By Dave Hyde

Remember in the year 2000 when Lars Ulrich of Metallica fame took a stand against Napster? Of course you do. On the off chance you don’t, at the core it was a case of copyright infringement, leaking unreleased demos, and ultimately not getting paid/reducing sales. When this went down a majority of people sided with Napster and Lars was just a greedy millionaire rock star.

Today we all see countless posts online (and I am sure conversations in person, as rare as that is anymore) about how shitty companies like Spotify are. How the bands make almost nothing in royalties while Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, currently has a net worth of $4.7 billion. So where was this sentiment 25 years ago? Why was Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning considered hero’s for allowing us to file share music for free and now we are pissed off because Spotify rips artists off?  How do you feel about Lars Ulrich now?

I have had this debate countless times with people over the years. To start, there are two general levels to modern day artists and streaming platform situations. You have the top level, where your well known, successful artists exist. Green Day, Bette Midler, Beyoncé, etc... This top tier level of artists have more monthly streams than most of us could ever imagine having. 8.7 billion Streams for Green Day times 0.004 cents per stream. You do the math. That shit adds up. Place that on top of all the other avenues of income they generate. It’s no wonder Billie is worth $75 million ‘eh. And good on him to pull it off. I am not frowning on this at all. Just building a case of perspective.

Now let us look at what I consider the second general level. The rest of us. The folks who work hard to make good music and get it out in the world. We may have 10 monthly listeners, we may even stream thousands or maybe even millions of times. We make a few bucks if we are lucky. Meanwhile Ek is a member of the Billy Goat Club! Unfair! Pay bands better! I don’t disagree with giving the creator a larger cut of the finances made off their work. In fact, back in 2000, I was one of few who fully supported Lars and his mission against Napster. It is hard enough to put appropriate value on art of any kind, so the last thing we need is people who are not artists taking most of the profits.

Belief in how we are paid as artists aside, I still struggle with not having much to complain about. The argument for me is simple. It doesn’t matter if it is online streaming platforms, YouTube, or record companies… You never really make much off of sales unless you are selling/streaming millions plus. You make your money via other avenues from merchandise to playing shows or any other open doors that your music helps you find. You have to find ways to monetize your brand. Plus in the case of record contracts, you have to be smart and lucky to not give up your rights, your ownership of your masters and so on. All those gory details we can save for future essays.

If you are on Spotify you are in some capacity or another growing your audience. You can’t put a price tag on that. So you may not make enough money worth cashing a check over, but who cares? You are finding your people and the people are finding you. If you are out playing shows, selling merch, doing your song and dance, you will grow and you will find growth financially. Being in this business and making a livable wage or better is astronomically stacked against you already. So the next best thing is to do what you love and hope it finds its place in the world. Then maybe with some time and sustainable upward trends in your brand, you can make some money while you’re at it.

All that being said, imagine if Lars and all the other big shots actually stood together. Imagine if the big artists of today stood together. They could be that change that would help all the rest of us out. Somehow though, once they make it there, they forget where they came from. Shit, a lot of them didn’t even have to come from where we come from. I know firsthand, on a smaller level, how you can come up through this industry and have momentum carry you so quickly that you leave where you came from behind almost unconsciously and accidentally. Still, through it all, you have moments where you remember. Where you know damn well where you came from. In those moments I wish more people took advantage of them to pull together like Voltron and improve the situations of those coming after them. I know when I had those moments, I decided to find ways back to where I came from. Ways to give back. Ways to give to others like others had given to me.

Okay, I will climb down off of this horse for now. Just remember, no matter where you go, sometimes you have to go shovel some shit so you never forget where you came from.

By Dave Hyde

There is an interesting thing that I assume bands do that I never really knew happened until we had to do it. At least in the moment in history when we had to do it. We had to fly city to city and be shuttled radio station to radio station to meet, greet, and acoustically perform a few songs from our upcoming major label debut. Not on the air. In conference rooms with executives in suits and ties. Yes, this happens.

In early 1999 Showoff was months away from our self-titled major label debut from being released. Our first single, Falling Star was to debut about 2 months before the release. We had shot a video (which is an entirely different story for me to tell you all about sometime) and the record label and us were all primed up and ready to get this thing out into the world.

