THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Unfiltered, unapologetic and out of control: A brief oral history of The Fag Hags and a moment in time.

June 27, 2019

LONG BEACH – Mark Zamudio made the slow crawl on his low-rider bike. One palm steadied the handlebars, the other gripped a black plastic bag as he ambled with ease down a Long Beach residential street. It’s 2005.

“Want a beer?” he asked a guest he was meeting for the first time as he arrived at the driveway. What came next was a lot of antics, goofing off, chickens roaming free in the backyard, bare asses in front of the camera, an unending supply of chips and salsa and, oh yeah, an interview with The Fag Hags – a band that never took itself too serious, labeled itself anti-music and remain a group of friends here for a good time, not anyone's approval.

Fourteen years after that interview, the band is still around, although drummer Lisa Pifer is now in Texas, with the rest of the crew still in Southern California. Their new rule is playing shows once a year. And here they are back in Paradigm for a different kind of story.

What follows is assembled from interviews over the past several months with some of the band and their friends. This isn’t meant to be definitive or a statement about the state of a certain decade or sub-scene or region. It’s people in conversation remembering a time and the friendships and relationships that can develop over something as seemingly simple as the music.

THAT AHA MOMENT

Lisa "Lisafer" Pifer: Everybody in my family had some kind of music going on. My brother played drums and I had piano lessons. We had a really musical family and neighborhood, so I was around musicians all the time.

When I was a kid, a family from New York moved in catty-corner to us and, with them, they brought the Ramones. That was the late 70s. There was also Rodney Bingenheimer. He had his Sunday night show and he always played really interesting, different music.

And then a little while later, up the street, my friend’s brother was a bass player in a band called Fatal Error. They still play now. I had another friend, her brother in Chatsworth used to yell at us. He used to call us hippies. It was those factors, and especially Rodney, that got me into punk.

Mark Zamudio: I grew up in east Anaheim. My wife claims it’s not the cool part because it was the newer, nicer part. It’s Anaheim Hills, but I was at the bottom of the hill.

El Monte. That’s where my dad grew up. He has so many stories. He pretty much said ‘I’m not raising my kids in L.A.’ And look at us. We’re still fucking monsters. He goes ‘I bought a house next to the best schools with no gangs and you two dumb fucks find the only two gangs in town, and you get kicked out of the best schools.’

Yeah [I got kicked out of] Esperanza [High School]. It’s a really nice school. And I went to El Dorado [High School, in Placentia], El Camino [Real High School, in Placentia]. Then I quit school and got arrested. I just didn’t like it. I couldn’t sit still. I wasn’t going a lot and I forgot why I got kicked out of Esperanza. I did dumb shit like blow lockers up, but they couldn’t prove it.

Back in the day, you didn’t have punk rock parents. There was no punk rock. My dad was into 50s [music]. I just found it. Music has been my life since I was born. I was obsessed with it, no matter what it was. I remember carrying around a Carpenters record when I was 4. I just fucking loved music more than the average person. I think my son’s the same way.

Lisa: Snap-Her was the first band I played in. 1995. I had a bass in my 20s and I would play unplugged. I had this hollow body Gibson copy. It was really beautiful. I wish I never got rid of it, but I did to get another bass. It resonated well because it was hollow and I could jam in my apartment in Hollywood without disturbing the neighbors. A friend of mine, Andi, encouraged me to play. She played with her fingers and I played with a pick. So I kind of got rolled into [the band] like a gang.

Snap-Her eventually got snatched up by Nina Hagen to be her back-up band. It got whirlwind busy. We had to fly out to New York with Nina to play these shows. My fifth show I ever played was as a bass player for Nina Hagen.

And then it kind of imploded. We had a lot of crazy, busy success really fast. We didn’t have the camaraderie like The Fag Hags and to get three girls and all this insanity, you’ve either got to be all on board or not. So I formed my own band Lisafer.

D.I. later took the three piece of Lisafer and added a guitar, Sean Elliott. And Lisafer became D.I.

If you have a tight rhythm section, you’re kind of wanted. We were young enough. We had passports and we were willing to go. That kind of stuff just happens. I’ve had a lucky run though.

Mark: I got into metal when I was a kid and then I forgot in what metal band, the guy said the word ‘faggot’ and it was all over the media. Then I find punk rock and these guys are talking about dicks and beer. No one cared. I hated serious shit and they were singing about girls, beers and farts. I was like, ‘Yes.’ I think Suicidal Tendencies, I bought their tape when I was 17. I was like ‘This is the shit’ and never turned back.

