I BET WHEN YOU WUZ IN JAIL YOU WUZ A PUNK!
POISON IDEA recorded their classic debut 7" on this day in 1983 at "Recording Ass. Portland, Ore". 13 songs, 13 unrelenting minutes!! The material was written between December 1980 ("Underage") and December 1982 ("Cult Band").
I was sitting at Smegma's house, the first band I was in, they just put out a brand new record on Sympathy For The Record Industry. I had just got thrown out of the other band I was in, I won't mention their name 'cos they don't deserve it, they had a couple of records out but they sucked. I was starting this punk band, 'cos I was into the punk rock thing. And I was sitting at Smegma-house looking throught a magazine to find out what can be the name of my band, it's the true story. So I was looking through the magazine, and Poison came up, "Poison, the name for a band?" It was kinda cool but simple, but Poison wouldn't cut it, which little did I know, ha ha. I turned the page, "poison, poison... poison harvest", and I got "what do you think of Poison Harvest, Brad?" and Brad goes "it sounds like a Grateful Dead song!" So I read on, "poison, poison, poison idea - that's kinda funny, what do you think of that?" and Brad says "yeah, that's a good name" and I say "okay, that's my new band - Poison Idea, I'll go out tomorrow and start getting people to play with me." And people ask us now if our ideas still are poisonous, I don't know is your girlfriend faithful?
I was influenced by everything. I was a little rocker as a kid, into Alice Cooper and Bowie and stuff like that. And then I heard punk and it turned me on, and punk has been just like a child in a candy store. If people ask me what bands I'm into now, well pick a contry and then I'll tell you what bands I'm into. I'm into all these bands from Japan and Sweden - like Rövsvett, Bristles, Black Uniforms, stuff like that. Even different states, I can't say I'm into one band, it's too narrow. Then I'm into different types of music too, I love thrash, but we're all into different things. Tom likes Jerry Lee Lewis and some rockabilly stuff, and he even likes classical, Müller or Mozart. Our guitar player listens to everything from Chemical People to Van Halen and shit. The only music I don't like is bluegrass. But basically what was the most outrageous happening thing at the time when we were starting out was the L.A. stuff, Black Flag was the most intense shit, New York was crappy art stuff with saxophones back then. And now of course they've got the Cro-Mags and Sheer Terror, I like a lof of N.Y. bands now - they're like harder than thou. There's a lot of great bands everywhere.
Jerry A. / Poison Idea interview, Moshable #9, 1991