I'm Going to Punch Your Face: A Short History of Keeping Parties Polite!

[Note: The emails have been consistent and clear. Though I believe these stories to be old and covered in both my memoir and the FIGHT book, enough haven’t heard them, so here’s some version of them, again. Enjoy.]

“Oh man,” he was laughing. “You still talking about that?”

The speaker was named Chris Sanford who, for the record, was the first (and only) guy to knock me out (I’ve only been choked out once. Thank Noah Espiritu). The occasion? My first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) match. At some smoker in a guy’s basement a la Fight Club. He had knocked me out at the end of the first round. I came to, maintaining that I had “tripped”, just in time to head out for round two…where he deftly choked me out.

So, yeah, I was still talking about it! I wrote book about it for chrissakes. For the record Sanford was a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (when I was a blue belt) and he was also Cesar Gracie’s striking coach, for what it’s worth. Doesn’t change the fact that at the age of 42 I was getting my ass kicked.

You see understanding the language of violence goes a long way toward appreciating how it works, why it works and whether it works at all anyway, and to what end.

In fact I’d make the claim that getting your ass kicked, like getting dumped, is almost something I’d rather have done to me than do it to others. Doing it to others involves a lot of justifying, explaining, reasoning to reach take off velocity. That is, if you have the propensity, even a little bit, for feeling some small amount of misery when you’re causing others misery.

[I]t remains there, in your life, a solid and silent testament to the day that you fucked around and, of course, subsequently found out…

However, getting your ass kicked is wonderfully economical. You can justify, explain and reason your way through it anyway you like but in the end, the inescapable conclusion remains: you got FUCKED up. How you choose to embrace that is your business but it remains there, in your life, a solid and silent testament to the day that you fucked around and, of course, subsequently found out.

Which is why I consider it a worthy, and worthwhile, gift to give (and receive, but see above: this ain’t about that). Some see this as a product of bullying, but I don’t just skip by these teachable moments. I embrace them. And really expect others to do the same since sometimes (actually most times) it, like any other kind of gift, is really more about it being the thought that counts than anything else.

Take for example, my now friend Duane Denison, member of Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk et al. I like him so much that when I was doing the liner notes for the career retrospective boxset release for the Gang of Four, I heavily lobbied for them to replace their dead guitar player with Denison. And like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca I, usually, stick my neck out for no one.

Our bands have played together as well. I also gave him copious play in EQ Magazine when I was its editor-in-chief. So when a mutual friend, Eilidh Bradley (rest in power) from the band Solar Race told me she was backstage at some show with him, I gleefully told her to say “hello”!

“Hey,” she said. “You know Eugene Robinson?”

“Oh,” Denison reportedly said. “You mean that really contrived guy…”

She paused and her pause stopped him. “…well…he just wanted me to say ‘Hi’ to you.”

Silence.

Then: “Don’t tell him I said that.”

From my days as a bouncer, my plan was clear…hold his right hand while slapping the fuck out of him with my left before finally hitting him with a leg sweep that’d see him hit the ground.

Minutes later she did exactly that. But in the mix of having my feelings hurt I had come to a very specific conclusion: if folks wanted to act like we were in high school, I’d act like I was in high school as well.

So a plan was cooked up: next time I saw him I was going to beat his ass. While I had only gotten into two high school fights when I was in high school — fun fact: both against guys with significant injuries (one had his arm in a cast and the other was walking with a cane HOWEVER, they both ATTACKED me first) — I had won both of those, so this bode well for our shared future.

Which as luck would have it happened at the Dour Festival. Our bands were playing and I’d almost forgotten about it until our roadie, who had also roadied for Denison, started acting weird.

“What’s your probl…” and right away I saw what it was. Denison was walking up on me, and so I swiveled and grabbed his hand. From my days as a bouncer, my plan was clear: continue to hold his right hand while slapping the fuck out of him with my left before finally hitting him with a leg sweep that’d see him hit the ground.

My hand tightened around his right hand but right as he was starting to notice…

“OH SHIT…IT’S EUGENE!” Kevin Rutimanis, a great man in his own right, swept in, so pleased he was to see me, and started extolling the virtues of, well, me. So it was on. Revenge versus ego. Revenge versus…ah, I kid no one here as any contest that involves my ego is going to lose. To my ego.

So no beating for Denison though I did share with him what I had planned. “I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. And truthfully so am I. But he said by way of explaining, “The Wire shits on everything I do, but they love everything you do!”

Ah. The old record sales versus critical acclaim thing. Well, I told him then like I’ll tell you now: I’ll take the record sales. The best would be BOTH but barring that? Always take the cash. He shrugged. And to close the circle what he added to BUNUEL’s last record chilled me to the bone with its greatness.

Glenn Danzig? A skosh different but something I didn’t see until a mutual friend of ours, Harley Flanagan braced me for making mock of Danzig for some misfortune, specifically getting knocked out, on video, by Danny Marianino.

“Hey man,” Flanagan corrected. “Bro is like 70 years old. Nobody should be happy that they knocked an old man out.”