Growing up, the punkers always picked on the metalheads. I liked the anarchy side of it. I had black hair – long ass, black hair since I was in the first grade. One day I was at a punk show. It was a club called Eugene’s and I was on stage. I had my Dickies on, my purple Vans and my long hair. I think I had shaved the sides. And someone called me a hippie. I was so pissed. I go, ‘Fuck that.’ I went to this party and I told someone, ‘Give me a mohawk.’ Everyone said ‘No,’ so I took the clippers myself.

Carly Slimen: Being from Anaheim, I grew up in the same neighborhood my whole life. I went to private school; I was sheltered. I was the rebel in a private school, so when I got out, I was still very sheltered.

My 9th grade year I begged my parents to leave. I felt like I wanted more adventure. I remember my parents were really nervous to send me to public school. I ended up meeting this girl who knew Mark. So the first time I ever saw Mark was when I was 16. He was just the older friend of someone and was dating someone else at the time.

I didn’t know about punk rock. When I went to public school, I remember running into my friend Cody and he gave me a mixed tape of the Descendents and 7 Seconds and that’s when I was like ‘There’s music that’s not on the radio.’

I was really into rockabilly. I liked The Cramps and Social Distortion – more that vibe. And then I met Mark and I didn’t even know punk rock. I would have never considered myself punk. I don’t know; I don’t label myself.

WHO KILLED THE 90s?

Mark: In the early days [the O.C. music scene] was amazing, and I didn’t get to see any of that. But when the 90s started, I just feel like it went into the toilet.

Jason "Bald Jason": I moved here [to Orange County] in ’89 or ’90. I grew up in Texas. When I came out, I thought ‘California. Oh, it’s going to be cool and punk.’ I had been into punk for a long time. I came out here to go to school. I chose to come out this way as opposed to Ohio or something.

I realized when I got here in the 90s, that music had turned to shit.

Mark: That’s what I thought. All of a sudden the 90s came and punk rock came and it was bleach blond hair, Black Flys sunglasses and Airwalks in Orange County. I was at a Tower Records store looking around and I went, ‘This sucks.’ So I got on my skateboard. I’m in Venice, went up to The Whisky and I saw Total Chaos out front with their hair and I’m like ‘This is it.’ Then I saw Suzy [Homewrecker], their drummer, and was like ‘Who’s that’? She was such a doll.

Jason: There weren’t any good bands. There just weren’t. Back then, I hated it. How many times can you play ‘Code Blue’ before your head explodes? All the popular music was really bad. Grunge was coming out. It didn’t have the same energy.

I had started a small band [Disco Penis], but we never went anywhere. We played around. The place to go in the 90s was Club Mesa. My band played there all the time. We were almost like the house band. When a band canceled, they’d be like ‘Oh, can you play’? We looked at it as that’s a 30-minute practice for us.

In the studio, I met Peter Archer from The Stitches and so that’s how I started hanging out with that crew.

Let’s explain The Stitches. We were all really good friends with Pete and we ended up being called Pete’s Crew. We weren’t as cool; we weren’t very handsome. But the party didn’t start until Pete’s crew arrived.

Mark: First of all, [Peter] hated me when he met me. Mike Lohrman from The Stitches put it best. He said I’m like that ugly, hairless dog that comes around and they kick once in a while, but they still let it hang out. I was actually friends with Peter’s girlfriend first and he had a party house, so there was always something going on.

I’d just walk in, in the morning, sit on his couch and have a beer. He’d come out in his underwear and grunt at me. He’d say, ‘It’s too early for you,’ because I was really loud and obnoxious and annoyed a lot of people.

Lisa kicked me out of her house before a couple of times, but that’s how you become friends with bands. You just like their music, they see you and then you start hanging out. I’m sure drugs had a lot to do with it.

Cheeseburger: Remember when Peter gave me his car? Remember that blue convertible he had? He said, ‘Here’s all you have to do. You don’t need a key to start it. You just have to break the window.’

Jason: The Stitches, The Bombs, The Starvations. They all played together. They all rotated around. Maybe one or two would switch headlining. They kind of brought back an old sound that everybody wanted to hear.

