Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Vex Billingsgate (Suburban Lawns) & George Hurley (The Minutemen), of the band Suburban John
“And then, you know, a lot of the stuff that we grew up on at that time is a lot of the spandex, pretty hairdo type things, and we always thought you had to be someone special to put out a record or something. You know? So here punk rock started, so we’d do it ourselves. We’ll make our own records, and that’s exactly what we did. You know? And we built our own followings and everything. We even blazed our own tour routes across the whole United States that we used for, like, eighteen years, and we just did everything ourselves.” — Vex Billingsgate & George Hurley (Suburban John), Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Zander Schloss (The Circle Jerks)
“I am a solo artist too, and I’ve made a couple of records and, you know, it released to crickets, but you know, it’s like, if you could get some of your listeners and guide them towards my records, they’re, of course, on streaming, you know. And my first record is called Song About Songs, and it’s produced by a guy named Gus Seyffert and some great musicians on it. Gus played with, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). He played bass with Roger Waters. And the second record that I just made is called Californias Burning. It has nothing to do with the wildfires, but serendipitously it actually, yeah. And this is nothing like Circle Jerks. No. It’s if think about the Circle Jerks and then imagine the polar opposite of the Circle Jerks.” —Zander Schloss, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Melanie Vammen (The Pandoras, The Muffs, The Coolies)
“And then I’ll just like, fast forward to next week. Next Friday, May 2nd, we have a new single coming out, and it’s with me and Palmyra and Kathy Valentine on bass and Clem Burke on drums. Clem recorded it while he was sick. Underground Garage are going to, you know, be playing it and everything. We’re on their record label, Wicked Cool Records. And so, you know, it meant everything in the world to us that Clem wanted to do this while he was sick. You know, incredible person. And we’re so proud of it, and we can’t wait for everyone to hear it.” — Melanie Vammen, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Richard Wagoner, Radio columnist
“[On the craziest stories covered] Some of the most fun ones, and the thing that always gets the responses is just talking about personalities that people loved growing up. You’re one of them, by the way. Anytime I mentioned you, I get tons of mail and I always get people saying, hey, you should be covering him on KOCI. It’s a little station down in Orange County.” — Richard Wagoner, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Phil “Fang” Volk
“But on the Johnny Carson show, we were completely live. We played our instruments, sang live, played live, did all the choreography. That’s one of the best TV shows we ever did, and Johnny Carson gave us a lot of kudos after our performance, and he really liked it. He was a cool guy.” —Phil “Fang” Volk, Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Denny Tedesco, Filmmaker
“[About his father, guitarist Tommy Tedesco] I knew he played guitar for a living, but I had no idea that he, you know, played with all these amazing acts because I was too young. He was a member of the Wrecking Crew, which was basically a group of studio musicians in the sixties.” —Denny Tedesco, Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Kristopher Roe (The Ataris)
“We just shot the video for it [new single, "Car Song"] this week, and the cool thing about that is we actually used the car, the Volvo, from Breaking Bad's final episode in the video, the one that, like, Walter White steals and goes back to seek his revenge on Jack and the gang. And I bought that from the assistant director. And, now my best friend who runs the studio that I record at owns it. And so the video kind of revolves around me going to an Airbnb that's run by Walter White and his wife.” —Kristopher Roe, The Ataris
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Jed the Fish Tribute
“I was amazed at the way he worked. First, there’s two things. I would watch his fingers when he was talking and his fingers would get all kinda spider like. It would play with the pots, which are the the volume controls on the board, and they were all over the board as he would talk. He would queue up records while talking. And the coolest thing that would just drive me nuts is he would wait so long before queuing up the next record.” — John Logic, Poorman's Special Guest Tribute show for Jed the Fish
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Krista Montagna
“So I think just subliminally, it just kind of led me down that road. I loved music, I loved film, and I ended up going that direction, you know? 1980s, I was watching MTV, and I was like who is this guy Russell Mulcahy that’s directing these Duran Duran videos, Billy Joel’s “Pressure” and [Duran Duran’s] “Rio” and all this stuff. And I was just like obsessed with it. So I went into production, you know, but I started in, multimedia. And it just kind of like led me in that direction.” — Krista Montagna, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Pearl Gates AKA Pearl Harbour
“Drivin’ was pretty big, not a Top 10, but it was a Top 100 Billboards recording in 1979. And yes, so Drivin’ was the biggest hit I’ve ever had and Pearl Harbor and Explosions was the most successful I ever was. But success does not mean fun or happiness. You know? So I was more all about fun and happiness.”
