the time this story hits newsstands he’ll have two more albums ready to go, titled Mazel Tov Cocktail and Myerz and Meatgrinder — the latter a fuzzed-out and bass-heavy collaboration with Tyler Jundt, Ben Presley, and John Restivo of Atlanta’s creepy cabaret punk outfit Material Girls. And there’s yet talk of another album on the way with Seattle-based electronic music producer Damocles, called Dumpster Pasta.
Myerz, born Michael Schwartz, is a conduit for a never-ending flow of musical ideas, and he recalls with exact detail the moment when it all began.
He remembers sitting in his parents’ basement in suburban Roswell, Georgia, a bright-eyed young boy playing “Donkey Kong Country 2.” He was so moved by the music he heard in the game’s “Bramble Blast” level that he composed his own lyrics to go along with the melody.
“I didn’t write down any of the words,” he says. “But I remember singing this one line: ‘I’m all on my own, I’m all on my own, going on a journey into the past.’”
He recites the lyrics, fully aware of their irony.
“What that even means, me writing those words when I was six years-old ... I have no idea.”
But with so many releases filling up his Bandcamp page, scrolling though albums with titles such as 2014’s The Many Masks of Myerz, 2014’s Rawzwell, and his debut album, 2011’s Nightmare from the 90’s, feels like just that, a journey into his past. It’s also evidence of the evolution of Myerz’s deceptively sharp writing and delivery masquerading as absurd humor, matched only by the feelings of social outrage he keeps at bay.
Myerz fully embraces the nerdcore label with which he is often pegged. But nerdcore is only one aspect of the Myerz persona. Press play on Packard Bell 96, and it’s clear that he has come light years from the naivete of his childhood, and from the Poindexter aesthetics couched in nerd rap’s naive imagery. For more, look no further than Myerz and Meatgrinder’s video for the song “Cheeze,” a two-minute journey steeped in grotesque and hypersexualized imagery using cheese as a metaphor.
In the song “Movie Night” from Packard Bell 96 Myerz raps, “Some will go against the man, some accept the savior. God won’t remove the shit from your bad behavior.”
In many ways, that lyric is a thesis statement for the album, and for what drives much of his full-throttle musical output. “I wrote that song while watching one of those True Life shows, like, ‘I weigh 600 pounds,’” he says. “The lady was complaining to her doctor saying, ‘God’s going to get me through this.’ And the doctor says, ‘Yeah, but you are not practicing your diet. God isn’t going to excuse you from your bad behaviors.’
“That’s how I feel about my generation, and the world in general,” Myerz goes on to say. “People complain all day long, thinking it’s going to solve anything, or they’ll turn to an activist group and say ‘I’m going to be a militant person now, and that’s going to excuse all of my drama.’ But until you fix yourself, nothing is going to change.”
It’s a subject that packs serious weight for Myerz. In conversation, he talks at length about spending too many years of his life as “an angry miserable person.” His state of mind is exemplified by the lyrics to “Let’s Go,” his 2016 collaboration with producer AyOh. In the song he delivers the line, “I’m the most insecure guy out there, I’m very nervous. I’m angry, but I hide it like people in food service.”
Before he could find true change in his own life, however, what Myerz calls a particularly “toxic” relationship in his personal life had to come to an end. He was also tired of hearing derogatory labels such as “snowflake” and “millenial” thrown his way. He accepted a corporate day job, took charge of his life, and let his creative flag fly with confidence. He also honed in on his desire to make music from a place that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Jewish identity is part of his persona. And with album titles such as NuJewbes and Jewnami in his catalog, he tackles Jewish stereotypes by adding a dose of personal realism. And while he’s coming from a place of humor, it’s no joke.
At its core, Packard Bell 96 is an album that’s all about blending styles, and it is Myerz’s most varied offering yet. “Space Banjo” blends the worlds of country and rap, whereas “Green Woman,” a reference to the classic “Star Trek” episode in which Captain Kirk gets up close and personal with a soft-focus extraterrestrial, is his take on a Sade/Lovers Rock dose of romance. “Ghost Culture” channels the spirit of hardcore punk with breakdowns and a nihilistic mantra into a Cardi B trap-style lyrical triplet, spouting “All my friends are fucked.”
Packard Bell 96 is a collaboration with Delorean Gray singer, keyboard player, and producer Jacob Chisenhall. Chisenhall is also a regular CL contributor. For his part, Chisenhall helped bring to life various concepts for songs. “Michael would say, ‘Help me write a country rap song,’” Chisenhall says. “We’d get the bass and the drums going and that would kickstart his creativity to the point where we asked ourselves ‘Are we going too far with this?’ Michael’s response would always be, ‘Why can’t I?’”
It’s that spirit of unrestrained, try-anything musical flow that lies at the heart of Myerz voluminous body of work. It’s trial and error. Each release marks a clear step up as his lyrics, his voice, and his concept become more focused. It’s evolution in real-time for the music and for the man.
“I make music for me,” Myerz says. “My end goal is to reach nirvana in the sense that I literally do not care if a single person listens to it or likes it, just as long as I like it. I think I’m getting closer to that point, but I don’t believe I’ll ever make it,” he adds. “I don’t believe in perfection.”
Michael Myerz plays the Packard Bell 96 release party on Sat., March 30, with Delorean Gray, Shouldies, and the Wreck Shit Club. $8. 9 p.m. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. S.E. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com. Sarah Loftus MEET MYERZ: “Until you fix yourself, nothing is going to change.” Michael Myerz returns "
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string(4816) "Bob Glassley, bass player, vocalist, and co-founding member of the Cheifs, has died at the age of 58.
The sad news came on the evening of Oct. 17. Glassley had been admitted to Northside Hospital Cherokee on Monday for cancer treatment, but the cancer was too aggressive.
Glassley was born July 16, 1959, and he first left a mark playing in the Rubbers amid Portland, Oregon's punk rock scene of the late '70s. He moved to Los Angeles in 1979 where he met guitarist George Walker, singer Jerry Koskie, and drummer Ken "Rabbit" Bragger and formed the Cheifs.
The group emerged as part of L.A.'s second wave of punk acts, bridging the West Coast music scene's evolution from punk into early hardcore. The self-reliance, D.I.Y. musical aesthetic, working class principles, and the sense of political defiance he honed during these early years galvanized in him an eternally positive and focused personality. His disdain for the state of American politics under the Trump administration had recently sparked new motivation in him to push the Cheifs' further than ever before.
The Cheifs' only proper release during its initial run, the "Blues' b/w "(At the Beach At) Tower 18' and "Knocked Out' 7-inch (Playgems) arrived in 1980, and credits the Germs' wild man vocalist Darby Crash as a "creative consultant."
After a few lineup changes, the Cheifs broke up in 1982. Despite remaining in obscurity, what few songs they'd released continually resurfaced on various bootleg and official releases. In 1981, "Riot Squad,' a song adapted from Glassley's older band, the Rubbers, along with "No Justice,' and "Scrapped,' appeared on an American Standard compilation titled Who Cares? That same year, "The Lonlies' appeared on the New Alliance/SST compilation titled Chunks.
In 1989, "Blues' appeared on the seminal Killed By Death Vol. 2 LP, and in 1993, "Tower 18' showed up on the Bloodstains Across California comp. A 1997 Flipside compilation LP titled Holly-West Crisis emerged as the definitive Cheifs document, rounding up everything the group had ever recorded. In 2000, Hate Records compiled the songs for a European release, and Dr. Strange reissued Holly-West Crisis in 2004.
Over the years, So-Cal punk staple the Descendents have also been known to whip out a cover of "Knocked Out' during live shows.
Glassley moved to Atlanta for work in 2000. In 2016, he resurrected the songs with a new group of players featuring singer Brad Castlen (Crisis Under Control), guitarist Scott Hedeen, and drummer James Joyce (ex-Noot D'Noot). With the new lineup in place, the group embarked on a run of Los Angeles-area dates and played shows at the Earl with seminal early punk and hardcore acts Death and the Dead Boys. In April, the Cheifs appeared on the cover of Creative Loafing, the week of their performance at 529 during the Atlanta Mess-Around.
The new Cheifs lineup recorded new versions of the group's original material at the Living Room June 17-18 of this year. The sessions yielded renditions of two older songs by the Rubbers, titled "Heart in Chains' and "88.' During practices they'd also recorded two new Cheifs songs, titled "Alienated' and "Mechanical Man."
Plans for releasing the material are still being discussed. In the meantime, the Cheifs' next show was set for Oct. 21, sharing the stage with the Descendents at the Masquerade.
Glassley's sudden death marks the end of the Cheifs. "It was a band centered around Bob and his music,' says drummer James Joyce. "Everything we wrote since getting together originated with Bob, except for lyrics that came from Brad. Bob held us together.
"Brad, Scott, and I come from a different generation and can't write songs like this,' Joyce says. "Bob was kind of frozen in time - he picked up right where he'd left off. Bob didn't listen to Black Flag after Dez ... his knowledge was 1982 and before, and he wrote material that fit perfectly with the Cheifs' original material. It was exciting, and it rekindled my love of playing drums in a really aggressive manner. Playing with Cheifs, I became the drummer I was when I was 19 years old. Getting to play this music was a life-enriching experience. I was able to play with some of my heroes meet some of my heroes. My thought was that this was going to last a long time,' Joyce adds. "We're older and stable in our situation. It's tragic that it happened the way it did, but we got a year out of it. It's been great year, and that's what's most important."
On a personal note, Bob was a new friend, and a good friend. We had embarked on a longer writing project about the Cheifs. Though our time together was short, every show we saw together, and every moment we spent talking about his experiences in life and as a musician were an absolute pleasure. Cheif out."
