Family Values" would give you an instant idea of what you were in for. They were a band that came from that little part of the world, the Northeast, from Cambridge, MA, with all their wacky, funny, surreal (in a good way) art, music, videos, and humor. At the same time I was going through my own, at times very serious musical phase as I went to private lessons for classical piano in hopes of one day making a career out of it. "Eyes and Ears" didn't work out the way it was planned because it was not a good recording and they broke up after only a few weeks. I wasn't looking for new bands at that point, but someone had a bootleg version of "The Sonic Disruptors' album _The Last S.D._ lying around. I was curious. There were no pictures of the band, so I assumed the album was from a local punk band from New Jersey or something like that. After a few plays, I realized that these were pretty different animals. They took in songs from all over the place and made it a bit of a jumble with the use of many unusual instruments (including a saxophone), the odd time signatures, and vocal styles. It was more than a little bit weird, but also refreshing in its unpredictability and originality. Some bands might have taken a bunch of covers and just put their stamp on them, but these guys made it their own with their quirky touches and unusual time signatures. I was floored by it, and I knew this was something I was going to love. After they broke up, I looked everywhere for them and finally found out that most of them were from Texas, like me. I also found out that I was a month and a half late to the party, as they had just disbanded the month before my senior year started. It turned out that I had a few favorite songs in common with them. I was going to need a band so I could start my senior year without any empty space in my schedule. Enter the Hose, the next band on my quest for those missing pieces. As far as this all-Hollywood version of the Hose is concerned, I was thinking it was a little more indie-rock and less punk, but it's still the same band in its own way. The album cover was definitely punk. We even had our own little comic strip on the back cover, something I started doing with many of my groups' albums. There were many punk rock groups that had some sort of a concept album cover. Look at the Ramones or the Butthole Surfers or even Sonic Youth. These were all groups that put a lot of time and thought into their artwork. I wanted ours to look cool and fit the music on the CD. Hollywood's only drawback was that it was made up of people from different bands, most of whom had already graduated and gone to other places. We did have some new faces in the band, one of whom was Eric Tew, who had a long and very eventful punk career, from the Dead Kennedys to Subhumans to Hose. He played guitar with us, and I have had a lot of great experiences with him. The others were Mark Kope from Scars and Traps, and Mike from Wasted Youth. There were three guys who were really new at this, so we put them in charge of learning the songs. That was a challenge that we did not want to give up, so we stuck with it. A major advantage was that they had already gotten their instruments together in one way or another, so they were already ready to play, which cut down on our rehearsing. Once you get your first gig or so, you can pretty much count on playing each song at least once, so we all had our homework done. I had started to do the art work for the group in my senior year of college, when I designed the cover for the _The Last S.D._ album. I did it all as a labor of love, because I felt like I needed to represent us as a legitimate band. I used a collage technique I was new to at the time. I was taking classes on painting and drawing and loved being in school. The art classes were good, too. I was going to Cal State Long Beach to study graphic design and fine arts at night. The whole reason for my senior year in college was to figure out what I was going to do with myself after I graduated, so when I did get out there and find out what I was going to do, it was a bonus. If it wasn't art, it would have been something else. The title of the group's first release came from a lyric in the song "Stuck" by Wasted Youth, and it was a perfect title. It seemed to fit the mood of the group, even though it was used to describe someone who was stuck in a crappy situation, someone who didn't stand a chance in the big city. They were stuck in Hollywood and working too much to make a living. We decided to just run with it. We were all stuck in Hollywood with little time left to experience this town, and we knew we were going to miss it and not want to be where we were going. When someone asked what we were going to do when we got out there, we would tell them that we were going to be stuck in Hollywood, and that became our group's motto. So we put together our group and learned our songs, and I began preparing for our very first show. The music in the club is the only thing you can really control, so I started playing shows with them, going back to my old clubs. The best part was that my punk rock friends and the owners of the clubs were all still there. We'd talk about bands and life and sometimes get drunk, and that's what happened every show. Our first show was at the old Brickbats down on the east side, but by then we were known as Hollywood in every publication that had come out, so all that changed. It was so weird going back. By the time I was getting ready for the show, I just went to the door and got in and hoped that everything would be all right. This was all happening in the very beginning of our senior year, when we needed everything we could get and everyone seemed to hate our band. The Brickbats had grown, and the club had come a long way since I'd played there before. We were used to playing in the back room, not on the stage. When we went to the stage that night, I knew we had a good show ahead of us, even though it was a pretty small venue. When I walked on the stage, all I could think about was being a rock star. The crowd was packed and going crazy, and we knew right then we were a hit. We had so much energy, and the place was jumping. Everything was perfect for our first performance. I loved it. I had always loved the Brickbats, even though it was in a seedy little alley downtown. That club was and still is like home to me. I've been in every hole, and I feel like it's like a hometown to me. It's still an important place in my heart, especially when we played there on our first gig. When we got to play a show at the Brickbats, we were back in our own territory. We knew the room well, and we had the best time doing it. The show was so successful that they asked us to come back again soon. We went home and celebrated, and the next day we all went out and got plastered. I didn't want to stop there. We didn't want to stop. We didn't realize how much fun this group could be, and we didn't want to quit. We had a blast and were proud of ourselves for pulling it off. When we were in our element, we could play as a team, work well as a unit, and come up with some fantastic things. The next show was at the Silver Dollar, down on Sunset, which was a more high-profile club on the west side. It wasn't as packed as the Brickbats, but it was packed just the same, and there were a lot more people there than we were used to. There were some great bands playing there every night. I'd go with friends and pick up the set list, too, and some nights it was awesome, so I could see what bands were playing later. When we played at the Silver Dollar that night, it was one of those shows. We rocked that place. There was a lot of energy on that stage that night, and as soon as it was over, I wanted to go back up there. We had a lot of energy as a group. We had been performing together a lot by then, so I knew the set list inside and out, but we were definitely a new band. We didn't have a real good idea of what to expect that night, but we had a great time. After the show, we had one more show at the Brickbats before our first CD came out. That time we did something that we didn't do in the beginning: we drank beforehand. We were trying to show off for the audience by showing everyone that we had just as much fun playing as anyone else. When we had been at the Brickbats before, it was like a family party, and even though we knew that, everyone at that show seemed to