The reason I'm doing
this website is because it's sort of an extension of my ego and persona
and it's about the things I like and definitely about the things
I dislike. Plus I wanted to put together something that I could get my
friends involved in. But there are very few people that will actually
do something you ask them to do if there's no money in it. Why bother
right? I wouldn't do it. But that isn't the reason I'm doing this. This
is a place where anyone with an internet connection can get an exclusive
interview with their favorite artist, read about a subject you wont find
on any other website, and hear about good underground music. If you want
to write something about your local shitty music scene, send me an email.
There are way to many bands and that's why I want to keep it to the real
underground stuff which I'm still learning about myself. Brooklyn has
an amazing scene in which I'm tapping into.
Word to Miss Clark and The little red writer for contributing
their columns. I like writers that no one knows about. Writers that have
mad talent and skills; that's what Miss Clark & The little red writer
possess, mad skills and talent. This website is for people that wouldn't necessarily
have a chance of getting a deal with a publishing house even though they
possess unparalleled writing mastery. That's the thing that
sucks about the literary world: you have to follow rules and get an agent
and all that bullshit. Fuck that. This website is a publishing company.
That's actually how all this started out. It was originally joelbullbooks.com.
Yes, we publish books. Look in the shop section. This is like City Lights
all over again but the year is 2008 and we are putting books out just
like lawrence ferlinghetti published his very first book on his own
titled, "Pictures of The Gone World". Ferlinghetti also published Allen
Ginsberg's Howl poem which turned into an obscenity trial against Ferlinghetti.
The case was won by Ferlinghetti when Judge Clayton Horn decided the poem
was of redeeming social importance. You get the idea. DIY is not something
found in Elle Magazine or Details. I'm sure those publications had humble
beginnings. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they were spoiled from the start.
That's really no concern of mine unless they want to write a check to
us and help us all out with funding so we can publish works that wouldn't necessarily
see the light of day. Maybe that person is you. Maybe you're a writer
and you want to publish a book. I can help you with that. Send me an email
and we can discuss details. Thanks for coming by. Joel Bull
I’m not going to do some standard narrative crap that actually is written by myself sort of starting out with some fake shit like, “Joel Hendricks was born…” I’m just going to break it down as best I can so here goes… I was born in East LA on April 25th, 1967 at 8:08AM. My father was adopted so I have no idea what my “real” last name is, but I’m happy that it’s a cool one nonetheless. I do know he comes from Italian decent and possibly a Polish mother. He has told me his biological father was a barber and that he doesn’t know too much about his biological mother. Apparently, the building burned down in Omaha, Nebraska where all the records were kept. My father was in an orphanage until the age of two. My mother is German & French and was also born in Nebraska. I never knew my grandparents on either side of my family, let alone anyone other than my aunt on my mother’s side as well as my uncle. My aunt Arlene is my mothers’ twin sister. We’ve kept in touch over the years but very briefly. You could say I’m not very family oriented. This isn’t by choice, more circumstance than anything. My parents divorced in 1974 when I was 6 years old. Life took a turn for the worse once the divorce transpired. I felt really, really lost for a very, very long time... In fact, I remember vividly sitting in a green 1973 van across from a courthouse in some little shit town in Nebraska crying my eyes out with my stepmother in the drivers seat and me in the passenger seat. I had no clue what a divorce was at that age. I truly did not know what was going on; but I did know that my mother was in that court building and I couldn’t see her. When my father returned to the van he was alone and we left with out my mother. I just had no clue what was going on… All I could do is cry… The van pulled away and my life was changed forever…
The next thing I knew there were all kinds of step relatives around me.
Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, cousins… I didn’t
know how to react to all these people. I really wanted my parents to get
back together but that never happened. I suffered emotionally and got
into a lot of trouble as a result of the neglect I felt at home. My stepfamily
consisted of some real live degenerates. I had two stepbrothers and four
stepsisters. We traveled all over the countryside as my fathers’
job as an asbestos worker was priority number one. We once traveled from
Missouri to California in a black 1965 Cadillac Hurst. It was on that
trip that I got caught masturbating in the back of the Hurst while we
were stopped at a rest area. Some guy was walking by the car and looked
in the window. There I was, blowing blanks into my pants. I felt such
shame when that happened… All those feelings of remorse and guilt
and regret and the inadequacy and that sense of being inferior and maladjusted
to situations and being completely discontent most of the time and the
isolation I felt was just so overwhelming… I fucking hated my life!
Before the divorce…
I spent the first two years of my life in East LA. We then traveled all
over the country of which little I remember. In the beginning it was my
sister Lisa, my brother Brian, and my father and mother Daniel and Darlene.
I don’t know if the mind is so powerful that it blocks out all the
negative things and remembers only what we subconsciously allow it to
remember, but I do remember certain things, and most of it was the troubled
part of my childhood. I was a thief at a very young age and that behavior
carried over into my adult life and got me in a lot of trouble. But the
things I do remember were playing doctor with the neighborhood girls and
touching tits and pussies at a very young age. Onetime my brother and
sister locked the babysitter out of the house and I took a shit on the
floor. Another time my brother would get the babysitter naked on the bed
and I would touch her muff with my mothers’ shoe and run away down
the hall and hide in a closet…
After the divorce…
It really seemed like my stepmother was out to get me, and my father just
followed along. They wanted all of the kids in the family to pay for every
mistake we made. Like kneeling in the corner on a hardwood floor for hours
upon hours. My stepmother smashed my head against the refrigerator door
early one morning because I was late getting up for school. There was
another time she threw a shaving cream can at my head and cut my eye open.