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The sad news came on the evening of Oct. 17. Glassley had been admitted to Northside Hospital Cherokee on Monday for cancer treatment, but the cancer was too aggressive.
Glassley was born July 16, 1959, and he first left a mark playing in the Rubbers amid Portland, Oregon's punk rock scene of the late '70s. He moved to Los Angeles in 1979 where he met guitarist George Walker, singer Jerry Koskie, and drummer Ken "Rabbit" Bragger and formed the Cheifs.
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Over the years, So-Cal punk staple the Descendents have also been known to whip out a cover of "Knocked Out' during live shows.
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Glassley moved to Atlanta for work in 2000. In 2016, he resurrected the songs with a new group of players featuring singer Brad Castlen (Crisis Under Control), guitarist Scott Hedeen, and drummer James Joyce (ex-Noot D'Noot). With the new lineup in place, the group embarked on a run of Los Angeles-area dates and played shows at the Earl with seminal early punk and hardcore acts Death and the Dead Boys. [http://www.creativeloafing.com/music/media-gallery/20858364/cheifn-out|In April, the Cheifs appeared on the cover of ''Creative Loafing,'' the week of their performance at 529 during the Atlanta Mess-Around.]
The new Cheifs lineup recorded new versions of the group's original material at the Living Room June 17-18 of this year. The sessions yielded renditions of two older songs by the Rubbers, titled "Heart in Chains' and "88.' During practices they'd also recorded two new Cheifs songs, titled "Alienated' and "Mechanical Man."
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Glassley's sudden death marks the end of the Cheifs. "It was a band centered around Bob and his music,' says drummer James Joyce. "Everything we wrote since getting together originated with Bob, except for lyrics that came from Brad. Bob held us together.
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string(5366) " BHB MK 06.59e77fe317a25 2018-05-23T00:58:18+00:00 BHB_MK_06.59e77fe317a25.jpg Co-founder of seminal punk, hardcore outfit was 58 years old 5824 2017-10-18T20:04:00+00:00 R.I.P. Bob Glassley of the Cheifs clint@thenetworkedplanet.com Clint Bergst Chad Radford Chad Radford 2017-10-18T20:04:00+00:00 Bob Glassley, bass player, vocalist, and co-founding member of the Cheifs, has died at the age of 58.
The sad news came on the evening of Oct. 17. Glassley had been admitted to Northside Hospital Cherokee on Monday for cancer treatment, but the cancer was too aggressive.
Glassley was born July 16, 1959, and he first left a mark playing in the Rubbers amid Portland, Oregon's punk rock scene of the late '70s. He moved to Los Angeles in 1979 where he met guitarist George Walker, singer Jerry Koskie, and drummer Ken "Rabbit" Bragger and formed the Cheifs.
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The Cheifs' only proper release during its initial run, the "Blues' b/w "(At the Beach At) Tower 18' and "Knocked Out' 7-inch (Playgems) arrived in 1980, and credits the Germs' wild man vocalist Darby Crash as a "creative consultant."
After a few lineup changes, the Cheifs broke up in 1982. Despite remaining in obscurity, what few songs they'd released continually resurfaced on various bootleg and official releases. In 1981, "Riot Squad,' a song adapted from Glassley's older band, the Rubbers, along with "No Justice,' and "Scrapped,' appeared on an American Standard compilation titled Who Cares? That same year, "The Lonlies' appeared on the New Alliance/SST compilation titled Chunks.
In 1989, "Blues' appeared on the seminal Killed By Death Vol. 2 LP, and in 1993, "Tower 18' showed up on the Bloodstains Across California comp. A 1997 Flipside compilation LP titled Holly-West Crisis emerged as the definitive Cheifs document, rounding up everything the group had ever recorded. In 2000, Hate Records compiled the songs for a European release, and Dr. Strange reissued Holly-West Crisis in 2004.
Over the years, So-Cal punk staple the Descendents have also been known to whip out a cover of "Knocked Out' during live shows.
Glassley moved to Atlanta for work in 2000. In 2016, he resurrected the songs with a new group of players featuring singer Brad Castlen (Crisis Under Control), guitarist Scott Hedeen, and drummer James Joyce (ex-Noot D'Noot). With the new lineup in place, the group embarked on a run of Los Angeles-area dates and played shows at the Earl with seminal early punk and hardcore acts Death and the Dead Boys. In April, the Cheifs appeared on the cover of Creative Loafing, the week of their performance at 529 during the Atlanta Mess-Around.
The new Cheifs lineup recorded new versions of the group's original material at the Living Room June 17-18 of this year. The sessions yielded renditions of two older songs by the Rubbers, titled "Heart in Chains' and "88.' During practices they'd also recorded two new Cheifs songs, titled "Alienated' and "Mechanical Man."
Plans for releasing the material are still being discussed. In the meantime, the Cheifs' next show was set for Oct. 21, sharing the stage with the Descendents at the Masquerade.
Glassley's sudden death marks the end of the Cheifs. "It was a band centered around Bob and his music,' says drummer James Joyce. "Everything we wrote since getting together originated with Bob, except for lyrics that came from Brad. Bob held us together.
"Brad, Scott, and I come from a different generation and can't write songs like this,' Joyce says. "Bob was kind of frozen in time - he picked up right where he'd left off. Bob didn't listen to Black Flag after Dez ... his knowledge was 1982 and before, and he wrote material that fit perfectly with the Cheifs' original material. It was exciting, and it rekindled my love of playing drums in a really aggressive manner. Playing with Cheifs, I became the drummer I was when I was 19 years old. Getting to play this music was a life-enriching experience. I was able to play with some of my heroes meet some of my heroes. My thought was that this was going to last a long time,' Joyce adds. "We're older and stable in our situation. It's tragic that it happened the way it did, but we got a year out of it. It's been great year, and that's what's most important."
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string(55) "Bob Glassley brings a 38-year legacy to the Mess-Around"
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string(55) "Bob Glassley brings a 38-year legacy to the Mess-Around"
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string(23522) "In November of 1979, Bob Glassley and a few friends piled into his car for a road trip down the West Coast. It was a retired police cruiser from the Dorris California Police Department, an all-white Plymouth with a souped-up engine. At the time, Glassley sang for a young punk band from Portland called the Rubbers. They were on a mission that day, to make some alliances in the Los Angeles music scene, and to line up some shows for a touring caravan of Portland bands. “We set out for L.A., and the motor blew somewhere outside of Stockton,” Glassley says. “When we got back on the road we found out it was the day they were taping the Hollywood Christmas parade. All of the freeway exits were closed, so we just kept driving around the city, looking for an off-ramp.”
Eventually they made it into the city and crashed at the Holly-West in Hollywood. The space was a former MGM studio and office building on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western, housing everything from a porno studio and a church led by a gay preacher to rehearsal spaces where musicians lived, practiced and spent most of their time hanging out.
One day, Glassley was listening to a group making noise in a nearby room when a young man with bright blue hair — George Walker — poked his head around the doorway and asked if anyone played bass. “I said I did, although that was a serious stretch,” Glassley says. “I owned a cheap bass back in Portland, so I felt qualified.”
Walker was a gay black man in the late ’70s L.A. punk scene at a time when there were few out gay or black punk musicians.
The two became friends, and after sticking around and playing music for a few days, Glassley was invited to join the group and play bass alongside Walker on guitar with singer Jerry Koskie and drummer Kenneth “Rabit” Bragger. Soon they would come to be known as Cheifs.
Glassley returned to Portland to play the final shows the Rubbers had booked and was L.A.-bound soon after. The Rubbers’ Bruce Loose went on to sing and play bass with San Francisco’s legendary punk outfit, Flipper. Back in L.A., Glassley experienced a thrilling new beginning, building friendships with the now-legendary denizens of the local punk scene, including Darby Crash and Lorna Doom of the Germs, Keith Morris of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, and Jack Grisham of T.S.O.L.
OLD SCHOOL: The original Cheifs lineup featuring guitarist George Walker (from left), singer Jerry Koskie, drummer Rabit and bass player Bob Glassley on stage, May 2, 1981, at Devonshire Downs in Northridge, CA.Vincent Ramirez Photography<!]}%-->He was thrust into a life bound by the live-fast, die-young ethos of late ’70s and early ’80s punk scene. But nearly 40 years after breaking up, the specter of Cheifs has returned, demanding the songs be heard again.
In their prime, Cheifs were a lauded act that bridged the gaps between West Coast punk and hardcore. They were a fixture of the Los Angeles scene but after scant few releases, the group has languished in obscurity.
From 1979 to 1982, Cheifs were a staple of the L.A. punk scene. Even though he hadn’t played in a band since they broke up, a chance meeting with a fan one night at the Masquerade proved the catalyst for Glassley to head up a new Atlanta-based incarnation of Cheifs.
Now 57 years old, Glassley lives near Woodstock, Georgia, where he works as a director of technology for Triton Digital. After watching social and political turmoil surge in recent years, the old familiar sting of unease that drove him to punk in the first place is stirring once again. With a new lineup together, Glassley is paying respect to Cheifs’ Hollywood legend while laying the groundwork for a new chapter in his musical career.
Despite the decades that have passed, the songs he played and wrote leading into the Reagan era remain as urgent and relevant as the day they were penned. “It’s unfortunate,” Glassley says. “Some of those songs are even more relevant now, in the face of everything the country — the world — is going through.”
By December of ’79, the group had settled on the name Cheifs. A friend of the band, Roger Rogerson, who played bass for the Circle Jerks, often playfully called out bossy people for being “the big chief,” or saying they were “chiefin’ out.” The band rolled with it.
