ANGRY AMPUTEES, BAD COP/BAD COP, COMPTON SF, KNIVES & GASOLINE ...

INTERVIEW: JANUARY 2012: MYSTERY ISLAND MUSIC: EDITED BY LUCY HELL


BRAD: Angry Amputees has been called the best punk band of the bay area, but I heard you’re currently living in L.A. Are you concentrating more on your other musical projects? Bad Cop/Bad Cop?

STACEY: The Angry Amputees were a great band ... And we had a really good run for a long time. The thing with the Amputees is that we will always be a band, and still do shows sometimes here and there. We are all family. We've been through too much together not to always be a band. But yeah, now I am concentrating on a lot of different stuff as the Amputees are less of an importance to me now. Since the Amps I have been in: Park Royal (London band with members of Snuff), Compton SF, The City Acoustic, The City Electric, Blacktop Idol, The Returners (Hip-Hop), Knives and Gasoline, (2 piece indie) and now Bad Cop / Bad Cop, (All girl punk). I sing on people’s records a lot and work with many different artists all the time. So yeah, I am concentrating on new stuff now. The Amputees had their time and it was great and a lot of hard work. But it made me into the musician I am today. Multi Faceted.

BRAD: SLUT BOMB is definitely one of the most kickass punk records in the past ten years. Will there be a follow up?



Stacey: Thank you so much for saying that!!! But I just don’t see us putting out anything new, anytime soon, or ever again. However, we do have an EP that was never released. We should put that out on our own. It’s really good ...

BRAD: Metal Mike of the Angry Samoans is rarely in a complimentary mood, but he had very positive things to say about Angry Amputees. You guys did a few gigs together, right? Any funny, exciting, scary Metal Mike stories you’d like to tell? Last time we saw him he slept on our front lawn.

STACEY: You know, we have played a few shows with Mike and I gotta say he has been nothing but super cool to me. I don’t have any weird stories about him at all. To me, he’s just a cool dude.

BRAD: Damn, now we're going to have to watch him do the Mikey dance. How did you get started musically and why?

STACEY: It started in the womb. My Dad is a Singer/Songwriter as well that played and sang to my Mom’s tummy when I was in there. I grew up to him playing guitar and me singing and we would record together. I knew from a young age way more about music than most kids because I had my dad teaching me throughout most of my formative years. I was playing drums at 4, tinkering with the piano my whole life. I wrote my first song in the 4th grade. Didn’t start playing guitar though until I was 18. I never thought I’d be able to do it, but it turned out to be the instrument I write music with and always play. I got into drugs really bad when I was a teenager and as much as I wanted to pursue being a musician, I also liked to party, hard! I was destined for an early grave or some serious prison time. The future looked bleak… until I picked up that damn guitar and found out I knew how to play and sing at the same time. I didn’t start by figuring out other people’s music either ... as soon as I found that I was humming my own melodies to the chords I was playing on guitar, I just went with writing my own songs. No time to waste. Music saved my life.

BRAD: Influences?

STACEY: Too many to name. I’d say every great song that I am affected by or that I love inspires me to write. I did at one point think I wanted to grow up to marry Billie-Joe Armstrong, but then I realized I didn’t really want to be with him, I wanted to be like him. So maybe Billie-Joe helped me get my shit together.

BRAD: Metal Mike helped Billie gets gigs in the beginning of Green Day -- so it's like one big happy family. :)

What kind of guitar do you play and why?



STACEY: In Electric bands I have always played Fender’s. Mostly Strats. Now I play a Tele most the time. I play them because in my punk rock world, the choices were Fender’s or Gibson’s. I played Fenders first and really am used to the way the bridge sits on the guitar, further back on the body than a Gibson. Plus Gibson’s have a toggle switch I always seem to hit at the wrong time. Right now I am playing my American Hwy 1 Series Telecaster. When I play acoustic I play my Takamine. Takamine makes some of the best affordable Electric / Acoustic guitars out there…. However, most of the songs I write are on the Acoustic Dreadnaught Sigma my Dad gave me. It was the first guitar I ever wrote a whole song with and it’s the guitar I write most of my songs on still.

BRAD: Your favorite song to sing live?

STACEY: That’s a funny question ... Everyone that knows me, knows I just love to sing. I love to sing all of my songs live. All of them!!!!

BRAD: Favorite venue to cause chaos?

STACEY: Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. That is my hometown venue!

BRAD: Besides you, who’s the sexiest punk girl out there?

STACEY: Again, Thank you! Brody, right? Haha. She rules. It’s probably her.

BRAD: Brody Dalle? Yeah, we don't hate her.



STACEY: But, there has got to be sooooo many. Maybe not, I don’t know, I am into dudes. But I do think that any girl with the guts enough to play punk rock, and do it well, is sexy as hell. Girls that sing with everything they have in them, or play with every bit of their hearts are totally sexy and powerful. Screechy, Cutesy girl punk bands are my nemesis; I find them to be false and repulsive. Come hard or go home! Doesn’t mean you can’t be poppy and have killer poppy punk songs ... Just mean what you say and sing it like you fucking mean it. Little rarely intimidates Punk Rock girls like me. And that confidence makes us sexy!

