On October 31st 1980 at 6 a.m. my asshole father wakes me up saying “your friend Tony Henderson is on the phone going on and on about watching someone record an album today, Get up and answer the phone”!
I jump up and grab the phone and Tony tells me “Brett Gerwitz and I were talking and he said it’s cool if we meet him at Greg Graffins house this morning”. “Then we’ll all ride with them to the studio and we can watch them record their New Album: How Could Hell Be Any Worse”.
I got dressed in a flash, and skate boarded over to Tony’s house and then we skated over to Greg Graffins house.
When we get there Greg is really cool. We sit down in the living room to wait for Brett to arrive. Greg sits at an upright piano and goes through a series of vocal exercises using the piano. It was pretty cool watching him, he was a really good singer.
Brett shows up in a blue VW van and we all cut out together in the van to pick up their drummer Jay Zisckrout. We load up his drums and then head over to Jay Bentley’s house. Jay comes running out with his bass and jumps in the van and Mother Fuckers I’m rollin to the studio with Bad Religion!
We get to Track Record Studios and load out the equipment. It’s certainly not work in my mind, not at all. Once everything was moved in and introductions were made with the engineers and people working on the album Brett showed Tony and I around the Studio. They hooked up two guitar amps in the guitar room, one a Music Man the other a Marshall. With the volume slightly varied it created a sort of stereo guitar sound…very sweet.
Here’s the funny thing… As everything is about to kick off Brett realizes that he has not one guitar pick on him, not one! I reached into my pocket and sure enough I had a medium Scotty’s guitar pic. I whipped it out and gave it to him. He looked at me shocked and then relieved and then… The Music began!
Tony and I watched it all happen that day and it really was an amazing experience. At the very end that night although people had come and now gone just Tony and I were left because hell, Bad Religion was my ride back home to the valley. The band came into the control room and asked Tony and I if we would sing backup vocals with them. We jumped up ready to go, hell yeah! So, when you’re listening to Bad Religions song The Voice Of God Is Government and when Greg goes into the chorus The Voice Of God Is Government you can still hear us sing “In God We Trust, Sinners Repent” with all the guys.
Note: As we were in the control room that day Tony Henderson mentioned to me after he went to the restroom that “The Lads” were in the lounge area. I remember taking a trip to the restroom too and I noticed Arnel wearing his leather perfecto with the skull & bones on the back sitting on the couch with some people around. I said hey in passing and they acknowledged my presence but they were all obviously fucked up on something…droopy eyes all around.
*** I received a cassette tape from Tony of the studio recording shortly after it was recorded and I remember going over to another friend Tony Cimo’s house to make duplicates because he had a double tape deck. It took two long years before they would release the album and tour but in the meantime my friends and I were enjoying the music exclusively within our own little group.We knew all the music and all the lyrics before seeing them at Godzillas in 1982***
JamesGenocide.com 
That was beautiful well said. I just in a little punk record store in Seattle just the other day
telling some about the record and that I did some backup vocals on that record, I don’t think he believes
me but that’s okay.
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I never forgot about that day Tony. It’s awesome that we’re still alive and able to confirm each other’s story. Most people don’t believe it because it’s such a fantastic story!
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This is fucking AMAZING. It’s so neat to observe how, in most punk scenes, back to THE scene, inevitably form into gangs and proceed to spit and stab each other, all while calling each other posers. My experience, as an example:
I grew up in 90’s Vegas, and was in a street punk crew(SplatterPunks), who constantly clashed with both the United, the Rogueshire Sharp Skins and the Los Treces. The entire scene, even the vegan pacifist FnB crusties, came together when 2 SHARPS, Spit and Dan, (RIP Lin Newborn & Daniel Shersty)were tortured and murdered in the desert by Polar Bear and his white trash girlfriends and lickspits. We sorta dropped crews and coalesced around the Nazi Termination Squad. For a few grand years, infighting was non-existent, everyone was either NTS or a bonehead. We hunted all of them. I had gotten my GED by then, so Ives, Rick and the rest of the former SP would roll around in Ives’ weird rape van, catching these clowns buying cigarettes or getting blowjobs in Naked City from male pros on the sly, and just fucking TATTOO them. I think I still have some of Trevor(Tank)s teeth on a vest. No one got away. We caught Melissa Hack on the Parkway near Sanctuary, Stacey thwapped that cunt with a chain, beat her retarded, and cut all her fucking hair off(bonus points,that that cuntrag finally went to prison for her part in the executions, almost 20 years later. Melissa, if you see this, I hope someone puts a Captain Morgan handle in your cooter and small LGBTQ and black/brown kids take turns booting your rotten womb while an arthritic witch fists your throat til you choke) . From then to about 2004/05, it was pretty clear the Vegas scene was not safe for WP. The first Agnostic Front/7Seconds show at the Huntridge we went to, and saw zero boneheads, was a glorious feeling.
I did want to ask, as someone from the “Reichstag Fire”, do you think that Suicidal and VC etc… contributed to the rise of White Power in California? Looking back, what would you do different to mitigate it? Would you want to?>
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