he sounds fucking perfect singing save it for later. he voice has got back to what it used to be.

so being a drunk skater kid in the eighties, i of
course fell in love with punk rock. i could not get enough.
i would make up excuses to sneak out of my parents suburban
home and i would go to shows all the time in downtown
sacramento, ca. even though the shows were cheap at that
time, it was getting a little hard for a kid to come up with
beer money and enough to get into the club.

what did i do? i talked to the promoter of the venue and asked
if i could work out a way to get in for free. i told him that i would
pass out flyers for the show at my school and to all of my friend,
and that i would put posters up in my area of town. in return,
i would get put on the guest list at the show with at least one of
my friends. i thought that it made look like a big shot and i
also could split the work with someone.

it went so well, that he started paying me to help promote the
shows. and that is where a lot of years started.

i worked with him for a long time, oddly doing punk rock shows
and dance nights in any venue that we could get. we finally found
a place that would give us three nights a week. they would get
all the bar, and we would get all the door. strangely enough, it was
a gay bar in sacramento. a place called bo jangles. we really could
not call it that on the nights that we were doing shows there, so
we called it Club Me. thought that it was funny.

punk started dying off quite a bit in the later eighties, and really
the only thing that was selling was hard rock and metal shows.
it was never really my cup of tea. so we wanted to reinvent the
club again, and a few nights a month, we called it the cattle club
(music that was meant to be heard). four nights a week with live
music then and one night a week we were still doing dance.

the cattle club really focused more on alternative music at the
time, and was too hip for its own good. there was an uncanny
knack of getting bands there right before they got big. so we
ended up losing money on a lot of shows. google that with
sacramento, and it will tell you the story better than i can. it was
a little crappy sweatbox bar that could cram 200 people in it
if we were lucky. there were more than a few nights that we
would figure a way to put double that in there. so many great
bands. remember this was a small shit box club. social distortion,
pearl jam, nirvana, alice in chains, mud honey, primus, janes,
lush, ride, the list goes on and on.

during most of this time when i was making a living as
a live music promoter, i really started digging into the
largest promotion company on the west coast, bill graham
presents. i used to carry a photo of the man with me in my
wallet, somewhat of a joke, but i would show it to people
and tell them that is what i wanted to become. so i started
moonlighting a little over there also.

just so we have the roll call right. i was promotion at three
different address at the time, working for BGP, and i was
trying to hold a little bit of a day job also.

i wanted to consolidate this effort and knew that i needed
to move to a bigger venue than that. i started managing and
promoting a club that we renamed ?the edge? and worked
there until i moved to texas.

when i came back to california, piercing almost full time, i
was still trying to do a little live music on the side also just
because i loved it so much still. i ended up working quite a
bit with bill graham presents again, but the story of why i
left there is almost too long to tell. the short of it was that
bill had been dead for a few years, and the company did not
hold to the integrity and standard that he always made sure
was a part of each and every event that he put on. make no
bones. he was the one that put together the first lallopolooza.
the first guy that understood how huge alternative music
could be.

when i left there, to satisfy my craving, i just started touring
with bands. road managing, sound tech, and even just simple
production on the road. i would only go out with guys that i
knew and liked. i did not want to babysit a bunch of drunk
asshole rockstars. so i ended up going out with a lot of medium
sized punk bands. but my favorite tour was in 94? with
7 seconds and the bouncing souls. youth brigade and screw 32
was a lot of fun, but 7 seconds will always be the best.

http://images18.fotki.com/v329/photo...MG_0668-vi.jpg

http://images15.fotki.com/v337/photo...MG_0666-vi.jpg
the fluid was a favorite of mine

http://images14.fotki.com/v20/photos...MG_0667-vi.jpg
victims family is a great band if you have never heard them

http://images18.fotki.com/v328/photo...MG_0669-vi.jpg
NOFX headling a small show that we did. five bands for five bucks

http://images18.fotki.com/v330/photo...MG_0670-vi.jpg
evlis is everywhere. i have a photo of me and mojo with no pants on somewhere

http://images18.fotki.com/v24/photos...MG_0671-vi.jpg
buck was shot by an old man feeding birds in the park

http://images15.fotki.com/v338/photo...MG_0672-vi.jpg
there are plenty of people that are descendants purists, but i love ALL also

http://images18.fotki.com/v25/photos...MG_0673-vi.jpg
mudhoney on a sunday night

http://images18.fotki.com/v329/photo...MG_0676-vi.jpg
primus could not headline a saturnight show at the time

http://images14.fotki.com/v20/photos...MG_0677-vi.jpg
i would date a girl that remembers that band. bigger show at the dance place

http://images14.fotki.com/v20/photos...MG_0678-vi.jpg

http://images18.fotki.com/v330/photo...MG_0679-vi.jpg

and one of the first dance nights that i did on my own. i was
still not even old enough to get into the bar
http://images18.fotki.com/v330/photo...MG_0664-vi.jpg

sunday am bump:)

Got a few that are missing to that thread (thanks Aly). All the love in the world Sean :)

http://www.thebudapests.com/images/img_3153.jpg

http://www.thebudapests.com/images/img_0219.jpg

I love Irish Pimp!