Cheeseburger: I grew up in Santa Ana, right underneath the water tower. Went to Santa Ana High School. The Santa Ana Wombstretchers started in the late 90s and went on for two-and-a-half, three years.

We’d get invited to play every six weeks when people needed an intro band and nobody else would do it. We didn’t mind. I’d say we were the first ’cause we were the worst.

Jason: Same philosophy as our band. I actually thought we were pretty good. We were before our time. Oddly enough, we were very melodic. We sounded a lot like Green Day. Needless to say, we didn’t get a lot of love. I’m a big Hüsker Dü fan so I like melodic punk. There weren’t really any standout shows for us. Hanging out with The Stitches. That was much more interesting.

At Club Mesa, we did whatever the fuck we wanted to do there. We drank shitty beer. They sold these massive beers for $5. Didn’t realize until later, they didn’t clean their beer lines. The bathroom probably had a kilo of cocaine layered on the bottom. We didn’t care. We had no fear of anything; we just didn’t give a shit. We knew all the bouncers.

Cheeseburger: At the time, the big poppy thing was going on. That girl, the blond girl from Anaheim – No Doubt – that was happening then. Kid Rock. That’s who ruined the 90s.

I’d say 98ish was when the world started to change, because it always changes. Around that time, I saw a big fluctuation in new stuff coming in, where it was a real out with the old, in with the new.

The new sound was more gentle. In the punk world, it turned more into a generic monotone cadence that everyone was just following and copying and redoing with their own words here and there. That’s why I reverted to the old shit.

As punk was fading out, that’s when I started getting into the more obscure. The shit from Ohio, like The Pagans, and trying to dig up old shit that my friends turned me onto here and there. I would spend a good amount of time at Vinyl Solution, just hanging out there and I’d just get turned onto old stuff.

But we still had our little bands. We were a crew. The Fag Hags, Scarlet Fever, The Pillz.

YOUR PUKE IS YELLOW, TOO

Mark: I went to see Dead Man’s Choir, one of my favorite bands, at this rad, little dirty punk rock club called the White Horse. I see this rad chick with fringe and a cane because Lisa wrecked her Vespa. She had a big scar on her neck. I just thought she was from England or something. I saw Lisa with her cane, with her fringe and her tattoos and was like ‘Who the fuck is that?’ Mean as hell. Don’t even look at her. Jason, from Dead Man’s Choir, was her boyfriend.

When I first met her, we were in the back of a car for two days partying in Hollywood, going to shows. I would talk and she would just look ahead. I’d talk, talk, talk and she would just stare ahead. We didn’t eat anything for two days and we took all these headache pills. We’re in the back of this car at these rehearsal studios where all these punks lived. Sun’s coming up and I go, ‘I think I’m going to throw up and she said ‘Me too.’ Those were our first words [to each other], and then we got out of the car. Our puke was all yellow. We partied pretty hard.

Lisa: I think it was around ’96 because it was right after Snap-Her and [Mark’s] friend was playing in Lisafer. Everybody was hung over from partying too hard so I gave everybody a Zinc tablet. ‘This will make you feel better,’ trying to be the expert for the hung over. I remember Mark threw up in the alley. I looked at it and I said ‘It’s yellow.’ That was the first thing I said to him after days of not speaking.

I observed. He was an outsider and I was reading him like ‘Who’s this guy?’ Isn’t that so funny? And then he turned out to be a lifelong friend. Family basically.

Mark: I guess I just gained [Lisa’s] trust and then every weekend after that for three, four years, every Friday I’d bounce here, head to Lisa’s, stay ’til Sunday, partied with her and her boyfriend and this band called The Resistance. Go watch Decline [of Western Civilization] Part III. It’s all about them.

Lisa: Before The Fag Hags, we used to play softball at Fairfax High on Sunday. I had bad knees, so I could always hit but somebody had to run for me and I would go on beer runs. I remember Mark rolling up. You know how he’s BMX crazy and he had someone in the back. They rolled up, had their shirts off. We were next to West Hollywood and these shirtless guys come up. I just thought they were hilarious. My kind of crowd: out of control.

Jason: The first time I met Mark I wanted to stab him. He just wouldn’t shut up. He was like Peter [Archer].

Carly: All the guys I dated before, when we were on a date, we’d go to a dinner and a movie. The first time me and Mark went out, he picked me up with two bikes in his truck. We went to Venice.

