Austinist Interviews Keith Morris from Circle Jerks
The first-ever Fun Fun Fun Fest is this Friday, December 1st, at Waterloo Park. Over two dozen great acts are on the bill, including Spoon, Peaches, The Black Angels, Prefuse 73, and DJ Mel. Tickets are $20, and can be purchased online.
Circle Jerks perform on the Punk stage at 8:55pm. -- The Editors
We’re excited to have you coming to Austin. You were here in March attending South By Southwest, right?
I’ve been to the last four South By Southwests. I love Austin Texas. One of my favorite guys, Tim Kerr, lives in Austin. And Gibby was living there for a while. And [6th] street is awesome!
I was in Austin on a tour with Thelonious Monster, and my friend Bob was tripping on acid, and he and the guitar player ordered a couple slices of pizza--and it happened to be on a Friday or Saturday night, which I guess is like, frat boy sorority partygirl night--and he was getting ready to pay for the pizza, and a couple of guys from the “football team” decided to swoop on the slice. So Bob said, “What the fuck is that? That’s my slice, I’m getting ready to pay for it!” and the guy turned around and punched him. Knocked him like twenty feet back into the street. But he was on acid, so he got up, and he was laughing and he said, “Dude, could you do that again?”
Is this the perfect setup for the Circle Jerks? I mean, now that you’re –
Now that we’re in semi-retirement?
Well, you still tour, but you haven’t put out a record in while. Are you writing material?
We are. We’re attempting it. We’re at each other’s throats, and we hate each other. It’s a love-hate relationship. And because I’m 51 years old, I can’t go out and do the punk rock tour and sleep on people’s floors and camp out at KOA any more. We still get our invitation to sleep at people’s houses, and that’s all fun and wonderful when you’re like 19 years old, doing cocaine, drinking, staying up all night partying and trying to get laid and all that good fun stuff. But we’re older and we have more responsibilities--like insurance and rent and all that fun shit. So those days are over. And we have a responsibility to the fans to perform to the best of our ability. So if we’re out all night and we come straggling in at three in the afternoon it makes it kinda hard to keep up with all the young studly rock bands.
Have you thought about doing reissues of the old albums? That’s the trend right now.
Oh, we’ve been reissuing for years. That thought comes and goes every now and then, but we’re basically just trying to milk the public for whatever we can squeeze from them, you know? $40 t-shirts available only when we’re playing live. As you come into the venue there’ll be nothing but a wall of Circle Jerks merchandise. Circle Jerks underwear, Circle Jerks socks, Circle Jerks personalized breath fresheners, gloves, g-strings. We had one guy in the band who actually wanted us to make up Circle Jerks hockey jerseys.
Was it Greg Hetson? Because I think Bad Religion sells hockey jerseys.
Oh, good for them. I’m happy and excited for them. But as long as I’m a member of the Circle Jerks, there will not be Circle Jerks hockey jerseys. There’ll be Circle Jerks condoms before there’ll be Circle Jerks hockey jerseys.
That actually makes more thematic sense. So after you guys play at FunFunFun Fest on Friday night, they’ll be screening Repo Man [which the Circle Jerks appear in] at the Alamo Drafthouse.
Oh, excellent! I didn’t know that.
Yeah, Zander Schloss [Circle Jerks bass player] is going to introduce it.
Well, in that case I hope they’re saving up rotten fruit and vegetables.
Yeah, I think they’ll be passing out rotten tomatoes as you walk in the door. You can actually buy a double ticket--one that gets you admission to FunFunFun Fest and to the movie. How did you guys wind up appearing in the film?
We got a phone call form Alex Cox, who happens to be a Circle Jerks fan. And he said, “would you guys like to do a song and appear in the movie?” Because in the soundtrack they were using Suicidal Tendencies, Circle Jerks, a few other popular punk rock bands at the time. And we were totally down for it. We’re always down for the party.
Of course, it was during the summertime, and they gave us a portable dressing room without any kind of air conditioning. They started fitting us for our tuxedos at about 11 in the morning, and it was probably ninety to a hundred degrees, and our scene wasn’t actually shot until I think about 6 or 7 o’clock at night. So here we are trapped in these tuxedos for the entire day. It was hellish.
Zander wasn’t in the band yet, right?
No. He hated us. Hated our music. But when we asked him to play, of course he was totally into it because it was an opportunity for fame and fortune.
Is that how you met? On the set of Repo Man?
Yeah. And we didn’t hit it off - everybody just disliked each other. We were all grumpy and grouchy being in our tuxedos in the middle of summer and all that fun stuff. But Alex is a great guy. We love his movies, and we had a blast.
What can people expect from the Circle Jerks at FunFunFun Fest?
I’m hoping that everybody wants to have fun and make friends and drink some adult beverages. Get loose, jump around, scream and yell. Learn some new dance steps! Learn the latest new dance craze, which I guess would be “The Mole”, where you try to dig a hole in the ground and then you pop back up and look around to make sure nobody steps on your head.
Or there’s The Lawnmower, where it looks like you’re trying to start a lawnmower.
Then there’s that new dance “clean up after yourself” where you pick up some trash and put it in the can. There’s The Swim and The Horse and The Pony. There’s the Robin Hood. And The Worm, of course. Our guitar player’s daughter went to a party, and there were about a hundred kids on the dance floor and she got out in the middle and started doing the worm. And all the kids cleared the dance floor and said, “What’s she doing?” I wish that I could have been there.
There’s also The Pogo, of course. But we’re not gonna mention The Slam and The Mosh and all that crap. All that “monkey with the roman candle shoved up its ass”. We don’t need to participate in any of that.