—Pearl Harbour, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Joe Puerta (Ambrosia)
“[On tribute bands] It's sort of a double-edged sword. You know? I think, it's it's kept it our music alive or helped revive it, but sometimes, you know, I feel like it's gotten to be so many tribute bands, you know, and it's gotten to be, like, almost over the top.”
—Joe Puerta, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Big Sono
“This is in my DNA. You know? It’s something that makes me happy. And, even when I try, just be like, I’m not doing this no more, like, many years ago, And I wake up depressed, and I’ll be like, I can’t do that. I gotta keep doing it. You know? So you get sometimes a little frustrated, but if you really love it, you’re gonna keep doing it.” — Big Sono, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Patrick O’Neal
“KROQ was one of our stations growing up for sure! So love alternative rock, grew up a Rock & Roll fan, right? Whether it was Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, The Who, Hendrix, Cream - those were my bands kinda growing up. Love Rush, love all kinds of music, for sure. So KROQ was a station that I had on all the time.” — Patrick O’Neal, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Alison Martino
“[About her Facebook page, followed by 630K] You know, I didn’t call it Vintage Hollywood for a reason. I called it Vintage Los Angeles. Because it’s about the people, everybody, and structures and architecture and restaurants and destinations, historic places.” — Alison Martino, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Clem Burke
“[Favorite Blondie song] Actually, my personal favorite is our first single “X Offender” which is also an homage to the Phil Spector Wall of Sound, Wrecking Crew sound. I was trying to emulate the drums of Hal Blaine on that record. And also Richard Gottehrer producing was a product of the Brill Building and also very much influenced by that whole thing we’re talking about- Spector, etcetera. So, to this day, the song “X Offender” is actually my favorite song. It has very great meaning for me, you know? Kinda got our foot in the door.”
— Clem Burke, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Daniel Zormeier, Chewbacca stunt double
“You know, I am not a person that is intimidated by people who have fame, money, or anything like that. And maybe it’d be different if I was President of the United States, but I have my doubts. I’m just kind of a regular guy, and I meet people, and I kinda take them at face value and make my judgments as I get to know them. So I put up everybody pretty much on equal footing and then you either go up or down on that footing, depending on how we get along.”
— Daniel Zormeier, Chewbacca stunt double, Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: John Easdale (Dramarama)
“[About former drummer, Clem Burke, who passed the day before this interview] No. He was our drummer. He was just the best drummer ever. I was saying before, I went to see Blondie because I liked Debbie Harry, but I left the concert in love with Clem Burke because he was just the greatest drummer I ever saw. I couldn’t believe it when he joined our band.”
— John Easdale, Dramarama. Poorman's 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Paul Cowsill (The Cowsills)
“I think there’s a movie or a documentary in it- the phenomenon of our audience and then all of us singers and bands, you know, we’re still doing it and the people just keep coming and coming. You know, we do this Happy Together Tour every summer. This will be our 11th summer in a row where we do between 55 and 60 shows within 2.5 months, and the crowds are crazy. We thought the Happy Together tour was going to be over two years ago just due to attrition, the audience just kind of fading. But we’re not fading, we are filling these places up with all of our people.”
— Paul Cowsill, Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Monique Powell
“We’re launching a tour and a new single on April 25. The song is called “Get Dancing” and we’re reaching out to all our fans to go on our YouTube and learn the choreography and be in the video with us. We’re filming the week of April 14 in Los Angeles. So yeah. It’s just I really want as many people as possible to learn the choreography and be in the video with me. And, I think it’s gonna be really cool. And then April 25, we launch this tour, and we’re just going everywhere.”
— Monique Powell, 15 Minutes of Fame interview
Poorman’s 15 Minutes of Fame: Blag Dahlia (The Dwarves)
“You know, man, we cut a wide swath through this mockery known as the music business. We always tried to maintain a sense of humor. We wound up sticking around a lot longer than people thought we would, and we’ve made 16 records, you know. We got our own label and, you know, as the years went on, we’d add more and more crazy people to the mix that you wouldn’t expect. You know, Nick Oliveri came in from the Kyuss crew and Josh Freese came in. He’s now in the Foo Fighters and, you know, there’d be all kinds of great players and interesting songwriters, you know, but we were always kinda known for that just kernel of insanity.” — Blag Dahlia, 15 Minutes of Fame interview