The Mudhoney Bumper Sticker

And here's one about Mudhoney, more or less:

OK, I actually got a story about Mudhoney Hate the Police.

At some point after buying SuperFuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles I decide to buy a Mudhoney bumper sticker, looked similar though not the same as what I have pictured here. And then, because the shiny chromium bumper to my black 1977 Malibu with the Edelbrock intakes and the dual exhaust was too full of punk rock and metal stickers to accept any more, I decided to affix it instead to my passenger dashboard.

Then, and wait it gets good, one Christmas season, I’m going out to see my sister, and she asks me to stop by the mall on the way in, to pick up some kind of cake or something, and being a complete dumbass, I say alright.

It takes me 30 minutes to park at the stupid mall, and another ¾ of an hour to pick up the stupid cake, and by the time I get the fuck out of this clusterfuck of a commercial emporium, I am totally pissed off–pissed at my sister for asking me to do do this, pissed at myself for agreeing, and pissed at the stupid Christian world for being snookered by this Christmas bullshit and wasting my goddamned time.

Ok, fine. So I’m driving a bit, shall we say, aggressively, and I, you know, tag someone, sideswipe them in the quarter panel. Bad deal, but to make it worse, because I’m so pissed off at my stupid-ass Christmas-mall experience, I decide it would be a good idea to hit the gas pedal hard and flee the scene.

I’m out of there quick, but so what? They got cameras and helicopters and pussy ass informants, so they pulled me over about three miles away behind an abandoned shopping mall.

So, we do the can-I-step-out-of-car thing, and then the assume-the-position-thing, and the search-my-crotch-and-pantlegs-for-drugs thing, and they were disappointed: not only did I not have pot upon my person, my license and insurance were in good standing.

Then, one of the three–or was it four, Christ these cops are like roaches–officers opens the passenger door, and gets a gander at my Mudhoney swag, plastered across my maroon dashboard.

“HEY HEY,” I swear to God he said, “get a load of this, guys. ‘Hate the Police.’”

There then commenced a 90-minute, excruciatingly thorough, search of my my beloved black Malibu. Seeing as I had long hair and the look of the car I drove, and the fact that I was no doubt wearing some T-shirt with a speedmetal band’s name on it, they had to assume the drugs would be found somewhere.

I watched them from the backseat of the police car, pissed off at them, pissed off at myself for committing a hit-and-fucking run like a dumbshit and (as I’ve already said) pissed off at my sister and at our stupid fucking commercial Christian society.

But I knew they weren’t going to find drugs, anyway, and that made me kind of smile. I was 27 or 28 at this point, and I’d quit smoking pot because I’d gotten tired of feeling paranoid every time I smoked.

Amazingly enough, I didn’t even go down to the station. They didn’t like my fucking bumper sticker, but they’d also said almost first thing, that I was lucky the other driver hadn’t been hurt, so I wouldn’t be going to jail. That was before they saw the Mudhoney bumper sticker, though, and I guess I was lucky that the pigs didn’t decide to go back on their word.

So they let me drive off, it was kind of weird as I pulled away, let me tell you, and eventually, like two hours late, I got to my sister’s house. But her fucking cake was ruined: in my flee from justice, I’d taken one or more corners kind of fast, and the thing in its white cardboard box had been flung against that same dashboard, and it got squashed.

I was so freaked out about the whole thing that I actually hired this Jew lawyer, Al Goodman, no shit, friend of my grandfather, to defend me in court. The sonofabitch didn’t even bother to show up, but then again, neither did any of the cops.

So I walked, with just the story to tell. And I do so here.

My Dwarves Story

I re-started my Tumblr since my last post here, and have been fairly active over there, you can check it out at http://lahistoriadelamusicarock.tumblr.com if you've forgotten, and if you want. Anyway, I've mostly been posting pictures with short captions there, as you're supposed to, but recently I've posted a couple longer stories there, and thought that to keep the cobwebs out over here, I might crosspost. So here's one about The Dwarves

Sub Pop SP197B 1993.

Listened to three times on the way into work (it’s more like an EP).

Brought to mind my Dwarves story. Late 80’s early 90’s, before Sugarfix, for sure. Knew this dude who knew a dude who wanted to get into promoting punk rock shows, so he got the Dwarves into this space on South Beach. I would imagine the band was touring off Blood Guts & Pussy.

This was as SoBe was transitioning between old folks’ haven and rich folks’ haven, at a time when a young person into punk or alternative or metal might want to go down there, and also at a time when someone who wasn’t a millionaire could still afford to run a bar with live music on the Beach. This was the heyday of the Cameo Theatre, for example, and there was a lot of music going on in sort of half-ass run down spaces. Washington Square, and Club Beirut, and this thing called the Thrash Can, and others I’ve surely forgotten.

And I don’t remember the name of this place where The Dwarves played; it was the only show I ever saw there. Dude who knew a dude maybe knew the owner or something.

Anyway, Dwarves started playing their first song, and there weren’t enough people in attendance to form an actual pit, but there were a few kids slamdancing up front, and one of them ran into He Who Cannot Be Named (who was playing in his tightie whities, of course), and a small melee broke out. At which point HWCBN knocked over the drum kit with extreme prejudice, and the entire band without a word stomped offstage. After maybe a minute and a half of music.

People were milling about, confused, in disbelief that the show could be over this quickly. Surely the band’d come back out after their little bit of theatre? I didn’t think so, and neither did my buddy Ivan–dude one–who walked up to me, and shouted in my face, with glee in his eyes, “that was so punk rock!”

And his buddy the would-be promoter guessed it too. He was pacing back and forth frantically in front of the remains of the drum kit, swinging his arms, screaming something like, “they can’t do this to me! They can’t do this to me!”

But, oh yes, they did do that to him. The Dwarves never came back out, and that, as far as I know, was the last time dude who knew a dude ever tried promoting.

In the years since, it’s come to my attention that Blag Dahlia might be a bit of an asshole, and I’m now pretty sure this was the band’s way of telling dude who knew a dude that this is punk rock, kid, and that dude two did not have the punk rock props, and he did not have The Dwarves’ respect.

To put it mildly.

Anyway, even though I never did see a full set from them, I never really held it against The Dwarves that they stole seven bucks from me, or whatever it was. Blood Guts & Pussy is a masterpiece of scum punk, and Sugarfix, though a little bit more mature, is not far behind.

I'll forego going through the motions of posting the audio file for "Smack City", it's streaming on Tumblr if you'd like to hear.