Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

Have a Ball (Fat)
An interview with vocalist Spike
by Margo Tiffen

Where are you, California?
San Francisco, yeah. I’m from Pittsburgh, though. On and off I’ve lived in California for ten years.

You work at Fat Wreck Chords, right?
Yeah, I’ve been there for about two years. I ship and receive. The big leagues.

How did you guys get together?
Well, I’d known Mike for awhile before I ever started working here. We were friends and he ended up giving me a call and I started working here. He wanted me to sing for a cover band. I’ve done a lot of hack work with other cover bands around town, just for money. It’s not that different from what my mom does. She plays a squeeze box and a tin whistle. She can just go to an Irish pub out here and sit down with ten people she doesn’t know and play Irish folk songs perfectly and it’s just not that far off from me. Things like Thin Lizzy and Alice Cooper have been relegated to folk standards. You know what I mean? You just show up with all these guys and it’s like “All right, Thin Lizzy – go to the four, go to the five.”

So you just dig doing covers?
No. I just can’t write songs. Anybody can do originals. How many original bands come down the pike? And it’s fucking garbage.

So Fat Mike started the band and he asked you to sing?
Yeah. He and Joey. They had this little scheme where they were gonna… See, they actually like all these old lite rock songs. They’re actually real big on them. They’re just vague memories for me, but they still listen to them. Maybe when they’re in a bad mood or something like that.

Seriously? That’s great. I thought of it more as a joke. My mom is really into Neil Diamond and I remember those songs from when I was young and it cracked me up. They actually sit around and listen to them all the time and decided they wanted to do something with them?
Yeah. That’s pretty much how it worked. It sounds kind of ugly, I know, but… You listen to a Lag Wagon song and it’s not that far away from it. Just throw in a few distorted guitars and drums. I guess they wanted to either do justice to these songs or make them tolerable.

You didn’t radically change any of the songs at all. Was the idea to just fuck around?
Yeah, that was kind of the whole point. It didn’t take a lot of work, a lot of effort, or creative… It’s just really all in the arrangement. What happened, when we were kind of hashing the songs out, like “Mandy”… I don’t know. It was magical.

So “Mandy” was the first song?
Yeah. Mike brought some records in. He brought John Denver and Barry Manilow records in. We listened to them and picked the songs we wanted to do. As “Mandy” was getting hashed out… it was just really, really funny. San Francisco being a cynical city, everybody just sort of nodded their heads. They knew how funny it was, it’s just nobody cops to it.

Was the intention to find the pussiest people you could possibly find?
Pretty much. No drums. Just one singer/songwriter and an acoustic guitar and then you can fucking do whatever you want with it.

The music on Have A Ball is very sectioned into a California punk sound. Did you have anything to do with the album musically?
Yeah, I guess it’s kind of LA sounding. Arrangements. I didn’t play any of the instruments, but I’d come in while they were recording and I’d say something sounded better a different way and they’d try it. Jackson had a few things to say in picking the songs. Joey and Mike picked out a lot of the songs. I picked out “Danny’s Song.” I thought it would sound good, just like – no drums. Another case of no drums. You can do more with it.

Who picked “Uptown Girl”?
That happened in the studio. We picked “Only the Good Die Young,” that’s the A side. Then they just started playing “Uptown Girl” in the studio and 15 minutes later recorded it. And then I sang… it just sorta happened. That’s in my opinion the best track on the record.

You’ve stuck to covering different songs by the same people so far, are you thinking of any other artists that you’re going to cover in the future?
Yeah, we’ve pretty much done two songs by each artist. The only exception being Paul Simon, where we did Simon and Garfunkel, too. That 7″, when it comes out, I guess will be called And Garfunkel. We’re thinking about Paul McCartney, Harry Chapin, Cat Stevens maybe. More of those songs that you just know. You know instinctively. You hear it and it just strikes a chord.

What do you do otherwise?
Ship and receive. Fuck up my back. This is my big break.

Do you play out?
Yeah. When it first started, whenever we played it’d just be a big party. So far we’ve played SF twice and LA once. Yeah. Drunk. Just drunk to the point of blackout all three times. I lost my voice for the one in LA. It ended up looking more like a Germs show.

