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| photo by Ken Miller | | |
Texas Punk Memories - Offenders, Dicks, M.D.C. and Felix Griffin - drummer for D.R.I. and Blunt Force Trauma
I was supposed to be reviewing a stack of Texas punk rock and bluesy or
cornpunk music cds sent to me tonight - The Rock Garage Texas Live
Concert Series, Hickoids, Churchwood and T. Tex Edwards and the Swingin
Kornflake Killers but I got sidetracked reminiscing about Texas. I had
driven through there once on tour in the late 80s with my old roommates
M.D.C. It was so flat there, driving forever without seeing anything or
anyone. The punk clubs were high ceilinged, huge and sweaty. There was graffitti scrawled on the ladies restroom wall in Houston about
Verbal Abuse singer Nikki Sikki, just like there was in S.F. We were all
squished in an R.V. together, a band, a girl (me) and a big fella named
Monterey Mark. Mark was a skinhead but he was touring with a punk band. Dave said the promoters
paid up more quickly with Mark along on the tour. His stout, cross armed
presence onstage also seemed to mellow the aggression of antagonistic
skins M.D.C. encountered at many concerts.
After we got back from tour to S.F. I returned to singer Dave Dictor's
pad where I lived in a punk commune of sorts although it wasn't
officially called anything other than the Rathouse. Others who lived
there were Joe Britz - zine publisher of Tales From the Rathouse and
Lawrence Livermore who started Lookout Records and discovered Operation
Ivy and Green Day. I wrote for Lookout zine once in a while. My first
review was of Redd Kross' record Neurotica. Dave introduced me to his
old friends from Texas like Mikey Offender Donaldson, the bass player
from the Offenders and M.D.C. and then songwriter/bass player for Sister
Double Happiness and his girlfriend at the time Tammy (who had also
been Dave's and M.D.C. guitarist Ron's girlfriend at one point, although
I can't remember who was first.) Tammy was THE muse for M.D.C. and so
many bands from that time and place. She was a beautiful blonde
heartbreaker with a big round derriere, a tattoo of a feminist fist on her
right arm and, rumour had it, webbed toes, which only seemed to add to
her mysterious allure to men. "Webbed toes?" I asked, "there's a part of
Texas where that sort of thing is common," a Texan ex-paramour informed
me. This was my first inkling that Texas and its inhabitants were
"different."
Dave also introduced me to Gary Floyd, singer from the Dicks and he told
me what an inspiration Gary was, that he had come out of nowhere and
shocked everyone at the University of Texas campus crossdressed and
curvy with a mohawk, being flagrantly homosexual in the late 70s/early
80s conservative Texas climate. Dave had moved from New York to study at
the University of Texas. He wanted to be a lawyer before he got into
punk rock. They were heady times but I had a falling out with Dave over
something and decided moving out was best and next became roommates
with Ron Posner, the guitarist from M.D.C. Soon after me moved in the
craziest and funnest roommate ever, a guy named Felix Griffin. Felix was
the drummer in D.R.I. He did not come from a poor family but he did
come from Texas, run away to live on the streets of San Francisco with
the punks and skins before becoming a bonafide crossover punk metal
superstar.
Felix fascinated me for many reasons. His crazy drinking yet talent that
kept him on tour drumming with a successful world famous band. He was a
musclebound handsome guy with huge blue eyes, sandy blonde hair and a
boyish charm about his face. Yet, for all his macho prowess and strength
he was so sensitive, reduced to a rubble of tears if he played the
right Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard song. I was from New Jersey and had
never heard Johnny Cash before. I was an ignorant fool who thought
Johnny Cash was a funny, old guy and I couldn't understand why Felix
didn't just listen to thrashcore music all day long considering that was
what he played. His exgirlfriend had become a junkie, so out of touch
with him or anyone she could feel for, that it hurt me to see Felix
hurt. The dramatic highs and lows of his mood swings and relationships
with his girlfriends was difficult to witness. There was a lethal
pattern I noticed that began with a six pack, tears and country music
and ended with a disaster. There was the night he crashed his truck
through someone's garage door and spraypainted something mean on it
afterwards.
Felix couldn't spell for s**t and didn't seem to read much but he was a
musical genius and a really good drummer by music snob standards, going
nuts with his amazing rhythms on a double bass set. He loved music and
didn't just play his records through speakers, he blasted tunes through a
motherf
**king p.a. in our apartment in the quickly gentrifying Haight
Ashbury district. I will never forget the hysterical yuppie from
upstairs shaking at the door with a policeman next to her as she hissed
in a furious whisper that we turn the music down. "It's not me," I tried
to explain, "it's my roommate." You could tell the yuppie lady was not
used to being ignored. She seemed like someone who had always gotten her
own way. "I have to work in the morning!" she snarled. Felix Griffin
did not care. When he decided to drink and crank up the tunes, nothing
could stop him. The cop said,"Well someone's going to jail and it's
gonna be YOU if your roommate doesn't turn down the music." So I went
back into the apartment and screamed at Felix at the top of my lungs,
"The fucking cops are here and if you don't turn it down someone's going
to jail and it's not gonna be me!" He would barely turn to acknowledge
my screaming since he was usually in the middle of telling a joke to a
friend and then finally he would turn it down and then the cops would
leave and then the whole scenario repeated itself a couple more times in
the evening, cops and all!