And right though he may have been, the last time I punched Danzig in the face he was anything but. It was 1982 at the Elite Club in San Francisco and pre-the age of woke, Danzig’s band had decided to open up strong after a little “good-natured” punk rock audience ribbing.

“FUCK YOU FAGGOTS!”

Which played in 1982 San Francisco about as well as it would play anywhere else now. An entire audience of, now-branded “faggots”, responded in the only way that made sense: a fusillade of garbage and bottles hit the stage and the people on it right before Doyle took off his guitar. Took it off and while standing on a four-foot high stage, the six-foot-tall guitarist swung his axe, like an axe, and brought it down on the head of a kid who had his back to the stage and didn’t even see it coming.

You could feel the shock of the strike through the floor and when the widening nimbus of blood spreading from the teenager’s head almost reached our boots we, at this point the gathered members of Whipping Boy (as well as the whole audience), attacked.

I’ve rarely seen an interview with him [Danzig] that I’ve liked as it leans too much on “I’m a bad ass”…probably the same of what might be said about me…

Steve Ballinger, our guitarist and also voted “Strongest Hands in the County” in Ventura County where he had wrestled to certain acclaim, beat the pants off of their drummer Googy at the time. Which left Danzig for me who had level a series of shots at the back of his fleeing head.

Fired up by this whole deal I wrote about it for Ripper Magazine. But something weird happened. A few years post-facto I had reconsidered. While their attack lacked proportionality they were within their rights to defend themselves. Moreover, in the initial article, I had claimed that the band, The Misfits, sucked.

But I had been listening to his band and his music since and while I’ve rarely seen an interview with him that I’ve liked as it leans too much on “I’m a bad ass”…probably the same of what might be said about me, the music is undeniably significant.

So I wrote him a letter saying so. I don’t know if he ever got it, or if he got it, if he read it but that wasn’t the point. The point was, after justifying, explaining and reasoning, while I might have been justified in kicking his ass, talking shit about his music? Definitely a bridge too far.

Kevin Martin? A very different story. Nothing to do with his bands, God, The Bug, or TechnoAnimal. Nothing interpersonal. In fact none of it was personal. It was business, which is sometimes the worst.

“Next time I see you,” I wrote, concluding a discussion where since his label, Pathological Records, had put out some of my band’s first records, I was expecting an accounting (not even cash) and was being stonewalled in getting one. “I will choke you into unconsciousness. Even if the next time I see you is 30 years from now.”

Then I proceeded to hound every distributor who distributed his version of our music as it was, in my mind, stolen goods.

Martin and I have played the same festivals before. There was even a brief time when someone, an intermediary, asked if I could put this aside for possible inclusion on a joint project together. I said I could. But, I am guessing, I was not believed.

It wasn’t until doing an orchestral maneuver at Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival that I looked up while we sound checked in the big hall and I looked over and spied Martin in the very furtherest corner of the room. I turned my back, like the way a grizzly does, while I contemplated the logistics.

Jumping off of the stage and covering the distance to where he was standing before he could escape? Probably 50/50. Using the mic to call him closer? I didn’t trust that, like the Big Bad Wolf, I could sell it. My voice would give it away.

Then it hit me: I’d take the backstage off of the stage and circle up behind him so I could do exactly what I had prognosticated all those decades prior to.

Of course, given that it took 10 seconds to think all of this through, it should be no surprise that when I looked back up, given the better part of valor, and shit, Martin was gone. That was 2013 or thereabouts and I’ve not gotten a sniff since then.

“But Eugene,” you might say. “You’re 63. Isn’t it time to let bygones be bygones?”

“Sure,” I might say. “Sure.” But will I? Ah, who the hell knows? But know this, a way to this man’s heart is clearly through his ego. So make your plans accordingly.

Listen/Hear: there are ONE vinyl record available, out of a limited print run of 500. Every record is different and many will get a free t-shirt with their purchase. This is the non-hardcore record by a formerly hardcore band. Remixed by Joe Chiccarelli. Originally produced by Klaus Flouride. Get it NOW.

ORDER HERE: https://tinyurl.com/dysillusion

And the reviews have started to come in…

“It’s a dangerous thing, remixing your own work for, while your sensibilities may have changed as an artist, somewhere out there, there’s a fan who would preserve you in aspic if they could. Nevertheless, with the original long out of print, the chance to revisit Whipping Boy’s Muru Muru (here remixed and reborn as Dysillusion) is not something to miss.” — Sonic Abuse

“Robinson and Ballinger, working with producer / sound engineer Joe Chiccarelli (White Stripes, Steve Wynn, Oxbow), have brought an entire album back to life. It’s not an easy listen. It’s punk, it’s goth, it’s post-both. It’s experimental and melodic. It’s electric and dangerous.” — The Big Takeover

And if books are still your thing and you still do books, please do this one…the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer’s Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here? Or the book Uncle Barry is holding.

And if you’d like to book a book show? Please DM.