HFL (Hard Fast & Loud): Over the years I’ve been heavily involved in the music scene both in going to shows and playing in bands. In the 1980’s I found punk rock music, which completely transformed me as a person. Cutting my hair and going to punk shows was like being reborn. Along with the music there were a lot of drugs. LSD, weed, alcohol, pills, and whatever else I could get my hands on. It started out as a weekend thing and turned into an ordeal that began to consume my life. This was all based around the punk rock scene in Huntington Beach & Los Angeles, California. Before being in a band of my own I went to a lot of shows. Places like Fenders Ballroom, The Cathey De Grande, Melody Dance Center, The Olympic Auditorium, Skateway Theater, The Rollerdome, Cypress College, Cuckoos Nest, The Dungeon, and many back yard parties and shit holes. There were times when I went on tour with Dont No to Arizona, Vegas, and The On broadway in San Francisco just to name a few. It seemed as though we played every little dump stop we could find. Some of the places were like rooster farms and chicken coups. It was crazy but I didn’t care because I was, for the most part, wasted every night. In 1987 I was already sober and going to meetings. That was when I started making music. I would sing into a ghetto blaster microphone while the cassette tape was recording and that was how we made our demos. It sounded horrible! People use to laugh at me. It was brutal. I was embarrassed for them mostly. I just thought, “What are you doing with your life? At least I’m trying to create something for people to identify with”. And deeper down inside myself I was thinking, “you fucking whores!” This one girl I knew kept smoking and sucking cock and working at a strip club and I actually ended up fucking her too. I fucked her and her best friend. Needless to say they weren't friends after that and I really didn’t give a fuck! One night I saw her at a club dancing on the dance floor and I took my gum out of my mouth and threw it in her hair from about 10 feet away. She started fucking with her hair as she tried to keep her composure. Me and my friends just laughed as she made her way to the bathroom to figure things out. HFL finally got a set of songs together and we booked a pay-to-play gig at The Marquee in Garden Grove, California. A hippy spot where Alice in Chains played and a bunch of other hair bands. I wore a wig and when we came out on stage I tore the wig off my head and said, “are you ready for some harsh reality?” People didn’t know what to think. The next thing that happened was ashtrays and tables started flying everywhere. Glass ashtrays. And the riot started. We made it through about half of our first song and the place was getting destroyed! Hippy bouncers were getting beat up. They shut the power off and that was the end of that gig. I sort of knew that would set the tone for the future of my music career. It was a blessing and a curse. Many people feared us. No one would book us shows. We played back yard parties and I sprayed mace on the crowd. Eventually we started getting shows with Guttermouth, Face to Face, Strungout, Pennywise and other local bands. Korn would later open for us at a trade show party in San Diego and we would go on to play shows with Sublime, No Doubt, Offspring, and many other well known acts like 311. We recorded two full length albums and four EP’s.” Eventually we got signed to a shitty label and Scott Ian from Anthrax produced a five song EP for us title “Old School Pride. We recorded our full-length album not long after that. We made the record at Jaun Croucier’s house in Pales Verdes, California. He was the bass player for the 80’s hair band Ratt. It was an interesting time for us. Although I never did love the quality of the recording, we nonetheless released the album on Lethal records and did one tour to support the album. But at the end of the tour it was a losing proposition. Our bass player was doing speed and seeing aliens and a couple of the other guys were smoking heroin on the weekends. It eventually turned into a complete nightmare and we broke up in 1995. The circumstances of drug use eventually led to Joey Hughes (Lead Guitar Player) killing himself.

Infuse: I went into somewhat seclusion after that and reemerged in 1999. I went on tour with Straight Faced for the summer of 1999 and later that year joined a band. We ended up calling ourselves infuse. We recorded at Stall No. 2 which is the Pennywise Studio located in Redondo Beach, California. The recording came out amazing but we broke up before we could even do anything with it.

In 2000 I landed a job with Linkin Park as their merch’ guy and driver. We were in an RV with nine guys and a trailer opening for the Kotton Mouth Kings. The venues were average size and I had been to most of them the year before with straight faced. The tour was two months and at the end of the two-month period everyone except for myself got fired. I was still sober and still had a job so I felt great about the entire ordeal. I knew Linkin Park was going to be a huge band but I didn’t realize they would last for as long as they have. I wore many hats on the tours after the RV. At one point I had so many responsibilities I thought I was going to kill myself the last day of Ozzfest in 2001. Sure, I was getting my dick sucked almost every night by the hottest sluts and having threesomes and all sorts of great stuff. But I was dying inside. I lost myself on tour. I traveled all over the world with LP. Eventually we had some time off and I managed to keep my job. LP ended up giving me 2% of the net total of their merchandise, which at the time, I had no idea how lucrative it would become. I found out very quickly as the big checks started rolling in after the tours. But as always, things change. Everyone was fired once again and I managed to stay on board. I helped to create bandmerch.com, which stemmed from me telling LP not to take a big advance from Winterland or Giant and give their merch away. They listened to me and the rest is history! A month before we were set to go on tour with Metallica in support of Meteora my 2% went away like the blowing wind. It was in a conversation with Donn Delson from bandmerch.com that I would come to know the meaning of disloyalty. He told me on the phone one day about a month before we were to go on that tour, “your 2% is going away and we hired a guy you will be working beneath as he has more experience with arena merchandise”. I was floored! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But it was true. I was so devastated that I ended up resigning three days later. The person they hired ended up getting fired for stealing and being drunk on the job, two things in which you would never have to worry about with me. Donn made it very clear to me that the guys in Linkin Park could trust me with everything and anything when it came to their merchandise. And I made sure I was always on point with everything! But that wasn’t enough to keep me on board. I wanted my 2% or I wasn’t going on tour. 2% is a lot of fucking money and Donn had it out for me that cheap Jew!

 

The music industry is a cruel and shallow money trench. A long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side. Hunter S. Thompson