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Interview with the late, great SUBHUMANS.

Taken from Splinterviews 2 (1982).

It's old news in Vancouver that the Subhumans are no more, since lead singer
Wimpy Roy left to play bass for DOA, after filling in on DOA's summer tour as
Dimwit's bass successor, while Dimwit replaced Chuck Biscuits on drums.  I
don't think anyone missed the Subhumans last stand, at the Oddfellows Hall on
September 3, at which all but the above photos in this article were taken.  But
this interview, done at the end of June '82, offers a different perspective on
the what at the time seemed the shape of things to come for the Subhumans.

WIMPY: I know what would be real groovy; we'll do the interview with our music
playing in the background real low. You could make a lot of money off this
interview, just think, you do it that way, then you go, "And then the Subhumans
went down to LA to record their record," you know, like Sound of the Sixties,
something like that, except you've got to do it Sound of the Eighties thing,
and have the songs interjecting between our comments.
INT: Like Discumentary.
WIMPY: Twenty years from now you'll be rich.  Actually I think in 2001 they'll
still be having Sound of the Sixties.
RANDY: The Beatles.

INT: Randy, how long have you been with the Subhumans? (long pause)
WIMPY: C'mon...stop.  Start again.
RANDY: I don't remember.
RON: This is a 15-pointer, Randy.
RANDY: RJ's party.
RON: Four or five months?
INT: I remember, it was New Years.
RANDY: New Years, right.
RON: RJ's Christmas party.
RANDY: OK, it's been six months.

INT: OK, when did you get back from California?
WIMPY: Uh, about three weeks ago.
INT: And you were down there for about...
RON: Six weeks.
WIMPY: Almost two months, I'd say.
INT: And you were recording all that time?
WIMPY: No.
INT: What were you doing?
WIMPY: Sleeping.  No, we were...well OK, first of all we were, first of all we
were on the road for about two weeks, and we did a show in San Francisco and
took our time getting to LA, I guess it was actually only a week.  We played
the On Broadway in San Francisco, this new club Dirk, Dirksen runs down there,
right above the Mabuhay Gardens, actually it's a lot better club than the
Mabuhay Gardens, but that's beside the point.  And then we stayed in San
Francisco a couple days, and then we went down to Los Angeles, and we actually
didn't start recording for about a week I think, since we, or when we got down
there, and I guess after that you could call all the rest of that time we spent
recording.

INT: And doing what else?
WIMPY: Well, uh...
RON: Just hanging around.
WIMPY: Mostly just being frustrated by, you know, studio problems, and
difficulties booking time, and stuff like that.
INT: Yeah?
WIMPY: Yeah, there was a lot of problems, it was fairly tedious at first, like
we were under the impression that we could just go down there and record the
stuff real quick, we'd be able to get in from twelve midnight sessions till six
in the morning, every night that we wanted pretty well, that was basically the
only impression we were under when we went down there, and uh, turned out that
it wasn't quite that way.  Turned out whenever they had a paying customer
coming into the studio that was paying cash up front, he would get, you know,
preferential treatment over us, and we'd sort of get booted aside.
RON: Like being on a standby flight, any time somebody wanted to pay full fare
we got the boot.
INT: Why was that, weren't you paying, or what?
RON: Well, SST was paying for it.  Basically, they got a deal worked out with
the studio, right, to get a good deal on time, they get a deal on the time as
long as nobody else wants to use it; unfortunately, lots of people wanted to
use it, so our sessions were strung out.
WIMPY: See, SST and Unicorn Records are basically working together, and
Unicorn owns the studio, and SST can put in their bands, which they get paid
back after the band, you know, sells, they get money back off of record sales. 
They normally wouldn't rent this tine out anyway, so they're really not losing
anything by putting us in the studio late hours during the night.
RON: Cause they're getting a piece of the action right down the line.
RANDY: To give you an example of how we got screwed around, I figure I got a
total of about ten hours in the studio.
RON: Yeah, we only got two sessions with Randy and then Randy had to leave, he
had to get back, so...
RANDY: Total playing time, ten hours.
WIMPY: He took a three week holiday, and he had ten hours in the studio.
INT: So you did all the drum tracks ahead of time, and then came back?
RANDY: That's right.
RON: And did all the layering over top.  Worked out good though, we're real
happy with it.  Cause we'd basically built the whole album up that way from
start, as a layering sort of thing and fitting everything together so it wasn't
a foreign thing; if we'd been a band that went in and all played everything at
once it would have fucked us around but that's the way we'd been doing it from
the start so it was a real comfortable situation to work in.
RANDY: Yeah, it was kind of natural for us.  Well, a little hectic.

