THE BIGGEST ABBA FAN IN MICHIGAN

As long as I can remember, the whole early-80 scene centered around the Touch & Go label has intrigued the shit out of me. My older brother was bringing home those records as they were coming out and they really blew away my little ten-year-old brain. My musical interests jumped from Kiss to Necros in a heartbeat. I would sit there for hours and pour pore [Sorrs. -Ed] over the photos on the Negative Approach 7″ trying to figure out just what the hell was going on in them and the issues of Touch & Go fanzine opened up a world of sexual exploration I still have trouble understanding as an adult. In short, the whole thing sorta informed my life and the twisted way I live it to this day.

The Detroit scene wouldn’t leave my brain some 25 years after discovering it, so I decided to write a book. Just as I was starting to put the whole thing together, I found out Tesco Vee was shopping around a no-holds-barred collection of the Touch & Go fanzines in book form. And now it seems both books will be released simultaneously to enthrall the punk rock masses. Wudda coincidence! In celebration of this occurrence, I thought Tesco and I should sit down in his mountain cabin in an undisclosed location with just a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and discuss what lead him from here, there, and your underwear…

Vice: So first off, what spurred the ABBA obsession? Did it come before or after the discovery of the UK Punk thing?
Tesco Vee: Actually, I was tooling around in my Opel Manta in 1973 taking a break from the Thin Lizzy and Montrose blaring from my Pyramid “Mindblower” speakers when “Waterloo” came on; I was spellbound and transfixed and I cranked it. Those speakers were some of the first to have pre-amps in em, 30 watts x4, I know that’s puny compared to today’s big wigger boffo subs, but for the time they were loud and clean and those two cream and sugar broads voices cascaded over me like a cool Alpine stream and I was a goner.

What lured you to them in the first place?
The production was majestic and the arrangements were over the top, but it was the silky blend of Agnetha and Frid’s pipes that really gave me the wood.

What’s your fave ABBA jam?
At the risk of appearing pedestrian I’d say it’s “Dancing Queen.” But also “Thank you For The Music” just because Aggie is the cats pajamas and I don’t care that she’s now an old reclusive and very rich hag. The Dutch Hercules’ power shaft is still hard like steel anytime she wants a twirl in the percales. What’s your favorite?

Mine? Maybe “Love Isn’t Easy” or “Dum Dum Diddle.” But if I just wanna get down to it “Dancing Queen” is a gem.
Good choices! I’m more of a phone guy so “Ring Ring” is my old-school fave

And now for the question on everybody’s mind… why were TSOL sissies?
Because they weren’t! They were big surfer dudes that could break my pencil-necked ass like a twig!

So why did you pick a fight with them?
It was a totally random thought I had. I remember seeing a picture of TSOL and they were all buff and burly and I thought, ‘Hey! Why not call them sissies and see what happens?”

Wasn’t there also a comic in an issue of Touch & Go that started it as well?
Yeah, it was drawn by Brian Pollack, my good and now permanently ex-friend.

The guy who drew all the classic Meatmen comics but refused for them to be printed in the book, right?
Yeah, that guy. I used to be great friends with him, but now I have a corkboard wall of him and his family in my garage that I ejaculate and spit on…

I got one of those with Francesco Rinadli on it. Getting back to the subject, why did he draw it?
Why did that guy draw ANYTHING? Because I put him up to it!

So there really was no reason for fucking with TSOL?
Not really. The funniest story in the book is about Ian MacKaye coming downstairs at the old 9:30 club to see Brian Baker jacked up against the wall by Jack from TSOL. Pretty soon, Ian gets jacked up too while Jack is crowing on with “Sissies, huh?” Ian eventually talked him down and all was well until TSOL hit the next tour stop and heard that we were talking shit again and the vitriol flowed anew. You’ve got to remember this was the Pony Express and illegal-long-distance-phone-calls-billed-to-major-corporation days. Word traveled slowly and lore grew legs.

You were also always fucking with Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll in those days. I remember when I saw you contribute some articles to them back then, I was sort of confused. That article you wrote for them about record collection (MRR no. 15) is like one of the best pieces of music writing in my mind. How did you reconcile with the people at MRR to the point where they’d publish your pieces?
Yeah, me and Tim Yohannon were strange bedfellows. All his fellow staffers probably hated me, but I think Timmy had a closet fetish for the un- PC side of punk. He actually came and saw Tesco Vee’s Hate Police at the Bottom Of The Hill show in San Francisco in 1992 and he had a big old grin on his face the whole time. Too bad he couldn’t give up the lung torpedoes, because he was a great guy. I did like messing with that mag–like shooting ducks in a barrel.

When I was a kid flipping through my brothers’ copies of Touch & Go, I always wondered where you got some of the imagery. Like, where did you find that picture of a guy dipping his schlong into a meat grinder?

That specific one I can’t recall, but I always frequented magazine stores and the Doc Johnson pleasure parlors. The photo booths were majorly disgusting. It was like someone went in there with a fire extinguisher full of semen and sprayed the monitor and floor. Your feet stuck and made that walking-in-muck sound. That didn’t stop me from popping a quarter into the slot and voiding seed to some Gloria Leonard short, though. The accompanying feeling of glee, guilt, and revulsion was worth every second.

When the whole Hardcore thing took off, did you adopt the look of the Huntington Beach punks you guys saw in Flipside?
I had a pair of doofy engineer boots but I never quite could pull off that look. I kinda went for the more Joy Division look with the black wingtips and straight leg pants. Man, I looked like a big putz in those boots. Later on, I painted them silver and used them for stage gear.

Wasn’t the first Meatmen show with Minor Threat?
No. It was supposed to be with Necros but they got stopped at the Canadian border. For some reason, I wanna say The Fix were on the flyer but don’t remember if they played. It was at the Coronation tavern in Windsor, Ontario. The traps in the urinals were gone, so you stood there and pissed on your shoes. The bartender was this old lady who had a frying pan and she whacked the local drunks when they got too raucous. Some guy threatened me with “I’m gonna stab you, you fuckin’ geek” and I raised my shirt where I had a recent surgery scar and said “Too late asshole, I got stabbed last week” and he got all wide-eyed with respect and left me alone. A person of normal intellect and common sense–there is no direct relation between the two–would have deduced that a life as a punk rock singer was a bad career move, but it was too late…I had hopped that happy freight and was off to the races.
If that’s the case, why do you still do this after thirty years?
A great question and one that really can’t be easily explained I think. Handsome Dick Manitoba summed up my credo on the first Dictators LP: :I could be baskin’ in the sun in Florida! This is just a hobby for me, ya hear? A Hobby!” I wasn’t a lifer like Danzig or Rollins and that’s why they are gazillionaires and I toil in obscurity. But being able to walk away and come back when I want makes it fun. When it ain’t fun, I bag it. But somehow I come back. Lucifer talks to me while I sleep; his brackish breath hot on my neck.. coaxing, cajoling, coercing me to fire up the Meatwagon and hit the road once again. Tesco Vee is a necessary reaction to the ridiculously over-the-top PCness that encircles us all. Even at 80 my fave thespian Clint Eastwood still rails against it; as will I until my last breath. Lighten up fuckstains and have a laugh! Life is too short! As long as I can hit the stage with a sack fulla piss and vinegar and not suck, you’re stuck with my flabby ass!

INTERVIEW BY TONY RETTMAN

You should go see Tesco’s Hate Police play with Negative Approach and Pissed Jeans next weekend at Santos Party House for the dual Why Be Something That You’re Not / The Complete Touch & Go Fanzine release party. We’ll remind you when it’s getting close.