This is a great read ;-)

10. What the fuck do Texans want with vintage guitars?

after working in live music and the clubs for a good amount
of my life at that moment, and still living in my home town,
not really adventuring out of it, a close friend of mine since
childhood got stationed in El Paso, Texas and was going to
be there for the rest of his gig in the army. he was bummed
about some of the decisions that he made, and was really
homesick, so i decieded to load of some of the boys that
i lived with and move all of us to Texas.

rent was dirt cheap, it was right on the border of mexico,
and i was ready for a change. leave the faster paced life
that i was living and slow down a bit. i was in the middle
of a really big swing in a different direction. i had been
on the wagon for about a year, totally dry from drinking,
i had stopped eating meat, and i was taking a hand full
of political science classes mostly emphasizing in
feminism and socialism. it was a strange chance to try
coop living in a different place.

very early nineties now, we had just got done trying to
put together some outdoor dance parties on the west
coast, nothing anyone had been doing really (raves) and
i thought that texas might be a fun place to try something
like that also. we loaded up a huge white can that we
bought, took almost nothing but clothes and a few chairs
since there were only two in the van, and after driving for
thirty hours, ended up in the middle of the desert in a town
that i really was not ready for.

after sleeping off the drive, we ate a little food across from
the hotel that we were staying at and i met a girl there that
night that told me about the ?hip? club in town and said
the next night was the night to go. about two months after
that night i started dating that same girl and went out with
her for almost three years.

we went off to the club and it was a shock. we had been
on the edge of the dance thing in cali, and texas was easily
nine months behind everything that we had been doing.
started talking to the dj there about music and such, he was
all excited about the fact that someone there knew some of
the bands that he was into, and asked me what i was going
to do for a job in town. i told him that i had no idea and
no plans, that i had not even been there a week yet. he
gave me his card and told me to visit him at work the next
day.

turns out that he owned a vintage guitar shop and had been
dealing guitars for years on end. he offered me and job and
i told him that i knew nothing about old guitars, i just knew
about music. he offered to teach me anything that i needed
to know and told me that i would pick it up as we went along.
that started something that i did for almost three years. it
was a blast.

we would go around the entire southwest to old pawn shops
and estate sales. finding something hocked, or an old fender
that someone played in his high school band. if the year was
right, the finish was good, and the parts still original, we would
buy a $500 guitar that we would flip the next week for $7500.
he had a list of old rock and rollers that would collect, there
would be places like the Hard Rock Cafe or high end music
shops that would just buy guitars from us unseen just because
of our reputation at the time.

we made cash every week. traveled all the time. got to meet
great guys that used to play in bands that would listen to on
the radio, and we got to hang out with whatever big rock band
at the time was in town playing and most of the time sell them
something on top of it. the best out of that was when we got
to spend time with U2 on the zoo tv tour. the sugar cubes and
public enemy were on the bill also. it was nice to be able to
meet the guys in U2, but i had always had a thing for bjork and
got to spend a few nights with her.

eventually i got burned on living in the desert. no trees, everything
was brown, the summers were too hot, i missed northern califonia.
but i did get to take few great stories with me and i did get to
deal a few awesome pieces of music history. john lennon?s first
vox ac30, one of elvis?s acoustic guitars, a few gretches that i
wished that i had not sold, and more than one of the guitars from
the rolling stones. there are still times that i look at the wall when
i walk by a pawn shop just to see what they have, or stop and drive
by a yard sale because i knew that was a neck from a 67? tele.

http://images18.fotki.com/v328/photo...MG_0680-vi.jpg

that's sweeeeeeeeeeeeet!! :pimp
"but i did get to take few great stories with me and i did get to
deal a few awesome pieces of music history. john lennon?s first
vox ac30, one of elvis?s acoustic guitars, a few gretches that i
wished that i had not sold, and more than one of the guitars from
the rolling stones."

Right On:thumbsup

monday bump :)

Sean is a Super Human.

Im always proud to call him friend.


