Ridel High
Hi Scores (My)
An interview with Kevin Ridel (Vocals/Bass), Steve LeRoy (Guitar/Vocals), Steve Coulter (Drums)
by Scott Hefflon
Where are you guys?
Steve L: We’re in Sherman Oaks, at my girlfriend’s house.
Is that where the band jams?
Steve L: No, it’s a halfway point between where we live and Santa Barbara, where we’re playing.
Who are you playing with?
Steve C: Nerf Herder. They just finished three weeks with Weezer.
Kevin, you used to be in a band with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, right?
Kevin: I moved out here in ’89 with those guys. It was the great Connecticut migration. I think I’ve tricked a lot of guys into coming out to L.A. “Hey, come on out! I’ll hook you up with a record deal.” That’s the line I got, so I felt I owed it to other people.
How many proofs-of-purchase do you need to get a record deal these days?
Steve L: They just give ’em out.
The first song, “Self Destructive,” sounds different from the version on the My Records comp Happy Meals.
Steve C: The first version was recorded by Michael Petak, who used to be in Carnival Art, in his Hollywood bungalow. It was our first demo. We used to play with Santa Barbara bands like Nerf Herder, Silver Jet, and Summer Camp. Joey Cape of Lagwagon, being from Santa Barbara, got a hold of that tape and wanted to put it on his comp. When Nerf Herder started taking off, he approached us about being on his label. We’d been talking with other labels, but nothing was really working out. We decided to do it with Joey. We wanted that independent vibe, we want indie cred.
Did you get your official Indie Cred Name Badges when you signed to a small independent label?
Steve C: Yeah. They’re all flannel. Very fashionable. They say, “Hello, my fucking name is…” It’s more punk that way. And the names are wrong, of course. It would be selling out to use your real name.
Who did you almost sign with prior to My?
Kevin: Mammoth and Tag. Now Tag is either gone, or swallowed by Atlantic. Just before they went under, Tag signed a great New York band called Ivy. The singer was a French model.
Steve C: Now she’s a Belgian model. It’s not hip to be a French model anymore. German models are totally in.
Kevin: We’ve had basically every label see us and say, “Uh, I don’t think so.” They don’t want to take chances. They want something that’s already happening.
How do you feel about Nerf Herder jumping to Arista?
Steve C: It was cool to see them go the distance like that. Because we’re the follow-up band, it’s interesting to see what could happen to us. It also gives us room to be the first band to stay with My Records and forge ahead that way. Our first show ever was with Nerf Herder in Santa Barbara, and those guys have always been friends of ours. They got us shows, we got them shows…
What about loyalty to the label that gave them a shot?
Steve C: They were the first band on the label, what loyalty was there really, besides to their friends Marco and Joey who run it? As far as I know, they’re all still friends.
Kevin: I don’t blame them at all. Talk about timing, too. I wish we had a song called “Van Halen” right when that whole turmoil happened. It shows you what it takes in terms of talent and blind luck to make it in the music biz.
Steve C: We have a new single called “Mötley Crüe.”
Kevin: I was there. I saw them at the American Music Awards. I saw Vince Neil singing, but the mic was at his waist.
Steve C: That must’ve been “little Vince” singing.
Kevin: And what’s up with Metallica? Are they hangin’ with Dick Clark or something? They show up at every award show.
Steve C: But I still say Jethro Tull is a better metal band. Even though flute is not a heavy metal instrument, I suspect a lot of metallers write their songs on the flute. Waitaminute, every time we do an interview, the conversation turns to heavy metal. Why is that?
Perhaps deep inside, we’re all closet heavy metal fans.
Steve C: We just recorded a cover of Cinderella’s “Shake Me” for a comp that’s supposed to have face to face, The Muffs, Lagwagon, maybe Bad Religion, on it. Too early to tell…
So you guys were heavily influenced by Cinderella?
Kevin: I used to listen to it when I was a teenager…
Steve C: I think we’re all rooted in that stuff. My older brother used to play that stuff endlessly.
Hell, we all have skeletons. I used to like Pretty Boy Floyd.
(Hysterical laughter, and yet more hysterical laughter.)
Kevin: Actually, that “Last Kiss” song was really good.
Tim Skold, of the industrially-credible band Skold, used to be Tim Tim of Shotgun Messiah.
Kevin: Really? I used to be into them. They weren’t really heavy metal per se. And Pretty Boy Floyd had a punk element in there, too.
