Slash and Grab
Into the Thick
Things Really Take Off
Post-Solger
Basics
Timeline
Discography
the Sound
Reference
Links
2005/06/06: Just received news and confirmation of Doug Rockness' death on or around May 28, while he was on vacation in Thailand.
2005/05/14: Page goes live.
Kyle Nixon - vocals
Paul Solger (nee Dana) - guitar
Doug Rockness - bass
Tor Midtskog - drums
Seattle's first hardcore band. Name is a misspelling of soldier. Formed in May of '80, split that October. Played a half-dozen shows, released one record, and provided crucial inspiration to the nascent Seattle hardcore scene.
February 16:
Kyle sees Black Flag.
May 2:
Kyle Nixon promotes a Black Flag show in Seattle. It ends in chaos. See Black Flag in Seattle for more info.
May:
Solger's lineup solidifies.
July 19:
August:
Solger plays Wrex about two after their first gig.
August 16:
August 17:
Solger plays with Black Flag in Portland.
September 19:
September 27:
October 15:
November 1:
S/T 7" (1981, 514 copies pressed)
(1000 copies repressed on Bag of Hammers in 1995)
I Hate It / Raping Dead Nuns / Aman // American Youth / Dead Solger
V/A - What Syndrome CS (1983 Deux Ex Tapes)
Live @ Wrex: Do Me a Favor / Repetition
S/T CS (1983 Deux Ex Tapes)
Banner Tape: American Youth (instrumental) / American Youth / Aman / I Hate It / Raping Dead Nuns / Dead Solger / Live @ Wrex: Do Me a Favor / What We Do is Secret (Germs) / Dead Solger / Last Punk / Repetition / Stab Yor Back (Damned) / Aman / Raping Dead Nuns / Scheme and Fraud
V/A - Basic Sampler CS (1983 Basic Tapes)
Banner Tape: Raping Dead Nuns / Dead Solger
Live at Wrex 7" (2003 Empty Records, 500 on black, 100 on red)
Live @ Wrex: Do Me a Favor // Scheme and Fraud
Codex 1980 LP/CD (2003 Empty Records)
Banner Tape: American Youth / Raping Dead Nuns / Aman / I Hate It / Dead Solger / Live @ Wrex: Do Me a Favor / Repetition / What We Do is Secret (Germs) / Stab Yor Back (Damned) / the Last Punk / Scheme and Fraud / Original 45: I Hate It / Raping Dead Nuns / Aman / American Youth / Dead Solger
If anyone knows of any other Solger releases, let me know.
Solger never released anything while they were active, which definitely affected the Solger sound. When it was finally time to put out a Solger record, Kyle didn't give much thought to quality. He dubbed off a copy of their only recording session onto the cheapest tape he could find, then sent it off to the pressing plant. A few weeks later he had 514 records that sounded like they'd been recorded in a train tunnel. While the original reel was no thing of beauty, the 50¢ kmart cassette Kyle dubbed it onto turned it into dogshit.
By 1983 the single had sold out and Jim Banner, a friend and fan, wanted to put some Solger stuff out on a compilation. Kyle had moved on, and told him to do what he wanted. Jim did, making a new mix and dub fromt he master. Basic Tapes used two tracks on their Basic Sampler (which suffered from anemic sound, not to mention the tape ran fast), and Deux Ex released the whole thing, including an alternate take of American Youth, on their Solger retrospective.
In 1995 Bag of Hammers wanted to reissue the 7", but sometime in the ensuing years the master had been lost, so Jim Banner's Deux Ex tape was restored and used. When Empty Records was gonna do a reissue, Kyle borrowed the original Banner tape and had Jack Endino remaster it, and the results are astounding—just listen for yourself.
Raping Dead...Stenographers?
Response to Raping Dead Nuns.
Desperate Times
This is the only contemporary Solger interview, and even it was done after they broke up!
Black Flag in Seattle
My talk with Kyle about Black Flag's impact on the growing Seattle scene. I think it's better than this interview, actually.
Official Solger Site
Run by Kyle Nixon. I stole most of the flyers I used from here.
Blastitude
Blastitude did a great interview with Kyle.