INT: So what's it called?
RON: The new album?  No Wishes, No Prayers.
INT: Where did that come from?
WIMPY: Where did it come from?  Good question.
RON: No, it's a phrase that just sort of popped up, while we were trying to
come up with something, and it just seemed right.
WIMPY: Yeah, I don't know, it's an old slogan of some sort, I really can't
remember exactly where it originated.  I'm sure it will be used against us too,
like you know, reviewers will take our album and go, "This album has got no
prayer!" (laughter)
RON: The thing with the statement, if you listen to the songs it's not a
negative statement, it's a positive one, it's don't wish or pray for things, if
you want things to happen make them happen yourself.  You get out of it what
you put into it, you know, don't wait around for somebody to bring you your
dreams.

INT: So how was California, anyway?  What's happening down there?
RANDY: It's hot.
RON: Lots is happening down there, all the time.
WIMPY: Well, it's a mecca for pop music, that's for sure.  Besides that...
RANDY: We saw tons of bands.
WIMPY: It seems to be catering mostly to really rich suburban kids, seemed
like a lot of the clubs were relying on the richer, suburban, outlying areas of
town.
RON: It's big suburb action down there for the kids and stuff, lot of
teenagers from the suburbs.  Orange County, San Fernando Valley, but also the
Hollywood thing's happening really big, and they're all divided, right, it's
not one big scene.  It's, y'know, the Hollywood people stay to Hollywood, and
the San Fernando Valley people stay with themselves and the Orange
County...it's like playing six different cities.
WIMPY: It's wonderful for a band up there...
RANDY: You could play there for three weeks and never play the same place.
WIMPY: And you wouldn't have the same crowd come out and see you, either. 
That's the beauty of Los Angeles, as far as a band goes, like they've got all
these different audiences all over the place, and you can, you know like, play
all over, and these people won't come and see you, or maybe a few people will
follow you around, but it's not anything close to a place like Vancouver, where
you've got a million people basically concentrated into one area, and you can't
play around here too often, or else you'll burn yourself out really bad with
your audiences.
INT: So you get a good audience no matter where you play though?
WIMPY: (laughs) Well, not necessarily good.
RON: It's like up here in the Vancouver scene, just about everybody knows
everybody that's in the scene, but down there it's like, the scene's probably
got a possible amount of ten thousand people in greater LA, so it's huge,
right, which is good, because it's really happening.  But you can also see
signs of the scammers and the people who are out to make money off a fad, sort
of getting their little digs in which makes it bad, like some of the big
clubs...we found the halls better to play in than the clubs.  Just because of
the staff's head space, right, they made everything too tense for the kids,
charged them too much and ordered them around and treated them like cattle. 
Whereas the halls that the kids are putting on themselves, it's a lot better,
really a good feeling, like the hall gigs here in a lot of ways, only bigger.

INT: What about the famous California violence, the HB scene and all that?
WIMPY: Didn't see any signs of that this time down there.
RANDY: None of that.
WIMPY: I think it's sort of died out as a fashion sort of thing, then again we
didn't...the only club we used to play down there was, uh, like, Huntington
Beach was where most of the famous HB violence happened most of the time, and
the only club that we used to play down there was the Cuckoo's Nest, and that
place is pretty well closed down, so...
INT: You didn't play there.
WIMPY: No.
RON: Uh-uh.
WIMPY: We didn't actually do very many shows when we were down in Los Angeles,
though.  We only did two shows.
RON: One in the Valley and one in East LA.
RANDY: We figured we'd be recording (chuckles).

