Gary Floyd is San Francisco's own living, breathing punk rock icon.
He first started playing with the punk band the Dicks, a legendary
self-proclaimed 'commie faggot band' in Austin, and then relocated
to SF, where he founded Sister Double Happiness, Black Kali Ma, and
Hard Ride. He also paints
writes, and currently plays with Gary Floyd and the Buddha Brothers.
Originally I was planning to write an article on Gary, but the
interview went so swimmingly, what with Gary's southern drawl and
hospitality, I thought I would excerpt it for you here, circa
Interview magazine '75 style.
Tuula: So did you buy a good wine or a bad wine?
Gary Floyd: Honey, I'll get back to you.
TA: So you're playing with Gary Floyd and the Buddha Brothers?
GF: Yeah, did you ever hear any Black Kali Ma?
TA: See, that's what I wanted to ask you, because I'm obsessed with
that record. (You Be The Pony, I'll Be the Bunny.) I wish that
band would've kept going.
GF: Really? I did too, but the Buddha Bros.are sorta part 2 of Black
Kali Ma. And we do a lot of those songs, because i didn't want to
stop playing those songs.
TA: I heard that record at Found Sound (a now defunct recording
studio in the Bayview), where you guys did some basic tracking and I
had a space there with my band at the time. And I heard it and we
were all in the parking lot, y'know, slightly drunk after band
practice, and we heard that song 'Wonderful', and we ran in there and
were like, 'That song! Who wrote that fucking song?' I love that
song, I listen to it all the time.
GF: I still perform that song with the Buddha Brothers.
(We both try to tap our cigarettes at the same time.)
TA: Two smokers, one ashtray.
GF: I wasn't really ready to start playing those Kali songs, and it
was of those times where everyone had a little personal shit going,
but I thought it was a great record.
TA: So what's that song about? It's like this perfect little pop gem,
with the first line, 'I rode by your house today, but you didn't
even look...'
GF: You know, some of the songs I write seem a little personal, but
they're just influenced by the music. Just about somebody you like
a lot, and they move up into a different place, and they're a little
too cool for you now, but you still love them, but you don't want
to, so you criticize them, and they're moving up and you're not
really doing anything, (laughs), you're just at home waiting for
them to call.
TA: I can't even imagine it now, but growing up in the South, and
being gay, and playing in this raging punk band... (laughs) do you
have scars all over your body or what?
GF: I've been lucky. I never got beat up in a band, or even for
wearing like a Mao jacket and cap in 1979, 1980. I was in Austin,
and Austin is a cool place in Texas. It's always been a real
musical city, it's always had a real liberal aspect ot it. So
somehow it was an auspicious time, and I didn't get my ass whipped
all the time. And the punk scene there was very family-like, it
was an insulated scene to an extent. Even if you didn't like
people that much, you would still take care of each other. And
there's still a website for everyone who was in that scene to stay
together, and they're not trying to re-live it. They're just people
who have grown up and they still participate in that
counter-culture. Not with mohawks and shit, but just like, 'I was
there, it was great'. When I went back there and played with the
Dicks last June it was really amazing and I had never really wanted
to do a reunion because it was so great when it
happened. But then I moved away and stuff. Those guys in the Dicks were family.
TA: And now you're doing the Dick's reunion again in October...
GF: I've seen those guys a lot over the years, but now we're gonna be
hanging out for a week.
TA: Right, right. In a van filled with smelly hamburgers and
everyone's feet.
GF: (laughs) Well, you know, they'll be hanging out here. It won't
be the a case of 'What is THIS on the floor.'... We were like, okay,
we're gonna practice and play these songs and we'll do the fucking
songs, they sound great., we should go through them again. We were
like, 'It's only been 20 years, to hell with it.' The first Dicks
reunion, it was incredible. It was fun, and there was all these
people there singing along. And one of the songs is called 'shit On
Me', there was a bartender who worked at the Eagle, and there's a
roomful of people screaming 'SHIT ON ME!!!' C'MON, SHIT ON ME!' He
was like, I don't understand it. (laughter) It was just so fun, and
I'm singing all those Dicks' lyrics and it's really relevant again.
TA: When I told people I was interviewing you, some people were like,
'The Dicks, cool...', but some people just freaked out. My friend
actually was raised in SF by her older, gay punk rock brother who
had every single record of yours, and she was telling me, in awe, 'I
saw him yesterday, in the frozen food section of Safeway..And I
couldn't say anything, I was like, IT's GARY FLOYD!' (laughter)
GF:People have said.
'I saw you before and didn't want to say
anything'. Even back then, I had a rough reputation.
TA: Your reputation precedes you.
GF: Yeah, but I'm a big puss. I've gone up to people who were in
bands that I liked and they were assholes, and do you know what that
taught me? That I don't want to do that to people. I want to be as
natural to people as I can. I'd rather get run over by a fucking
truck and go straight to hell than be rude to people who were fans
I'd really rather burn in the stinking turd of hell. Some guy wrote
me on myspace and said, 'That's so nice, you're talking back to me,
and you write back, and you're not an asshole.' I just want to be
myself.