Kill From the Heart
There's a small Solger section on KFTH.
Remnant Bride
Kyle's cult.
White Devil
Jim Banner's record label/publishing house/website.
Where do you start with Solger? I guess with the record.
In 1981 Solger put out an EP that's legendary for being the punk rock record: lowest of the lo-fi, rawest of the raw, rarest of the rare. Collectors have been drooling over the record for years, and its price is hitting the triple digits as a result.
1996 or 7, in the wilds of Arlington, I'd finally heard of Solger, found someone with the record, and got them to make me a tape. When I finally sat down to play the tape, the excitement was palpable. Solger, I thought to myself, are gonna be fucking great. Then I hit play.
It wasn't lo-fi, exciting, and raw, it was muddy and boring. It sounded like someone recorded it in the basement next door to where the band were practicing. There's no high end, there's no bass and the drums are inaudible. Their vocalist was a mush-mouth, but that didn't really matter because you couldn't hear a damned thing he was singing over the muddy, washed-out guitar anyway.
I have to admit, and it may shock you, that I was not smitten by the Solger 7".
I didn't think of Solger again until about 1999, when, in the process of tracking down another Seattle band, I happened across two live Solger cuts on an obscure compilation. They were great. I bought the reissue 7", several years old at this point, and was surprised by how good it sounded. When Empty Records put out a remastered CD, I bought that and my mind was blown again. The remastered stuff is incredible—the original 45 was a low, steady thrum of muddy guitar. The new versions tear through the speakers like a fucking shotgun blast. With the aid of modern technology and a lotta noise reduction, I came to my senses and decided I loved Solger.
The next step, of course, was to get an interview...
I contacted Kyle through the Solger website and set up an interview in late November, 2004. What follows is roughly half the interview (the other half was all about Black Flag, and you can access it from the side bar).
So, you got into punk from the Damned by way of Led Zeppelin, then from Slash mag to Black Flag?
KYLE: Yup. It was November '77 when I bought that Damned album and by Christmas I had the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and shortly after that, the best band I ever found, Bullet by the Misfits, that was hot. I got that and sold it for five bucks to Blaine. Stupid. I just bought everything, good, bad, and just bought anything that came out and after a while decided, okay, this is shit, this is good, got away from the art stuff, got away from the English stuff, got away from Crass, and pretty much tried to stay West Coast.
How did you find out about the Seattle punk scene?
KYLE: Well, there was a comic book store called Time Travelers that sold punk rock records and there was another place called Everybody's Records. I bought most of my punk at those two places.
Then I was going out to Burien, which is just south of Seattle, near Mt. Olympus and buying punk rock and bootlegs. Originally I was buying Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin bootlegs out there but then when punk rock broke out I was buying Sex Pistols bootlegs and stuff like that out there.
Time Travelers was in Seattle, they're the ones who put on the Dead Kennedys show, they're the ones who supplied magazines, and they really started getting shows going—legitimate shows—because everything before that was at this place called the Bird. I got to go the Bird a couple of times and I was scared to death, I still had long hair, and me and my friend would stand in the back and watch these bands play this...punk rock.
I remember seeing some of the guys like Duff, Duff must've been about 15—and the other kids around, Mike Vrainey, wearing blue hair and mustache and dressed the same way he dresses now. I was just going to those shows just to see what this music was about.
The Zeros played at the Bird, Crime played there, and the Fishsticks, that was one of the first bands I saw. Those guys became the Pudz later. The Mentors had already moved away so I hadn't seen them, but Secretary Hump was the inspiration for Raping Dead Nuns, from the EP. The Lewd were the greatest band in Seattle, they were the closest thing we had to the Pistols before they moved away.
What other bands were active when you were first getting into the local scene?
KYLE: Well, there was the Radios, Cheaters, the Enemy. People really ragged on the Enemy at the time, but they were really fun. I remember they did communion at the Bird. At the original Bird there was a riot and they'd gotten beaten up by the police, so Susan, or Suzanne, she actually did communion with a broken arm or broken leg on-stage, and I thought that was pretty cool and sacrilegious to do at a punk show.