We learn there is going to be a 2 week run of us going to multiple radio stations to meet their executive teams. Seems interesting, but odd. What do we know though? Just a bunch of very young adults in a new world, so whatever. We’re ready to get after it.

The tour we were on comes to a close and we end in Los Angeles with a couple days off. Then we’re off to the airport to begin this radio station run. The itinerary is insane. I don’t recall the specifics, but it went more or less like this. On the plane at 6am. Fly from LA to San Francisco. Shuttle to the station. Do our thing. Shuttle back to the airport. Fly to Portland. Shuttle to the station. Do our thing. Shuttle to the airport. Fly to Seattle. Shuttle to the station. Do our thing. Shuttle to the hotel. Get some sleep. 6am we’re back to the airport…. So on and so on. We were in 3 or 4 different cities and states daily. It was exhausting with the travel alone, not to mention the meetings at each stop.

So let’s discuss these meetings we had at each radio station. They were all basically the same. We arrive and are escorted into a reasonably sized conference room where we unpack some guitars and my little practice amp for my bass. We set up at the end of the room. Usually as we are doing so, people start to filter in, offer handshakes and smiles. Everyone is always so pleased to meet you. I quickly began to wonder if most of these suits even listened to music much. Most I fear did not. Radio, like music, is essentially a business though. So you manage to reconcile this concept one way or another.

It’s time for the meeting to officially begin. A quick trip around the table for introductions followed by an onslaught of questions for us. Who are we, what are our influences, why do we do what we do. The usual.

Now anyone who knows me well knows that early on in my professional music career I got bored with the same run of questions you get almost daily. So I always tried to mix in a healthy amount of believable bullshit. My goal was to someday have enough of it out in the world that when people started to compare notes, they would only then realize how contradictory my answers were and in turn, never really know the truths. Not because I had anything to hide. Just to entertain myself and maybe others who would just get it.

Around and around the tables we go. Same questions, same answers (somewhat) and on and on and on. 3 or 4 times a day! Day after day! Then we play the same 2 or 3 songs for them. Then each visit we have to take everything we have already done through this visit and combine it with a big finish. There is always a big finish, no?

The big finish. The reason we have to do all of this? Simple. We have to sell the radio executives the idea that playing our song is worth it to them. It is hopefully in part considered based on the song itself, but appears it is more about playing ball, kissing ass, shaking hands, kissing baby’s blah blah blah. You want your music to be out there though, so not too horrible to do. You believe in your product, so why not go a little thick with the smooches to help it into the world. Still, you do this multiple times a day, day after day… you quickly start to feel your compromised integrity gnawing at you. This game is not why we play music nor is it how we want to find fans for our music.

We are barely adults. Punk rock kids. We got a super lucky break and made the choice to go for it. This is what we’re reduced to. Mix in those conflicting emotions with lack of sleep, airports, shuttles, new places… Something has to give. 2 weeks was quickly feeling like months. All of this and there was one more giant, horrible black cloud lingering over us. Our friend since childhood was with us. He served Showoff as guitar tech and all around backbone to keep us going day in and day out while on the road as far as I’m concerned. He eventually filled a role in the band just after we released the Self-Titled record. Anyway, his amazing mother had been diagnosed with cancer and from what I remember, it was really aggressive. It was moving fast. We were always on the road at this time, so it felt even faster with gaps in time when any of us would see her.

We are on the last couple of days of this radio event and he is told he should head home to see his mother and that things are not going well. Of course we got him a flight booked immediately. The rest of us had a bit of an internal conflict because some of us wanted to go home with him, to support him, whatever, just to be there with him in any way. Some of us felt we needed to complete this radio run. It makes me absolutely sick to think about to this day, but we somehow made the choice to finish our obligations and sent him home… alone. I have so few legit regrets in my life, but this is one of them. I was very upset over it all and couldn’t believe we were pressing on when more important things were going on. Unfortunately, we moved forward.

