TESCO VEE
By Morgan Y. Evans

Growing up I had pretty liberal and forgiving parents considering that my room was decked out in strung up dead baby dolls, comic book cut outs of hot X-Men babes (Psylocke, I love you. Text me.) plus fragments of Skinny Puppy and Big Black lyrics painted on the walls. There were still a select few things I had to hide away from Mom and Dad before they accepted the fact that I wasn’t trying to completely destroy my mind, however. My mom was usually pretty darn tolerant but she definitely hated and threw out my Gwar “I died on the flesh column” t-shirt featuring zombie warriors and dead hookers sewn together and she also frowned at and wasn’t by any means fond of the large breasted zombie girls on the back of White Zombie’s LA Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol 1 album. Bearing this in mind, there was no way I was going to let her find my Meatmen albums if I wanted to still have a place to live. One of the funniest, crassest and yet still socially relevant bands ever, The Meatmen sprung like some drunken transvestite, vitriol spitting version of Athena from the Zeus-like skull of punk mastermind Tesco Vee.

While his musical output with various groups has been bad ass, enjoyable, button pushing and absurdist over the years, the most powerful thing Tesco Vee has contributed to punk rock and the world was his influential co-founding (with Dave Stimson) of the Lansing, MI based Touch and Go fanzine. The fanzine would not only eventually turn into one of the most influential underground record labels of all time, releasing classics by everyone from Necros to Tar, The Jesus Lizard and Silkworm much later, but the fanzine that was the precursor to it all was the first way that many people in the middle of the country and parts beyond discovered some of the most influential punk and hardcore bands ever (Negative Approach, anyone?).
In the day of do it all yourself, word of mouth punk, Vee and Stimson worked like rabid dogs chasing a leg to bring the latest word on punk to the streets. All that and more is documented in the thorough and definitively crucial new book Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine ’79-’83, out on metal expert Ian Christie’s Bazillion Points imprint. Riding a wave of rediscovery courtesy of the book, the historic 1981 Midwest hardcore punk “Vengeance” 7” single by TOUCH AND GO book editor Steve Miller’s band The Fix has even fetched an impressive $4,250 at auction recently!

The TOUCH AND GO book collects all of the influential ‘zine and makes it maybe easy to find for diehards for the first time. The book features introductions from Henry Rollins, Keith Morris and Ian MacKaye and is 576 pages of awesome stuff from the start of real hardcore. It is an unprecedented window into a crucial time that we now have thanks to the dedicated few who documented that era in the first place. Like the recently published Eerie Von book Misery Obscura: The Phoyoraphy of Eeerie Von (which my pal Andy Ani Male from the band Stalkers recently showed me), the book is a vital collection of materials that were first born of enthusiasm and were of the moment before becoming crucial for posterity as time has passed and influence has grown.

It was my pleasure to talk via telephone with Tesco Vee and find out about the making of this fucking sweet book, that early era and the rock n’ roll fever/DIY ethics that urged him towards helping create history and assist in the growth of the punk rock movement in such a big way.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: I’m so psyched to talk to you, man. I’ve been a fan for a long time. Ever since that Meatmen cover of Sly & The Family Stone.

TESCO VEE: (laughing) That I took a machete to.

MYE: It’s choice, man. My friends and I used to blast that all the time & scare girls. “Oh, you wanna dance?” (laughing)

TV: (laughing)

MYE: Let’s talk about this book. Punk rock from Lansing, Michigan… back in the day. What do you think gave you the attitude to start the ‘zine in the first place years ago?

TV: I’ve always been a fan of music. In the 70’s big rock acts started to come through town. T-Rex. Iggy, obviously. I’ve always been a fan of the down and dirty. The Dictators. All the bands that were kind of flirting with the punk rock sound. When punk happened it was like, “Woah! What’s going on here?” I dumped a lot of my progressive rock collection which I now wish I had back. I bought as much punk rock as I could. I was so passionate about this new music that I had to write about it. I was exploding with the desire and need to spread the word. Dave Stimson and I weren’t really friends in high school but we hooked up later on and said “let’s start a ‘zine.” He came over to my parents and saw my collection and Touch And Go was born.

MYE: Right on! What was the biggest challenge off the bat? I remember my friend Zac from the band Dead Unicorn and I had a ‘zine in our high school in the nineties and we used to have to sneak in and run it off the high school copier and use up all the toner!