Big B

9. What is tower records?

when i came back to california from texas, i was still piercing
but i never considered it a real job, even something that i would
want to do as a career. i still had money from the guitar gig and
i didnt want to sit on my ass too long, so i went out to find a
meanless job to pay taxes on. something that would fill the hours
in the day and make me feel like i was doing something while
i was reinventing myself. i was working for bill grahman presents
on and off, making jewelry and piercing out of my house at
the time, but none of it really felt solid. because of too many
weird books and college courses that would never go towards
a degree or job of any sort ( i was spelling woman with a Y at
the time to make sure that i was not using male dominated
language and was vegan), i felt like i needed to go back to some
sort of artist type existence.

sacramento is the corporate home of my favorite record store
chain, http://www.towerrecords.com and they keep all the main
warehouses there. in its time, it was a great store and the catalog
that they kept for a chain store was awesome. still at the top,
family owned and run, it was something that i could sign up for.
i didnt want to work in the music department, i was too much
of a snob at the time, so i went to work in the movie department.

i worked in the foreign and independent department of the video.
basicly what my job entailed was to review movies and decided
how many of them we were going to stock at which stores. i had
a job sitting around all day and watching movies. some might
think a dream come true.

i would watch almost nothing but abstract indy films and things
with subtitles. some of them amazing films, and got into to it
so much that i was talking movies home with me and watching
them there also. i was up to about five films a day, sometimes
six. black and whites. french. things that were three hours long
and had no speaking parts in them. director?s cuts of films that
were abstract to start with. i started going to critic showings of
new foreign films. going to showing where the director whould
be there for a question and answer after the film. not calling
them movies anymore, just calling it film. i had become a
movie art fag.

i left that job and went full bore into piercing afterwards, and
still to the day, i have a hard time going to an independent film.
i will look at it and think ?this is going to be a movie about two
gay Pakistani men living in london. one of their grandmothers
dies, and they have to walk across europe to get her rocking chair.
there will be long black and white shots of them staring at each
other not saying a word, just smoking filterless cigarettes. after
the movie is over, there will be a bunch of people out front
talking about how it touched them and how mainstream media
can never really be art?

after that, i will go home and watch adam sandler or bill murry
movie and eat ice cream just to shake off the thought of even
seeing something like that again. it almost makes me want to
eat meat and watch porn.

12. What did you get a scholorship for? Why didn't you take it?

when i was in high school, i was a drunken punk rock skater piece
of shit pile. i mean i spent a lot of time vomiting during lunch breaks
when i was not getting into fights on campus with jocks. i picked
fights with teachers, counselors, couches. i spent time almost every
week in an office getting suspended or in detention.

oddly, though the whole process, i was in honor classes and got
straight grades. when i found out that public school systems had
to let all students try out for sports, i thought it would be the
most fucked up thing to make the football team just to be an
asshole to all the jocks that we were giving a hard time to. just
to ruin their little club. turns out that i was good at the sport and
ended up playing varsity for two years and a little more.

so there i was, major disciple problem, but an honor roll athlete.
the school didnt really know how to deal with me, so they let me
graduate early with a diploma instead of just expelling me.

this is the same time that i had been promoting shows and working
at a live music bar putting stuff together. every night i got to drink
at the bar after the front door closed, and every morning i was going
to first period history.

almost from nowhere, and i really didnt know, but i was offered
a scholorship for a private school. full ticket ride. so here is the
choice that i had in front of me. i had been going to school for
thirteen years straight, im not even eighteen yet, and i was looking
at moving out of my town and doing another six years.
rock and roll, or school? get to drink in a bar every night and
flirt with girls that were four or five years older than me?
move to a dorm room and start taking even more classes?
i turned it down flat and stayed in town. other than a few
classes here and there, i never went to school.

Sean, seen you around, but havent gotten to meet you yet.

Sick Ambush man! I'm really enjoying it.

Look forward to meeting you at a show soon :) :thumbsup

i will be in florida in a few days

13. Talk about your drinking days and why you quit?

oh... nights through all the teenage years, drunk most the time,
fighting, fucking, or a combination of them all. drinking before
a show, drinking at the park or down by the beach. waiting
until the front door of the bar closed, or back at someone?s
house, high school keggers.

one way or the other, i found myself drunk most nights night of
the week. teenage rebel years right? its what you do.

on the other side of things, i skipped college for the most because
i didnt want the party to stop, i blacked out on more nights than
not, fighting in the middle of the week, ending up in the hospital
more times than i can count. pissing shitting and vomiting every
which way that i turned. it started to become not so sexy and a
little more of a problem really.

most the behavior kept going the same way. at one time i was
living in a house full of drunks, four guys in a one bedroom
apartment, drinking in the middle of every day. walking up and
needing a drink to stop a little shaking from the night before,
and my health was starting to get a little weird. i was working
at bars doing shows, it was ok that i was a drunk, it was the
lifestyle at the time for me. rock and roll, drugs, and booze.

some of the guys that i had run into around town, coffee shops
and clubs, would help me with promotional stuff in exchange
for guest list spots and such. i would go out with them to different
clubs and shows promoting what we were doing, flirting with
girls, having a good time, and i dont think that i ever noticed,
but none of them drank at all. i was drunk, but they were not.

