INTERVIEW: N.O.T.A PART III
No Idols: What were some of the first fanzines N.O.T.A corresponded with back then?
Bruce Hendrickson: This is a question Jeff should probably answer as he handled most of our media interactions. We mailed out hundreds of our On the Pavement (1982) and Live at the Crystal Pistol (1983) demo cassettes, many to various fanzines all over the world. Names like The Front Page, Leading Edge, and Pollution Control spring to mind. The network of fanzines back then was the lifeblood of the Hardcore movement, allowing punks to become aware of each other and to keep up with what was going on.
Russell met Tim Tonooka on his trip with Barrie out to San Francisco. Tim’s fanzine Ripper from San Jose was first to do an early piece on the show we did at the Muskogee Assembly Center, where we were literally run out of town by rowdy rednecks. This was the same venue where Merle Haggard recorded the live version of ‘Okie From Muskogee’; an outcome we should have anticipated but took us by surprise anyway. We were fortunate that ‘zine editors like Tim were curious about a punk band from Oklahoma. We received a lot of favorable coverage from fanzines that were springing up all over the country. We received a brief mention in Trouser Press.
Tim Yohannan of Maximum Rock n Roll took an early interest and asked us to do an interview; our relationship with Tim eventually led to his inviting us to contribute ‘Propaganda Control’ to the Maximum Rock ‘N’ Roll Welcome to 1984 compilation. It is difficult to overstate how important that compilation was to raise our profile.
In early 1983 a letter arrived by snail mail - we had no telephone at the time - from Jello Biafra inviting us to play with the Dead Kennedys in Dallas at a show Frank Campagna was promoting. That show at Trax, a burlesque club, was a breakout show for us. Frank got word the police were going to raid the club looking for underage kids. Dead Kennedys jumped up and did an impromptu matinee show on our gear that was already set up on stage. A wild night that led to more shows with Dead Kennedys down the road.
The Welcome to 1984 comp brought us to the attention of European fanzines like Straight Edge and TVOR in Italy and helped us build a European following. We were getting more and more mail every day, really all due to fanzines. Eventually, we made the Hardcore charts in New Musical Express in the UK, which we were very excited about. By the time the LP came out, we were getting reviews in magazines like Thrasher and Flipside.
Local fanzines like David Fallis’ Mutant News, Blatch put out by Jim Blanchard, and No Fashion by Jeff Sniderman was the glue that held the Oklahoma scene together. This alternative DIY media really made ‘80s Hardcore possible.
Who were some of the first bands to form in the area in the wake of N.O.T.A?
Today David Fallis is best known as a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor for investigative reporting at the Washington Post; in the early days of Hardcore he was already putting out a fanzine Mutant News while still in high school. David is likely one of those kids in Tulsa who discovered Devo on MTV. Devolution opened his eyes and changed his life forever. He managed to get Los Reactors booked at a high school dance which gained him considerable notoriety among his peers. David was a dedicated cultural revolutionary at a very young age - something I can relate to. By the time we met him, he had discovered Minor Threat and straight edge; he underwent a Hardcore metamorphosis almost overnight.
A natural-born leader and organizer, it wasn’t enough for David to be a fan; he decided to form a band. Moving to Norman to enroll at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of ‘82, he and guitarist Brian Riddell put together No Direction with Blake on bass and Kent on drums. We now had a second nascent scene in Norman as well as Tulsa; Hardcore was growing and replicating across the Sooner state.
David began organizing shows and landed a show on the university radio station. We began a close collaboration with those guys, playing many shows together both in Tulsa and Norman. David was so successful that by early 1983 a show we did with No Direction and Husker Du at the National Guard Armory in Norman drew a much larger crowd than any of the shows we were doing in Tulsa.
The advantages of doing shows in Norman at the Armory or the American Legion included the fact that we could advertise these as all-ages shows; and as with college towns across the country, Hardcore scenes thrived where you had large numbers of students looking for something to do. Before long the Gomers formed in Tulsa and Diet of Worms in Norman - young enthusiastic kids writing exciting and provocative socially aware original songs. Tulsa punk had grown and evolved into Oklahoma Hardcore.
Your Live at the Crystal Pistol demo tape was what made people aware of both the band and a Hardcore scene existing in Oklahoma. How many of those tapes did you send out you reckon?
The Live at the Crystal Pistol demo cassette was extremely important for us. We had an earlier demo ‘On the Pavement’ in 1982 recorded in my garage by Larry Brandt, the bassist in Russell’s previous band the Mutant Fish. Larry moved to Tulsa at the same time as Russell and he had a four-track; we asked him to come over and record some rehearsals. We were not happy with our performance as Russell had only been in the band a few short weeks. That tape sounds better today than we thought at the time. We were still a work in progress; we’ve always been hypercritical regarding our recordings. A few of those songs wound up on the Prank Records reissue of Live at the Crystal Pistol decades later.
Producer Martin Halstead working his magic on N.O.T.A
Live at the Crystal Pistol marked the beginning of our collaboration with Martin Halstead. Originally from the UK, we met Martin just after Russell joined the band. Martin quickly became an integral member of the NOTA team. A brilliant multi-instrumentalist, engineer, producer, photographer; the dapper unflappable Martin demonstrated a genius for improvisation, overcoming any obstacles we encountered recording under the most primitive conditions imaginable. He understands us and the sound we are looking for - then and now.
Live at the Crystal Pistol was recorded on a single night on a four-track in the first weeks of 1983. It really marked the end of the summer of ‘82. Our experiences as the house band at the Crystal Pistol had really helped the new lineup gel. We were becoming a proficient thrash band; we were playing at speeds unimaginable a year earlier.
We mailed out three hundred copies of the cassette gratis to anyone who wrote and asked for one. It was certainly important in bringing us and the Oklahoma scene to the attention of Hardcore fans and ‘zine editors around the country. At the time all we could hear were the flaws in our performances. It was about this time we started looking around at local studios. We booked time in a couple and the results were disastrous - usually, because local engineers simply couldn’t or wouldn’t grasp what punk recordings should sound like. I don’t think they could wrap their heads around our sheer velocity. Nevertheless, those experiences did undermine our self-confidence somewhat. Becoming a studio worthy band was the next bridge to cross.