When he [Mark] picked me up for one of our first dates he was this tattooed, short, buff guy, pulling up in this lifted truck with flames on the windows. I believe there was fur on the dashboard.

Mark: There was.

Cheeseburger: He was trying to cover his bases like all the kids.

ANTI-MUSIC: THE FAG HAGS

Mark: I would always be at practices at my friends’ bands and I would always jump around and everyone just clicked with me. Lisa was always like ‘I want you to play something.’ I was dating Suzy Homewrecker – this is towards the tail end of the 90s. So we tried to write songs. It was real constipated. You know, drums and bass only. It was like err, err, err.

Peter is the master. He goes ‘Come with me.’ He said ‘Get Lloyd from Thee Indigents on guitar. OK. Call Ralphie from The Distraction because he really wanted to be in The Stitches because they needed a drummer and he goes, ‘Ralphie will think this will be his in, in The Stitches. We’ll just use him.’ Peter goes, ‘First song’s going to be Fag Hags.’ He wrote it and then ‘50 Cents.’ He pretty much did that in half an hour and then said ‘OK, I’m going on tour. Use my studio.’ And we practiced once a week at The Stitches rehearsal studio right here in Fullerton.

It was a secret lockout. No one worked there. You could light fireworks in there. We’d sleep in there. We’d have parties in there until the next day. So I always give Peter mad credit for The Fag Hags.

It was me, Lloyd and Ralphie. Lisafer was going to play bass and then the drummers kept not showing up. So Lisa grabbed a screwdriver and a stick and says ‘I’ll play drums’ and she kept a beat while we practiced.

Carly: I hung out with [Mark] at the Inland Invasion in 2002. I had met him several times before that, but that was the first time he held my hand and we hung out. My best friend Tracy at the time was in a band called the Lipstick Pickups. They needed a fill-in bass player so they asked me. I met Mark and then two weeks later was my first show.

I was 22. At the time, I had this other friend and she said something like, ‘Oh, mid-life crisis.’ And I remember thinking ‘Oh, am I too old to be in a band’? In my head, I was thinking should I be playing? I remember Mark said ‘Don’t listen to her. Do what you want to do.’

I didn’t even want to tell Mark about the show. He said, ‘It’s a public show. I’m going to go whether you invite me or not.’ So the Lipstick show was 2002 and then The Fag Hags came end of September or October. It started up in 2003.

Mark: It was the perfect opportunity because I met Carly and I really wanted her in the band so I brought her in on bass. Lisa on drums. Lloyd on guitar. That’s a good picture. Then one day Lloyd was like ‘I don’t have my guitar’ and I had paid for studio time, so Lisa said ‘Can Doug play.’ Doug’s a fucking amazing musician. He got us recorded.

I like having girls in there. It’s just, honestly, all my best friends have been girls. They’re just tougher, smarter. Like, Lisa pretty much would let me know, ‘Hey, dude. This guy’s trying to screw us on the list’ and she would always tell me ‘This is your band. You need to go handle this.’ Because bands play so many games.

Lisa: We drank a ton when we played. We did it for fun. We would play Alex’s Bar. One time they had a fashion show and our crowd moved the catwalk, so we got banned there. Big’s in Fullerton. We would just have a lot of fun and then the next thing we knew, we were opening for The Vibrators. We were anti-music. We weren’t trying to be the cool guys. We were two couples in a band.

Mark: I didn’t even want The Fag Hags to sound like [it was from Orange County]. I wanted it to sound like The Queers and all the songs I wrote were like that. But when you bring four different personalities in, because they can’t read minds, that’s what made The Fag Hags. It’s a combination of musicians. Lloyd [Thee Indigents, The Fag Hags, Loose Trucks] had more of a Chuck Berry sound. That’s why he calls himself ‘Flaming Fingers Lloyd.’ Have you heard about ‘Praise the Lloyd’? He has some songs he sings and plays guitar and everyone says it should be called ‘Praise the Lloyd.’ Then Doug came in with a little bit more of a structured sound.

I moved to Long Beach about 2003 because I was in the middle of starting The Fag Hags when I bought the house. The era in Hollywood came to an end around ’99 for us. Our group of friends. Johnny Witmer from The Stitches still lives there.

I feel like back then you could run around to punk rock clubs for $5 and see a bunch of bands that night. Then it just became the bigger clubs only, like The Whisky, where you had to pay more to get in.