The Enemy actually went down to LA, toured down the coast and played with Black Flag.
KYLE: Yeah, and they were cool people. They were actually a bar band before punk rock hit, but they shifted over and a lot of people held that against them. Really, their songs were good punk songs, and they knew how to play their instruments. I found them entertaining, but the Lewd was probably the most fun because those guys, it would be non-stop spit. People'd be spitting from the first song to the last song on them and it was just wonderful.
(laughs) Well, from a certain point of view.
KYLE: No, no, it was incredible to see that, it was like adulation. I remember the first time someone spit on me, it was this English guy when we opened for Black Flag—I didn't know he was English until we spoke afterwards—and he spit on me on stage, and I was like, "Finally, someone's spit on me." You know...
"I have arrived."
KYLE: (laughs) Yeah. And so I spit back, and I got lucky, hit him square in the face from the stage. He got pissed off and got on the stage and wanted to smack me for it, but then the crowd pulled him down and started beating the hell out of him. I thought, "Well, I gotta get one shot in there," so I jumped down—and I'd boxed in the 8th grade, so I knew a little bit about boxing—and I got one good punch into his face. Afterwards we talked a little bit, found out he was from England, and he didn't know this or that about what was going on...and everyone was like, "No, you can't go around beating up Kyle" (laughs). So that was pretty cool.
I thought spitting was a pretty nifty thing, with AIDS now though, I don't think it's quite as advisable.
What was the situation with media in Seattle—radio and magazines and TV?
KYLE: There was a magazine called Twisted that was pretty good, that was local, and that's the one that had the Mentors Secretary Hump song next to an interview with the Flying Nun, back to back, and that's where I got the idea for Raping Dead Nuns. It had a Sex Pistols article too, which is why I bought it. There was also one called Chatterbox that was out at the time, and another one, a guy I went to school with put it out, called Inaudible Noise—
Jeff Gebanini—
KYLE: Jeb-uh-nini.
Jeb-uh-nini.
KYLE: Yeah. He's in Amsterdam now, I just saw him, he came over here this summer. And Lee, I hear from him quite often, about Paul, and Paul's cancer situation, about once a week now.
After Solger had broken up, Wilum Pugmire put out Punk Lust. That was a real fun one because he would just type everything out and if he made any mistakes he'd just X over his errors, not white them out or anything, just put an X over it and keep on goin', which I thought was fantastic. He loved Raping Dead Nuns, he printed the lyrics and people were offended by it, which was the whole point. People missed the whole anarchist aspect of it. Part of anarchy was the no god aspect—no authority, no state, and no god—and an attack on religion fit in with that aspect of it, but no one caught that. People would complain that the one song didn't fit in and how the other songs worked but Raping Dead Nuns didn't fit into the theme, you know. They didn't have a clue what I was doing, so...(laughs) But it fit.
And radio, there was KRAB with Stephen Rabow
KYLE: Ray-bo.
Ray-bo.
KYLE: Yeah. He was also on KZAM, and he played Solger. We also had a band called Shit that was just me, Paul Solger, and some of the Fags. We'd all switch instruments. I don't know, did you guys call 'em fuck bands, where everyone one would just get together and...
Yeah.
KYLE: And so we just had this fuck band called Shit and we made a tape where we'd all play different instruments. I had this concept of having a bass where all the strings went to the wrong tuning peg, so they'd all be criss-crossed—
just a mess
KYLE: Yeah, it didn't matter about the notes. The whole point was just to make a chung sound, and I played it with a hammer. Rabow actually played one of our Shit songs on the radio, which I thought was great. I talked to Ben Ireland of the Fags recently, at that guy from Pearl Jam's house, what's-his-name...Stone Gossard, and he remembered me from back in the day, wearing rubber boots and playing bass with a hammer. He thought it was hysterical.
Well, it sounds pretty memorable.
KYLE: (laughs)
And Stephen Rabow also did Deux Ex tapes, who released the What Syndrome comp and did a tape of the EP and live stuff too. Was he a big fan?
KYLE: Rabow was a real big Solger fan. He would come to our shows and I would actually sing songs to him, or about him. I would dedicate songs to him or say they were about him, just to suck up to him.
