Sucking On Chili Dogs, Outside The Tastee Freeze

This snapshot was sent to me by Tammy Fowler, or actually her daughter, from Tustin, Ca. It's from 1982, a year when music was truly at a crossroads. The evidence is here as we go from right to left:

The young man with the That Girl hairstyle was the drummer of a local Van Halen style metal band called Outrage. His name is Pete Kearney, he was a super cool guy, good drummer. He also had a cute sister.

Next with the sexy legs is Fred Gill. Fred liked to have alot of fun and was one of the first guys I knew who was into hardcore punk and then switched over to metal. He eventually became the lead singer of Outrage after a few hair growing months. Note: This is not the Northern Cal extreme metal band also called Outrage. Our Outrage was more like Van Halen meets Motley Crue. Hardcore and/or Punk had sort of become the bandwagon and things got stale and violent as more and more knuckleheads got into it. Our circle of friends didn't seem to dicrimminate one way or the other.

3rd from left is Kerry Brown. He was the drummer of a cool local band called ST Vitus Dance. They were NOT the LA Biker/hard rock band ST Vitus but were more like the Cure than anything else. Now, in 1982 that was not as common as you may think. Maybe in the UK but this is OC we're talking about here. SO kerry was into metal and punk and this sort of gothy tinged british stuff that was creeping in. We went to see Bauhaus at the Roxy around this time. Magic Mountain (now Sick Fags) used to host bigger Kroq-ish bands at the arena there (the same one where Spinal Tap perform Jazz Odyssy in the film). We used to caravan the hour and a half up there to see The Psychedelic Furs and Lords Of The New Church. Very fun times. I see Kerry once in a while, he's a producer and musician who works with Billy Corgan and Courtney Love alot.

Next is Yours Truly with New Romantic hair do acting like Elvis. I must say I'm probably the redneck in this bunch. I dated the girl behind the counter and we hung out here (yes, it's really a Tastee-Freeze) all the time.

To my right is Dan Kauzman. Dan was this older guy (21) who rented a room in Kerry's mom's and drove us all around alot. We would ditch school and ride with him up to Hollywood to buy creepers and colored skinny jeans from FLIP and Poseur on Melrose. He turned me on to a shitload of cool stuff like Joy Division, The Wierdos, Zounds, Black Randy and the Metro Squad, The Screamers, The Dils, The Alley Kats, The Go Go's, The Birthday Party,....just tons of stuff that you really had to hunt for back then. I remember Dan took me and some friends to see the film, "Dance Party" in Hollywood. The movie featured The Specials, Madness, The Selector and Bad Manners and we all danced in front of the screen through the whole thing!

On the end is Jess Bingaman, the guitarist in Tustin's first and for a while, only punk band called Saigon. They put out one 7", 4 song ep. The band's bassist was Ed Bingaman who later played with Adam Maples, Kat and Brian in the awesome hard rock/Punk hybrid band, Legal Weapon.

Back in 1982, little guts like us did not fit in too well. In fact this shot may have been snapped between regular barrages of bottles from passing "hippies" or "jar heads". The radio was all Journey and the B52's and the mainstream sucked, same as it does today. No offense to the B-52's....

Thank You