I came home with a really bad haircut and she hated it. The last thing
I was going to do was let her touch my hair. She gave me the shittiest
haircuts in the world and I had to wear those crooked fucking haircuts
throughout my young life. It was a travesty. There were several times
I wanted to kill myself because of the humiliation and shame I felt. I
didn’t want to live a lot of the time and every chance I would get
I escaped by playing with my hot wheel collection or doing something that
was away from everyone. Once I got older there were other things that
I found myself escaping into… One time my parents found a pillowcase
I used for a cum rag and made a big deal out of it in front of my brothers
and sisters. “What the hell is this? What is this?” My father
was waving the pillowcase with yellow cum stains all over it as he yelled
at me some more... I stood there sweating almost ready to cry, but you
didn’t cry because you would only get more of a beating! It was
complete humiliation in our house. The neighborhood kids feared my stepmother.
One time my dad chained our dog to a tree so the dog could barely move.
He beat that dog and all of us kids like we were slaves. We paid the price
for fucking up. It was brutal. The jealousy between my stepbrother and
myself just suffocated any kind of father/son relationship I was to have.
My stepbrother was a year older than me. He got into a really bad car
accident in the early 1990’s and is mentally challenged and in a
home with a caretaker. It’s really sad. He was drinking and lost
control of his car and hit a tree. I’ve been to see him once since
it happened and it was really sad to see him that way. I stole money from
everyone including him, my step-grandmother, stepmother, father, brother,
sister, mother; I stole money from everyone like I was a junkie. But I
wasn’t a junkie. I was stealing way before I ever did drugs. Once
I started doing drugs the stealing became a priority and I only did it
more.
Things progressed for me and I ended up going to jail when I turned 18.
The year was 1985 and I was in C12 at OCJ (Orange County Jail) in Santa
Ana, California. I hung out with the Asians and had to fight my way through
some shit in that motherfucker! I didn’t want to ride in the white
car with a bunch of back stabbing peckerwoods. That wasn’t my thing.
Even though I grew up in Huntington Beach, California and knew a bunch
of skinheads, I never liked the hatred those people possessed. I was a
skinhead that had Jewish, Asian, and Mexican friends. I remember going
to shows at Reseda Country Club and seeing the big overweight Jew punkers.
They were intimidating but I wasn’t a threat to them. I didn’t
care what color your skin was or where you came from. That narrow-minded
bullshit is for the weak and futile. I’ve always had an eclectic
group of friends. Being punk rock is an attitude and there really doesn’t
need to be a certain look for a person to be punk. But when I was growing
up in the 80’s punk scene it was mandatory that you looked as fucked
as possible. Stealing became a problem along with being punk rock and
like I said, I ended up in jail. I went back to jail almost every summer
for about five years and each time it seemed like I did six months.
It was like one minute we moved to California from Missouri (because that
is where my step family is from) and the next thing I knew we were moving
back to Missouri. I fucking hated Missouri and the fact that I had to
leave all my friends behind in Huntington Beach. In Missouri I got beat
up by black girls in middle school because I punched some kid in the face
for mouthing off to my stepsister who I had a crush on all of our childhood.
One of the black girls stood up for me as all of her friends chased me
onto the bus one day as school was letting out. It was fucking scary!
We soon moved back to California and that’s when I made some long-term
friends. First I got into the hippie scene. Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Alice
Cooper and that late 1970’s hippie shit! But it wasn’t long
and I was into punk rock music. There was a girl in middle school that
hated me and one day we passed each other in the hallway. Some words were
exchanged and she ended up freaking out and tore off my Led Zeppelin shirt.
Needless to say her and I got into a fistfight after school. She stabbed
me in the hand with a pencil and I punched her in the head and threw her
on the ground then ran to the nurse’s office crying.
I don’t think that girl ever really knew that she changed my life
forever… It was a blessing because that’s when I got my haircut
and started listening to Stiff Little Fingers and Bad Brains. I started
going to punk shows, got into fights, got beat up, fell in love with punk
rock, went to jail, fucked a lot of girls, went back to jail, took LSD,
did all kinds of drugs, stole cars, smoked cocaine in hotel rooms until
my body was numb, fell in love with surfing, fell in love with music again,
actually always loved music, started my own punk band HFL (Hard Fast &
Loud), played shows all over, got sober, went back to jail sober on a
burglary charge, got out, made music, recorded a bunch of albums, helped
other bands along the way, fucked a lot more girls, got head all the time
and had threesomes and was a fucking jerk asshole, relapsed after 10 years
sober, got sober again, got a job with Linkin Park, had my trials throughout
my sobriety, moved to New York, moved back to Orange County, moved back
to New York, and here I am.
JH ARTIST FUND
MC59 / OCD / Cass Dillon / Compound Radio / Holly Brook / Caitlin Moe / Jason Maloney
© Copyright 2007 joelhendricks.com