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Vice Blog

RETTSOUNDS - HANK IV

San Francisco is a town with a rich history of politically charged punk bands that aren't afraid to cry out against injustice and champion equality through their crude though effective music. Thankfully, Hank IV is not one of those bands.

Much like Joe Perry and his "Project" from the early 80s, these bay dwelling dudes let the music do the talking. And their "talking" is a focused sonic attack that twists the Midwest good-time snarl of the Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments with a walloping doubled up guitar attack that will have you wondering where your copy of Eternally Yours is. (Seriously… where is it? This isn't funny.) Since their latest full length on the Siltbreeze label entitled III was my go-to record whenever drinking needed to get done in the later half of last year, I figured I'd tap the band on their virtual shoulder to see if they come off as badass and fun on the computer as they do pumping from my crap heap speakers on a Thursday night.

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Vice: First off, how pissed were you guys when you found out Kendra Wilkinson named her kid Hank IV?
Hank IV: Can't say we were litigiously pissed. The fact that Hank Baskett IV outranks us in several search categories only serves us right. But we do sort of feel sorry for Hank Baskett. That laugh of Kendra's would grate anyone into madness.

You guys have quite a pedigree in regards to past bands that didn't really "fit in" with the San Francisco scene--bands like Icky Boyfriends, Resineators, etc. Where does Hank IV differs from these other bands?
We lack the catchy hooks of the Icky Boyfriends, the vision of the Resineators, the smash hits of the ThemeWeavers, the common sense of Bum Kon, and the delicate femininity of Duh.

Let's talk about the latest LP III. Is it true it was recorded for ten dollars in an old abandoned warehouse or something? If so, let us in on the details. Why did you decided to record it in this fashion rather than with someone like Tim Green like you did with your previous albums?
Ten dollars was more than Siltbreeze, or we, had to spend. This album was actually recorded for zero dollars over six months by Chris (Portfolio, bass player) at our practice space/studio in the Tenderloin that Andy (Oglesby, guitarist) and Anthony (Bedard, guitarist) nicknamed The Shill Building. In a former life it was the Black Eyed Pig studio run by Kyle Statham from the old Matador band, Fuck. Even if the money had been there we only had a small window of time to record basic tracks before losing our drummer, Scott, for several months, so we said "Fuck it," sequestered ourselves inside the Shill Building, and paid dearly in terms of "the hidden cost of free." Obvious benefits were the luxury of time for overdubs and mixing and our proximity to Miller's East Coast West Deli. A big drawback in not going back to Louder Studios and recording with Tim Green was that we didn't have him playing us carefully chosen recordings of other bands' in-studio fights, arguments, and frank discussions, or him asking us if we wanted to take a break and actually record a song.

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It seems most of your LPs thus far are really short. Is this a conscious effort or is it that that's just all the new songs you've got at the moment?
We aimed to make III as succinct as we could, to skim all the fat off and reduce the sauce down as far as possible. It's a distillation of the post-skiffle attack from Refuge in Genre (2nd album) and the extended jam sequences from Third Person Shooter (1st album). Plus, we were thinking strictly in terms of vinyl--15 minutes per side is ideal for reproducing the sound of our 400W Mesa Boogie bass stack, the one we got criticized for having when opening for Jay Reatard because the amp wasn't "garage" enough for some audience member.

Your vocalist, Bob, is not going to get out of this interview without talking about Bum Kon, the hardcore band he had in Colorado in the early 80s.
Bob McDonald: Bum Kon were big fishies in a small pond along with a handful of great overlooked bands like the Frantix and White Trash (members of both went on to form The Fluid), Child Abuse, Dogmeat (who in a very roundabout way went on to aid in the invention of grunge years later via Blood Circus), and a few others who will eventually find their way to a KBD-type bootleg comp. We opened for Motorhead on their 10th anniversary tour, played with the Dead Kennedys, Butthole Surfers, Swans, Suicidal Tendencies, and I'm sure a ton of others that the years have stolen from me. There were two full-length albums released between '84 and '85 which I assume are difficult to find outside of Denver or my bedroom, and fat chance getting in there.

