Exploring Punk Rock Escapism and Humor with Spike at Montreal’s Warped Tour

0:04 Hey, you're listening to The Adventure of Pumlin on W4CY. For you. This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures of Pipe Man W4CY radio, and I'm here with... Spike. Nice. That's me. Here at Warped Tour. Yes, indeed. Montreal. Jean Drapeau. You said that really well, because I can't say it that well. No, it's up. It's up. Thank you. So, first, I just want to say, I absolutely love your freaking glasses. They are cool as hell. Oh, thank you.

0:49 They're like a blue with black mixed in. It's hard to describe. People just have to see it. But, man. And the whole motif, like, I had blue hair for a lot of years up until recently. And I'm like that. I would match my sunglasses and all to my hair. My dog matches, too. If you see my dog, she matches. That's not by accident. Nice. What kind of dog? Chihuahua. She looks like a miniature German... Australian shepherd, that is. But she's actually 100% Chihuahua, supposedly. Nice. Is she here? No, no, no. We left her back in San Francisco for this trip.

1:30 We've flown with her a couple times. But she's kind of a homebody. She's like, I just want to stay home. You go do your thing, Dad. Yeah. She misses us, but.. But then they're so excited when you come home. When you're on tour... And you go home and you have that come down period. It is nice to walk in the door and have your dog so excited to see you. Yes, it is. Dogs, cats, macaques. I don't think we're allowed to have those. I live in South Florida. Mother-in-laws. Well, that's a whole other thing. I had a friend that had a lemur as a pet in the house.

2:13 Are you allowed to have that? Not really, but it's South Florida, so people do a lot of things like that. Yeah, you don't have to do anything in South Florida. Exactly, you know, and it did attack me one day. It was a trip. It did? Yeah, like I was there all the time, and it was always cool with me, but when they become an adult, wild, exotic animals like that, something happens, obviously, and just one day it just freaked out and it was bouncing off all the walls and And it just came in, like, took a chunk out of my elbow, and then it was stalking me. I ran out of the house, and it was, like, going side to side, and the sliding glass door was stalking me. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe I just invaded his space.

2:56 It had you sussed, finally. I know, right? It was definitely... More exciting than any mosh pit I've been in. Or scarier, let's put it that way. Yeah, and they're serious little animals, right? I've been watching these Instagram videos with this guy. I think he's a Chinese guy that scares macaque monkeys with a song. It's pretty funny. Oh, man. I love when you go to Bali and the monkeys steal your shit and then negotiate with you to get it back. So I was in Bali and they love to steal your sunglasses. And then they want you to give them food. But if they don't like the food you give them, they throw it away and you can't come get your sunglasses. Oh, that's great. But the minute you give them the food they want, they just hand them back to you.

3:45 Yeah, man. So smart. They're smarter than we think, than we want to give them credit for. No doubt. So how's it feel being here after all these years in Montreal at Warped Tour 2026? Um. It's difficult to describe. I love Montreal. It's one of my favorite North American cities. To me, it's up there with New Orleans and San Francisco and New York. Not because of size or relevance or anything like that, but just because. It doesn't look like anywhere. The vibe. The vibe, yeah. Exactly. I love it here. So I'd love any excuse to come back is... Very welcome.

4:32 And this venue, this venue, like I walked in, I've never been here. I felt like I was just at a big skate park. Like it's so cool. Formula one races here too. I think so. Yeah. Villeneuve, the dad, dad, dad, like they got a whole circuit named after him. Right. Nice. Yeah. That's where we went today to the wrong address that we were given. So we're late today. So I think there, there's a lot of sort of, questionable information being given from, you know, official sources. But you made it. We did make it. Our drummer's not here yet. He's had many canceled flights and one was diverted to Dulles instead of... So it's been...

5:22 It's been crazy. I know that feeling. Yesterday I did that all day. They, you know.. And then with a bunch of big gun cases, you're. A square peg. You always were a square peg, but these days. We're moving into a different... We're really turning a corner in the world, I think. I think so, which is why I think bands like you and Warped Tour and punk rock in general is needed more than ever. Yes, pleasure, enjoyment... Even carefree. Because we don't get political, and I certainly have political ideas and beliefs, but we're pretty serious about keeping it out of.

6:09 Our oeuvre, so to speak. Just because we would like to be an outlet. Everybody knows what's wrong. Half of them are wrong about it. Right. But everybody knows that something's wrong. And they don't need some middle class white dude screaming to them about it. You know what I'm saying? So we try to provide a different form of entertainment. This is our escape. Trolling. Well, sort of. It's weird, though, because, you know, like on the nights that we get the loudest boos, because we do try to provoke a crowd. to and past the point of vocal displays of like displeasure and disapproval.