INT: Silly you.  I already asked you, when the tape wasn't running, how...if
the sound from the first album has changed since Randy started.
WIMPY: Well, since Randy and Ron started.
RANDY: Yeah, that would be better.
WIMPY: I'd call that a turning point in the band's approach to playing.
INT: How?
WIMPY: Well, we've just taken a more aggressive attitude, trying to put a lot
more punch into our sound...wrote a bunch of new songs...
RANDY: Speeded it up a bit.
RON: And slowed it down a bit too.
WIMPY: We're just trying to put more dynamics basically into our music.
RON: A lot more directions, and just sort of, coming to the point of rather
than, you know, bass and drums staying subtle and in a supportive role, trying
to utilize all four people to the fullest.  So everybody has their one part
that makes up the whole.

WIMPY: When you're only playing with a four-piece band, to use each instrument
effectively you have to make sure that everything's working together as a real
tight unit.  So we spent a lot more time working on our rudiments, you know,
making sure that each person's part was meshing with each other person's part,
which was one thing we didn't really do with the old Subhumans.  That was more
a feeling, just sort of an effort that we all did, without really planning
anything out.
RON: Yeah, and that's not taking anything away from the old Subhumans either,
because at that time, when I would be an observer of the Subhumans, that was
working.  What's happening now is that punk rock, or hardcore, isn't this big
shock value thing anymore that people's hair stands on end and they go, "Wow!
what the fuck's this?" right, it's a thing that people are used to the paces
now, and they're used to the intensity of it, so basically our approach now is
to keep that intact, but also to broaden out in a sense that, create...filling
up the whole spectrum, rather than just relying on the sheer intensity of it.
INT: Broadening to a bigger audience?
RON: No, no, as far as the sound goes, like, just utilizing everything to the
fullest and keeping more consistency and just a tighter set, tighter show, that
sort of idea, leaving sort of less to chance in the sense that it could work
against you if you were robots, but we're not, right, and it's working for us
in the sense of we don't go out and have really shitty shows because somebody's
not on.  Even if somebody's not on, their functional part is still there, so
it's still going to click to a point and people are going to feel they got
their money's worth and they bad a good time.
INT: Like working with a net.
WIMPY: Working with Annette, or a net?
INT: A net...
RANDY: Funicello.
RON: I saw her on TV the other night.
CLAUDIA: With or without ears?
IKT. So what's the point, I mean.  If you've still got the same audience, and
OK you're tighter now, and you've got that working for you, but what are you
gonna do in the long run?
WIMPY: With our new album, we're planning to hopefully broaden out our
audience more.  A lot more than our first album got us.  I'm sure it will,
because for one thing, we're going to have a separate Canadian and a separate
United States release, so neither one will be considered an import.  One of our
big problems with the first album was that when we sent albums down over the
border they were charging, you know, outrageously heavy prices, ten or eleven
dollars American sometimes for our measly little record down there, when we're
competing against bands down there that put out records and they're selling
them for four dollars, right, so you've got this huge gap in the price range,
and a person has to be a pretty heavily dedicated Subhumans fan to want to be
putting out that much more money for our record than somebody else's record. 
But we're gonna be able to close that gap by having separate releases in both
Canada and the United States.
RON: And the UK.
WIMPY: Well, I don't know about the UK release, we haven't really discussed
that at this point.
RON: No.
INT: Who's your distributor?
WIMPY: At this point we're right in the middle of, you know, signing ze papers
and dealing and we can't really disclose any details as far as what our plans
are.  So that's going to help us for sure, and we're planning on concentrating
ourselves a lot more on Los Angeles from new on, just doing more shows down
there, spending more time, playing more gigs.
INT: Why?
RON: Cause it's happening there, that's where it's all happening.
WIMPY: Well, for one thing, it's got a lot of central magazines, LA Weekly,
there's a lot of magazines coming out of there.  You could centre yourself in
Columbus Ohio, and you could be the greatest band in the world, nobody would
ever know about you.  But Los Angeles and New York are basically where, if
you're gonna do anything, and get written about, people are gonna read papers
from Los Angeles or New York.  DOA or us could sit in Vancouver for years and
years and years and nobody would ever...
INT: Which you haven't done.
WIMPY: Well, (laughs) we have actually, this is our fourth year in Vancouver.
INT: So what's the point to the greater exposure?
WIMPY: Well, the point is to sell more records and get more fans and hopefully
build ourselves up so that we'll be playing bigger and bigger gigs and getting
that snowballing effect.
INT: Getting more and more people thinking or more and more people having fun?
RON: Exactly; getting more and more people thinking AND having fun.  If we
were playing to a thousand people at a gig maybe some people's attitude would
be, "Oh, they're going for the big market, they're doing this, they're doing
that," or sold out or some shit like that, whereas the attitude is as far as
we're concerned why shouldn't we be playing to that many people?  I'd rather
have that many people sorta thinking our way than going to a Van Halen concert
or something like that.  I mean that's the whole idea with the punk thing is to
get the youth of North America thinking that way, right...
WIMPY: Sure, it's healthier for everybody...
RON: Than smashing up their cars, and being racists and being fucking pigs,
right, they should start using their brains, and the more exposed people get to
these type of bands the more people listen to them the more that's gonna
change.  So that's what we wanna do, we want everybody that we can possibly get
to hear us, to hear us.