BRAD: For sure. Who’s your favorite superhero?

STACEY: Batman.

LUCY: Batman is totally sexy.

BRAD: What’s the weirdest thing a fan’s ever said to you?

STACEY: I get the, “Oh my god, I am in Love with you’s” all the time ... I find that creepy cuz they don’t know me at all. But one of my favorites is, “Your band was great, you’re so cool, wanna come huff paint with us around the corner?” The fucked up thing is ... I said yes. Haha ... Jen found me about to partake and stopped me before it was my turn.



BRAD: You have something in common with the tribe at Mystery Island – other than punk rock; you actually care about animals. Explain your feelings about: Punk Rockers Against Animal Abuse!

STACEY: I find a lot of Punkers are vegans or vegetarians and are socially conscious. We read, we are educated and we know there is more to life than what our society tells us. Animal Abuse is what I fight against the hardest. I can’t take it ... From Factory Farming to a beaten domestic animal, I feel the empathy so much that it hurts my whole body. Most people look at animals in a subjective manner ... “It’s MY pet,” like they OWN them. Or, “We are supposed to eat meat. We’re humans on the top of the food chain,” etc.

I think deeper into that and know that every living being on this planet has a soul, a personality and should have the right to live out its life naturally. Humans use animals to benefit themselves, like the shitty White Man used to do to the Slave. My theory is ... if you don’t have it in you to go out and kill the chicken you wanna eat, or shoot the cow you want to eat, you have no business eating them. My cats are some of my best friends and I am super grateful everyday that I have the chance to live with them in a balanced and equal way. I treat them with respect and genuinely care about what they want or need from me. I just don’t understand how people could mistreat any animal in anyway. And if the public really looked at factory farming and what they are eating; animals that are scared, tortured, force fed, traumatized and pumped with fillers and antibiotics is probably the main cause of depression and illness in our society.

You are what you eat right? If you are eating an animal that is feeling all of that strife, pain and suffering, you’re ingesting that fear, depression and anxiety and that will manifest its way into your life. Ignorance causes this crime against the defenseless. I will go to my grave trying to save animals that are abused, or stranded by their irresponsible owners and left in shelters to be put down. It isn’t their fault. We as human domesticated these animals to be companions, and when ignorant people get a hold of an animal, it is less than a best friend, and more like a toy for them to play with, exploit and sometimes abuse. I could go on about this forever. I just wish more folks were more socially conscious and wanted to strive for a world that was equally balanced between humans and nature.

LUCY: Hell, yeah.

BRAD: Tell us what you’re working on, musically, right now and where we can get a hold of all things Stacey Dee:

STACEY: 1. Knives and Gasoline just released our full length record “Love Songs for Crime Scenes” that you can get on Amazon, Itunes, our website www.hertcrimes.com and Latothebay.com, so look out for us touring to a city near you come Spring, 2012.



2. Bad Cop / Bad Cop my all girl punk band is about to release our first 5 songs EP called, “Lethal Weapon 6” and are ready with enough songs to do a full length this year. We will also be touring come spring 2012.

3. Compton SF is available on ITunes – we put out an EP last year called “Hurry up and Die.” We aren’t playing out much, but the EP is worth getting. It’s awesome.

4. I work with Blag from the Dwarves when he needs me. We have put out a split 10” last year called Candy Now Verses Stacey Dee which was released only in Germany and only on Vinyl. Check with No Balls Records for that gem! Blag is a great friend and I true professional who writes amazing songs and I love working with him. I sang on their last release. You can probably get it on ITunes.

BLAG DAHLIA INTERVIEW

5. I am currently working with Fat Mike of NOFX on a music project. Not yet available to the public’s knowledge.

6. Russ Rankin from Good Riddance and I have been talking about starting an “X” type project, but faster punk with killer harmonies and back and forth singing, which should begin in the coming months.

7. I am constantly writing acoustic Stacey Dee songs and will probably put together a record of all of the bands I’ve been in while getting new people on some of the newer songs I have written or will write.

8. You can find me singing on a lot of LA’s underground Hip Hop artist’s records. Like 2Mex’s “My Fan Base will destroy you.” Or my group The Returner’s release; “Make up your Break up” which is only available on ITunes. Fuck I am everywhere right now crossing a lot of different genres and having a great time with it ... As a songwriter you write songs, no matter what kind. I don’t box myself just in the punk rock category although that is what I’m most known for. I like to fly that shit as many ways as I can. A writer – writes.

BRAD: Absolutely. Well, we try, anyway.

Thanks, Stacey! You’re awesome and we’re playing Slut Bomb on the Island … right now.

Bradley Mason Hamlin
Mystery Island Publications
January 16, 2012



“Stacey Dee Interview" by Bradley Mason Hamlin.
© 2012 by Mystery Island Publications. Published: 01.16.12.
All rights reserved.

Photos of Stacey Dee from the collection of Stacey Dee.

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