at one point, one of the guys asked me if i thought that the way
that i was living was a problem. at the time i think that i was
about 125 pounds (im 175 right now) whiter than i was right
now, and i would get nose bleeds constantly. i was starting to
think that it was a problem.

i decided to get on the wagon and try it all out dry instead of
loaded. i would go two or three days at the most without
drinking and then i would end up on a bender and try to start
all over again. at one point i finally was able to give it up.

i changed my entire lifestyle. i moved into a house with a
group of guys that did not drink. i gave up the bar job and
just focused on the larger club, and not too much time past that
i made the move to texas so i could fully shut the door on what
i thought was a life that was perfect and turned out to be something
so incredibly demoralizing i didnt even really know who i was.

i have not had a drink since that time, since that day. shortly after
that is when i gave up eatting meat, started reading some political
books, and really spent that time reinventing who i thought that
i was.

14. Why the hell are you involved with the green party?

well looking at a little of my past, i did punk rock shows out of a
gay bar, i worked at dance clubs, i am a vegetarian, the obvious ideas
that i got from my own surrounding ended up being a very liberal veiw
of things.

systematic wars overseas, increasing debt killing the middle class, senate
hearings that are forgot about a few months down the line. convictions
that had no real meaning, it was easy for me to identify the fact that our
two party system, that our government itself, is flawed from the top to
the bottom.

i spent a few years lobbying in california for the party. pushing what
i could. not really because i am all the ecominded, but it seems like
our first strong shot at a third party.

you can complain if you are not involved.

one of the reasons that i like adult, oddly, is because i really believe
it goes hard against the grain of the system. mostly, its a group of
people that did not go through the process of ?higher education?
which for the most produces quite a bit of debt at a young age to
start working for a corporate machine that fuels the top level of
economy it makes for a good redistribution of wealth. there are
a lot of people that make a good amount of money that do not
vote conservative for the most.

and then, i also like the fact that so many people inside this industry
are self made and self started.

http://elli-nude.com/Me/2005-11-18-L...esDay3-091.jpg

http://elli-nude.com/Me/2005-11-18-L...esDay3-092.jpg

http://elli-nude.com/Me/2005-11-18-L...esDay3-059.jpg

http://elli-nude.com/Me/2005-11-17-L...lesDay2-23.jpg

i was telling her that she had freakishly long arms. you know how your arm span is supposed to be as long as you are tall? her's is much longer.

Great interview!

:thumbsup

Did she thank you for noticing that she was freakish? :) I was just admiring her rear view. I didn't notice her arms.

http://elli-nude.com/Me/2005-11-18-L...esDay3-091.jpg


not at all. she started waving them around like a monkey and then told me about her thumbs that are really weird. if you look at katie in the back you can figure out the way it was all going

15. Who is the primary fiscal support for your parents?
i will come back to that one

16. Where have you lived in your life? Why? Where do you live now? Why?

sacramento, california is my home town. my first love. and i place that
i still like to go and visit.

san francisco, califonia was a very short time. very messy. and not a
sober breath

el paso, tx was three years of living in the dessert. its was a time that
i will not regret. that i got to sell guitars and have a great time. time
that i spent really starting the process of becoming the man that i am.
santa cruz, ca is now my home. a smaller group of friends. a beautiful
ocean town. a slower pace than i have ever lived. i think that is why
i dont mind going to shows.

Wow... very interesting read so far... Reminds me a bit of myself when I was younger minus the piercing and the school.

17. What exactly do you do for AFF?

that is always the question. i burn bandwidth.
its a interesting dynamic that i have never really defined.

Oh I remember the thumb bit now that you mention it!

18. Any significance to the tatoos you have? pics
not really

http://images18.fotki.com/v25/photos...tattoo1-vi.jpg
i was really young when i got that. i keep forgetting that its in my armpit

http://images15.fotki.com/v337/photo...tattoo3-vi.jpg
i think that we are going to talk about that later

http://images18.fotki.com/v330/photo...tattoo7-vi.jpg
that is a really bog coverup of something else

http://images14.fotki.com/v21/photos...tattoo5-vi.jpg
ya. that looks gay

http://images14.fotki.com/v21/photos...tattoo8-vi.jpg
with a broken heart, you have nothing to lose. to thine own self be true

http://images14.fotki.com/v20/photos...tattoo2-vi.jpg

i found that when i was looking for something else. notice that the legs have pants around the ankles... i was getting ready to pierce his cock

prince albert... anyone?

who broke your heart?

we all know that it was you scott

Nice one!

:)

http://images15.fotki.com/v338/photo...78/arm2-vi.jpg


i think that i forgot to mention that i have a chicken tattooed on me

thanks for the great pics jules!! :thumbsup more answers please...

Well deserved ambush...I have had the pleasure of meeting Sean at a few shows and I can only say that he has always come off as a true and kind person. Great read as well. Congradulations.


Gerard