INT: Somebody asked me a theoretical question today: what if you made a whole
lot of money, and could put it back into what you were doing, how would you use
it?  Say if somebody granted you fifty thousand dollars.
WIMPY: Fifty thousand?
INT: Sure.
RON: We could do a real good album with that much money.
WIMPY: Fifty thousand we could probably just sink into equipment and buying
ourselves a truck to travel around in, we wouldn't really have the chance to do
anything really constructive with that much money.  Perhaps we could...(room
fills with mass sniffing and laughter) forty thousand dollars worth of cocaine
and after that...
RON: See the thing is that nobody's fooling themselves, they're not in this to
be rich and famous, and all this fucking shit, what we're in it to do is to
keep building up our popularity and get ourselves to the point where we can
play comfortably in places, and at the same time any money we make, it's always
been that way, is just been going right back into the band.  It's a
reinvestment thing all down the line, that's just what it's all about.
WIMPY: Yeah, it's really hard to say.  Ideally, I'd do all sorts of wonderful
things, and put out a miniature record label for all the unknown bands in
Vancouver to record on, or something like that, but...
INT: Like who?
WIMPY: Like who?  I don't even know who all the unknown bands in Vancouver are
anymore...
CHORUS: They're unknown!
RON: I think there's just No Exit, and Contraband.
WIMPY: Oh yeah, and there's the Social Outcasts, or something like that, from
Burnaby, and Castration Anxiety.
RON: It's starting a bit in Vancouver, the younger kids are getting into it,
and a lot of it's to do with the LA thing that's happening, Black Flag
influence and those bands who are showing you that you can do it yourself, get
off your ass if you want to do it.  Vancouver tends to be a little more laid
back, or quite a bit, than LA in that sense; we get our heads turned around
when we go down there just because these bands that are doing something, that
are on the LA scene, they gotta work for what they want, it's not a relaxed
situation, it's real competitive, and the bands down there are real good.  When
they want to get something done they do it themselves and don't wait around for
somebody to offer it to them, because there's always another band that's ready
to jump right in there.
WIMPY: Yeah, it's pretty healthy in that respect.  That's why I think the
Vancouver scene hasn't prospered in the last little while, actually I'd say
it's diminished a bit, you know, basically there's nothing to drive people on
to, uh, they can't see the light at the end of the tunnel anywhere along the
line, so they just don't put out enough effort or whatever, because they think
it's hopeless. Starting up bands...
RON: A lot of the difference down there is the liquor laws, a 14 or 15 year
old can go into a bar, you just can't drink, but you can go in and see bands,
and up here they can't, right.  If you play in an alcohol place then your
audience is 19 or over, and that's all there is to it, and the underage gigs
are happening in that direction which is good, but it hasn't recreated the
feeling of a few years ago, when it was really something to get into; that's
what I see the problem with Vancouver is, just no new recruits to draw from
because there's no big efforts being made to expose them to it.
INT: But can that be recreated?
RON: Well, nothing can be recreated, but I think that the interest can be
brought back in, if there was more concentration on underage, high schools, you
know, all you gotta do is let people see it, and some people aren't going to
get into it but other people are gonna evolve into it, and it's gonna keep
strengthening.   But a person four years ago is now 28, and they're getting
into something different, not maybe musically, but they've got their own trip
happening, and it's just, people get old and they change.  They don't get old,
but they do change, right.
WIMPY: Well, they get old too.
RON: They get old, but it's not like somebody that's 28 is old.  But for what
we're doing, our message is to an adolescent, or a teenager, basically--
WIMPY: (interrupts) I don't chink our message is catered for any particular
type of being, it's basically universal.  It's just that people in Vancouver,
or I find musicians in Vancouver, tend a lot of the time to hack it out for a
few years and then they decide to go the safe route, and they all wind up
playing in these hunky bars and stuff like that and, I don't know, they turn
into the B-sides or the Modernettes or something like that.
INT: I don't think I can print that.
WIMPY: Please do.
INT: OK, I will.
RON: Bands where you don't have to think about it, you can just sort of move
your body, la la de da...beautiful.