I actually liked the guy though. He had a beard, which was not cool, he was not conforming to what everyone else was doing. He dug what was happening, and everyone hated him because he seemed like an outsider. The guy worked in a hospital, and he also had a radio show. He had a genuine interest, he showed up at these shows, he enjoyed the music, and he wasn't a fake European snob-type guy. We had a guy from Britain who did a show, and he became a really big DJ and that was fine and dandy, but I liked the fact that Rabow was just Rabow.
A genuine person, not a "radio personality."
KYLE: Yeah, nothing fancy, no conformity, a guy with a beard and glasses who just liked...he'd play all the stuff, hardcore, regular punk, stuff like the Dynette Set, the new wave, he played anything, and now he's doing tourism in Florida, writing tourist books.
When did you first become involved in punk instead of just watching shows and buying records?
KYLE: Well, the guys from Time Traveler asked me to put up flyer for the Dead Kennedys, and I just thought the Dead Kennedys were just like the store's band. They had a drum kit and stuff set up there, so I just thought it was their band. I put up flyers everywhere for them, I even wallpapered them up on the windows of music stores, and they'd call Time Travelers and made me go down and clean the mess, fix the damage I'd done with the posters. And I I still had to pay to get into the show (laughs).
That's how I started, just as a flyer guy.
Once I had actually done my own show, the May 2nd show with Black Flag, I actually got to work at the Showbox—for free—on the volunteer staff. Nobody got paid at the Showbox (laughs).
Mike was taking people's enthusiasm and using it to his advantage, which I thought was smart. These people enjoy it, they wanna participate, they wanna see it, so let them go ahead and do the legwork, and he did that. He had a full crew of people, all working for free, whether it was flyers or security. We all did it for free. We cleaned toilets, we scrubbed the floors, we did—
All the glamorous jobs.
KYLE: Well, we got to practice in the Showbox, Solger did, and that's why we got to do toilets and floors, clean up after the shows, because we were practically living out of the Showbox. I mean, I even had sex on that stage when the Ramones were in town, so...We spent a lot of time there.
It all kinda just moved from being a kid and going into a punk rock store buying records, and being willing... My first thing was putting up flyers though.
What was it that made you decide the time was right to form Solger? You'd written the songs before-hand, so what was it that made you say, "Okay, now I can form a band."
KYLE: I had a lot of pent-up anger from my life, and when I first heard punk—when I first heard the Pistols, not particularly the Damned—it was something I could relate to and between that and singing Nervous Breakdown with Black Flag I realized that I really could do this and get away with it. That just gave me the courage to seek out someone I could do it with.
How did you meet Paul and the rest of the band?
KYLE: Well, Paul ran an ad in the paper looking for someone to play with...I think he had the Stooges so I called him and said, "Well, how about something like Black Flag or the Germs?"
We actually met in this record store, Everybody's Records, and I brought him a list of all the lyrics I'd written—I'd even had Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols autograph it...it was just that when you meet Glen Matlock, you ask for his autograph—and I showed Paul this long list of lyrics—and a lot of them were crap (laughs), because a lot of them I'd written when I was still into the whole English thing and they didn't really fit with what I wanted to do then, but at least they showed that I had a desire to create.
We agreed to start practicing, and I found a place to practice—the Showbox. I asked Mike if we could use the back storage room behind the dressing room and he said, "If you clean it up, you can use it." So we cleaned it up, and we started playing, just me and him.
When I met Paul, at first I didn't think it was going to work because I didn't think he clicked. Paul had just turned 16, I think he was 15 when we first met, he was 16 when we started actually sitting down at the Showbox and started playing. He'd play and have me sing, and he'd say, "No, don't go like this," over and over and over, but I don't know, you just do it (laughs).
The main thing is you wanna be somebody, but at the same time you don't wanna be someone you don't like. And there were so many bands I didn't like, and there were bands that you'd like to kind of emulate or pay homage to or, match their energy level, but be yourself.