Felix could also be incredibly funny and made the most insightful
observations about people, he described Ron M.D.C. as someone who
couldn't turn a corner without walking in a right angle. When not
playing/touring with M.D.C. Ron ran a shop called Fogtown Skates. He
didn't skateboard himself but sold a lot of boards and shirts there.
Ron's room was clean as a whistle and he liked nothing better than to
kick back playing classical music on an acoustic while puffing a fatty.
Ron could sight read music very well and loved musicians like Andreas
Segovia. In some ways, Ron and Felix were best friends and in many
ways, their friendship had a Mutt and Jeff like quality of opposites to
it. Ron was a brilliant Jewish intellectual who never cracked a beer and
Felix was a bible belt good ol' boy who never cracked a book but they
shared a sense of humor. There was always a laugh to be had but Ron
wasn't laughing the time Felix and his old skinhead friend Sonny cooked a
pound of bacon in vegetarian Ron's pan and Ron said it couldn't be
scrubbed clean enough and threw the pan away. But you know how
sometimes it's human nature to make assumptions about the pieces fit
together and the more you get to know people the smaller you find out
the world is.
When I caught up with Felix over the phone recently, I realized the
connection between Ron and him was not only that they were roommates but that they were band brothers
through the revolving doors of band line ups. I asked him about his D.R.I.
days and he told me, "the two best records are D.R.I. Dirty Rotten LP,
Dennis played bass on it, the first one is classic no doubt about it and
Dealing With It. Mikey Offender played bass on that. That era was
super punk and straight up, we tweeked it. It was my idea to get Mikey
to play bass." I had never realized that Mikey "Offender" Donaldson was
a thread running through the sounds of so many of these great early
Texas punk bands. I remembered Mikey sitting down and showing me the
chords to John Wayne Was a Nazi and telling me how he had composed the
intro to classic punk hard hit. Felix added that he had toured with
M.D.C. as a drummer in 2008 in Europe for the Mikey Donaldson memorial.
Felix also expressed sadness over the recent suicide of Chumley, who
had been playing bass for D.R.I. Felix told me he plans to bring his
daughter up to a November 26 concert in Oakland to see Attitude
Adjustment and other bands play in homage to their departed friend.
Talking about the old days, Felix explained that much of his frustration
was fueled by his feeling financially burned by Rotten Records who
managed D.R.I.,"they ripped us off!" he told me about his old manager.
"D.R.I. getting ripped off like that, it fucked me up. He stole the whole record company and embezzled tons of money. He was
having the cds printed up in Singapore or someplace like that so they
couldn't keep an eye on how many were being sold. After Crossover I
called it Corrupshover, hell, we didn't even know what royalties and
publishing were. All of the street punks that crossed over to that
scene got ripped off."
Like many drummers, Felix also feels like he didn't get the
compositional credit and royalties he was due. He was the force behind
changing D.R.I.'s sound to the crossover punk/metal legends they
became. "I helped compose Nursing Home Blue and I wrote the intro to
Yes Ma'am on Dealing With It which is the record that changed
everything. I was turned on to Venom, early Metallica and early Slayer
and I brought that to the band."
Since Felix quit playing with D.R.I. he has played in a Texas band
called Roger's Porn Collection which released one album. For the past
three-four years he has played drums in an old school punk/Northeast
hardcore influenced band called Blunt Force Trauma. The band's themes ,
he explained, deal with new world order, Big Brother and
antigovernment. Last year they toured Europe with Napalm Death and Sick
of it All. He added about one band member,"Craig Holloway is a bass
player from the Detroit area. He's a great artist." Blunt Force Trauma
has two records out Good Morning America and Hatred for the State.
They are working on a new album called Let Them Eat Red, which Felix
added, has the same elements as Dealing With It.
Back in the day, Felix would always reminisce about Texas, the state
that spawned him, saying,"Where I come from it's so boring, all there is
to do is get drunk and beat up your best friend. " So when people talk
about England, poverty, misery and anger spawning punk rock I think of
the desolation of Texas, a flatland peppered with bible belters, gun
nuts and madness inducing pockets of isolation spawning its own special
brand of punk rock (all those bands came from there M.D.C., D.R.I.,
Dicks!) and Felix Griffin.
As far as Felix's wild lifestyle goes he had racked up 10 years clean
and sober a while back but had slipped for a while. He hasn't had a
drink in a month but added he is taking his life one day at a time. You
can't change somebody. About D.R.I. he added,"I would still play for
them."
Reviews coming soon, I promise.
Felix in center holding cigarette in black special forces t-shirt/street kids photo by Ken Miller