We all feel the weight of our poor decision along with the exhaustion and damn near disgust at what we are doing with these radio executives. We arrive at the last stop. Back to LA. KROQ. Literally the one station that can and will make or break careers based on anything other than the music itself. I don’t know about the rest of the guys, but I had had it with what we were doing. I know at least one of them felt the same if not all of them. Kind of a shame that the most important stop would be the last stop. Knowing people no longer make the best choices due to exhaustion alone. So be it. We are in one now.

The usual events unfold at KROQ. The great importance of this particular meeting seems to not register at all for me. We do our thing, play our few songs and engage in conversation. One of the suits comments on tattoo’s some of us have. They then start to ask the other guys if they have any tattoos and as quickly as they ask I tell them that one guy has a Willie Nelson tattoo. They are completely, or maybe shallowly intrigued.

“Show us your Willie Nelson Tattoo!” they say. He says no shyly and maybe embarrassed slightly. They keep asking. Of course I keep encouraging him to just show them the tattoo already. Decline after demand after demand after decline. It wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t. There is no Willie Nelson Tattoo. Fact is, it is somehow a joke only we are in on along with the occasional interested innocent bystander. I know you want to know how this plays out. It probably only played out because of our frustration with everything in our lives in this moment. We are finding ourselves dangerously hilarious in the most self-sabotaging way possible. So my encouragement, everyone’s overtired laughter in our camp and his willingness to not give a shit all come to a head and he stands up, pulls his ass out, pulls his cheeks apart and shows them Willie Nelson.

Needless to say, KROQ did not pick up Falling Star for rotation. KROQ sets the standard, so almost no one else picks it up either. How the song still managed to make it to number 36 in the Billboard Charts that year is beyond me. It was against the odds. It was with very little support. I would like to think what little it did do, it did because of the music. Not the ass kissing. Not the shaking of hands. How the Willie Nelson tattoo. It worked all on its own with the support of people who truly loved what we were doing musically.

Everyone should be respected for the paths they choose to take or avoid in this business. There is no right or wrong way more or less. In my opinion though, it should always be about the music first. Serve your songs and they will end up where they belong. Even if it is through a journey like ours. Even if it isn’t the path you ever saw yourself willfully taking. Serve your music. Stay pure in your relationship with the music you make.

The other takeaway from this… never ever send your friend home alone especially when the situation is grim. People in our lives are so much more important than anything else. It’s an absolute bummer to learn that lesson too late. It is a disgrace to make the wrong choice in this situation.

By Dave Hyde

Have you ever had the urge to pull off the highway when you see one of those fantastic XXX superstores at a questionable exit somewhere in the middle of where you were and where you’re going? I live in South Central Kentucky these days and travel quite a bit. A majority of my travel is back and forth to the Chicagoland area. Along Interstate 65 on that trip there are 3 of these places.

Anyone who has gone into one knows all about them. To not render my typing here pointless, you all have no idea what these fantastic slums are all about. If you do, most wouldn’t want to admit it. Anyway… They almost always have a gnarly gravel parking lot along with semi-truck parking in the back, and the exits they live at might have an almost equally disgusting Amoco station next door and possibly a fireworks store across the street filling the otherwise completely empty landscape. The exit itself is usually for nothing more than a town called Whiteland or Brownsville. It’s literally an exit you wouldn’t dare stop at after nightfall or if you had your family with you. You’d risk someone pissing the seat or running out of gas before you’d stop there.

So now we’re in the parking lot. Grab your tube sock full of quarters, lock your car doors and head inside. It looks like a fairly normal sex toy shop. Usually a few gross dudes lurking around that when you are caught down wind of them you can smell that nasty piss smell that is either actual piss or meth… or both. You can wander around a bit looking no less shady than the other dudes, but hopefully you smell a little better. Eventually you work up the nerve to find your way to the back rooms.

Peep shows and glory holes! Population 7. Shoes sticking to the floor the closer you get to the walls. No eye contact with a soul in this area for sure. Now you can start pumping quarters from your tube sock into the peep show and through a slab of glass you can visually/at your own hand enjoy whatever it is they are willing to do for you. Not a bad setup, but honestly I think I would rather stick to xHamster on my laptop. The gold is in the booths. The glory holes! You get into these, you may need something a little more flammable to spend than the quarters. My understanding is one can present their rope through said hole and be welcomed by a few different options. I don’t know too much about this because if I am ever to this point, I am all in on paying the fee for the person on the other side to close their eyes and open their mouth, no questions asked. Then I would press my balloon knot to the hole and fart like nobody’s business.