INT: Who writes most of your stuff?
WIMPY: Well, this record I think I actually contributed most of it, but me and
Mike usually combine about 50-50.
INT: You write the lyrics more, or...
WIMPY: No, we usually separate our projects.  Mike's a lyricist himself, as
well as a musical writer, and he just designs a song to fit his lyrics, or
whatever he does, I don't know exactly how he goes about it, but the music
portrays the mood that he wants to get across for his lyrics.  And I do the
same thing myself, mostly.
INT: And he can write a song and hear you singing it?
WIMPY: Yeah.  Well, he gives me an idea, he plucks me out the melody line on
his guitar or something like that, to show me how exactly he wants the vocal
melody to go or something like that.  And that's basically how we get our songs
moving.
RON: With this band a lot too, one person sort of presents a song, and we all
digest it, and come up with ideas.
WIMPY: Yeah, that's how we get the arrangements.
RON: Yeah, but the person who writes the song, like Wimpy will write both the
music and the lyrics and Mike will do the same.  And Wimpy will show Mike how
the chord structure is and basic rhythms and how things are going and vice-
versa with the lyrics, right, and then we all hash it out.
WIMPY: Then Randy and Ron will ait down and figure out where they want to put
in little parts or whatever, you know...
RANDY: Dis, dat, and de odder...
WIMPY: So it's actually a combined band effort to write the songs.  It's just
that, the basic song is written by one person, just like if I was to play it
for you on the acoustic guitar, or something like that, the way I wrote it, it
wouldn't sound much like the way the band plays it, I'm sure.
INT: It has to evolve into a Subhumans song.
WIMPY: Yeah, that's it, evolutionary.

INT: So what now?  When are you going to play in Vancouver?
WIMPY: Well, we're looking at a gig, let's see, probably around the end of
July.  We're not positive cause we haven't got the place or the date confirmed
as of yet, but we're discussing it.  We're basically waiting for the album to
get pressed, and that's like up in the air, cause I can't give you any details
on that either, cause of the nature of the stage that our dealings are at at
this point.
INT: So you don't want to play until the album's pressed?
WIMPY: No, we're gonna play before the album's pressed, I'm positive of that.
RON: When the album's done, all we're gonna do then is play.
WIMPY: Yeah, that's when we're gonna set out on a ten year tour.
INT: Yeah?  See ya.  All through here and down to the States and blah blah
blah.  You don't want to play much in Vancouver?
RON: No.  See, it's the amount of people you can draw in one place.  If you
play it too much, it's no longer an event to people, right?  And you're not
getting across to them the intensity you want it to, so it's better to sort of
pick your times when you wanna play, not overdo it, and that way people get the
most out of it.  If we played six nights in a club, the interest would die real
quick.  Not the interest would die, but...
WIMPY: We're trying to create Subhuman-mania (laughs).
RON: God, it sounds like we're trying to...
WIMPY: Subhumania. (begins strumming acoustic guitar)
RON: For us to do a good job, it's got to be exciting to us, as well as the
people, right, and if we played one place too much, we wouldn't be excited
about it any longer, and it wouldn't be any fun for us.  So we have to keep it
fun for us, as well as for the people.  Rather play one good gig than three
mediocre ones.

