Album Notes

Patriots Statement

I first came into contact with Chris Pederson, the guitarist and lead songwriter for “the Patriots,” in 1981when he was playing a show with his band, “The Dumps” at Joe’s Grass Shack in Santa Barbara, California. I was immediately impressed by Chris’ ability to combine melody and lyrics in a hardcore format. I got to that gig via Chris’ girlfriend of the time, Laurie Silvers. At that time, I went to Santa Monica High School. Laurie went to Beverly Hills High and all of us met and lived at the Starwood and Oki Dogs in Hollywood. It was in the tussle of that scene that I again saw Chris and found out he was forming a new band. That band became the Patriots. For the next two years, I lived in my mother’s garage, Chris lived in Venice, Stuart lived in Hollywood, and Juan just showed up at rehearsals as we developed the set on this CD.
Our first gig was on September 1st, 1982 on Santa Monica Boulevard. We opened up for the Mau-Maus. I remember because the drummer got ill and I played their set with them. When we toured North to San Francisco I wore a Dodgers shirt to be antagonistic to the Frisco-ites. A bunch of girl punks jumped me and were beating me silly when our violent bouncer came in and cleaned them all up. He was subsequently fired because he did not need a situation to start a fight. During one of our sets in a small warehouse some punk hit another in the head with a beam. I remember D. Boon of the Minutemen being in my van when the police came to search our car for the beam. Rumor was that the victim never walked again. The scene had casualties. We played huge festivals in which I was mortally afraid of falling off the riser, bars and parties. It was a relentless two years that we survived.
Like all good things, the Patriots had to implode due to its own excesses. In our second year we decided to play a punk rock game with our music. We made it our business to see how fast and how drunk we could play. The drunk part was no problem for me. I polished at least two forty-ouncers of Olde English malt liquor a weekend at the time. I am proud to say that I vomited at least one night a weekend throughout the second year of the Patriots. And I was not alone in this lust for destruction. On any given night, one or more of us would finish the show and be too intoxicated to leave the stage. Drinking never stopped us from finishing, but the speed of the shows was taking us to the edge of incoherence. You will hear that our later recordings are much faster and thus a bit less melodic. We lived the Punk ethic till the end.
Loyalty is a bitch and time destroys all. D. Boon started hanging around our rehearsals. He was a beautiful guitarist. It turned out he was scouting me as a drummer. But I took umbrage at his offer to join the minutemen because he was subverting the Patriots. Almost immediately after that refusal, Chris left us. He did so in order to play the lead role in Penelope Spheeris’ 1984 film Suburbia. So much for loyalty! Chris made a few more films. I put out a solo album, have continued playing in bands until this day and now write books. Rumor has it that Juan went into education and Stuart is still in a mental institution as a result of taking too much LSD at a Nick Cave concert. The Patriots live on only in fading memories, the appearance of our logo on the side of the main car in Suburbia, and this CD. May it help you on your own path to oblivion and destruction.

John Press