A lot of people moved to Long Beach because the music scene seemed better there. You had Alex’s [Bar] and Fern’s and so it seemed like a better place for the music. Now, Long Beach, it’s still rad, but I think a lot of people moved to Texas because their scene is growing and it’s a good mix.

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. THE END.

Lisa: Oh my god, probably all through the 90s and into the 2000s for sure, into 2010, was great. When you do what you love, hanging out around like-minded people and your life is just filled with music – and, now, I feel like I’m in a new universe, for sure. Who knew?

Probably that era though in my 20s, 30s and early 40s was the most grandiose because I could handle going out and working and touring. Now, I give it a good shot, but we pick and choose wisely how we spend our time.

You used to be able to go to five or eight, sometimes 10, really rad punk shows up in L.A. I think that there still is a lot. But at this time, there was the Coconut Teaszer, where they had a free bar and tacos and sodas. The Garage is gone. Bar Deluxe.

It’s always constantly rotating, but now there’s another generation of people that have moved to the area, especially in L.A. So it’s just different, but you have some that are still there. There’s a lot of bands that are still around. D.I., Agent Orange, Decry is still around. The Humpers still do stuff. So the bones are there. The footprint is there as they say, but it’s totally different.

I don’t know. Every time I go there, they’ve changed it. Gentrification has changed it a lot.

Jason: It switched again in the mid-2000s. It’s hard to judge. I had a kid in ’98 and when you have a child, you kind of fall out of it. I know the drugs changed because we were all into coke and then everyone got into speed and it went downhill. It never worked out.

People didn’t go out anymore. We used to have fun. Our weekends would consist of Friday night seeing a band and did a ton of blow. Saturday continued doing a ton of blow and then we all went to the horse track at Los Alamitos on Sunday.

We did scare a lot of people though.

Cheeseburger: That’s how you weed out the weaklings.

Mark: [Cheeseburger] pulled a knife on me one time. He was out back screaming. I go ‘What the fuck.” So I go up to him and he pulls a knife on me with his black leather jacket with white stripes of duct tape. Cheese had some outfits.

Cheeseburger: When you lose your youth, it’s a whole personality changer.

Mark: You’re just a dick.

Cheeseburger: Your mind doesn’t work like it used to.

Mark: Your dick doesn’t work like it used to. Lucky for me, I’m into old birds.

Carly: What’s funny is Damian, our drummer, just messaged us about a show and playing it. I told him it hasn’t been a year yet.

We all had jobs so we didn’t play every weekend. And we weren’t one of those bands that were desperate to play. We probably played once a month, if that. We were just about having fun.

For me – I met Mark at 22 and he had that [Long Beach] house from the time I was 23 to 26 and everyone else they were a couple years older than me. So they taught me so much because I was so young. At the time, I look back, and I was insecure. I remember Lisa teaching me so much and Mark.

For me, they helped me grow up and see different parts of life. Mark was so fun. We had pigs and chickens at that Long Beach house. He’s insane.

Lisa: I’m in two bands right now: Screech of Death and then I play in an old band the Next. We have a new record that’s been recorded. There’s a band called The Pagans and my guitar player Robert Conn is from The Pagans. Arthur Hays is the drummer for the Next. There’s Glenn Gilbert on guitar.

So I’ve got some good people around me. I don’t know if it’s anti-music anymore, but we definitely work hard at it. We make our own shirts. I’ll do tours, but everybody’s got day jobs. We do OK though. We make it happen.

Mark: When you were in a punk band, you had a following and that became your crew. They were a skateboard gang or clique. Scumbag’s a scumbag. We’re all a little dirty. Cheese has The Scodes.

Cheeseburger: The Scodes they’re kind of just like a big extended family that do a bunch of different things. Some ride motorcycles. Some are artists. Some are into low riders. Good people; solid people you can depend on.

We’re all audiophiles in our own right. I think that’s a little bit of the bonding mechanism because we like the obscure. If it was common and already used by everyone else, you didn’t want to do that.

Lisa: I have to create, you know? It’s my passion. If I don’t do it, I’m not happy. Mark and Carly, they have two kids, and they’re still playing. Some people take little breaks. What’s funny to me now are the guys hitting 60, retiring soon and they want to tour. There are people that just play forever and then there’s ones that stop. I’m not a stopper. I don’t think Mark and Carly are either.

Mark: That’s some good shit right there.