There is me, Ismael Hernandez on Bass, Stevil on guitar, and Destroyer Rick on drums.
Dr. Know started in 1981 and was formed by Kyle Toucher, Ismael Hernandez, and Robin Cartwright.
Dr. Know is a play on the JamesBond film title, Dr. No. It was spelled differently because IanFleming's people like to sue people.The first name that the band had was The Accused. One day the guys werehanging out, thinking of changing the name. A few other people werethere, too. Once it was decided that Dr. Know was the new name, TomNeidermier asked if he could use the old one. He moved to Seattle andThe Accused was born.
The first guy who sang was apunk from Ventura named Joey Pina. He had all of the parties andeveryone hung out at the place he and his brother Art shared on thebeach. He didn't last long, so they tried Ron Baird from Hueneme, butRon was into different stuff, and so they tried Rik Heller, who wouldbecome the second drummer, but Rik got headaches from yelling, so theyasked me to try it. I did a couple of rehearsals and then we did a gig.
Agression, Ill Repute, and abunch of other people were all there at a party one night when Ismaelheard the D.O.A. record, "Hardcore '81." Ismael remarked that if theywere Hardcore, then we were Nardcore. Simple as that. Tony From IllRepute took that joke and ran with it. It turned up in grafitti allover town, on surfboards and skateboards, and pretty soon, we had ascene. Agression was the original band from the beach, and they hadthe Secret Symbol, which was the rectangle, the S, and the square. Atfirst it was N.A.S.H., for Northern Area Skin Heads, but no one wantedto be known as a skinhead. We had all just shaved our heads at onepoint. In Oxnard there was no racist thing going on. The members of theearly punk scene were Japanese, Flipino, Black, Mexican, White, andeverything else. It was a year of the N.A.S.H., then Ismael coined theterm nardcore, and it was on.
Well, Agression, Dr. Know, IllRepute, and Stalag 13 were the first four, followed by a ton of bands likeFalse Confession, Habeus Corpus, M.I.A. from Ventura, A.F.U., Beergutz,R.K.L. from Santa Barbara and Rat Pack from up there, too; Ground Zero, the first punk band from the 805,
The Rotters; and a few others.
Silver Strand Beach, aka Hollywood by the Sea. It all started on Cahuenga Street.
I had been in a band beforeDr. Know with a bunch of older surfers, but we did a lot of covers. Idid manage to write some originals. Agression covered "Body Count," whichI had written in 1978. I hadn't acted since "Bad News Bears" in '75. Iwas too busy surfing and skating, and seeing bands play.
No one knew I was in a bandfor a while. I was trying to stay away from being Eddie. I was sick ofit. I still had an agent and I got a few interviews, but I would showup high on coke and wearing a leather jacket with blue hair, so wordgot around that I was pretty much over it.
Like I said, for a while Iwas pretty undercover. Black Randy had tried to ask me my name a longtime ago at a gig, but he was wasted and couldn't hear me. He thought Isaid my name was Random. I liked that. Black Randy named me Random. Theindustry really did nothing for punk but give it a worse reputationthan we already had, and a lot of people believed the publicity. That'swhy so many jocks got into new wave, and then the next thing you know,the guys who used to try to beat you up were standing next to yousaying, "Yeah dude, U2 kicks ass!" They never understood. I did find away for TV to give the band a boost, though.
Yeah, the guys at "South Park"put a little bit of that song on there. Kyle and I got paid for that.Not a lot, but it was being paid for punk rock, which was strange forus.
I realized that the mediacould help us. By the way, I only had green hair in it. Anyways, it wasa Dick Clark special called "Whatever Happened To?" I decided to showthem what happened. I got money from the producer to record one song,but we did fourteen in one afternoon. They sent a film crew, and we did a bitof one song for them, lip syncing to our just completed track of "WhatTo Do." That got the band a bit of attention. We did the "We Got Power"comp for Mystic, then Doug Moody kept the master tape and released"Dr. Know, The Original Band" in 1988, five years after I had quit Dr.Know. He wrote some crap on the back saying that I had produced therecord at ABC Studios, which was all fucking bullshit. Kyle produced itin Ventura at Goldmine Studios in late 1981. Moody was a bit off.
I didn't form Harmful IfSwallowed. They were a band looking for a singer, and I didn't jointhem until 1989 or so. I quit singing for them around 1992.
I got married in 1994. My wife Liz is a nurse.
Yeah, his name is Lincoln Bixby Cruz. He's thirteen now.
No, I haven't been active in A Minor Consideration in quite a while, but if Paul needs me, he knows where I am.
