Legal Weapon interview Pg.2

Kat : You get guys who take your publishing rights away from you, they kind of dick you around. It's not very productive if you're going out and continue to release stuff, they'll hold you up. There's a possibility when we get back we might work on a KROQ compilation. Like "Rodney on the ROQ".

Adam : But we're reluctant to sign away any publishing rights because it doesn't give us the freedom to release what we wish.

Kat : And also, the only band we know that is going to be on that record for sure is The Plugz, and they are getting pretty new wavish. The only attempt at mainstream that we did was our last album, and that's as far as I, personally, want to take it. I like bands that are more like cult bands. They're more into a certain sound, and developing their own sound rather than trying to appeal to mass audiences. As long as I can tour and make records that I think are at least satisfactory, and get a decent following, that makes it worthwhile to go out and play for people. But I'm not into selling out and changing our sound to the point that it sounds like nothing. Like Iggy Pop or Lou Reed- the dinosaurs, so to speak, who survived and did it with style. They changed every single time they recorded.

MU : How far would you like to see yourselves go? Would you like to play in front of a real large audience?

Kat : As far as playing, I like a more personal atmosphere. Something like the Santa Monica Civic would be fun to play in just to deal with the big sound system, to see how your band sounds and acts on a larger stage.

MU : What's the biggest show you've played?

Kat : 1500 easily.

Adam : With this present lineup I think the biggest show was at The Channel with about 750.

Kat : The Cramps show was sold out. That was a thousand people.

Brian : U.K. Subs- that was a big one.

Kat : There were about 2000 people easily, that was a bloodbath.

Brian : We'd definately like to play big time shows and fly here and fly there and make all kinds of money.

Kat : But right now we're crammed into a van.

Brian : We're not exactly expecting it.

MU : Do you have other jobs back home?

Brian : No, not at this time. We dropped everything for this.

Adam : 9 to 5 really is a drag, and many people will tell you that.

Kat : It's better to be in a band and work 24 hours a day and stay up till 5 in the morning.

Adam : Wake up really heavy headed and say, "Wow, I have a show tonight and 8 hours to get there".

Ed : We had to drag Adam out of his job.

Adam : My million dollar gas station job.

Ed : That's the only time we came close to breaking up.

Kat : Yeah, it was right before we left to tour. It's like when you do a tour like this, you give everything up. You just say, "Well, this is it. I may be in the gutter tomorrow".

Adam : We don't know where we're at right now, but it's still fun. That's what it's all about. When it stops being fun...

Ed : I want money.

Kat : I want a new pair of shoes.

Adam : Money is nice but there's more, like masses of screaming people when you're playing, that's always nice.

Ed : Masses of screaming people throwing bottles.

Adam : I've never had a really rejecting crowd.

Ed : Some people throw beer cans just for the hell of it, they don't do it maliciously or anything.

Kat : They're all empty. If they were full, that would be a real pain.

Adam : We just throw them back.

Ed : I had a guy throw a whole daiquiri at me. It landed on my bass, sprayed my bass.

Kat : Was he telling you to shut up?

Ed : No, it was just something to do. Afterwards, he came back and shook my hand and told me we played great.

Kat : He baptised you.

Adam : It's like Fear, they get bathed in spit and beer and it's like, "Hey, we love you".

Kat : Same thing with the Kennedys.

MU : Have you gotten a good reception all over?

Adam : Basically, we've never been actually rejected. We've had people who just stand there when we play the new wave disco clubs.

Kat : Yeah, we made those mistakes. There was this one place where they had Go Go dancers. I said, "Get down out of there, you can't dance to this". On one southeast tour they booked us in a preppy club and had a cover band doing Duran Duran songs open for us.

Brian : We chased out their audience.

Kat : Sometimes we really get shafted as far as opening bands.

Adam : We get put with these bands that have nothing to do with what we are doing.