TV: Being a school teacher I had to do it clandestine in the middle of the night and find paper at 3 a.m. That’s why some issues are pink and blue. I was teaching school by day and printing this scandalous Touch And Go rag at night. My biggest fear was leaving one of these pages on the glass and the school secretary would walk in and see Farrah Fawcett with cum bursting out of her nose, you know?

MYE: (laughing) God. I didn’t know you were a teacher.

TV: Yeah. Xerox machines in 1979-80 were hardly the technological marvels they are today. If the drum was low on toner I got a gray issue. If it had been replaced I got a black issue, so the labor was quite intensive to get these issues photo shopped back as black and readable as they could.

MYE: You had the content already, yeah, but was it hard to figure out how to present it in book form? It’s so many pages but it kind of thin, which is cool. The book is a few inched thick instead of a huge tome of lore.

TV: That’s one of the reasons the book could be a reality. Forced Exposure, Flipside, Maximum would take multiple volumes but we were a handy 22 issue size. Even though big, it still lent itself to book form. I am very grateful. It’s still a brick, don’t get me wrong. Over three pounds of punk rock history!

MYE: Of course there’s shocking stuff in there but you also were covering a crucial developmental stage of punk. How was it being there or seeing some of the stuff you saw. Crazy moments, or whatever? Times you couldn’t believe what you saw or had just written about?

TV: Oh, yeah. Part of it is I wish I was paying better attention. At the time we didn’t really realize the import of what was happening. Seeing D.O.A. play. Andy from the Necros leaping up into the air and crashing into the stage. Silly nonsense I remember. Big bands would come through Detroit. Some bands would come to Lansing. We’d drive in the middle of the night to go see Johnny Thunders. The Freezer Theatre was where all the real hardcore went down and the hole in the wall where everyone spied on the girls peeing…

MYE: (laughing)

TV: It was basically just a squat. The guy who owned it, I don’t know if he was pirating electricity or what. Ian MacKaye tells a good story of playing there and having to chase the promoter down the street and into some Fellini-esque apartment with cross dressers and little kids and screaming “Where’s my money!” Ian’s, you know, not a greedy guy…

MYE: (laughing hard)

TV: (laughing)… but he needed to be paid. He literally had to take his life in his hands. That neighborhood was strictly junkies, transvestites and bullet proof glass. All of us little suburbanites were taking our life in our hands every time for punk rock (laughing). There was a big riot outside; I think it was a Minor Threat show. The Freezer Theatre had bigger shows like Misfits, Necros, Meatmen. We’d all be warm up bands for national acts. It was a weird scene ‘cuz the Detroit scene was really spread out all over Michigan as opposed to a D.C. or NY concentrated downtown thing going on. We had bands all across the state that would come together for these shows. That was what it was all about. It would be a cool happening. I booked Minor Threat and Negative Approach, The Meatmen and a band called Whipping Boy from San Francisco at a little Lansing repertoire theatre company place. My wife collected money and Minor Threat stayed at my house. It was what was cool about doing this stuff. Ahhh, memories.

MYE: It must have been heavy going back through all this stuff, but also, once you started seeing the magazine being influential and you were getting a reaction back from people in the scene…I guess the question is, how were people reacting? You really could shock people back then! And then over time seeing it take on a whole other life and all these bands becoming fucking legendary!

TV: Yeah. I mean, we definitely tried to go for the throat and shock and offend. That was a precursor to The Meatmen and all that sophomoric scatology that followed. That was our angle. We kind of had a “We know about this stuff and you don’t and we’re gonna teach you” attitude. That’s how it was gonna go. If we liked you it was good for you and if we didn’t…tough shit. Dave and I would do our pages separately and if we had time we’d get a case of beer and meet up to read each other’s pages and crack up laughing.

MYE: That’s like those “exquisite corpse” type drawings where one person does the head and someone else does the body without looking and then it is a monster at the end (laughing).

TV: (chuckling) exactly.

MYE: Dude, so Negative Approach…You are doing a thirteen venues in nine states book tour and some of the bands are coming back for it!?

TV: Well, NA is on the Detroit show and the NY show at Santos Party House and also on the first Meatmen show of the year at the Riot House in Chicago. NA, The Zero Boys and The Meatmen are gonna do a showcase. I’ll be doing three shows with NA which is always fun, a lot of shows with The Hate Police. Got some new guys. Where are you out of?