This isn’t about being shitty to the recipient. It’s about my level of (im)maturity. I am pushing 50 years old and farts are as funny to me now as they ever have been. My father used to tell me “son, the day a fart doesn’t make you laugh, you’ve grown too old”. The thought of farting in glory holes runs wild through my imagination every single time I pass one of these places. I can say with complete honesty, I have not actually ever done this, and actually I have only set foot inside one of these places maybe twice just to see what was what. So where am I going with all of this then? Good question.

I really just want to tell you a little bit more about myself and my existence with my band Those Naked Guys. I am most known for Showoff, which is just swell, but TNG is a completely different animal and so much of it is rooted in immaturity and most of that comes from me. That may be giving a little too many mature points to the other guys in the band. We’re all young at heart. That’s part of what makes punk rock so great. Keeps you young, or kills you young I suppose, but somehow in my case, it keeps me young in spirit and heart while my body betrays me with age. Anyway, allow me to cheat and do a little copy/paste from a post I made in 2023, before TNG reunited for the first time in almost 30 years.

I’m belligerent just to see the look on their faces. I believe in tapping into my self-deprecating ego. The burden of brilliance and ability to clearly see all possible paths to execution usually lead me to not apply myself, to dummy up and keep my mouth shut and ideas locked in the vault. I could do so much more, so much better… I just don’t want to. I love to exist in that balance and work very hard on the things I do want to do.

Most musicians are inherently rebellious, yet most take few risks to push limits of a standard, expected and predictable performance. This is something I have never understood even though I am guilty of it. Most of what I do is more calculated than it appears, which is part of the calculation. I love to provoke energy and reaction out of people and situations.

I’m reliable for a good diatribe. Fear of the unknown reaction lets you know that you’re alive… unless they kill you. I am not as offensive as you are offended. Addicted to self-destruction. Remember that self-destruction doesn’t just manifest in ways you see. Most of mine resides in my mind and emotion. These are not words of wisdom, they are my words of wisdumb.

I can’t and won’t speak for the rest of the band, but I never set out to make friends or have fans. We were birthed out of a time where Punk and Pop Punk music were growing into a massive movement and everyone was looking for a way to be a part of it. When I was asked to join this band and informed they wanted to be a punk band, I was excited to have the opportunity to be involved. The only issue early on for me, they were not a punk band… yet. We turned that around really quick. We did not however become another typical Chicago area punk band. We had 4 guys who loved a very wide range of music and it all managed to inform our songwriting and attitude as a band.

For my part, I wanted to bring a snotty, childish, and aggressive character to life as the front person of a punk band. I wanted to be Darby Crash, Mike Muir, and Mike Patton all in one excessively rude and crude package. What I lack in vocal ability I more than compensate for in energy, improvised lyrics and above all, the drive to make everyone not want to like me or my band. Like I said, I wasn’t out to make friends or fans. It’s punk rock. It is music and attitude in its most pure, raw form without a care in the world of what anyone thinks about it… and in an era of “everybody’s doing it”, I wanted to be the anti-band/person to that entire movement.

People would come to our shows in football helmets and shoulder pads. There was an excitement and danger in the crowd as there was on stage. Most shows I felt a little bit of what GGAllin must have felt when the crowd would all cram into the furthest from the stage portion of the room. Not that I ever threwshit at people or anything GG style like that, but there was still some unknown that always caused distance. It was fun to try to lure people closer and to suddenly rush out to them.

We existed for a few short years, quietly self-destructed and ventured out on new journeys. Funny how it all circles back eventually. Maybe not exactly the same, but same enough. When you’re in this, you’re in it.

That was where I more or less came from and what most true to my heart as an artist is. In my older and supposedly wiser years, I assume I have mellowed a bit. I care more about those involved in the situation. The root of it all still lives in me and lives in this band.

Will we play more shows, make new albums, and continue as a band again? Sure. Not going to rule it out. For now, all I can say is keep your eyes wide, your ears open, your defenses up, and by all means, please keep your face away from the receiving end of a glory hole… I tend to just show up unannounced in all possible scenarios.