6:53 Um, and then we try to reel them back. And on the nights when the booze get the loudest, that's when we sell the most t-shirts. So we definitely understand our role. Um, we're not just like a friendly, fun cover band. We're, we're something maybe a little darker. Um, Troublesome? Troubling? Still fun, though. Still fun. Because for the same reason I hope that comedians are fun. Because you look at one another, you're like, did he just mean what he just said? Or did she just mean? And those to me are the genius comedians. And so we've been on many festivals like this, obviously. And we've been on tours. where we opened for the likes of the Violent Femmes or Flogging Molly. And very quickly, we began to understand our role, given that everybody else was very earnest..

7:48 Very well rehearsed. And talking about their ideas or their music, being very serious about it. They definitely want to be the heroes of their own story. We don't share that sickness. You just want to be a musician and have fun. No, we want to troll crowds, man. Maybe it comes from getting beat up. so much when I was a kid. I know Bill Burr talked about it. He said it was the only way to come into a room where I could make everybody like me. Because I watched one of his specials the other night. I was like, wow, that's a really interesting way to put it. Because when you go through rituals of humiliation and beating..

8:32 Hi, Kenny. How are you? Good to see you. It's okay. She's around. She's around. She just dropped me in a golf cart. Good to see you, baby. And so, given that that is sort of the way everybody... I mean, pretty much everybody in music, certainly in punk music, which I don't think everybody had that sickness in the 70s where they had to be serious and had to. Really present ideas. No, it was vibe and image propulsion. No doubt. And even cool surrealist, like, we were talking, and I love The Clash, but we were talking recently to Captain Sensible.

9:19 They came up and played a few songs with us in Vegas. A few years back, and played some damned songs with Pinch on the drums, who plays drums with us. And I remember. Captain Sensible being sort of derogatory about a lot of the other, you know, punk bands of the era because they were serious and these bands that i still like i love in fact like the clash but but thought about it from that perspective like when you see and understand a band like the damned and what they were trying to present which was not political ideas no any kind of cogent anything just raw rock and roll that's really what energy and they didn't even have a word for it nobody was saying punk at that time they were just going out and being weirdos you know continuing the great weirdo tradition and that's what we're trying to do weirdo rock and roll um There's elements of American trash, as you'll see. My wife, Audra, who does our wardrobe, she likes to call it... American Schlager culture. So if you're familiar with Schlager music from Germany, I don't know why you would be.

10:36 I just came from Wacken, so.. Okay. So there's a culture around it, too. Schlager doesn't just sound like something. It looks like something. It sounds like shit, to be perfectly honest. But it looks really good, really trashy, a lot of mylar and shiny microphones. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, you know... Audra might rake me over the coals for saying this, but I think that was sort of her inspiration for how she dresses us. And, you know, I just try to stuff a wild monkey suit and live up to the costume. Live up to the threads. There it is. There it is.

11:17 It's all image propulsion, and I don't know what the image is, even. Well, you know what? The thing is, there's a phrase that I'm going to say that says it all. Shit the bed. Shit the bed. Yeah. It wouldn't be the first time. Oh, my God. I just love that. And burn the sheets. You know what I mean? That doesn't wash off. You know what I mean? Just burn them. Burn your record player after you listen to our record, because it won't be fit for anything else afterwards. We're going to shit your record player. We're going to shit the bed and we're going to shit your ear holes, man. But you do it so well. Oh, thank you. I think so. And I think this is our best yet.

11:58 And you know what? I love that you don't take it so seriously. It's music. Let's just have fun. Escape the seriousness. That's why we're here. I don't want to hear that shit. I'll have people call me during a festival and be like, Did you see the news? I'm like, no, I don't give a fuck. Go obsess over the news. I'm here. I'm with them. I obsess over the news, but it doesn't come to my metier. Right, not here. I'm very disciplined about keeping it out of my metier. We all know, man, you know, I'm moving. They say you're supposed to move right in your old age. I'm moving way to the left, man. I'm almost a commie again. Jesus Christ. Like, what's going on in the world? But anyway.

12:45 You're here at Warped Tour. That's not what you're going to see. That's not what you're going to hear from us. You're going to hear us shit the bed literally and figuratively. And you're going to enjoy more covers and appropriations and intellectual property theft. And just fun. That's right. So let's have fun here at Warped Tour. And thanks for having fun with me on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Girls just want to have fun. That's right. That's right. Right on. Thank you for listening to The Adventures of Pikeman on W4CY Radio.