I think I said in the Blastitude interview that I just wanted to be somebody, and I think that a lot of times when you're a teen you don't feel like you're anybody, and you don't have a voice. Punk rock, like our first record we didn't put a label on it, and the point was, you know, fuck labels, why do we need a label, why does everyone need to sign up with a label, and I was trying to make statements that any kids can do this. I'd never thought I was very good, and I got away with it. I was actually fortunate to get together with Paul.
My girlfriend started sitting in on bass, and she wasn't good enough, but she said, "Well, I know this guy who plays bass," and that was Doug, so that's when we met him. Then I put a flyer up on the wall and about a week later Tor came up and said, "Hey, I'd like to try out for your band." I said, "Well, you know, if you join the band you'll have to shave your head."
(laughs)
KYLE: And I was just joking, but he actually did it. So he tried out, there were some other guys, but he beat them, so he got to be the drummer. His style was a lot better than what the other guys were doing. The other guys were playing the stuff that everyone was and Tor was doing something else. He was actually from Norway—in fact Rockness' parents were from Norway too, and they had a different thing going on—
Viking rock! (laughs)
KYLE: It wasn't the typical Seattle...there was a weird scene. We had the old Seattle kinda, I dunno, glam, Bowie-esque rocker guys that got off on the New York, Whiz Kids kind of thing, drag queen type stuff. Then we had a huge gay thing happening, which I didn't have a problem with. Then there was the whole University District scene—which was where those guys came from—where they're just playing rock and roll, garage rock that got labeled as punk rock. After a while I just got sick of that. The first few times it was cool—people had weird outfits on and stuff, but then I got a taste of something really pure...
And couldn't go back.
KYLE: Yeah, because a switch goes off. I'm a bi-polar, manic-depressive type guy and once I see something I just go for it.
I had planned...the word hardcore didn't even exist then, no one called it hardcore punk, but I had already planned in my head that we were going to have a hardcore punk rock band, that the band was going to be hardcore, just in the terms of hardcore porn—there's soft and there's hard, and our band was going to be hardcore. At that point everyone was starting to use the word hardcore, but I had set in my mind to be hardcore and to put out a shitty product.
(laughs) Okay. What was—
KYLE: Let me say this too, I haven't talked to Tor in maybe 22 years or something like that, and I just met with him again last year, got to meet his girlfriend and such. He said to her, "Kyle is the only person I know, who no matter what he would do, would try to make it as bad as possible," and I didn't think anyone had even noticed that I'd put so much effort into doing that, and Tor had actually picked up on it, that I would do the worst show—make it as punk rock as possible—as unclean, as untight...
As dirty and nasty and unpleasant as possible.
KYLE: Yeah, like a Darby Crash show. Darby never had a good performance—not one. Outside the studio, it was all complete crap. So I was really complimented when he said that...
What was the response to Solger, since you were trying to be a bad, awful, wretched hardcore band in the middle of a glam rock/garage punk/new wave thing?
KYLE: Well, people didn't understand us. The new kids, people like Andy Wood, and stuff, the Fartz—Blaine talked about how they were trying to emulate us—they liked us. There were a lot of bands who started moving in that direction, whether it was from us or something like Black Flag.
Pretty soon the scene was flooded with hardcore bands, and I thought most of them were pretty lousy, because they started getting kinda chunky after a while.
And there's only so much you can do with louder and faster—
KYLE: —and fuzzier.
Most people didn't understand us, but there were some people who thought we were good. The biggest compliment I ever got was the back to back nights where someone said we were better than Black Flag—to me Black Flag were the kings—and to have just one person in Seattle and one person in Portland, back to back, say that was...well, I said, "You're full of shit," but deep down I'm thinking, "Damn, that's a huge compliment."
Aside from the gigs with Black Flag were there any other memorable Solger shows?
KYLE: Yeah, our best one was when we did the show...we played at Randy Hall's studio. It was just total chaos—the best performance, but the worst musically—it was just awful, but it was just as far as putting on a punk show it was primo.
We got so wasted that I pissed my pants, took my pants off, punched the sound man, and I threw his monitor...Paul would play one song and I'd sing another. It was just a total wreck, but I'll run into people and they'll go, "Man, I still tell people about that show."