By Dave Hyde

Is it the music or the individual that defines Punk Rock? The easy answer is both. Is that true though?

Let’s start with the individual. The makeup of a punk rock person seems obvious at the surface. Someone who believes in being themselves regardless of what others think. A healthy amount of extremism to set yourself visually apart from the rest with the way you dress or the way you style your hair. Someone willing to speak up or even lash out against anything that disagrees with their personal beliefs. I could go on and on with these fairly typical surface traits of the average punk rock individual. We know it’s more than that. We know it can also be less than that. So it isn’t really about blue liberty spiked hair, a Ramones t-shirt, a rebellious attitude, or screaming in the face of an authority figure just because you can. It’s deeper than that.

So what is it that makes a person a punk? I think it is all about self-awareness at its roots. Knowing yourself, and who you areeven if the outside world hasn’t a fucking clue of who you are. You can know who you are and be very outwardly truthful to the point that everyone knows exactly who you are. You can also be very secluded, living inside yourself, unwilling or maybe even unable to really let it all out. Anywhere in between, which is where most people reside. No matter where you are on that spectrum, the one thing that seems consistent in a punk is the person they know they are is pure. When you have that internal awareness, it fuels something. Sometimes it’s because you are completely uncomfortable or confused by it. Sometimes it’s because you just know exactly what you need to know. Either way, it creates a feeling unlike anything. It creates energy in every fiber of your being. All that, in my opinion, is what makes a person what tends to outwardly be perceived as a punk. Not that surface look, though that can very well be a big part of it. It is in the way a person carries themselves and the vibe they give off like radiation. Punk rock individuals are nowhere close to limited to the surface punk I described earlier. Not anymore. Maybe in the few moments of the Pistols and Ramones, and maybe again in the days of Black Flag and the Germs and maybe again in the Green Day/NoFX era. These moments are big, but these moments only heighten the look like the first few moments after you strike a match. Then the truth settles back in.

Now some may read that and think I am criticizing the punk rock look. I am not. I’ve been all in on the most stereotypical punk rock looks over the years and love it all. I just think the surface is more a way to show it, show it off, a badge of honor, putting it out there to find more of our own, etc..

With all of that said, let’s look at a couple of musicians who aren’t typically considered punk rock that absolutely meet the requirements in my book. Jim Morrison of The Doors. Not a punk band or look, but man what that guy put into the world was pure punk rock energy. How about legendary Jazz musician/saxophone master John Zorn? Zorn is punk for sure. I could name loads of folks but at this point I am beating this drum to death and honestly most likely lost readers about 2 paragraphs ago. So be it.

Moving on to Punk Rock Music. What is it? Is it the fast BPM’s? The 3 chords and an attitude? Being aggressive, offensive, or crude? Is it low quality or big production? Talent or just banging out what you can on instruments?

Punk music has an impossible amount of subgenera’s that you almost can’t define Punk Rock by the music. It can be anything musically can it not? Purists would eat my soul raw if they had the chance right now, but come on. Pussy Riot is easily as punk rock as Screeching Weasel. Not by sound, but by individuals, their motives, their content, their actions.

If you define a specific sound with punk music, does it have to be loud guitars and screaming vocals at a breakneck pace? I bet your answer is no. That is such a limiting definition of the music. Is it performance? Being fairly loose and care free with the level of talent, ability to perform or record, etc.? There is purity in imperfection of performance that I think is best within punk music, sure, but does it define it? Not a chicken dicks chance in Hell. There have been plenty of amazing punk bands who were more talented than well-schooled musicians just as there have been shit loads of sloppy bands that are as far from punk music as possible.

What makes it punk rock music then? I think musically a lot of it is the willingness to push boundaries instrumentally, in production, with song writing and of course lyrical content. Lyrical content is the low hanging fruit when it comes to punk rock music. Anti-this, fuck you that. Not always that way but usually. Even if said in a more thoughtful or deep way, it’s still the same at its core. I am personally guilty of, and have a tremendous love for the shallow fuck yous.

All this being said, and the more I have left unsaid, I think this exercise has clearly brought me to the conclusion that it is 98% the individual and 2% the music.