IN THE MAGAZINE

Portrait by Richard Kern

BLOODCLOT! - PART 2

John Joseph of the Cro-Mags Makes the Rest of Us Look Like Pussies

INTERVIEW BY TREVOR SILMSER

Did you consider yourself a punk at that time?

I don’t know. I wasn’t like, “Yo, I’m a punk rocker.” I didn’t call myself nothing. I called myself a mess, you know what I’m saying? But then I hooked up with this girl Nancy and she turned me on to a lot of stuff. She took me to CB’s and Stickballs and these crazy after-hours punk-rock clubs. I liked the energy and the craziness of it.

Were you on the streets back then or were you in a group home?

I was already on the streets. I had been in the Saint John’s Home for Boys but I just wasn’t feeling it.

How did you get involved in spirituality? From what I got out of the book, you were intrigued by the higher power that HR from Bad Brains was tapping into.

There are two dudes that I credit a lot of my spiritual development to and one is undoubtedly HR. He’s such a brother to me. He put a mic in my hand and was like, “Get the fuck out there and sing.” I was trying to be a drummer.

But yeah, it was HR and Jerry Williams, who was a really instrumental person behind the Bad Brains’ first album. He produced it, recorded it in his studio, and even put the Bad Brains up there. If it wasn’t for Jerry Williams that album never would have happened. He also got me into raw foods. Then one time HR took me for vegetarian food and ordered me a dragon bowl. I was like, “OK, where’s the dragon meat, motherfuckers?” It was seaweed, and I was like, “What the fuck?” I loved HR but I ran around the corner and got a burger. Then he started taking me to Vegetarian Paradise and this place on Sixth Street called the Cauldron, I thought that this shit could taste pretty good. Then I got me a job at Prana Foods and, shit, the state didn’t raise no fool. I was like, “All right, I’m eating this shit for free now.”

Were you hooking up all the Bad Brains dudes with free food too?

Oh yeah, they were coming by. They rolled up every day and I was loading bags of sandwiches—$100 worth of groceries—for them.

I’m just trying to picture you working at Prana and all the dreads showing up.

It was like the window for the juice bar—it was a to-go window [laughs]. All of a sudden five dreads would pop up in the window and I would be like, “All right, what do you guys need?”

Going back a bit, I like how you describe the first time you ever heard of the Bad Brains from some guy at a club in Virginia.

I was like the wildest squid then, man. I fuckin’ did drugs, I sold drugs, I just did whatever the fuck I wanted.

So you were a squid—you were still in the navy at this point?

Yeah. I would sneak off base to go to happy hour. I’d get out of my uniform, put my leather on, and go see all the bands. I saw the Teen Idles and the Untouchables at the Taj Majal. So I was going there for happy hour one day and Doug, the owner, comes running out and he was like, “Dude, you got to fuckin’ see this band.” I was like, “Cool, all right, I’ll go check it out.” He was like, “No, no—you don’t understand.” He looked like he’d just seen 20 people get gunned down by a fuckin’ terrorist or something. He was blown the fuck away. So I went upstairs and the motherfuckers clicked off a song and I was just like—get the fuck out of here.

It must have been insane to see them that early on.

And you couldn’t praise HR. He would give all praises to the most high. You know, I don’t care what the fuck that man is into now or whatever. I owe him a lot of shit and I can’t ever disrespect him. He’s a genius and an amazing human being. All of us have our problems and you can’t knock anybody for it. Bad Brains changed the whole fuckin’ game, you know.

That’s why when I ask these kids today if they ever heard of the Bad Brains and they’re like, “Nah,” I’m like, “Go buy the fuckin’ ROIR CD today. Go get the Live at CBGB 1982 DVD today. Do your fuckin’ homework and know where this shit comes from.”

I don’t see any current punk-rock bands trying to go anywhere near as hard as the Bad Brains now. Nobody is going for a revolutionary thing.

They don’t. They are just a bunch of whiny douchebags with eye makeup and it’s disgusting.

And with shit being so fucked up now… George W. Bush, the Iraq war, the coming recession… I mean, this could be debated but there is not a lot of great music addressing that shit.

I ain’t gonna debate you on that. I will pat you on the back for saying that. I don’t even listen to 90 percent of the shit that’s out there now. I like shit where there is some soul pouring out of it. If motherfuckers ain’t going through something, how are they going to say anything about anything? You’re singing about how tough you had it in the suburbs of Connecticut because you didn’t get your fuckin’ Gameboy on time. I mean, give me a fuckin’ break. If you don’t go through some adversity in life, you don’t have shit to say as far as I am concerned. That is why the Cro-Mags put out Age of Quarrel. I was living in a motherfucking squat—and it wasn’t like we were summer squatters going to Western Union to get money from Mommy and Daddy. We lived that shit and that is why the album was the way it was.

Are you the type of person who gets bummed about New York City now compared to the way it once was? Do you miss the crazier days?

Well, my mom can walk down the street now and not get mugged. But I think you would see a lot less of these fuckin’ jerk-offs around here if it was still dangerous. Back then you didn’t go to Alphabet City. Avenue A was adventurous, B was bold, C was crazy, and D was dead. And like, I’m paying all this rent now. But what goes up must come down. I wrote a song called “Seeds of Destruction.” We have been planting these seeds for a while. No great empire lasts forever, and you know America is next.

We’ve barely scratched the surface here. If you ever cared about punk rock or “underdogs beating the odds,” you need to read John’s book The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon. It’s available at punkhouse.org.


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Comments

Anonymous, on Aug 28, 2008 wrote: " Vice is late. Dude was just featured in Inked (tattoo mag fashioned after Maxim mag). Nice try, but Inked just did it. You could have waited and it would have been like, "Oh cool, were revisting old school punkers who turned buhdist/hindu and now do tattoos in the north east" but nope, you just followed suit. Yeah, we know, Inked is killing you in photo layouts and amping out the hotties with ink, but jeez (yup, I said jeez, and I mean it), I come to you for the freshest of flavors, not stale shite. You guys should stay away from newsstands for awhile so your not influenced to cop other ideas and reprint them." thank god you told them that people already know about cro-mags, bet its news to them... you twat.
	ssmartina, on Jun 5, 2008 wrote: BLOODCLOTS!
Anonymous, on Jun 5, 2008 wrote: nice!
Anonymous, on Jun 5, 2008 wrote: wow!
Anonymous, on Jun 5, 2008 wrote: wow amazing fantastic!