THE VIEW FROM THE TOP: Rabit (left) wearing one of the shirts that gave Cheifs their name, George Walker, and Bob Glassley circa 1979.DL Jacobs<!]}%-->Around the same time, Glassley had an uncle die from Leukemia. He’d worked as a butcher and always wore plain white T-shirts. When he died, Glassley inherited those shirts. One afternoon he bought some red and black spray paint, went to his room at Holly-West, and made band shirts. When he showed them to the rest of the band, the reaction was a resounding, “Ah dude, you spelled it wrong! On every single one of them!”
But amid the punk era’s landscape adorned with logos like the Misfits’ skull and Black Flag’s bars, Cheifs presented a golden opportunity for branding. “I know how to spell,” Glassley laughs. “The i and the e came after c! … And ask anyone named Keith how they spell their name!”
Cheifs played regularly at venues such as Hong Kong Café and the Fleetwood, sharing stages with a who’s-who of Southern California punk legends: Black Flag, X, the Minutemen, Fear, Redd Kross, Descendents, Germs, T.S.O.L., Social Distortion and more. “The Gears, too, if I can add a band to that list,” says former Black Flag and Circle Jerks vocalist Keith Morris, who currently sings with the band Off! “The Gears and Cheifs were our party buddies. How many times did we all just crash on that floor where they practiced in the Holly-West building? Cheifs were easily one of the greatest bands around,” Morris adds. “When Holly-West Crisis finally came out it was such a great record.”
Cheifs’ sound occupied a strange but growing middle ground in the post-punk era, when the term hardcore didn’t yet denote a musical genre. Before Cheifs came along, groups like X, the Screamers and the Weirdos had stylized a Hollywood punk sound by infusing short, sharp blasts of rock ’n’ roll with outsider art leanings. The more aggressive sound of bands like Black Flag and the Adolescents had yet to fully reveal itself.
In Cheifs, Walker’s twisted hooks and bar chords taking shape in songs such as “Blues” and “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” were driven by a contentious snarl and fast, reflexive melodies. Rabit’s jittery drumming in “Knocked Out” was cut from a loud-fast and deceptively simple style on par with New York’s no wave scene. Koskie’s sneering voice was a conduit for disturbed visions of disenfranchisement, and Glassley gave direction to Cheifs’ buzz saw onslaught.
<img alt="KNOCKED OUT: The photo featured on the sleeve of Cheifs' " blues"="" b="" w="" “(at="" the="" beach="" at)="" tower="" 18”="" and="" "knocked="" out"="" 7-inch."="" src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/320w/CHEIFS01.58ffc8f47590a.jpg">KNOCKED OUT: The photo featured on the sleeve of Cheifs' "Blues" b/w “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and "Knocked Out" 7-inch.DL Jacobs<!]}%-->One song that Glassley penned the music and lyrics for, “Eddie’s Revenge,” tells the true story of a journalist who was gunned down by police. “The LAPD at the time were neo-Nazis, I won’t mince words,” he says. “I read a story in the newspaper about this amateur writer who was shot while standing inside a phone booth, holding a typewriter. A cop felt threatened. There was even a witness,” he adds. “The song is from his perspective, wanting payback because justice wasn’t served.”
Glassley sings: “Armed with a typewriter you look very threatening/They know you’re a nut case so they’ll say anything/And don’t try to resist your life’s worth nothing.”
Other songs such as “Blues” confront the hardships of the world with thick skin. In “(At The Beach At) Tower 18,” Walker offers insight into the perils of a gay lifestyle in the Reagan era when he sings, “You think your sex action’s better than theirs/They’re doing a job you could never do/At the beach!”
“Knocked Out” celebrates the youthful abandon and persistence of throwing punk shows whether the cops liked it out not.
The Germs’ vexed singer Darby Crash was a friend of the band, who hung out at Holly-West. Glassley recalls an afternoon in 1980 when Cheifs’ manager Debbie Johnson announced she’d lined up studio time at Present Time Records in North Hollywood. Crash wanted to be there. “I recall him setting in the control room and making suggestions about sound and vocal tricks, like the doubling that Jerry used on most of the recordings,” Glassley says.
The songs they recorded — “Blues,” “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and “Knocked Out” — were pressed on a 7-inch via Playgems. It was Cheifs’ only release while the group was active. Crash is credited as “Creative Consultant” on the sleeve. “That wall of sound on the guitar was likely his doing,” Glassley says. “He was there from beginning to end, providing input, effectively working as a producer. He was a good friend of the band,” Glassley adds. “His fans demanded him to be someone he wasn’t 24/7. They expected him to be on stage all the time. I think he really enjoyed chilling with everyone at Holly-West.”
Holly-West is hallowed ground in the annals of punk history. Redd Kross’ bass player, Steven McDonald, remembers the intimidating feel of the place when he was a kid. “I was only 12 years old back in the those days,” says McDonald. Redd Kross also plays the Mess-Around on Sat., April 29.
“Redd Kross recorded a project there, and we hung out with Cheifs and the Gears and everyone else," McDonald A. Everyone was friendly and accepting, but the place had this Bukowski vibe. It was a scary, old, decrepit building, but the community was really cool.”
Cheifs’ song “The Lonlies” appeared on the New Alliance/SST compilation titled Chunks that year. Later, “Riot Squad” (an adopted Rubbers song), “No Justice” and “Scrapped” appeared on an American Standard compilation titled Who Cares.
A half-dozen more songs were recorded, but personal differences caused Koskie and Rabit to leave the band. Glassley and Walker reconvened with vocalist Paul Brashier and drummer Gilbert Navarro, aka Jack Rivera, but they were together less than a year. By 1982, Cheifs were done. Glassley sold his bass and bought a computer, and has worked with technology ever since. He has made attempts to get the original lineup together for occasional one-off shows, even a surprise birthday party that Descendents’ drummer Bill Stevenson was throwing for singer Milo Aukerman. But neither Koskie nor Rabit have expressed any interest in playing with Cheifs again. The two have reunited to play shows with their pre-Cheifs band, the Simpletones. Neither Koskie nor Rabit were available for comment. Walker is presumed dead, although no death certificate has been produced yet. He was last seen hanging around Newport Beach in the early ’90s, but when Glassley went searching, word on the street was he had died.
Cheifs have since languished in obscurity, but the music refuses to disappear. A 1997 Flipside compilation titled Holly-West Crisis emerged as the definitive Cheifs document rounding up everything the group recorded. In 2000, Hate Records repackaged the songs for a European release, and Dr. Strange reissued Holly-West Crisis in 2004. The same year Spontaneous Combustion reissued Cheifs’ “Blues” b/w “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and “Knocked Out” 7-inch.
In 1989, “Blues” appeared on the seminal Killed By Death Vol. 2 LP. What’s more, the Descendents often whip out a cover of “Knocked Out” during live shows.
Glassley moved to Georgia for work in 2000. His time with Cheifs had become a distant memory ever since. But that changed in July 2016 when Flag, a hardcore supergroup featuring singer Keith Morris, bass player Chuck Dukowski, drummer Bill Stevenson and vocalist/guitarist Dez Cadena — all Black Flag alumni — along with Descendents guitarist Stephen Egerton played the Masquerade. Glassley went backstage to say hello. While talking with Stevenson, Glassley felt a hand on his shoulder. A stranger asked: “Excuse me, did you say you were in the misspelled Cheifs?”
It was Scott Hedeen who owns Burnt Hickory Brewery in Kennesaw. The brewery is known for naming beers after punk bands, such as the Didjits Blood Orange IPA and Die Kreuzen Imperial Pumpkin Porter. Atlanta metalheads Order of the Owl even have a Chocolate Orange Stout in their name.
“Some of the seed money I used to start the brewery came from selling my punk record collection,” Hedeen says. “I sold a Cheifs single for $300, so I joked that he was a partial investor in the brewery.”
Hedeen and Glassley became friends. Hedeen hadn’t played guitar in a long time, but one night he sent Glassley a text. “I asked if he’d ever considered playing Cheifs’ music again,” Hedeen says. “I was in his ear. At the time he didn’t know the depths of where he had been, and the interest that’s out there for that era of music. It’s like you’ve seen a famous photograph from history countless times, and suddenly you realize that you see someone in the background. He was there.”
SCREAMING AGAIN: Cheifs current vocalist Brad Castlen.Mark Kocher<!]}%-->Glassley knew former Crisis Under Control singer and punk historian Brad Castlen would be interested. “When this started out last July, it was more for fun, but as people responded to the potential of the Cheifs’ music being played live again, I realized this was something more,” Glassley says. “Brad and Scott helped me see that. As I started posting lyrics on Facebook, it became clear there was still relevancy and many of the songs could have been written today and people related. That said, I was dead set against doing anything that would not live up to the original spirit and energy.”
They convened with a temporary drummer to play a Halloween party at Burnt Hickory. Hedeen made posters boasting a performance by “Holly-West Resurrection playing the songs of Cheifs.” Glassley was hit hard by seeing the name again. “He said, ‘You can’t do that!’” Hedeen says. “He didn’t want to dis the other members of the band, but I think we’ve convinced him now that they don’t care. Our intention is to make sure that Bob and the band get their just deserts.”
RESPECT: Cheifs guitarist George Walker circa 1979.DL Jacobs<!]}%-->When Hedeen takes the stage, he sticks a laminated photo of Walker on his guitar, adorned with the word “Respect” — Shepard Fairey style. “George was a trailblazer on so many levels,” Hedeen says. “Getting into his head and figuring out how these songs work is a major accomplishment for me. I had to decode this man’s web of how he did it. I had to reinvent myself.”