I got to sing for Flipper in1995, doing three gigs in L.A. to help them finish a tour after Brucehurt his back. I was really wasted then, and it was fun pissing off allof the punks with Flipper. We would just play slower and slower andwhen we were at The Whiskey, playing between The Adolescents and D.I.,it made the crowd just fucking hostile. Flipper are great. I ended upin a purple sequined jockstrap and nothing else at The Viper Room gig,and Julia Bell and Jennifer Finch stuffed dollar bills into myjockstrap. We destroyed the bathroom with grafitti at The Dragonfly sobadly that Cliff made me come back the next morning and paint it. I wasspretty out of control back then.
Ismael and i decided to tryit again. Kyle didn't want to, so we went off on our own. Kyle is agreat writer and guitarist, he was way ahead of his time, but he saidhe wasn't an angry
nineteen year old anymore. That's cool, I'm still angry at46, so i don't know what age has to do with it. It would be nice tohave Kyle's writing and sound now. He was so brilliant in his wordingand language. He wrote a song that mentioned AIDS way before mostpeople knew what that was. He was a computer genius. Although his darklyrics and metal style were what contributed to me quitting
Dr. Know, Ilook back at those songs now and think wow, that guy wrote some greatmusic. Maturuty and time can really change a person.
No, we have different people, butit's always been me and Ismael. Two original people are the minimum. Ifhe quit, Dr. Know would be over for good. Hell, he was a foundingmember.
Slayer covered "Mr. Freeze" in 1996.
Not at all. I did the tourswith Dead Kennedys, and when i got home, Dr. Know would do our gigs. Weeven toured with Ill Repute and Stalag 13.
I will always remember thegood times I had all over the world with Klaus and D.H. Ray and Ididn't agree on some things, and I basically quit because of thedisagreements, also because I needed to rest. I broke my shoulder inBirmingham, England in April of 2003; and I finished the tour, but Iwas battered.
Biafra and I started talkingagain right after I quit Dead Kennedys. We had known each other sinceway back in the day from gigs and when we opened for them a few times.I can understand his being upset about what I did to a certain degree,but it was all way over the top most of the time and it took away thereal message of Dead Kennedys. We all make mistakes, you know?Whatever, I was in the band, and now I will always be an ex-member ofthe band. That's pretty cool for a punk kid from Oxnard. I was lucky toget to go to Russia, Tokyo, Rio de Jainero, and sing punk rock to fansof the band. It was really fucking amazing. Pauley is a sweetheart, andshe does know a guy from "Bad News Bears," David Stambaugh, who is anassistant pastor at a church in Hollywood. We didn't talk about"Killing For God."
This might sound stupid, butalmost all of the gigs are the best. In the early days, playing withThe Misfits in Watts, Circle One in a sketchy part of L.A., and some ofthe Santa Barbara gigs with Fear, Flipper, D.O.A., and Dead Kennedysare standouts, as well as some of the house parties with Agression, IllRepute, Stalag 13, and R.K.L. After we got back together, there havebeen a lot, too. With Poison Idea in San Diego, Fang and Union 13 inSan Francisco, with Stalag 13 at The Troubador, playing with DeadKennedys again, where I had to sing two gigs in one night during abenefit for my mom, so many great times. Playing with Pig Destroyer andBrutal Truth at the L.A. Murderfest was an all time gig, too. It's damnfun to still be doing this at 46, and there is no reason why we can't dothis for a long time.
With Dr. Know, I had a blasttouring with Dayglo Abortions. We went from L.A. to Vancouver with themand every single night was fucking nuts. We hit every punk dive andskatepark all the way up the coast, and pretty much destroyedeverything. The East Coast was a great time when we did CBGB's. We alsohit a few spots with Municpal Waste. With Dead Kennedys, South Americawas incredible, as well as Russia, Japan, and our first trip to Europe.We played with Slayer in Germany to so many people. They stretchedacross a field as far as you could see. I don't know how many peoplewere there, but it was easliy over 100,000, and probaly more. I love totour.
We leave soon on a WestCoast tour, then into Canada and all across that country, with stops inChicago, Detroit, and New York City. A summer tour of Europe forsquats, clubs and festivals is in the works, and our new album shouldbe available now from Unrest Records. It's called "Killing For God" andhas seventeen all new songs. We are always looking for local and weekendtrips, so contact us and be sure to get your merch from us at a gig, orthroough Unrest. The rest are bootlegs, and those people suck hippiecock in hell.
Wisdom, from me? Ha! Just do what's right. Quit surfing now.