MYE: I live between Upstate, NY and NYC. I know some of the Bad Brains and shit.

TV: Oh, ok. We’re doing an in store in NYC on the 28th of August. I’m gonna be a busy boy.

MYE: Meatmen played in Albany, NY last year and I really wanted to go. I was pissed I missed it. How’s that been coming back strong again?

TV: Like it always was, hit or miss. Some markets we still rule and some it’s, like, whatever. We’ve always been an East Coast …ever since the 80’s the East Coast has been our wheel house. Providence is one of my favorite stops because there’s something in the water. They’re fucking insane. They always come out. It’s like a “meat” crowd, y’know? My wife is happy ‘cuz there’s ninety percent dudes in the crowd and all wearing GG Allin shirts and the clubs are happy ‘cuz they all drink like fishes, so…

MYE: (laughing)

TV: Book the Meatmen and you’re gonna make some money at the bar!

MYE: One more thing…when you first came up with the idea for the Meatmen song “Centurions Of Rome” were you just, like, laughing your ass off to yourself?

TV: Oh yeah, totally. Anytime you yell “Proud, brave, white!” you’ve got to be careful! (laughing) I’m out there to shock and offend but I’ve always steered clear of the race thing. Despite my reputation, nothing about race, but nobody is safe. It’s a target rich environment out there.

MYE: (laughing)

TV: I play on stereotypes and no one is immune from my musical barbs, to be sure.

MYE: Target rich environment. That ties back into the book. You guys were self sustaining because the things you were writing about weren’t for people who didn’t get it and they were often lampooned. There’s the D.I.Y. ethic.

TV: It allowed us to reach out and connect with small, tribal factions throughout the country and even the guys from D.C. … I ended up moving there. The Minutemen in Southern California and the bands in San Francisco… It was a little coterie of bands that thought alike. Ian’s quote in the book, thirty years after the fact…he has a couple of interviews in the magazines but he says , “I went to this record store one day and saw this magazine and it had Penelope (Houston) from The Avengers on the cover. I was like “What The Fuck?!”…’cuz Ian had the attitude that it was only the Metropolis areas like L.A., D.C. and NY and that no one else knew anything about punk. Here we are reviewing all these records and he was like “Holy Shit!”. So he fires off a Teen Idles 7”, just puts it in an envelope and mails it. We get it and it’s in like 12 pieces and we taped it together and still played it and said that it ruled (laughing).

MYE: (laughing)

TV: They were all excited ‘cuz we were interested. It was great. I met a lot of people I am still friends with today through the magazine.

MYE: It’s that discourse. I see some of it now and of course so much has changed with blogging and much has moved online. I love the old flier tradition and poster art but a lot of that is changing more online. The discourse is the main thing. At least with some blogs people can comment directly on things for better or worse. I wondered how you feel about some of the technological changes going on?

TV: It’s the good and the bad of it all, that’s true. It’s great for promotion. Very immediate. You’re only one click away from people hearing a song. The bad news is that the underground scene for want for want of a better word and the whole “movement”, if you want, can never happen again…because of the immediacy. People hear something and they move on in no time at all. Steve Miller from The Fix and the editor of the book had a good point. He said you’d find out about a band like The Birthday Party. He read about a review in Touch And Go and wanted to buy it and there was that waiting period and anticipation. He became a fan for life. I remember sending Black Flag $2 for the “Nervous Breakdown” 7” and getting this package in the mail that was elaborately painted in day glow paint…for $2! Dave, my partner, called me and said , “You gotta get over here right now!” I went to his place and he put the needle down and we heard the opening refrain of “Nervous Breakdown” for the first time and looked at each other and our eyes were bugging out. “Oh my God! This is the greatest record ever!”

MYE: Yeah. It is. That’s true.

TV: Maybe it sounds like an old geezer thing to say but it took a whole lot of effort, time, money and care to learn about this stuff. Writing people letters is a lost art. Kids don’t even go to shows anymore ‘cuz they’ll just watch it on YouTube the next day.

MYE: Great, footage of a show with no one there (laughing). There’s a lot of white noise. You can find out about it fast, like you said. Sometimes there’s scene building in smaller environments where there are 3 or 4 bands that group together, but they might be copying some national band anyway instead of trying to figure out their own way to be cool, you know?

TV: Sure.