Drummer James Joyce (ex Noot d' Noot and Car Vs. Driver) knew Hedeen through the brewery and tried out for the gig. He'd also been friends with Castlen for nearly 25 years. After one practice, they looked at each other and said, “OK, we’re the Cheifs!” A Christmas party at Burnt Hickory was followed by a show at the Earl opening for Detroit proto-punk rockers Death. Then came a run of L.A.-area shows in March.
At first, wondering if they’d be accepted by the group’s hometown was nerve-wracking. “There were people who came out to the shows and said, ‘Wait, where’s Jerry?’” Glassley says. “I was worried about it at first, but the bottom line is, I tried to get him involved, but I found somebody else.”
BACKS AGAINST THE WALL: The new incarnation of Cheifs features Bob Glassley (from left), Scott Hedeen, Brad Castlen and James Joyce.Mark Kocher<!]}%-->Still, anxiety was high, especially for Castlen and Joyce, both of whom are of a younger generation than Glassley and Hedeen. Before their Saturday night show at Cafe NELA, they were sitting at the bar when Joyce noticed Keith Morris walk in. “Brad started losing it,” Joyce says. “He kept saying, ‘This is your fault! If it wasn’t for you being able to play these drum beats and tying everything together, I wouldn’t have to perform in front of Keith Morris, and have him judge me as the singer for Cheifs.’”
Morris, in his 2016 memoir, My Damage: The Story of A Punk Rock Survivor, writes that Cheifs were one of the few bands he thought of as the Circle Jerks’ competition. Now, he was there to see what the new group was all about.
“In the early days we were always friends — all of it was friendly until it was time to play shows,” Morris says. “That’s when some darkness crept up: ‘We’ve been playing longer, and we’ve played more shows than you. We’re from Hollywood, you’re from where you’re at, we draw more people, can you keep up with us?’ All of that kind of drama. But I always drank a few extra beers, got a little more fuzzy-headed and tried to keep the camaraderie at a social and friendly level.”
The Circle Jerks played their first show with Cheifs at a club in Redondo Beach called Kahuna’s Bearded Clam. “We pissed off everybody that night,” Morris says. “One of the songs we played was ‘Wasted’ and the guys from Black Flag wanted to firebomb our vehicles and run us out of town.”
The anxiety that Castlen felt, however, was over respect for the music. “There’s a lot of attitude in punk about where you come from,” Castlen says. “Crisis Under Control used to get that attitude from Atlanta punks because we didn’t live in Fulton County. ‘You can’t play punk or hardcore if you’re from Gwinnett County!’ So that’s just magnified. Here we are a bunch of guys from Georgia. How are we going to play these L.A. punk songs? I was worried people would have a problem with that and that we’re playing with just one original member.”
Afterward, Castlen thought, “If I don’t ask, it’s going bother me the rest of my life.” He approached Morris and asked, “What did you think?” Morris looked over his glasses and gave a thumbs up. “We did it justice?” Castlen asked. In the conversation Morris replied, “Oh, I woulda told you if you didn’t!”
Neither Koskie nor Rabit showed up for the L.A. shows. But other old friends were there: Don Bolles of the Germs was at the Cafe NELA show, and second Cheifs drummer Jack Rivera sat in for a performance of “Blues.” The night before, at a show in Anaheim, Brian Brannon of skate punk legends JFA and members of the Vandals were there offering praise.
Castlen recalls overhearing a conversation at a record store out there when their merch guy asked the record store clerk — an older guy — if he was going to the show. His response: “No. I don’t want to ruin it. I saw them back in the day.”
That kind of skepticism is understandable; plenty of people feel similarly about any bands who are resurrected with a new lineup. “But we’re busting our asses, making it sound as close to the original recordings as possible,” Castlen says. “I heard the criticism, but the legend of Cheifs means a lot to us, and we all felt like we had to prove ourselves.”
Kendall Behnke, who sang alongside Koskie and Rabit in the Simpletones, came out for the Friday night show. He showed up again the following night at Cafe NELA. According Castlen, Behnke called Koskie to get him out for the show. He didn’t come but asked how they were. Behnke’s reply: “I’m not going to lie to you … they killed it.”
Castlen says the band discussed what would happen if Koskie showed up. “I’d have no problem handing the mic over to him, if he wanted to sing,” he says. “But Bob’s in Woodstock, Georgia, so it would be hard to have a Cheifs reunion with two guys in California. I think he’s a great singer; I love the songs, and I have nothing bad to say about him. But I’m glad he doesn’t want to be involved, because here I am.”
FLASH TO BANG: Bob Glassley (from left) leads the Cheifs at Dipiazzas in Long Beach, March 2017.Albert Licano<!]}%-->While practicing for the L.A. run, the new lineup learned a few songs that the original Cheifs played but never recorded, including “Heart in Chains” and “1988,” both originally performed by the Rubbers. Both songs will appear on a split 7-inch with L.A. punk stalwarts the Gears via the Hermosa Beach label Hardline Entertainment.
“I love playing and didn’t realize how much I missed it,” Glassley says. “Even my wife, Vicki, has commented on how playing again affected me, in a good way. Add to that the relevancy of this music, these words at this time, and it makes sense. Given the situation our country and the world faces, I think there is a lot to say, and this is a familiar vehicle to make oneself heard. I fully expect us to be writing new songs in the months ahead, and we’ll see where that goes, but for me it feels like 1980 all over again — only worse.”
They’re recording at the Living Room in June. After recording those two songs, they’ll record the rest of the songs they’ve learned, if for no other reason than to have a document of this lineup’s time together. Whether what they record gets released remains to be seen. “If you’re a legendary band that can release a new album, people will buy it, like it was an original Descendents album,” Joyce says. “We’re not there, so we’re not trying to push out an entire album’s worth of material that somebody has to digest. It’ll be more like a song or two here and there.”
This approach takes the pressure off while fleshing out the strongest material a song or two at a time. But before Cheifs start writing new songs, their priority lies in taking the show on the road. Until now, the group has never played outside of L.A. and San Diego. But with the new lineup clicking in Atlanta, the group has its sights set on the East Coast.
After 35 years, excitement surrounding the group only underscores the strength of the songs. Giving the music a chance to be heard by a new generation, in an entirely new era, the new incarnation of Cheifs is already uncovering new meanings for these songs. For nearly 40 years, the road has been long and full of pitfalls. Like it was the day that Glassley and his friends piled into his converted cop car heading for Los Angeles, the future is unwritten. “I still have difficulty wrapping my head around it all. I have a split personality in this regard,” Glassley says. “On one hand, I’m coming to grips with the legacy side of it for the first time, and the other hand, I want to hit the road and play some fucking punk rock!”
Cheifs play 529 on Fri., April 28, 2017, as part of the Atlanta Mess-Around. $10. 3 p.m. with Watcher, Death Stuff and Mutual Jerk. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com.
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string(25623) "In November of 1979, Bob Glassley and a few friends piled into his car for a road trip down the West Coast. It was a retired police cruiser from the Dorris California Police Department, an all-white Plymouth with a souped-up engine. At the time, Glassley sang for a young punk band from Portland called the Rubbers. They were on a mission that day, to make some alliances in the Los Angeles music scene, and to line up some shows for a touring caravan of Portland bands. “We set out for L.A., and the motor blew somewhere outside of Stockton,” Glassley says. “When we got back on the road we found out it was the day they were taping the Hollywood Christmas parade. All of the freeway exits were closed, so we just kept driving around the city, looking for an off-ramp.”
Eventually they made it into the city and crashed at the Holly-West in Hollywood. The space was a former MGM studio and office building on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western, housing everything from a porno studio and a church led by a gay preacher to rehearsal spaces where musicians lived, practiced and spent most of their time hanging out.
One day, Glassley was listening to a group making noise in a nearby room when a young man with bright blue hair — George Walker — poked his head around the doorway and asked if anyone played bass. “I said I did, although that was a serious stretch,” Glassley says. “I owned a cheap bass back in Portland, so I felt qualified.”
Walker was a gay black man in the late ’70s L.A. punk scene at a time when there were few out gay or black punk musicians.
The two became friends, and after sticking around and playing music for a few days, Glassley was invited to join the group and play bass alongside Walker on guitar with singer Jerry Koskie and drummer Kenneth “Rabit” Bragger. Soon they would come to be known as [https://www.facebook.com/TheCheifsOG/|Cheifs].
Glassley returned to Portland to play the final shows the Rubbers had booked and was L.A.-bound soon after. The Rubbers’ Bruce Loose went on to sing and play bass with San Francisco’s legendary punk outfit, Flipper. Back in L.A., Glassley experienced a thrilling new beginning, building friendships with the now-legendary denizens of the local punk scene, including Darby Crash and Lorna Doom of the Germs, Keith Morris of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, and Jack Grisham of T.S.O.L.
{img src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/640w/Cheifs_live_cropped.58f39eab2e018.jpg"}OLD SCHOOL: The original Cheifs lineup featuring guitarist George Walker (from left), singer Jerry Koskie, drummer Rabit and bass player Bob Glassley on stage, May 2, 1981, at Devonshire Downs in Northridge, CA.Vincent Ramirez PhotographyHe was thrust into a life bound by the live-fast, die-young ethos of late ’70s and early ’80s punk scene. But nearly 40 years after breaking up, the specter of Cheifs has returned, demanding the songs be heard again.
In their prime, Cheifs were a lauded act that bridged the gaps between West Coast punk and hardcore. They were a fixture of the Los Angeles scene but after scant few releases, the group has languished in obscurity.
From 1979 to 1982, Cheifs were a staple of the L.A. punk scene. Even though he hadn’t played in a band since they broke up, a chance meeting with a fan one night at the Masquerade proved the catalyst for Glassley to head up a new Atlanta-based incarnation of Cheifs.