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How about the rest of you guys? Any memorable Icky Boyfriends or Resineators stories?
Anthony Bedard: Icky Boyfriends just played our first show in 15 years at the Budget Rock festival last October and it was a huge success, weirdly enough. Our debut show was in 1990 opening for Melvins and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. A few songs into the set we'd managed to clear the room and the booker kicked us offstage shortly after that. The one guy left in the audience, JM Dunn, immediately offered to release our first 7" and he began living in a camper van on the streets of San Francisco to finance it. The boyfriend of the girl who sang on our first 7" came to the recording session straight from his vasectomy and placed a jar containing his freshly snipped vas deferens on the recording console where we could see it through the glass. On the way back home from that tour, traveling south on the I-5 just outside of Portland, we had a tire blowout on the trailer we were towing. We went into a clockwise 180 degree spinout at 65 miles per hour, flung off the right shoulder of the highway, and came to a complete stop facing the oncoming traffic with the U-Haul flipped on its side, still attached to the hitch. None of us were hurt and nobody else was involved in the accident. The highway patrol showed up and it was a fairly straightforward exchange about the details until they got a look at the bottle of liquid paper on the backseat, at which point they grilled each of us separately, trying to get us to admit that we'd been huffing it. In actuality, Jon (Swift, vocalist) had stopped speaking to Shea (Bond, guitarist) and I entirely and was using the liquid paper to assist in writing us hilarious notes in the voices of people we'd met on the trip. We eventually received some accident settlement money for our damaged gear and trailer and used the proceeds to self-release our first album, I'm not Fascinating.

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On the last song of the Resineators' Kyber Pass show in Philadelphia in 2001, David Nudelman stood up from the drum kit and his foot slipped into a 2-step stairwell causing him to do a combination pirouette/lunge/full body slam into a door behind the stage that had been left ajar by a member of the Mikey Wild Band. Dave slammed into the door, which then flew wide open, and he ended up crash-landing horrifically on the sidewalk of 2nd St. The amp still squealing, Dave somehow got up, ran back into the club and triumphantly finished the set. He spent the remainder of the night in a South Philly emergency room with a variety of torn muscle injuries. A cab dropped him at Siltbreeze headquarters at 6am where he wandered the living room in circles all bandaged up and in dire need of painkillers and food. At 8:00am, I took Dave to the pharmacy down the street and on the way back he spotted a cheesesteak shop. I thought it was weird that one would be open that early in the morning, but Dave insisted on getting one. Back at the house, Tom Lax was awoken by the smell of the food and was amazed to hear where it had been procured, assuring us that this particular cheesesteak shop was not in the primary business of selling cheesesteaks and that they must have served Dave (quite a sight to behold at that point) just to get rid of us.

Bob, I've seen pictures of you in a Venom shirt. Would it impress you at all if I told you I saw them play with Black Flag in my hometown of Trenton, New Jersey when I was 13?
That impresses me greatly, other than the Trenton, New Jersey part. I would've loved to see that bill. Does it impress you that I saw U.K, The Rockets, The Cars, Heart, and Ted Nugent on the same bill at Mile High Stadium in Denver?

It most certainly does! My brother had the first U.K. album Danger Money and I can honestly say I thought it was one of the most frightening record covers I'd ever seen at that point in my life, right up there with In The Court of the Crimson King or Alice Cooper Goes To Hell. I don't know if it was the guy washing his hands so thoroughly or Eddie Jobson' clear violin, but it scared the crap out of me. Anyways, what do you like about Venom?
I love everything about Venom, and am personally In League with Satan, though you are mistaken about the T-shirt. It was actually a Hollertronix shirt with a copped Venom logo.

Do you keep up at all with today's black metal scene?
I don't really keep up with today's exciting black metal scene, as I'm not a big fan of acoustic guitars, though I will go to my grave with my Carcass and Pungent Stench LPs.

What's the Hank IV opinion on Rush?
Chris Portfolio: Competent musicians with a near ludicrous Ayn Rand obsession.
Bob McDonald: It was hearing a Rush album for the first time that made me go looking for punk rock.
Anthony Bedard: Chris and I are big fans of live and promotional photos of the band. Majestic.

TONY RETTMAN