It was also the time period. A bunch of us ex-rockers were looking for something to latch onto. Heavy metal had turned into a glam parody of pseudo-circus freaks and even the “cool” bar bands were covering Legacy of Brutality-era Misfits and claiming a punk history…
(Slow, building laughter resulting in hysterics.)
Sorry… Steve, weren’t we talking about the Misfits before?
Steve C: I thought we were talking about Dokken. “Breaking The Chains”, “Tooth and Nail”…
No, you were talking about Dokken.
All: Oh! Busted!
Kevin: By the way, the L.A. Weekly once spelled our name wrong three different ways in one week. We might use that as an album cover sometime.
Steve C: Once, we’d finally gotten a show at The Viper Room, and they misspelled the band name. So we spelled Viper wrong on our flyers, just to teach them a lesson.
The Vypër Club. Gone Goth. You don’t pronounce it, you just get depressed about it.
Kevin: And we played a Buddhist Barbecue once. Do you prefer Star Wars or Star Trek?
Um, Star Trek. Star Wars is a simple good vs. evil plot with amazing dogfights. Star Trek is full-on low budget sci-fi soap opera cheese.
Kevin: These guys are Star Wars fans. I collect Star Trek stuff. Toward the end of every episode there’s a scene where you get all watery-eyed, routin’ for Capt. Jim.
Steve C: Are you telling me that in Star Wars, when Han Solo turned to Luke Skywalker just before they left to fight the Death Star and said, “Hey Luke, may the force be with you,” you didn’t cry then? Yet you cry when Shatner runs around in tight trousers and a tight shirt with a big A on it, fighting Mongoloids on some obscure planet, for reasons which will be painstakingly moralized to you at the end?
Well, yeah.
Kevin: I hear there’s a Star Trek Amusement Park in Canada.
Steve C: Kirk out.
Say, do you think people are going to spell your record’s name wrong, too? It’s Ridel High, but it’s Hi Scores. Why is that?
Steve C: It’s a play on “scores” being songs, and these are our songs, so they’re “high” scores. But if you look at a pinball machine, like the one we designed for our cover, they list off “hi” scores.
Who writes most of the songs?
Kevin: I do. But I’ve had kind of a crap year.
Steve L: What do you mean?!? You made a record!
Kevin: Well, before that I mean.
You never really said why after being courted by lots of labels you chose to go with My.
Steve C: When you enter a situation like this, you never really have any idea what to expect. We’ve known Joey and Marco for a long time. Joey obviously has a lot of interest in this label, but he’s always overseas with Lagwagon, up north recording with the Gimme Gimmes, or something. Marco is Joey’s right hand man. He’s a Santa Barbara scenester who’s been in all kinds of bands, like, forever. He was in Lost Kittens back in the glam metal day with Luke from Silver Jet, Chris Shiflett from No Use For A Name and 22 Jacks, Steve from Nerf Herder…
Are there a lot of guys named Steve in the L.A. scene?
Steve L: Quite a few. It’s impossible to go out in public without running into one.
Steve C: Marco and Joey have been behind us since before the talking phase prior to our signing to the label. They understood the songs, understood where we wanted to go, and wanted to help us get there. It’s a great business relationship, and a great friendship.
Kevin: There was a point where we would see Joey in the clubs, but we didn’t know how serious he was about starting the label. He would say he wanted to do a record for us, and we all thought it would be cool to work with such a great guy we knew we could trust. There were times I was really frustrated with the Mammoth thing, we were talking to them, and it felt like they were trying to snow us. The guy who owns the label did not give a shit about us. But these guys Tom Osbourne and Dan Gill were amazing, and they were the only reason we kept talking to the label.
Steve C: The whole thing opened our eyes to what we really wanted out of a record deal. Money and big deals are a great thing, we’d be stupid if we said we didn’t want them, but we realized we didn’t want to deal with 40 to 400 people at a label when we could work with Joey and Marco. We can call either of them at 2 AM, freaking about a show or a song, and they’ll take the call and talk to us. They’re friends.
Kevin: During the whole time we were talking to Mammoth and getting frustrated, I remember being at home with my wife, in the bathroom, after a meeting with our lawyer about the Mammoth thing. And I said, “God, let’s just do the record with Joey.” At the time, I said it because I was so frustrated, I just wanted to do something. It turned out to be the right thing to’ve done.