People were shocked, they were standing there staring (laughs). It was almost like a performance piece—people were trying to stick their tongues down my throat. There was a lady on LSD holding her pot out for me, and I kicked it out of her hands—she musta been 50 or 60 years old...just weird stuff.
Paul had done a bunch of...that stuff in the whipping cans. He was tanked up on that, plus we drank a bunch of Old English 800. We weren't supposed to play last, but the Refuzors refused to play after us. That irritated me, so I started cannonballing these Old English 800's until we were just totally...just...super fucked up. Then I just lost control. It was fun. I smashed a can into my head and had a black and blue face the next day, and I chipped my tooth, it was classic.
Why did the band split in the end? That's something I haven't seen addressed elsewhere.
KYLE: Well Paul was drifting more towards hanging out with the Fags, with Upchuck and all those guys. They were like...I didn't know that they were going to be as good as they were, but they ended up being pretty good industrial—pre-Ministry—type band.
I thought it was great stuff when I heard it, but he wanted to do something more artistic. He's also bi-polar, so his mood changes like every day—one day he wants to be in the Fags, the next day he wants to be in the Fartz, then he wants to do something like cruising music, then he wanted to go do something with Upchuck, with the Fags. It was really Paul pulling away, and it was pointless.
The end was when we were supposed to go to Portland and play with DOA after we played with them here. I just remember knowing that were going to break up. We were invited to go with DOA to Portland, and Paul and Tor said no. Me and Doug were the only ones who wanted to go.
I was just pissed. Mike Vrainey says I was actually in tears. I remember I went and smashed the wall in this nightclub called WREX, which was a gay bar, punched this hole in the wall. One of the guys from the Refuzors came over and really tore it wide open. The head of security was standing right there the whole time, didn't say a word because he was friend of ours.
I went down with DOA and watched their show, went out to a late dinner or early breakfast with Joey Shithead. I came back, went to Doug's place, he was living with the Fartz at that time, and said, "That's it, this band is over with."
The thing is, we never got along as people. We didn't even know each other—I met Paul through an ad, never knew the guy—now I've grown to love the guy, especially since he's going through this cancer, being at the hospital with him and so forth. Me and Doug, I got to watch Doug beat up a few people, like the Dead Boys and some other guy. Me and Tor, we never spoke. We were just four guys that were not really a band (laughs). Four guys playing music that had nothing in common.
Why did you decide to put out the EP, since Solger had already split?
KYLE: Well, we'd been recording it just to document the band. There was a band called Kaos, before the LA Kaos there was a Kent, Washington Kaos, and that was Loud Fart's band, he was the singer. He'd made a metal acetate record and I thought that was pretty cool and that we should do that. We got this guy, Steve Clark—when we did the jackets he wanted to be put down as Flippo Scrooge—and I just wanted to do an acetate, but he said, "If you're gonna do that, why not go ahead and make a record?"
I said, "Okay, but let's just make the minimum," since we didn't have much money—in fact we didn't have any money—but Doug had a job cleaning buses out, and he put up the money for the 514 records.
And then there were some tracks on cassettes. Were you involved with that or was it all Steve Rabow?
KYLE: I had given Jim Banner permission to use anything that Steve Clark had done for a Seattle compilation he wanted to make, and I told Steve that Jim had permission to do that. He went out and grabbed a tape from when we played at WREX with DOA, which was our last show. It had crappy production—I had a better tape of that show—and he didn't actually have permission to use that. My attitude then was, so long as you put it out and it's your dime, that's cool. I wasn't about money and I didn't care about that. The record says, "No copyright." I really didn't care about it.
When it came time to make the CD, I tried to get the tape that he'd transferred from Steve Clark's master, and he tried to hold it back from me. I told him, "Hey, I told you then that you could use it, and I'm telling you now that I want to borrow it, and I'll give it back to you in three days." I got it back to him the same day.
Jack Endino downloaded it and fixed it up.
Banner was involved with the Manson family, wasn't he?
KYLE: Yeah, he's a funny guy. Him and his brother. Strange guy. He's into a lot of the occult stuff. He'd call, and he'd talk to Charlie on the phone a lot and record their conversations. He makes CDs of Charlie's part of the conversations, takes himself out, just has hours of Charlie talking and philosophizing. He has this thing at whitedevilrecords.com, and he puts out CDs and records for Charlie Manson, just gives him whatever kind of support he can.