MYE: On that note, a lot of the classic bands had similar qualities but they were all kind of doing their own freakish gene strain of punk.

TV: Yeah, their own little niche market.

MYE: You mentioned The Avengers and they were worlds away from some other bands.

TV: Out here you had The Crucifucks and L7 and everybody was coming from a disparate style but working together.

MYE: Crucifucks is a great example ‘cuz his voice was so weird and unique and now singers just copy each other. I hate that. Early punk was some guy yelling in his voice about his sucky life!

TV: Yeah. He’s not trying to be anybody. Granted, we were aping the Brits some, but you could say the Brits were aping The Ramones and the first generation 75’-’76 punk rock. To me, the American reaction, the middle class hardcore punk reaction to punk, resonated the most. It was a middle class reaction. It wasn’t , “I’m getting spit on in England.” I’m living in suburbia but it doesn’t mean I don’t have angst and something to rail against.

MYE: It’s sometimes about wanting to have fun and not always so grim and about anger, but of course there’s lots of wanting to get anger out too and vent…but, how did you first get the nerve to start The Meatmen or some of these crazy things? How’d you say, “ Fuck it, I’m going for it?”

TV: As far as having the band, it seemed like a natural progression. “I can do this too.” I was gonna make my band funny ‘cuz I was weaned on Frank Zappa and The Fugs and all this silly nonsense while I was in high school. We thought that was the greatest stuff ever. There’s no bands with humor so that was gonna be my thing. They’d call us a joke band back then, which I thought was a cop out. Are The Angry Samoans a joke band ‘cuz they had some funny lyrics? Black Randy & The Metrosquad’s Pass The Dust, I Think I'm Bowie is one of the best albums ever. It’s freakin’ hilarious. I don’t know if you ever heard that one. That’s why the tongue in cheek runs throughout.

MYE: Once you started to put out records with Touch & Go also, you had record trading and letter writing, but how did you learn things like distro and stuff where you were sorta going fly by night on it all?

TV: The first Necros was 100 copies and the first Fix was just 200. We may have done some distribution but I don’t think we did. We did mail order and went around the state and sold them through the magazine and local record stores. Those two records are now $3,500 a piece as the current Ebay price, since they were such limited quantities. When Corey Rusk got involved I can’t tell you who he distributed through but he was definitely a necessary partner there and then obviously took the label over completely and made it what Touch And Go eventually became. He had the monetary wherewithal and a real interest. I didn’t really have an interest in running a record label. I wanted to do the magazine and be in a band but I didn’t want to do the nuts and bolts of doing a record label. That’s probably why I handed it over to him eventually. Probably should’ve kept the five percent, but neither here not there.

MYE: Is it wild to you how influential the label became after having germinated from this kind of mischievous idea?

TV: Oh yeah. I’m kind of honored he wanted to keep the name. He easily could have started his own label and called it something else. I like the fact that he wanted to keep it alive and make it what it was. Granted, I might have kept the musical stylings a little more muscle head than he. That’s his choice. He picked the bands that he liked and was the only label on earth that did everything with a handshake deal. There was only one little blip in that which was with the Butthole Surfers. That broke his heart.

MYE: Shit, this is awesome and it’s great to talk to you. How does it feel to hold the book in your hands?

TV: It feels really good to slowly run my fingers over the embossed logo and smell the ink. It’s like a new car. It’s been five years since Steve Miller and I sat in a Kinkos and made little proposal packets to send out but now it’s like having a newborn baby and I’m showing it off to everyone. It’s a great feeling and I’m like on cloud nine.

MYE: How’d you find the publisher?

TV: They were interested. For whatever reason, maybe the lawyers of some places saw the content and said no…

MYE: (laughing)

TV: (laughing) …, but Bazillion Points were interested and popped out. About a year and a half ago my lawyer said to dust off the proposal and send it to me. Ian Christie at Bazillion is the expert on metal so a few people have asked him why he did this but he likes punk rock too. He did the Hellhammer book. He did The Encyclopedia Of Heavy Metal, which I got an autographed copy , “To Tesco-Ozzy Osbourne.”

MYE: Awesome.

TV: Yeah. That’s like, holy shit. But, um, Ian’s been great. The book would not have looked that good if he hadn’t been involved. He put his heart and soul into it. He’s not one of these guys that just pops out a book and says, “Next.” He’s actively involved in every aspect and it’s been really great.