TA: I know Kurt Cobain was a huge Dicks fan
GF: He was, and he was also a fan of
that first Sister Double
Happiness album, it was on his little list that he would play for
people. He was really, really sweet, but he was always doing a
little bit of nodding. One time, his manager was saying, 'Oh, their
album sold a million today'. We were in Tijuana, and I was going to
go up to him and say congratulations, and I said, 'How's it going''
and he says, 'I'm so fucking sick of people coming up to me and
telling me how wondeful it is this record's selling big'. I went and
told my whole band, 'Don't say congratulations! He doesn't want to
hear it!' (laughter) He was a great guy, a great innovator, a
little nuts.
TA: I have those little lists..if I really like someone I always
push The Dicks and Roky Erickson on them.
GF: Roky Erickson was great. When I was tour with Sister Double
Happiness they were putting out that Roky tribute album, it was
gonna have ZZ Top, and REM, and they asked us if we wanted to do a
song. We did 'Temple Prayer (Two-Headed Dog)' And I saw him the
last time I was in Austin and he's doing really good.
TA: Your writing reminds me of him. Would you ever publish anything
you write?
GF: No, but I'd like to. Sometimes I write those little blog things,
and I read one to my friend yesterday, and she was, 'My god, where
does all this anger come from?' And I said it doesn't really come
from anywhere.
TA: I don't think it's anger, it's all got this very Southern Gothic
influence. You wrote recently that your parents were incredibly
supportive.
GF: It was amazing, they always were. Even my father, who's like a
world war 2 vet, probably could be called a redneck, but he had some
consciousness that was really fucking cool. And my mom was always
really supportive, and when I started doing little bands, like, fat
kid with bad Beatle cut bangs, ranting..but we had songs that were
sorta good, y'know? One time, not too long before my mother died,
she came here for her birthday. And all of my friends came, they
all loved her, and Sister Double Happiness played. I said, okay,
I'm gonna introduce my very best friend in the whole world, she's
here tonight, and it's my mother. I thought she'd be so
embarrassed, and she jumped up and was like 'MY
BABY!!' (laughter)
It was the greatest memory, she was so happy.
TA: There's a lot of mother references in the Black Kali Ma record.
GF: For a long time, I was really giving no attention to the
spiritual side of my life. Like, nothing at all. And then it
started coming to me really strong. And it wasn't like, go to the
first Baptist church, it came in the way of a vacancy. I thought,
this is like a spiritual vacancy, and I had been a real spiritual
kid. I was raised Baptist, and my parents said one day, 'We don't
want to go to church anymore, but we want you to go if you want to,
and we're take you, and we'll come and get you.' And that changed,
I became Catholic, which freaked my mom out a little
bit. But they took me to church, and then the war in Vietnam started raging when I
was 15, and I got very political, very left. And I ignored all the
spiritual stuff for some time. But then I started getting really
hungry for it. When the Dicks were on tour one time, I had some
books about Buddhism, and I studied that a lot, kept moving, and I
found another path, sort of a hippie path, and I got very into the
Hindu path of mother worship, the different mother goddesses. Kali
is my chosen mother. I see her terrifying side, but I also see her
loving side. I started studying that, and I even quit Sister Double
Happiness for a year to join a monastery. I studied, for a year
and thought, okay, i'm really not going to be a monk
anytime soon.
And I got Sister Double Happiness back together. So yeah, a big
mother thing. A BIG mother thing. And Kali is all those mother
references. She'll slap you down, she'll pick you up. That's part
of the whole trip, you have to look through it. It's all there,
whether it's a hurricane down south, or it's a big gold palace up
north. They're all part of it and if you get too attacthed to
either one you're gonna freak out later on. You have to look at
what's going one, deal with it, and keep your whole inner thing
going on. And none of it's easy. I get rid of a lot of anxiety,
and what could be called depression by singing.
TA: Yeah, it's a big catalyst.
GF: If I had to keep it all inside,
didn't have any valves to get rid
of it, I'd be fucked. I mean, look at you, you're an artist, a
musician, that kind of shit, doing what you're doing. What if you
didn't have that side? What if you worked in an office downtown and
there was no way to get rid of it? Your outlet is having, like,
dinner with the girls.
TA: Right. I just actually wrote a blog on myspace (laughter), the
new crack cocaine of the 21st century, and I was talking about that,
how it's so sad, people looking for validation, and I felt really
grateful, you know, because, okay, i'm female, I wear make-up, I
like high heels, but nothing is like the absolute luxury of playing
guitar, and making art, that is my life. That is what it's all
about.
GF: And it's like,
goddamn, aren't we lucky? I've never taken that
for granted, being able to go on stage and sing thoughts, sing
emotions that I've had. Real sad shit, or real mad, or happy. All
real. I'm able to get out and communicate. How lucky is that?
By Tuula Ala
