Mm-hmm.

So the LA punk scene was very small when it started, and I feel really lucky, uh, that I was part of it from the beginning, because it was very exciting.

A, a lot of people think of the punk movement in kind of a negative and untrue way, especially for the scene that we had in LA, which was mostly art students, a lot of girls, a lot of people of color, a lot of LGBTQ people.

It was, like, a very small but inclusive group of young people.

So that was a perfect atmosphere for my band-

Yeah.

But it was very cool, very magical, and I've only experienced that one other time, and that was not that long ago, like 2017 to 2024 or something that I was working with my friend Pietro, and we had the exact same thing happening.

So we released a couple albums together.

[laughs]

...

but, um, it ...

We were, I mean, of course thrilled 'cause Coachella is the biggest mus- music festival in the world.

Um, another funny thing, uh, happened though is, uh, we were standing on the side of the stage waiting to go on, and it was a huge stage with a huge, huge green lawn for the audience.

There was nobody in the audience.

It was completely empty.

Tell me about that because that's, that's rock god status right there.

Mm-hmm.

So that was probably really early on, I realized that that was kind of my thing, because I wasn't a good musician.

I mean, the extent of my musical education had been going to one of those, in the summer when your mom wanted to get rid of you, so you went to the park and you took little classes or whatever.

So I took, like, folk guitar for a couple weeks.

So that was the extent of my musical background, but just because I had that, I got dubbed the guitar player right away, so, and then, you know, I started learning how to play guitar, and Billy Zoom helped me, and it was, uh, it was exciting.

I mean, really, basically, hardly anyone was really a good musician then, and that didn't matter.

It was more about the enthusiasm and stuff.

Ellwood.

So how did you see yourself evolve in the way that you approached things or the way you may not have approached things?

One of the biggest breakthroughs for us was when MTV started, because even though in Europe, especially England, there was a pretty long history of music videos being made, we didn't have that in America at all.

And so when it started, it was very exciting.

MTV was looking for content.

That really helped us.

And our first video was like, I remember our first video was Our, Our Lips Are Sealed, and we had a budget of $6,000, which really was no budget at all.

And so we just kind of ran around town being silly and not really taking it very seriously and stuff, which I guess is part of the punk rock ethos.

I mean, I'm thinking that you must feel really good because you're out there trying to make change.