RealiD: Spike, as magical as everyone is making the early and mid ‘80’s, or back in the day, out to be, do you remember it being as incredible a time while you were living it?

Spike: I don’t know if it was as magical as people are making it, or whatever, but I remember it being pretty magical. When I think about it, at the time, I didn’t think it was, but when I think back, or look back at it or whatever, a lot of things that happened back then were pretty amazing, especially compared to what goes on today. So I guess in a way it was, but its probably not as some people make it.

RealiD: Back then could you even fathom where you would be today or how this whole scene would end up being regarded?

Spike: When we first started I didn’t think we would last a month and I didn’t think we’d ever even play a show much less record a record or tour or do anything like that. So we had no clue. We just got lucky I guess. We picked a few, made a few right decisions, took a few right turns, the right way and not the wrong way, and we got lucky, and 20 years later here we are. But I had no clue, no idea or whatever, had no inkling to think that we’d be here today doing this.

Ass D checks tape.

RealiD: So here we are 20 Years later; new record I hear?

Spike: UUUAAAAHHH...We’re writing, but there are no plans to actually release a record or anything like that, we’re just going to see how it goes. We’re kind of frustrated, in a way, with the music business, and what not, and with our status, where we are now. Our last record, nobody bought it and most people don’t even know about it still. We don’t see any reason to release a record that people aren’t going to buy or find out about or care about. It seems like our fans are into the old stuff...so we’ll go with that!

We are writing, it’s just going really slow. We all don’t live in the same area anymore. Kurt moved back to Texas, I still live in California, our drummer lives in Florida. It makes it real hard to practice. So what we do is kind of write on our own and pass around tapes. Learn parts; learn this, change this and we get back together. We try to do sound checks when we can. You never know.

RealiD: Am I wrong to say there’s a greatest hits on Deadline? Who’s Deadline, is that you guys?

Spike: Nah...That’s a subsidiary of Cleopatra and we’re very unhappy with that.

RealiD: Is the track listing wrong?

Spike: THE WHOLE RECORD IS FUCKED! Can I say that? Well it’s fucked. They didn’t take any time doing it right. I was supposed to be working with them. I sent them art. I sent them the songs on CDs to use. I created the CD. They went ahead and put it together them selves, chose their own songs or whatever, and pulled them off a CD that had errors on it. If you listen to the CD it has this weird clicking throughout the whole thing. The songs are in the wrong order. They were supposed to send it all to me to approve before it came out and before I knew it people...our fans had it. They were telling me, ‘I just bought this greatest hits thing, and it’s all messed up.’ And I didn’t even see it yet or get to approve it or nothing. I am really upset with them. And now we got this thing out there and it’s garbage. It is garbage. Thanks to Cleopatra.

RealiD: Someone did a DRI tribute record as well right? You like it?

Spike: Right. Yes. I worked on that as well. Same sort of type thing, although these guys did it right. They worked with me on everything. I got to approve everything. This was Malt & Soda Records from Phoenix. And it came out great. I have no problems with that.

RealiD: Whose performance did you like the most?

Spike: Good question. The Fartz. (The Fartz do “Coffin” on the tribute record)

RealiD: What other new bands do you like out there?

Spike: Real new? I don’t know any to tell you the truth. The last new bands that I started getting into or liking I guess would have been a few years back like Earth Crisis and H2O and stuff like that. Since then I really haven’t been getting into anything too new, there’s nothing that really strikes me that I can remember. We listen to a lot of it. We check it all out.

RealiD: The DRI guy. I have a pin from a Rock Hotel show at the old Ritz in NY from like ’86 or ’87.

Spike: The button guy used to be out in front of every show. Sure, sure, the button man.

RealiD: The Button Wall. I have seen these buttons start turning up again all over. You guys created a really powerful brand and logo with this thing. Marketing MBAs, Advertising geniuses will work their whole career never creating a logo or brand this powerful, this strong.

Spike: It’s definitely done a lot for us and helped us a lot. It’s catchy. It’s a simple logo. People remember it and identify with it. It stands for slamming or moshing. It’s like pro, as it doesn’t have the anti sign through the circle meaning no slamming, but pro moshing and slamming and having fun and all that stuff in a good way. Our singer and his brother used to go to art school together in Houston when we first started and they had a project in the school to create a business logo or a company logo or signage or whatever it’s called. And he created the logo and it was standing for no thrashing. It had the line through it when he did it for school. We were like, ‘this is pretty cool.’ And we took the line off and said, ‘now it’s pro slamming.’ Then we started using it for our first record label, which we put out our first record, which was Dirty Rotten Records, and it was actually the logo for the label. We just incorporated it into the band after the first record came out. Everybody thought it was our logo anyway. We stopped doing the label thing, we had a different label, there was no more Dirty Rotten Records, and we kept it.

It’s popping up in deformed form all over the place. Mackie, that does recording and mixing boards, they just came out with a skanker, that’s what we call him, and it looks almost identical to ours except they put like feet and hands on him.