Banner's a different kind of guy. He was in an industrial group called Enstruction—I can't find them anywhere—but they're one of the first guys that started playing that weird...using machines...all sorts of weird noises. Well, they weren't the first because people were doing it in the sixties and seventies, but as far as punk rockers doing it...
Is there any Solger stuff that hasn't been released yet?
KYLE: Yeah, the entire Black Flag show is unreleased. We went through that, me and Jack Endino, and we listened to that vs. the DOA show and every song that wasn't already on the EP, we listened to, and between the two the WREX show was better.
There's two songs that aren't on the CD that are instrumental. One's the intro that we played every show—we'd start off with an instrumental and I'd come out of the crowd. It was supposed to symbolize just some guy coming out of the crowd and singing with a punk rock band—and then we'd break into I Hate It or something like that. That song was left out because it wouldn't make sense to someone listening to it on CD.
We had another one which could have had lyrics, but it was the one song that was meant for me just to fly into the crowd—instead of me wasting I Hate It or Dead Solger, or whatever, we had this song that was just for me to go flying into the crowd and thrash around. It was called Song Number 4, even though it wasn't necessarily the fourth song. I would just go crazy and trash the place during that song—it was pretty much a concept piece.
After Solger split did you do anything music-wise or did you get out of punk or what?
KYLE: I did the promoting thing, and I did...I tried to work with Tom from the Fartz. I remember we did one ska song at a fuck show. After playing with Paul it was really hard to work with anybody else. Even recently I've had a couple guys ask me to play with them. My brain is so weird, and I don't think anyone could even stand the stuff I would say on-stage. It just wouldn't make sense to them.
They just couldn't relate.
KYLE: I'm pretty out there, I don't know if you've read any of my writings outside of punk rock.
No, I haven't. Are they online or what?
KYLE: Yeah, if you go to remnantbride.com, a lot of what's in those writings are from me. You could even look for my name—you'll find some pretty bizarre stuff in there. There's also a Yahoo! group where I have a lot my writings, it's very spiritual and stuff like that. But people don't wanna hear that (laughs).
Speaking of spiritual matters, what's this about you joining a cult?
KYLE: Yeah, that's the Remnant Bride. It's funny, I just had Jack Endino over for Thanksgiving, we had him over Sunday—that's when we did it. I had the leader of this cult and his daughter over here to have dinner with my family, and my brother came over as well. My son couldn't believe he was sitting next to Jack Endino, the guy who discovered Nirvana, and his dad's former cult leader, sitting there, eating Thanksgiving dinner.
But that's the way I like it. Mark Arm from Mudhoney invited me down to the Kerry party on election night, and he wrote, "and if you're voting for Bush, go to hell." I said, "Well, I'm already in hell, and I'm voting for Bush. Can I come to your party anyway?"
(laughs)
KYLE: So I went down there, the only Bush-ite at the party, and I went down and just had a blast. Drinking, enjoying myself, I just like to be in places of conflict.
There's something to be said for that.
KYLE: Well, in the email he sent me he said that he wanted to be around like-minded people, and my thinking is what good is it to be around like-minded people?
It's an echo chamber.
KYLE: It's crap. If you're going to change this world you have to be around non-like-minded people and by talking you can rough out each other's edges and start to understand them a bit. I'd rather put myself in places where people are not going to accept me, or I'm going to rub people the wrong way, or both of those and a little more, and have enough humor to laugh about it. I think Jack had a wonderful time over here. I think it was quite fun.
I had a good time with Mark, trying to get him to play the Specials, Ghost Town, since they had the Specials there. That would have been apt since the place started clearing out pretty quickly once Bush started winning. I just like doing that sort of stuff, and people don't understand that.
Well, that's it for my questions. It's been a blast to interview you, great fun. You've got some great stories.
KYLE: Alright. Are you publishing anywhere?
Yeah, I'm working on a magazine.
KYLE: Just spell Solger correctly and I think you've got it...
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