The birth of the shit

It's tuesday morning i´m sitting here at my desk and im thinking about the birth of the shit. I started playing guitar in 1980 on a guitar that i stole from a friend of mine that was in a hospital in a coma after a car accident. you know we spend our days smoking pot and skateboarding, just usual crap in 1980. Then in 1980 hardcore music was the music of the people. Minor Threat and Black Flag were big bands and we mimiced them. I could never play other peoples songs I would just make up stuf and think of that sounded to cool to me. all my friends they all started bands, some of them were pretty famous, DYS, SSD, Impact Unit, and Negative Affects. what really appealed to me being a skateboarder and this whole hardcore music was the fact that it was you know really sarcastic and it was real. It was short, fast, angry blasts of fuck you i don't care. Sarcasm has played a big part of my life, im a big believer in the worst case scenario ideaology...you're neighbors gonna poison your dog, ya know things that pertain to all suvurnban agsnt. Skateboarders have always been sceptical breed, the whole ideaology of hardcore music, it ewas tailor made right at that time. I didn't join a band while everybody else did and they had their heyday. Then in about 1983, Minor Threat broke up. I saw them for one of the last times in new york and I realized that it was one of the best shows i was probably gonna see. Pretty much everything resolved for me after that. The spirit of fucking killing people in the pit, and mass destruction was gone from my life. So I spent the next 25 years basically skating, travelling millions of miles, drugeed out of my mind. Like the guitar would always sit in the corner of my room, and id blast shit. I wrote "hammered" in 1981. I didnt realize that it would ever be something that would matter to me. We started then in the mid 90's, anti hero started. The guys that i hung around with...me, cardiel, julien. We'd hellride. We'd travel and sleep in the bushes like vagabonds.
Cardiel's whole life was like anything was possible. We're low maintenance people, we'd meet the people and sleep at the park. By the late 90's skating was changing. Skating was huge, but wed always been doing the same stuff. Tony Trujillo joined our gang in 97 or 98. He was always the kid that was sleeping underneath the couch, he kept to himself, he never said much. We could tell that he was cut from the same cloth as us and he was immediately part of our family. Skateboarding for us is about character. It's not about tricks, its about people who are down to get it done. We'd be at the park drinkin beers even if it was raining, we just didnt care. When tony jumped up in like 98, after numerous hellrides we spent a lot of time travelling. After john had his accident in 2003 we all kind of reevaluated. Things were kinda changing for us. The stoke that john brings to any session, ill remember those for all my life. We had to rebuild and keep what we were doing on the road fun. the summer of 2005, we went to europe and we had a meltdown. We told the world cup people fuck you we don't care. we're over your contest scores and runs. They think that they're the sactioning body of skateboarding but they're wrong. So after that 2005, Tony bought a guitar but he had like 2 strings. We sat on the hill and made fun of people and we pretty much made them pay. But tony and I have always shared the same musical tastes. We'd show each other little riffs. The idea of starting a band didn´t even occure to us, we were just passing time. So then the next month is king of the road, we were in Louisville. We were again sitting on the hill singing songs and talking shit. We were singing fuck timmy upson songs to the tune of just a gigiolo just shooting the shit hangin with Freddy Gall. When we got back to San Francisco, and on my 43rd birthday I bought my first guItar, reggie. The next weekend Vans had the downtown showdown. Tony was like we gotta go check out this girl that plays drums.
I didnt know that Tony knew her from before. I didn´t know that it also happened to be her birthday. So we met her and the first thing I did was name her Trixie. We all came up with nicknames for each other. I'm ground chuck like whats left of me after skating. T-Bird is like a thunderbird. So we had the band goin. But we didn´t have a name. Tony thought of Bad Shit. I was kind of sceptical. But Tony said kids love swear words. And I was like sold. So we started practicing, and the first song that we wrote was FucKill, "Fuck you fuck you kill kill kill" were the lyrics. So we started the tradition of all our songs being under a minute and a half. So we would just make our songs about things we saw in every day life. Things that other people thought were fucked up, we just thought were stupid. So in retrospect, when I look back on it now, we started the band in September 05 and we just played the same three songs over and over. But we're skateboard people first. People hate us cause we get a free ride to go wherever we wanna go. We don't have a record deal, we give away merchandise. Our music is about life experiences and having fun with your friends. For us, the ultimate is a box of boards,a plane ticket, a destination, your friends, and the starry skies above. It's so simple and that's what we want to reflect in our music. It is what it is. We're just in it to do it cause we love making fun of people and having a good time and we're good at it. Life is short, so you should enjoy yourself. So if you have a good time, and if things suck, change it.
I was 43 years old and I started a band. When we play our songs with our friends its fun. I could press pause on my life and say wow. Like I said, we´ve travelled in other countries. Last year we played in Shanghai and Beijing. My Mom always said that the worst thing anyone could say was no. We happened to have a lot of good friends that have helped us along the way. It's been a hell of a ride. People either hate us or love us. So I know we're doing something right. Every inch of music we've ever recorded has been done by all three of us. Tony records it, I write the songs. We all work together to create it. It comes from all of us. And thats why its so real. Our shit, we paint pictures, whether its a junkie bitch selling her twat on Capp Street, it's all Bad Shit. The bottom line is we're just skateboard people having a good time. If you're down with that, you're down with us. And if you're not, fuck off, see you on the fucking highway bro.

JAKE PHELPS
Tuesday, Feb.-13, 2007