INT: And after this album, and after this tour, then what?
RON: Another album.
INT: Another album, another tour?
RON: Yeah, inside a year, another album.  That's the general sort of idea.
INT: You're gonna do it down in California again?
WIMPY: Well, that's...
INT: Up in the air.
WIMPY: That's unknown, it might be in Inuvik or something.  I wanna go to
Iceland.
CLAUDIA: Is it cheaper to put out a record in LA?
RON: Way cheaper.  Studio tine down there is dirt cheap.  The music industry
down there has died, and they built all these great studios when everything was
booming, and now it's not, so for 24-track you pay 25 dollars an hour, instead
of $125.
WIMPY: Also, sort of a weird thing, you know how the recession is sort of
happening right now, well the studios down there are in ultra-recession, and
it's ultra-competitive for studios to drop their rates to try to get business. 
See Vancouver doesn't have that glut of studios, really high quality studios,
so they can charge like 150 dollars an hour for Total Sounds West, or whatever.
And there's a lot more quality engineers working in Los Angeles.
RON: There's a lot of people down there that really know what the fuck they're
doing, like they've been putting out music for a long time, and recording, and
they really know what it's all about, and up here all my experiences have been
that it's a learning idea for a lot of these guys.
WIMPY: And a lot of them are really set in their ways, take someone like Ron
Obvious, who's a real cocksucker if I ever did see one.
RON: They're intimidated by the sound.
WIMPY: (continuing) Plus he has this total idea of how an instrument is
supposed to sound, like a snare drum.  He's got this idea that a snare drum has
to sound this certain sound that makes your ears bleed, this total top end sort
of...I don't know, I've heard that it's impossible to get him to do anything
else.  If that's the way he thinks it's supposed to sound, no matter how much
you talk to him about it...
RON: Basically we found a relationship with Spot, he's a real smart guy.
INT: Spot's your producer?
RON: Spot's the guy, he basically engineered and co-produced with us and put
in a few ideas, and he's been doing it for a long time and you can say to him,
"This is more what we're after," and he understands, and he gets it, and he
doesn't fuck around for hours.  He's really fast, really proficient, and really
knows his business.
INT: With imagination?
RON: Oh yeah, great imagination, great sense of humour too, and let us stay on
his floor for months on end.  Real nice all-round guy.
WIMPY: You've got to make some sacrifices to be a rock star these days. 
Sleeping on the floor is one of them.
INT: That's where you stayed down there?
RON: Yeah, in Spot's house.
WIMPY: We stayed with him night and day.
RON: It was great, there was two rooms, and a kitchen, and there was seven of
us at one point.
WIMPY: Every day we'd wake him up, and scream at him, "Can we get in the
studio today?  No?  NO?!?!"  It was great.  The guy's totally cool.
RON: Really nice, and he's done a lot of this sort of music, right, like a lot
of the people you run into up here, they have these preconceived ideas, and
they try and control, rather than working on strong points they try and develop
these wanky ideas they've already got about it.  He understands it, and worked
with it, and it worked out great; we're really happy.
INT: That's great.
WIMPY: So that sounds like it pretty well covers the glut of our experiences
in LA.

INT: OK.  Thenkew.
WIMPY: What's your magazine going to be called, anyways?
INT: Splinterviews.
WIMPY: Splinterviews, oh, great.  That one was pretty splintered.
INT: Last words?
RICK: Cecile English helped out.
RON: Yeah, special thanks to Cecile English, who did all our preproduction. 
He was really great about that, gave us endless time for basically nothing. 
And it wouldn't have come out nearly as good as it did unless he'd done it.
INT: OK, great. Say hi Lavinia.
LAVINIA: Bonjour.