Well, you know it’s a great show when you’re drunk and you lose your voice and then you pass out. You definitely know you’ve accomplished something.
I didn’t pass out there. I spit on Jackson, the guitar player, but I ended up blacked out at the Frolic Room. I think I chipped my knuckle and it still hurts. I don’t know what the fuck I did. I took my girlfriend down and she was just real stoked on me the whole time. I lost my voice so I had to get really drunk ’cause I couldn’t sing a fucking note. I was drinking Throat Coat tea and Loquot syrup in some insane hope of a breakthrough. I just ended up getting trashed. It started with a Bloody Mary at the airport, then beers in the car, beers at soundcheck, beers at this guy’s house, beers at the club…

Does drinking largely influence your music?
Oh, yeah. When we recorded “Leaving On A Jet Plane” I was so drunk I blacked out. I don’t even remember recording it. It was that kind of embarrassing drunk where the next thing you know you’re dancing naked on a bar or something. We’re playing Coney Island High in New York on September 5 for CMJ. It’s gonna be big. We’re gonna be wasted.

Have a favorite drink?
Umm… Bushmills Irish Whiskey.

Do you hang out with the other band members?
Well, I hang out with Jackson. Mike, I don’t know. I don’t really hang out with him anymore. He’s got his own fucking NOFX thing going on. I want to take the band out and I don’t know if we’ll use him. For a lot of reasons. I mean, he’s already got NOFX going, so, you know. We might get bottles thrown at us but… You know what? I could just fucking call Greg Hetson and see if he plays bass or some guy from the Circle Jerks who’s bald and drunk right now, you know what I mean, and just go to Germany. I want to get out, San Francisco’s too fucking dry. I’m shriveling up here and Mike isn’t helping me, so…

This is definitely something you like doing, though, and you want to continue?
Yeah. I mean, I’ll fucking take a Karaoke machine on the road with me, anything. Especially, you know, English gay clubs… I just got faxed over some kind of memo saying that they’re pushin’ us with the gay press in England, which I’m really stoked about.

Any special reason? Just your good looks?
No, no… Well, yeah. The covers, I don’t know. I think they go for those songs like “Nobody Does It Better.” You know what I mean. Tickles their fancy I guess.

OK, two part question – Have you gotten any major feedback from the album yet? Have you heard from any of the artists you covered?
No! I’d like to hear good feedback from the artists, that’d be kind of nice. Feel good. John Denver calling. Billy Joel. Billy Joel, I’d be like “hey.” God, give them like, guest singing slots.

Then it wouldn’t really be a cover, though.
I know. I’m getting a little out of my league here. Out of my element. No feedback yet, though. San Francisco, going back to the cynical thing, I have no fucking idea about the feedback from the CD. Here, all anybody ever listens to is like garage bands from Seattle. See how far away from the stage they can stand and talk amongst themselves.

Have you kept the same members since you started?
The same guys record and we’ve only played out as this band.

On one of your 7″s you had a listing that kind of misled some people I know into thinking people like Billie Joe from Green Day were in the band.
Oh, yeah. That wasn’t a 7″, that was the Generations comp. Somebody said something and it just went crazy. No, Billie Joe has never played with us, nor has Ron Weltner. Somebody screwed around, just put some names on there, said “Ahh, what the fuck. It’s a punk rock human rights comp. How many fucking copies is this gonna sell?” Then, the next thing we know there’s like half page ads in Spin. Kinda like,ooh…boy.

Do people ask you about it?
Danny Vapid did, when he was here. His band’s on Fat and he just sort of walked back into the shipping room and I had no idea about any of it. I hadn’t seen the ads or anything yet. So he’s like, “Hey, I hear I’m in the Gimme Gimmes.” I’m like “What? Oh. Uh – sorry.” A guy from SNFU called ’cause I guess on the Fat comp it said, “members of SNFU, Sticky…”

Were they annoyed or did they think it was funny?
They thought it was funny, at least some of them did. I haven’t talked to any of the other people. Whatever, it’s a joke. It’s like, ten years ago, who would give a shit? You were talking about bands being happy selling 2,000 copies. Now, it’s a whole different scene. California punk, I guess. I don’t know.

What’s coming up for the band?
New full-length at some point, but a lot of 7″s until then. Any song that’s on the record right now that you haven’t heard on a 7″ is going to have a B side. We’re releasing a box set of 7″s too. Really limited amount. 7″s are cool to put out because not a lot of people buy them. They’re nice to have and nice to have out.

Would people be able to get them in stores or would they have to order them?
You might be able to find them, depending on how good the distributors are. The Epitaph 7″ you can still find, which is Billy Joel. We do the 7″s on all different labels. It’s nice that way, everyone’s got a different slant on it. The Neil Diamond one is on Hopeless and the Paul Simon one is on Kung-Fu. Those should be available right now. Full-lengths are Fat Wreck Chords. We’re a Fat Wreck Chords band, that’s home base. I gotta say, it’s a great label.

Do you ever get to ship out your own stuff?
All the time. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. It’s a nice Zen feeling.