RealiD: Crazy days. Any days stand out or some crazy old shit from the road?

Spike: You know I have a million stories, but I can’t pull one out of my head right now.

RealiD: 5 favorite records.

Spike: How about my 5 favorite bands? Black Sabbath, Prong, Minor Threat, Black Flag

RealiD: Dez or Henry?

Spike: Keith, Dez, Henry, all of them up to the Kira days. Led Zeppelin.

RealiD: Speaking of some old, tell me about the re-issues?

Spike: We’ve been re-issuing. The first 2 records are already out and we’re working on the third one, which is Crossover. The Dirty Rotten LP has been re-issued with 20 something bonus tracks; there’s 49 tracks on it now. And Dealing With It just came out a few weeks ago and now that has 42 tracks on it or something, including the video. And Crossover is next. We are working on that right now.

In addition to the Crossover re-issue with how ever many bonus tracks and CD enhancements, we are also working on the CBGB’s DVD. Which is a show we did in 1984. It’s only like a 40 or 45 minute set, that’s probably all the time we had and we probably played all of our 100 songs.

RealiD: Do you remember who else played that day?

Spike: COC

RealiD: Nice!

Spike: It was a pretty good show. We were kind of nervous, as CBGB was a big thing to us. You hear about CBGB all over the world, it’s got to be one of the most famous clubs in the world. We were in awe; just playing there it was like, ‘whooooaaaa, CBGBs!’ We were kind of stiff and what not, but we managed to pull it off.

RealiD: Was that show a part of DRI’s first tour?

Spike: Second tour. The band got together in ’82, May 2 1982. In ’83 we went out on tour with the Dead Kennedy’s and MDC, the Rock Against Reagan Tour. We played colleges and stuff like that, for free all over the country. Just kind of like protesting and what not. So this was our second tour in ’84, we went out as a headliner and we were just playing all over, here and there, 50 bucks or whatever we could get. And that’s one of the shows that was actually recorded and it’s like the oldest thing we have on video to date and if there is anything before that we don’t know about it.

RealiD: MDC were Texas boys as well right?

Spike: They were from Austin and we were from Houston and at the time a lot of Texas bands were moving away because the Texas scene was good, but it was so small in a way that...There were too many bands and not enough shows and every time a band came through it was 100 bands fighting for that spot to open up. And I guess like us a lot of bands wanted to go on the road. That was the main thing; all these bands were coming through and we were like, ‘Whoaaa, we want to do this!’ We heard all these bands were moving out to California and we had friends like Verbal Abuse that just moved out and they were like, ‘Yeah, we just moved out there, you can practice for free, you can squat in the building, and eat in the soup kitchen.’ We were like, ’OK. Sure. Let’s Go.’ We moved out there and in 2 months were on tour

RealiD: Where did you move in California?

Spike: San Francisco. Houston to San Francisco. We were squatting at the Beer Vats. It was an old Hamms Brewery that was gutted out. Verbal Abuse was there. MDC was there, there were a lot of bands you probably wouldn’t know of or heard of before. Maybe 100 bands lived and practiced at this place. It was like 4 or 5 stories of beer vats and every beer vat was maybe 50 of 60 feet long and they were actually round covered with rubber. They built like a floor, ‘cause it was round and you couldn’t put anything or furniture in the room, so they built a floor so we had a flat surface to practice on. 100 bands used to live and practice in these weird, run down, broken down, rat hole beer vats. It was a commune and everybody looked out for each other. It was really cool. Then finally there was a fire and a couple of vats burned down and the authorities came and shut everything down and kicked everybody out and they knocked the place down and made a parking lot out of it.

RealiD: What did you do next? No place to live, let’s go on tour?

Spike: Well kind of, sort of. We kind of all just went out on our own and moved in with room mates; get a room for $100 a month and somebody would live in the closet, Kurt went and lived in a tree and whatever the hell. I was living under a VW Bug that was broken down with no tires on it, I used to sleep under that and we just kept doing that and you would hit the soup kitchens. Then finally we actually started making some money. I could afford to like, get an apartment.

Spike’s closing comments:
We would like to thank all of our fans for 20 years of support. We realize that without fans coming to shows and buying a record, buying a sticker, telling a friend, turning somebody else on to DRI, we would have never lasted this long and we really appreciate it. We hope to keep going and if you keep coming to shows and thrashing with us, maybe we can do it for another 20 years. We’ll keep going as long as they keep coming. We hope to see everybody out there soon at a show near you. Our website is a total dedication to the fans, where we included everything from 1982 to 2002. There is all kinds of free songs and information and photographs. It’ll take you a month to go through the whole thing. Check it out, it’s at http://www.dirtyrottenimbeciles.com or the quick and easy URL is http://www.dri1.com .

Hope to see you soon! Cheers! - Spike DRI

Check the live shots from the show.