Now 57 years old, Glassley lives near Woodstock, Georgia, where he works as a director of technology for Triton Digital. After watching social and political turmoil surge in recent years, the old familiar sting of unease that drove him to punk in the first place is stirring once again. With a new lineup together, Glassley is paying respect to Cheifs’ Hollywood legend while laying the groundwork for a new chapter in his musical career.
Despite the decades that have passed, the songs he played and wrote leading into the Reagan era remain as urgent and relevant as the day they were penned. “It’s unfortunate,” Glassley says. “Some of those songs are even more relevant now, in the face of everything the country — the world — is going through.”
By December of ’79, the group had settled on the name Cheifs. A friend of the band, Roger Rogerson, who played bass for the Circle Jerks, often playfully called out bossy people for being “the big chief,” or saying they were “chiefin’ out.” The band rolled with it.
{img src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/640w/CHEIFS04.58ffc6fb4fddc.jpg"}THE VIEW FROM THE TOP: Rabit (left) wearing one of the shirts that gave Cheifs their name, George Walker, and Bob Glassley circa 1979.DL JacobsAround the same time, Glassley had an uncle die from Leukemia. He’d worked as a butcher and always wore plain white T-shirts. When he died, Glassley inherited those shirts. One afternoon he bought some red and black spray paint, went to his room at Holly-West, and made band shirts. When he showed them to the rest of the band, the reaction was a resounding, “Ah dude, you spelled it wrong! On every single one of them!”
But amid the punk era’s landscape adorned with logos like the Misfits’ skull and Black Flag’s bars, Cheifs presented a golden opportunity for branding. “I know how to spell,” Glassley laughs. “The i and the e came after c! … And ask anyone named Keith how they spell their name!”
Cheifs played regularly at venues such as Hong Kong Café and the Fleetwood, sharing stages with a who’s-who of Southern California punk legends: Black Flag, X, the Minutemen, Fear, Redd Kross, Descendents, Germs, T.S.O.L., Social Distortion and more. “The Gears, too, if I can add a band to that list,” says former Black Flag and Circle Jerks vocalist Keith Morris, who currently sings with the band [http://offofficial.com/|Off!] “The Gears and Cheifs were our party buddies. How many times did we all just crash on that floor where they practiced in the Holly-West building? Cheifs were easily one of the greatest bands around,” Morris adds. “When ''Holly-West Crisis'' finally came out it was such a great record.”
Cheifs’ sound occupied a strange but growing middle ground in the post-punk era, when the term hardcore didn’t yet denote a musical genre. Before Cheifs came along, groups like X, the Screamers and the Weirdos had stylized a Hollywood punk sound by infusing short, sharp blasts of rock ’n’ roll with outsider art leanings. The more aggressive sound of bands like Black Flag and the Adolescents had yet to fully reveal itself.
In Cheifs, Walker’s twisted hooks and bar chords taking shape in songs such as [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thW0Qx3udsg|“Blues”] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tySTqayT6A|“(At The Beach At) Tower 18” ]were driven by a contentious snarl and fast, reflexive melodies. Rabit’s jittery drumming in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM1JQdurPf0|“Knocked Out”] was cut from a loud-fast and deceptively simple style on par with New York’s no wave scene. Koskie’s sneering voice was a conduit for disturbed visions of disenfranchisement, and Glassley gave direction to Cheifs’ buzz saw onslaught.
KNOCKED OUT: The photo featured on the sleeve of Cheifs' "Blues" b/w “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and "Knocked Out" 7-inch.DL JacobsOne song that Glassley penned the music and lyrics for, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-b8za34E3w|“Eddie’s Revenge,”] tells the true story of a journalist who was gunned down by police. “The LAPD at the time were neo-Nazis, I won’t mince words,” he says. “I read a story in the newspaper about this amateur writer who was shot while standing inside a phone booth, holding a typewriter. A cop felt ''threatened''. There was even a witness,” he adds. “The song is from his perspective, wanting payback because justice wasn’t served.”
Glassley sings: “Armed with a typewriter you look very threatening/They know you’re a nut case so they’ll say anything/And don’t try to resist your life’s worth nothing.”
Other songs such as “Blues” confront the hardships of the world with thick skin. In “(At The Beach At) Tower 18,” Walker offers insight into the perils of a gay lifestyle in the Reagan era when he sings, “You think your sex action’s better than theirs/They’re doing a job you could never do/At the beach!”
“Knocked Out” celebrates the youthful abandon and persistence of throwing punk shows whether the cops liked it out not.
The Germs’ vexed singer Darby Crash was a friend of the band, who hung out at Holly-West. Glassley recalls an afternoon in 1980 when Cheifs’ manager Debbie Johnson announced she’d lined up studio time at Present Time Records in North Hollywood. Crash wanted to be there. “I recall him setting in the control room and making suggestions about sound and vocal tricks, like the doubling that Jerry used on most of the recordings,” Glassley says.
The songs they recorded — “Blues,” “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and “Knocked Out” — were pressed on a 7-inch via Playgems. It was Cheifs’ only release while the group was active. Crash is credited as “Creative Consultant” on the sleeve. “That wall of sound on the guitar was likely his doing,” Glassley says. “He was there from beginning to end, providing input, effectively working as a producer. He was a good friend of the band,” Glassley adds. “His fans demanded him to be someone he wasn’t 24/7. They expected him to be on stage all the time. I think he really enjoyed chilling with everyone at Holly-West.”
Holly-West is hallowed ground in the annals of punk history. Redd Kross’ bass player, Steven McDonald, remembers the intimidating feel of the place when he was a kid. “I was only 12 years old back in the those days,” says McDonald. [http://www.creativeloafing.com/music/article/20858365/messaround-best-bets-for-2017|Redd Kross also plays the Mess-Around on Sat., April 29.]
“Redd Kross recorded a project there, and we hung out with Cheifs and the Gears and everyone else," McDonald A. Everyone was friendly and accepting, but the place had this Bukowski vibe. It was a scary, old, decrepit building, but the community was really cool.”
Cheifs’ song “The Lonlies” appeared on the New Alliance/SST compilation titled ''Chunks'' that year. Later, “Riot Squad” (an adopted Rubbers song), “No Justice” and “Scrapped” appeared on an American Standard compilation titled ''Who Cares''.
A half-dozen more songs were recorded, but personal differences caused Koskie and Rabit to leave the band. Glassley and Walker reconvened with vocalist Paul Brashier and drummer Gilbert Navarro, aka Jack Rivera, but they were together less than a year. By 1982, Cheifs were done. Glassley sold his bass and bought a computer, and has worked with technology ever since. He has made attempts to get the original lineup together for occasional one-off shows, even a surprise birthday party that Descendents’ drummer Bill Stevenson was throwing for singer Milo Aukerman. But neither Koskie nor Rabit have expressed any interest in playing with Cheifs again. The two have reunited to play shows with their pre-Cheifs band, the Simpletones. Neither Koskie nor Rabit were available for comment. Walker is presumed dead, although no death certificate has been produced yet. He was last seen hanging around Newport Beach in the early ’90s, but when Glassley went searching, word on the street was he had died.
Cheifs have since languished in obscurity, but the music refuses to disappear. A 1997 Flipside compilation titled ''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-b8za34E3w|Holly-West Crisis]'' emerged as the definitive Cheifs document rounding up everything the group recorded. In 2000, Hate Records repackaged the songs for a European release, and Dr. Strange reissued ''Holly-West Crisis'' in 2004. The same year Spontaneous Combustion reissued Cheifs’ “Blues” b/w “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and “Knocked Out” 7-inch.
In 1989, “Blues” appeared on the seminal ''Killed By Death Vol. 2'' LP. What’s more, the Descendents often whip out a cover of “Knocked Out” during live shows.
Glassley moved to Georgia for work in 2000. His time with Cheifs had become a distant memory ever since. But that changed in July 2016 when Flag, a hardcore supergroup featuring singer Keith Morris, bass player Chuck Dukowski, drummer Bill Stevenson and vocalist/guitarist Dez Cadena — all Black Flag alumni — along with Descendents guitarist Stephen Egerton played the Masquerade. Glassley went backstage to say hello. While talking with Stevenson, Glassley felt a hand on his shoulder. A stranger asked: “Excuse me, did you say you were in the misspelled Cheifs?”
It was Scott Hedeen who owns [http://www.burnthickorybrewery.com/|Burnt Hickory Brewery] in Kennesaw. The brewery is known for naming beers after punk bands, such as the Didjits Blood Orange IPA and Die Kreuzen Imperial Pumpkin Porter. Atlanta metalheads Order of the Owl even have a Chocolate Orange Stout in their name.
“Some of the seed money I used to start the brewery came from selling my punk record collection,” Hedeen says. “I sold a Cheifs single for $300, so I joked that he was a partial investor in the brewery.”
Hedeen and Glassley became friends. Hedeen hadn’t played guitar in a long time, but one night he sent Glassley a text. “I asked if he’d ever considered playing Cheifs’ music again,” Hedeen says. “I was in his ear. At the time he didn’t know the depths of where he had been, and the interest that’s out there for that era of music. It’s like you’ve seen a famous photograph from history countless times, and suddenly you realize that you see someone in the background. He was there.”
{img src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/640w/BHB_MK_02.58ffc4e99289e.jpg"}SCREAMING AGAIN: Cheifs current vocalist Brad Castlen.Mark KocherGlassley knew former Crisis Under Control singer and punk historian Brad Castlen would be interested. “When this started out last July, it was more for fun, but as people responded to the potential of the Cheifs’ music being played live again, I realized this was something more,” Glassley says. “Brad and Scott helped me see that. As I started posting lyrics on Facebook, it became clear there was still relevancy and many of the songs could have been written today and people related. That said, I was dead set against doing anything that would not live up to the original spirit and energy.”