Kat : I'd rather play with thrash bands any day. We've done really well with thrash bands. I was kind of sceptical when we were going to play with (thrash bands) in Boston and New York. I thought, "This is it, we're going to get massacred" because we play rock and roll, but it is like speed rock and has a hard edge to it, but it's not "umpa umpa umpa". I thought they were going to hate it, but they liked it. I thought they were going to hate it because there's a girl in the band. That's another thing people like to hit you up about, if there's a chick singing. It's like, "We can really hit her up and intimidate her".

Ed : It doesn't work, does it? She intimidates them.

Kat : Some people seem so dense when they try to pull that crap. One thing that I see nowadays that really bums me out, the kids are like fascists in their beliefs in music. They refuse to like other bands. Like the Zero Boys here, I would think they would have a very large following, because of the music they play. It's something you can listen to over and over again. That's the idea of music.

Ed : I think that when (The Zero Boys) come out with their next album, they'll pick up a good following. I heard their first album and I was just amazed. Where the hell have these guys been the last few years?

MU : In the cornfields.

Kat : There are a lot of bands that are like that. Bands are either doing 2 things- they are either doing real hard rock and roll or their doing thrash. Or they do art music, which we don't talk about.

MU : What's next for Legal Weapon?

Kat : We'll have a new album out in about 3 months, it'll be a lot different.

Adam : I think this next album is going to have a lot of energy to it, more like our live shows. People compare us to our recent albums and say, "You're nothing like that live, you're much more powerful". So we're going to try to incorporate that live feel into our next album.

Kat : We're going to produce it too. That will be the big difference. We've had too many people dick around with our sound. What happens with a lot of these bands is people try to make them a little more commercial.

Adam : And it gets wimpy.

Kat : That's what happened with one of the Circle Jerks' records. They tried to make it kind of commercial and it came out with a thin sound.

MU : How long did it take to record "Your Weapon"?

Kat : Three weeks, and the words and everything were written right then and there. It's basically a movie about the scene.

MU : Do the radio stations in L.A. play any hardcore?

Adam : Plenty of college stations do.

Kat : "KNAC".

Adam : KNAC is a good station, but KROQ has gone full art bands.

Ed : We still have Rodney.

Adam : But Rodney is slowly getting pushed into the art scene too, and he goes for a lot of little girly bands.

Brian : There's a lot of college stations out in California that play punk rock music.

Adam : There's a major station, KLAS, The Def Leppard, Journey type station, they have a local music show every Sunday at midnight. They'll play a tape that you send them. It's on Sunday at midnight, and who's up then? But at least they're making an effort. It's something. It's nice to at least make it onto that major station. Maybe some of the old faithfuls are out there listening. And you get a little bit besides Def Leppard. I wish more of them would do it, but it's just really mainstream. The college stations really pump it out though.

MU : Do you play a lot of colleges?

Kat : No, actually we don't.

Brian : We just get the radio station interviews. The thing that's neat about those interviews is you can just go in there and plug yourselves. They'll play 3 cuts before they do the interview, they'll play 3 in between, and end up playing all of both albums by the time you get out of there. I just wish more stations would do it.

Kat : They're afraid it's a communist plot to ruin the kids. What's always disturbed me about America is every generation, we go through the same thing. Everyone looks a little different and the music is obviously speeding up as we progree in society or whatever. It's like a big fear that there's a subversive element that's trying to infiltrate our kids, weaken their backbones, and make them "bad Americans". I think it's part of our culture to do this every 10 years and make a big change. But I think the punk bands now are making a hell of a lot more of a statement. It's the most revolutionary music scene that's ever happened. It's just about the biggest underground scene. It's like in the 50s, people didn't want Rock and Roll. (Punk) is being supressed a lot. Of course, it's not going to work because the more you tell somebody not to do it, the more they are going to do it. That's always been the way I've been all my life. That's why I love punk rock. It's the way things should be. You should be able to do anything you want as long as you're not totally massacring everything in your way. It was good, it was refreshing, it was the energy that music needed.