They convened with a temporary drummer to play a Halloween party at Burnt Hickory. Hedeen made posters boasting a performance by “Holly-West Resurrection playing the songs of Cheifs.” Glassley was hit hard by seeing the name again. “He said, ‘You can’t do that!’” Hedeen says. “He didn’t want to dis the other members of the band, but I think we’ve convinced him now that they don’t care. Our intention is to make sure that Bob and the band get their just deserts.”
{img src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/320w/GEORGE02.58ffbf13243f6.jpg"}RESPECT: Cheifs guitarist George Walker circa 1979.DL JacobsWhen Hedeen takes the stage, he sticks a laminated photo of Walker on his guitar, adorned with the word “Respect” — Shepard Fairey style. “George was a trailblazer on so many levels,” Hedeen says. “Getting into his head and figuring out how these songs work is a major accomplishment for me. I had to decode this man’s web of how he did it. I had to reinvent myself.”
Drummer James Joyce (ex Noot d' Noot and Car Vs. Driver) knew Hedeen through the brewery and tried out for the gig. He'd also been friends with Castlen for nearly 25 years. After one practice, they looked at each other and said, “OK, we’re the Cheifs!” A Christmas party at Burnt Hickory was followed by a show at the Earl [http://www.creativeloafing.com/music/media-gallery/20852817/photos-death-and-the-cheifs-at-the-earl|opening for Detroit proto-punk rockers Death]. Then came a run of L.A.-area shows in March.
At first, wondering if they’d be accepted by the group’s hometown was nerve-wracking. “There were people who came out to the shows and said, ‘Wait, where’s Jerry?’” Glassley says. “I was worried about it at first, but the bottom line is, I tried to get him involved, but I found somebody else.”
{img src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/640w/PS_MK_02.58ffc31228f06.jpg"}BACKS AGAINST THE WALL: The new incarnation of Cheifs features Bob Glassley (from left), Scott Hedeen, Brad Castlen and James Joyce.Mark KocherStill, anxiety was high, especially for Castlen and Joyce, both of whom are of a younger generation than Glassley and Hedeen. Before their Saturday night show at Cafe NELA, they were sitting at the bar when Joyce noticed Keith Morris walk in. “Brad started losing it,” Joyce says. “He kept saying, ‘This is your fault! If it wasn’t for you being able to play these drum beats and tying everything together, I wouldn’t have to perform in front of Keith Morris, and have him judge me as the singer for Cheifs.’”
Morris, in his 2016 memoir, ''My Damage: The Story of A Punk Rock Survivor'', writes that Cheifs were one of the few bands he thought of as the Circle Jerks’ competition. Now, he was there to see what the new group was all about.
“In the early days we were always friends — all of it was friendly until it was time to play shows,” Morris says. “That’s when some darkness crept up: ‘We’ve been playing longer, and we’ve played more shows than you. We’re from Hollywood, you’re from where you’re at, we draw more people, can you keep up with us?’ All of that kind of drama. But I always drank a few extra beers, got a little more fuzzy-headed and tried to keep the camaraderie at a social and friendly level.”
The Circle Jerks played their first show with Cheifs at a club in Redondo Beach called Kahuna’s Bearded Clam. “We pissed off everybody that night,” Morris says. “One of the songs we played was ‘Wasted’ and the guys from Black Flag wanted to firebomb our vehicles and run us out of town.”
The anxiety that Castlen felt, however, was over respect for the music. “There’s a lot of attitude in punk about where you come from,” Castlen says. “Crisis Under Control used to get that attitude from Atlanta punks because we didn’t live in Fulton County. ‘You can’t play punk or hardcore if you’re from Gwinnett County!’ So that’s just magnified. Here we are a bunch of guys from Georgia. How are we going to play these L.A. punk songs? I was worried people would have a problem with that and that we’re playing with just one original member.”
Afterward, Castlen thought, “If I don’t ask, it’s going bother me the rest of my life.” He approached Morris and asked, “What did you think?” Morris looked over his glasses and gave a thumbs up. “We did it justice?” Castlen asked. In the conversation Morris replied, “Oh, I woulda told you if you didn’t!”
Neither Koskie nor Rabit showed up for the L.A. shows. But other old friends were there: Don Bolles of the Germs was at the Cafe NELA show, and second Cheifs drummer Jack Rivera sat in for a performance of “Blues.” The night before, at a show in Anaheim, Brian Brannon of skate punk legends JFA and members of the Vandals were there offering praise.
Castlen recalls overhearing a conversation at a record store out there when their merch guy asked the record store clerk — an older guy — if he was going to the show. His response: “No. I don’t want to ruin it. I saw them back in the day.”
That kind of skepticism is understandable; plenty of people feel similarly about any bands who are resurrected with a new lineup. “But we’re busting our asses, making it sound as close to the original recordings as possible,” Castlen says. “I heard the criticism, but the legend of Cheifs means a lot to us, and we all felt like we had to prove ourselves.”
Kendall Behnke, who sang alongside Koskie and Rabit in the Simpletones, came out for the Friday night show. He showed up again the following night at Cafe NELA. According Castlen, Behnke called Koskie to get him out for the show. He didn’t come but asked how they were. Behnke’s reply: “I’m not going to lie to you … they killed it.”
Castlen says the band discussed what would happen if Koskie showed up. “I’d have no problem handing the mic over to him, if he wanted to sing,” he says. “But Bob’s in Woodstock, Georgia, so it would be hard to have a Cheifs reunion with two guys in California. I think he’s a great singer; I love the songs, and I have nothing bad to say about him. But I’m glad he doesn’t want to be involved, because here I am.”
{img src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/640w/DiPiazzas_AL_02.58ffca257334d.jpg"}FLASH TO BANG: Bob Glassley (from left) leads the Cheifs at Dipiazzas in Long Beach, March 2017.Albert LicanoWhile practicing for the L.A. run, the new lineup learned a few songs that the original Cheifs played but never recorded, including “Heart in Chains” and “1988,” both originally performed by the Rubbers. Both songs will appear on a split 7-inch with L.A. punk stalwarts the Gears via the Hermosa Beach label Hardline Entertainment.
“I love playing and didn’t realize how much I missed it,” Glassley says. “Even my wife, Vicki, has commented on how playing again affected me, in a good way. Add to that the relevancy of this music, these words at this time, and it makes sense. Given the situation our country and the world faces, I think there is a lot to say, and this is a familiar vehicle to make oneself heard. I fully expect us to be writing new songs in the months ahead, and we’ll see where that goes, but for me it feels like 1980 all over again — only worse.”
They’re recording at the Living Room in June. After recording those two songs, they’ll record the rest of the songs they’ve learned, if for no other reason than to have a document of this lineup’s time together. Whether what they record gets released remains to be seen. “If you’re a legendary band that can release a new album, people will buy it, like it was an original Descendents album,” Joyce says. “We’re not there, so we’re not trying to push out an entire album’s worth of material that somebody has to digest. It’ll be more like a song or two here and there.”
This approach takes the pressure off while fleshing out the strongest material a song or two at a time. But before Cheifs start writing new songs, their priority lies in taking the show on the road. Until now, the group has never played outside of L.A. and San Diego. But with the new lineup clicking in Atlanta, the group has its sights set on the East Coast.
After 35 years, excitement surrounding the group only underscores the strength of the songs. Giving the music a chance to be heard by a new generation, in an entirely new era, the new incarnation of Cheifs is already uncovering new meanings for these songs. For nearly 40 years, the road has been long and full of pitfalls. Like it was the day that Glassley and his friends piled into his converted cop car heading for Los Angeles, the future is unwritten. “I still have difficulty wrapping my head around it all. I have a split personality in this regard,” Glassley says. “On one hand, I’m coming to grips with the legacy side of it for the first time, and the other hand, I want to hit the road and play some fucking punk rock!”
''[http://local.creativeloafing.com/event/529/cheifs-play-the-atlanta-mess-around-with-watcher-death-stuff-and-mutual-jerk|Cheifs play 529 on Fri., April 28, 2017, as part of the Atlanta Mess-Around. $10. 3 p.m. with Watcher, Death Stuff and Mutual Jerk. ][http://local.creativeloafing.com/event/529/cheifs-play-the-atlanta-mess-around-with-watcher-death-stuff-and-mutual-jerk|529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com.]''
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string(23950) " Cover Outside1 1 01 Low Res 2018-03-06T04:41:31+00:00 cover_outside1_1_01_Low_Res.jpg Bob Glassley brings a 38-year legacy to the Mess-Around 3273 2017-04-27T04:00:00+00:00 Cheifin out jim.harris@creativeloafing.com Jim Harris Chad Radford Chad Radford 2017-04-27T04:00:00+00:00 In November of 1979, Bob Glassley and a few friends piled into his car for a road trip down the West Coast. It was a retired police cruiser from the Dorris California Police Department, an all-white Plymouth with a souped-up engine. At the time, Glassley sang for a young punk band from Portland called the Rubbers. They were on a mission that day, to make some alliances in the Los Angeles music scene, and to line up some shows for a touring caravan of Portland bands. “We set out for L.A., and the motor blew somewhere outside of Stockton,” Glassley says. “When we got back on the road we found out it was the day they were taping the Hollywood Christmas parade. All of the freeway exits were closed, so we just kept driving around the city, looking for an off-ramp.”
Eventually they made it into the city and crashed at the Holly-West in Hollywood. The space was a former MGM studio and office building on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western, housing everything from a porno studio and a church led by a gay preacher to rehearsal spaces where musicians lived, practiced and spent most of their time hanging out.
One day, Glassley was listening to a group making noise in a nearby room when a young man with bright blue hair — George Walker — poked his head around the doorway and asked if anyone played bass. “I said I did, although that was a serious stretch,” Glassley says. “I owned a cheap bass back in Portland, so I felt qualified.”
Walker was a gay black man in the late ’70s L.A. punk scene at a time when there were few out gay or black punk musicians.
The two became friends, and after sticking around and playing music for a few days, Glassley was invited to join the group and play bass alongside Walker on guitar with singer Jerry Koskie and drummer Kenneth “Rabit” Bragger. Soon they would come to be known as Cheifs.
Glassley returned to Portland to play the final shows the Rubbers had booked and was L.A.-bound soon after. The Rubbers’ Bruce Loose went on to sing and play bass with San Francisco’s legendary punk outfit, Flipper. Back in L.A., Glassley experienced a thrilling new beginning, building friendships with the now-legendary denizens of the local punk scene, including Darby Crash and Lorna Doom of the Germs, Keith Morris of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, and Jack Grisham of T.S.O.L.
OLD SCHOOL: The original Cheifs lineup featuring guitarist George Walker (from left), singer Jerry Koskie, drummer Rabit and bass player Bob Glassley on stage, May 2, 1981, at Devonshire Downs in Northridge, CA.Vincent Ramirez Photography<!]}%-->He was thrust into a life bound by the live-fast, die-young ethos of late ’70s and early ’80s punk scene. But nearly 40 years after breaking up, the specter of Cheifs has returned, demanding the songs be heard again.
In their prime, Cheifs were a lauded act that bridged the gaps between West Coast punk and hardcore. They were a fixture of the Los Angeles scene but after scant few releases, the group has languished in obscurity.
From 1979 to 1982, Cheifs were a staple of the L.A. punk scene. Even though he hadn’t played in a band since they broke up, a chance meeting with a fan one night at the Masquerade proved the catalyst for Glassley to head up a new Atlanta-based incarnation of Cheifs.
Now 57 years old, Glassley lives near Woodstock, Georgia, where he works as a director of technology for Triton Digital. After watching social and political turmoil surge in recent years, the old familiar sting of unease that drove him to punk in the first place is stirring once again. With a new lineup together, Glassley is paying respect to Cheifs’ Hollywood legend while laying the groundwork for a new chapter in his musical career.
Despite the decades that have passed, the songs he played and wrote leading into the Reagan era remain as urgent and relevant as the day they were penned. “It’s unfortunate,” Glassley says. “Some of those songs are even more relevant now, in the face of everything the country — the world — is going through.”
By December of ’79, the group had settled on the name Cheifs. A friend of the band, Roger Rogerson, who played bass for the Circle Jerks, often playfully called out bossy people for being “the big chief,” or saying they were “chiefin’ out.” The band rolled with it.
THE VIEW FROM THE TOP: Rabit (left) wearing one of the shirts that gave Cheifs their name, George Walker, and Bob Glassley circa 1979.DL Jacobs<!]}%-->Around the same time, Glassley had an uncle die from Leukemia. He’d worked as a butcher and always wore plain white T-shirts. When he died, Glassley inherited those shirts. One afternoon he bought some red and black spray paint, went to his room at Holly-West, and made band shirts. When he showed them to the rest of the band, the reaction was a resounding, “Ah dude, you spelled it wrong! On every single one of them!”
But amid the punk era’s landscape adorned with logos like the Misfits’ skull and Black Flag’s bars, Cheifs presented a golden opportunity for branding. “I know how to spell,” Glassley laughs. “The i and the e came after c! … And ask anyone named Keith how they spell their name!”
Cheifs played regularly at venues such as Hong Kong Café and the Fleetwood, sharing stages with a who’s-who of Southern California punk legends: Black Flag, X, the Minutemen, Fear, Redd Kross, Descendents, Germs, T.S.O.L., Social Distortion and more. “The Gears, too, if I can add a band to that list,” says former Black Flag and Circle Jerks vocalist Keith Morris, who currently sings with the band Off! “The Gears and Cheifs were our party buddies. How many times did we all just crash on that floor where they practiced in the Holly-West building? Cheifs were easily one of the greatest bands around,” Morris adds. “When Holly-West Crisis finally came out it was such a great record.”
Cheifs’ sound occupied a strange but growing middle ground in the post-punk era, when the term hardcore didn’t yet denote a musical genre. Before Cheifs came along, groups like X, the Screamers and the Weirdos had stylized a Hollywood punk sound by infusing short, sharp blasts of rock ’n’ roll with outsider art leanings. The more aggressive sound of bands like Black Flag and the Adolescents had yet to fully reveal itself.
In Cheifs, Walker’s twisted hooks and bar chords taking shape in songs such as “Blues” and “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” were driven by a contentious snarl and fast, reflexive melodies. Rabit’s jittery drumming in “Knocked Out” was cut from a loud-fast and deceptively simple style on par with New York’s no wave scene. Koskie’s sneering voice was a conduit for disturbed visions of disenfranchisement, and Glassley gave direction to Cheifs’ buzz saw onslaught.
<img alt="KNOCKED OUT: The photo featured on the sleeve of Cheifs' " blues"="" b="" w="" “(at="" the="" beach="" at)="" tower="" 18”="" and="" "knocked="" out"="" 7-inch."="" src="http://dev.creativeloafing.com/image/2017/04/320w/CHEIFS01.58ffc8f47590a.jpg">KNOCKED OUT: The photo featured on the sleeve of Cheifs' "Blues" b/w “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and "Knocked Out" 7-inch.DL Jacobs<!]}%-->One song that Glassley penned the music and lyrics for, “Eddie’s Revenge,” tells the true story of a journalist who was gunned down by police. “The LAPD at the time were neo-Nazis, I won’t mince words,” he says. “I read a story in the newspaper about this amateur writer who was shot while standing inside a phone booth, holding a typewriter. A cop felt threatened. There was even a witness,” he adds. “The song is from his perspective, wanting payback because justice wasn’t served.”
Glassley sings: “Armed with a typewriter you look very threatening/They know you’re a nut case so they’ll say anything/And don’t try to resist your life’s worth nothing.”
Other songs such as “Blues” confront the hardships of the world with thick skin. In “(At The Beach At) Tower 18,” Walker offers insight into the perils of a gay lifestyle in the Reagan era when he sings, “You think your sex action’s better than theirs/They’re doing a job you could never do/At the beach!”
“Knocked Out” celebrates the youthful abandon and persistence of throwing punk shows whether the cops liked it out not.
The Germs’ vexed singer Darby Crash was a friend of the band, who hung out at Holly-West. Glassley recalls an afternoon in 1980 when Cheifs’ manager Debbie Johnson announced she’d lined up studio time at Present Time Records in North Hollywood. Crash wanted to be there. “I recall him setting in the control room and making suggestions about sound and vocal tricks, like the doubling that Jerry used on most of the recordings,” Glassley says.
The songs they recorded — “Blues,” “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and “Knocked Out” — were pressed on a 7-inch via Playgems. It was Cheifs’ only release while the group was active. Crash is credited as “Creative Consultant” on the sleeve. “That wall of sound on the guitar was likely his doing,” Glassley says. “He was there from beginning to end, providing input, effectively working as a producer. He was a good friend of the band,” Glassley adds. “His fans demanded him to be someone he wasn’t 24/7. They expected him to be on stage all the time. I think he really enjoyed chilling with everyone at Holly-West.”
Holly-West is hallowed ground in the annals of punk history. Redd Kross’ bass player, Steven McDonald, remembers the intimidating feel of the place when he was a kid. “I was only 12 years old back in the those days,” says McDonald. Redd Kross also plays the Mess-Around on Sat., April 29.
“Redd Kross recorded a project there, and we hung out with Cheifs and the Gears and everyone else," McDonald A. Everyone was friendly and accepting, but the place had this Bukowski vibe. It was a scary, old, decrepit building, but the community was really cool.”
Cheifs’ song “The Lonlies” appeared on the New Alliance/SST compilation titled Chunks that year. Later, “Riot Squad” (an adopted Rubbers song), “No Justice” and “Scrapped” appeared on an American Standard compilation titled Who Cares.
A half-dozen more songs were recorded, but personal differences caused Koskie and Rabit to leave the band. Glassley and Walker reconvened with vocalist Paul Brashier and drummer Gilbert Navarro, aka Jack Rivera, but they were together less than a year. By 1982, Cheifs were done. Glassley sold his bass and bought a computer, and has worked with technology ever since. He has made attempts to get the original lineup together for occasional one-off shows, even a surprise birthday party that Descendents’ drummer Bill Stevenson was throwing for singer Milo Aukerman. But neither Koskie nor Rabit have expressed any interest in playing with Cheifs again. The two have reunited to play shows with their pre-Cheifs band, the Simpletones. Neither Koskie nor Rabit were available for comment. Walker is presumed dead, although no death certificate has been produced yet. He was last seen hanging around Newport Beach in the early ’90s, but when Glassley went searching, word on the street was he had died.
Cheifs have since languished in obscurity, but the music refuses to disappear. A 1997 Flipside compilation titled Holly-West Crisis emerged as the definitive Cheifs document rounding up everything the group recorded. In 2000, Hate Records repackaged the songs for a European release, and Dr. Strange reissued Holly-West Crisis in 2004. The same year Spontaneous Combustion reissued Cheifs’ “Blues” b/w “(At The Beach At) Tower 18” and “Knocked Out” 7-inch.
In 1989, “Blues” appeared on the seminal Killed By Death Vol. 2 LP. What’s more, the Descendents often whip out a cover of “Knocked Out” during live shows.
Glassley moved to Georgia for work in 2000. His time with Cheifs had become a distant memory ever since. But that changed in July 2016 when Flag, a hardcore supergroup featuring singer Keith Morris, bass player Chuck Dukowski, drummer Bill Stevenson and vocalist/guitarist Dez Cadena — all Black Flag alumni — along with Descendents guitarist Stephen Egerton played the Masquerade. Glassley went backstage to say hello. While talking with Stevenson, Glassley felt a hand on his shoulder. A stranger asked: “Excuse me, did you say you were in the misspelled Cheifs?”
It was Scott Hedeen who owns Burnt Hickory Brewery in Kennesaw. The brewery is known for naming beers after punk bands, such as the Didjits Blood Orange IPA and Die Kreuzen Imperial Pumpkin Porter. Atlanta metalheads Order of the Owl even have a Chocolate Orange Stout in their name.
“Some of the seed money I used to start the brewery came from selling my punk record collection,” Hedeen says. “I sold a Cheifs single for $300, so I joked that he was a partial investor in the brewery.”
Hedeen and Glassley became friends. Hedeen hadn’t played guitar in a long time, but one night he sent Glassley a text. “I asked if he’d ever considered playing Cheifs’ music again,” Hedeen says. “I was in his ear. At the time he didn’t know the depths of where he had been, and the interest that’s out there for that era of music. It’s like you’ve seen a famous photograph from history countless times, and suddenly you realize that you see someone in the background. He was there.”
SCREAMING AGAIN: Cheifs current vocalist Brad Castlen.Mark Kocher<!]}%-->Glassley knew former Crisis Under Control singer and punk historian Brad Castlen would be interested. “When this started out last July, it was more for fun, but as people responded to the potential of the Cheifs’ music being played live again, I realized this was something more,” Glassley says. “Brad and Scott helped me see that. As I started posting lyrics on Facebook, it became clear there was still relevancy and many of the songs could have been written today and people related. That said, I was dead set against doing anything that would not live up to the original spirit and energy.”
They convened with a temporary drummer to play a Halloween party at Burnt Hickory. Hedeen made posters boasting a performance by “Holly-West Resurrection playing the songs of Cheifs.” Glassley was hit hard by seeing the name again. “He said, ‘You can’t do that!’” Hedeen says. “He didn’t want to dis the other members of the band, but I think we’ve convinced him now that they don’t care. Our intention is to make sure that Bob and the band get their just deserts.”
RESPECT: Cheifs guitarist George Walker circa 1979.DL Jacobs<!]}%-->When Hedeen takes the stage, he sticks a laminated photo of Walker on his guitar, adorned with the word “Respect” — Shepard Fairey style. “George was a trailblazer on so many levels,” Hedeen says. “Getting into his head and figuring out how these songs work is a major accomplishment for me. I had to decode this man’s web of how he did it. I had to reinvent myself.”
Drummer James Joyce (ex Noot d' Noot and Car Vs. Driver) knew Hedeen through the brewery and tried out for the gig. He'd also been friends with Castlen for nearly 25 years. After one practice, they looked at each other and said, “OK, we’re the Cheifs!” A Christmas party at Burnt Hickory was followed by a show at the Earl opening for Detroit proto-punk rockers Death. Then came a run of L.A.-area shows in March.
At first, wondering if they’d be accepted by the group’s hometown was nerve-wracking. “There were people who came out to the shows and said, ‘Wait, where’s Jerry?’” Glassley says. “I was worried about it at first, but the bottom line is, I tried to get him involved, but I found somebody else.”
BACKS AGAINST THE WALL: The new incarnation of Cheifs features Bob Glassley (from left), Scott Hedeen, Brad Castlen and James Joyce.Mark Kocher<!]}%-->Still, anxiety was high, especially for Castlen and Joyce, both of whom are of a younger generation than Glassley and Hedeen. Before their Saturday night show at Cafe NELA, they were sitting at the bar when Joyce noticed Keith Morris walk in. “Brad started losing it,” Joyce says. “He kept saying, ‘This is your fault! If it wasn’t for you being able to play these drum beats and tying everything together, I wouldn’t have to perform in front of Keith Morris, and have him judge me as the singer for Cheifs.’”
Morris, in his 2016 memoir, My Damage: The Story of A Punk Rock Survivor, writes that Cheifs were one of the few bands he thought of as the Circle Jerks’ competition. Now, he was there to see what the new group was all about.
“In the early days we were always friends — all of it was friendly until it was time to play shows,” Morris says. “That’s when some darkness crept up: ‘We’ve been playing longer, and we’ve played more shows than you. We’re from Hollywood, you’re from where you’re at, we draw more people, can you keep up with us?’ All of that kind of drama. But I always drank a few extra beers, got a little more fuzzy-headed and tried to keep the camaraderie at a social and friendly level.”
The Circle Jerks played their first show with Cheifs at a club in Redondo Beach called Kahuna’s Bearded Clam. “We pissed off everybody that night,” Morris says. “One of the songs we played was ‘Wasted’ and the guys from Black Flag wanted to firebomb our vehicles and run us out of town.”
The anxiety that Castlen felt, however, was over respect for the music. “There’s a lot of attitude in punk about where you come from,” Castlen says. “Crisis Under Control used to get that attitude from Atlanta punks because we didn’t live in Fulton County. ‘You can’t play punk or hardcore if you’re from Gwinnett County!’ So that’s just magnified. Here we are a bunch of guys from Georgia. How are we going to play these L.A. punk songs? I was worried people would have a problem with that and that we’re playing with just one original member.”
Afterward, Castlen thought, “If I don’t ask, it’s going bother me the rest of my life.” He approached Morris and asked, “What did you think?” Morris looked over his glasses and gave a thumbs up. “We did it justice?” Castlen asked. In the conversation Morris replied, “Oh, I woulda told you if you didn’t!”
Neither Koskie nor Rabit showed up for the L.A. shows. But other old friends were there: Don Bolles of the Germs was at the Cafe NELA show, and second Cheifs drummer Jack Rivera sat in for a performance of “Blues.” The night before, at a show in Anaheim, Brian Brannon of skate punk legends JFA and members of the Vandals were there offering praise.
Castlen recalls overhearing a conversation at a record store out there when their merch guy asked the record store clerk — an older guy — if he was going to the show. His response: “No. I don’t want to ruin it. I saw them back in the day.”
That kind of skepticism is understandable; plenty of people feel similarly about any bands who are resurrected with a new lineup. “But we’re busting our asses, making it sound as close to the original recordings as possible,” Castlen says. “I heard the criticism, but the legend of Cheifs means a lot to us, and we all felt like we had to prove ourselves.”
Kendall Behnke, who sang alongside Koskie and Rabit in the Simpletones, came out for the Friday night show. He showed up again the following night at Cafe NELA. According Castlen, Behnke called Koskie to get him out for the show. He didn’t come but asked how they were. Behnke’s reply: “I’m not going to lie to you … they killed it.”
Castlen says the band discussed what would happen if Koskie showed up. “I’d have no problem handing the mic over to him, if he wanted to sing,” he says. “But Bob’s in Woodstock, Georgia, so it would be hard to have a Cheifs reunion with two guys in California. I think he’s a great singer; I love the songs, and I have nothing bad to say about him. But I’m glad he doesn’t want to be involved, because here I am.”
FLASH TO BANG: Bob Glassley (from left) leads the Cheifs at Dipiazzas in Long Beach, March 2017.Albert Licano<!]}%-->While practicing for the L.A. run, the new lineup learned a few songs that the original Cheifs played but never recorded, including “Heart in Chains” and “1988,” both originally performed by the Rubbers. Both songs will appear on a split 7-inch with L.A. punk stalwarts the Gears via the Hermosa Beach label Hardline Entertainment.
“I love playing and didn’t realize how much I missed it,” Glassley says. “Even my wife, Vicki, has commented on how playing again affected me, in a good way. Add to that the relevancy of this music, these words at this time, and it makes sense. Given the situation our country and the world faces, I think there is a lot to say, and this is a familiar vehicle to make oneself heard. I fully expect us to be writing new songs in the months ahead, and we’ll see where that goes, but for me it feels like 1980 all over again — only worse.”
They’re recording at the Living Room in June. After recording those two songs, they’ll record the rest of the songs they’ve learned, if for no other reason than to have a document of this lineup’s time together. Whether what they record gets released remains to be seen. “If you’re a legendary band that can release a new album, people will buy it, like it was an original Descendents album,” Joyce says. “We’re not there, so we’re not trying to push out an entire album’s worth of material that somebody has to digest. It’ll be more like a song or two here and there.”
This approach takes the pressure off while fleshing out the strongest material a song or two at a time. But before Cheifs start writing new songs, their priority lies in taking the show on the road. Until now, the group has never played outside of L.A. and San Diego. But with the new lineup clicking in Atlanta, the group has its sights set on the East Coast.
After 35 years, excitement surrounding the group only underscores the strength of the songs. Giving the music a chance to be heard by a new generation, in an entirely new era, the new incarnation of Cheifs is already uncovering new meanings for these songs. For nearly 40 years, the road has been long and full of pitfalls. Like it was the day that Glassley and his friends piled into his converted cop car heading for Los Angeles, the future is unwritten. “I still have difficulty wrapping my head around it all. I have a split personality in this regard,” Glassley says. “On one hand, I’m coming to grips with the legacy side of it for the first time, and the other hand, I want to hit the road and play some fucking punk rock!”
Cheifs play 529 on Fri., April 28, 2017, as part of the Atlanta Mess-Around. $10. 3 p.m. with Watcher, Death Stuff and Mutual Jerk. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com.
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Brandon English WE THE PEOPLE: Bob Glassley on stage with the reincarnated Cheifs. 20858364 Cheifin out "
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Cheifin out
04/27/2017
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