Warped Tour, Ska Pits, and Band Origins with The Planet Smashers

0:05 Hey, you're listening to Adventure on W4CY Radio. This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventure's Pipe Man W4CY Radio, and I'm here with.. Matt from the Planet Smashers. Patrizio from the Planet Smashers. Nice. You did a good job. It's like you practiced it. That was perfect. That's as far as we can go. I got to tell you, we're at fucking Warped Tour in Montreal. How badass is that? It's sick, man. We're happy to be back. It's great seeing so many friendly faces and old buds. It's super cool.

0:47 I think bands like you are what Warped Tour represents. I like different kinds of metal, different kinds of punk, but I think of Warped Tour and I do think of ska. Some of the most fun pits are always ska pits. I mean, for me, it's good. You need that mix. You know, you can't be all the do-da-do-da-do-da, which is great and everything, but you do need some, you know, I would say. Groovy. Groovy. You could call it groovy. I was actually going to call it kiss-inspired reggae. That's kind of what we... That's what we always say whenever we cross the border. Yeah, it's nice to give people a break and also let them dance in a, you know, in a different way.

1:31 It's just fun. Like, Different pits are different pits, and you go into a ska pit, and it's just, you know, everybody's just smiling and having fun, and it's like the best therapy ever. It is. We see differences, though. In the States, when we play down there, the pits are very friendly. They're like a circle ska pit, nonstop. Here, Montreal, it's a bit more hardcore in the ska pit. Everyone's still nice, but it's a little more frisky. So it's more of the punk part of Ska than the Ska part of Ska. Montreal's a punk rock town. As we're noticing here at Warped Tour, and I'm so happy that we have... I'm in South Florida. I came all the way to Montreal to do Warped Tour because I think this is the place to be.

2:21 Way to go. And you probably got away from the heat. We're going down to Florida soon. Yeah. Where are you coming? You going to be there? Where are you going to be? We're doing fests. We're doing shows around Florida. Well, in Florida. Five in October. Right around fests. We're playing Heartwood Stage, and we're doing the Bo Diddley thing in Gainesville. Nice. That's good. Gainesville is pretty far from me. Where are you? I'm in South Florida near West Palm. We're playing Lake Worth. Lake Worth at Propaganda. Exactly. What's the date of that show? Hold on. I can tell you. Hold on. Nicole, look it up. Look it up. Oh, no. Wait. I got it. I got it. I got it. I'm guessing like October 21. Oh, I think I can do that because then the festival season will be over for me. 21. You'll have to put me on the guest list. I'll go to that show. That's near my birthday and that'll be right after Aftershock.

3:14 We can sing you a song and everything. Nice. Have you ever been to that venue? Oh, it's a pretty cool venue. It's like an iconic venue. It's small, typical punk rock venue. Amazing. We feel most at home sometimes in those small venues. Right? It's a different kind of vibe, right? Because you connect with the audience and you're part of it. Even me as a listener, it's like one of my most favorite memories. Clubs. Yeah, you can. For me, it's like I can be more myself. I feel like I can be a little more, well, goofy. Sadly, that's more like myself. But anyway. But that's what makes it fun. Yeah. So what is it that first got you guys into doing what you're doing? Like not as a band, but in general as musicians from a young age?

4:04 Oh, for me, my first vinyl album that I ever bought was ELO with Don't Bring Me Down on it. And my brother Dave, who went to England as a prep and came back as a mod and a punk, he took my ELO album and put a firecracker in it and threw it like a frisbee and it blew up in space. And he said, listen to this. And it was the Sex Pistols' Bodies. But since then.. I love that story. I do, too. I remember walking down to the lunchroom in grade five singing the opening rant for One Step Beyond by Madness. So for me, it was always there. I never thought I'd be in a ska band until I went to a local show in Montreal. Me, Mom, and Morgan Toller were playing, which is a reference to the first abortion doctor in Montreal. Went to that show, and it was wild.

4:49 And I thought, well... Maybe I should be in a ska band. This guy, though, is a youth maestro. I am a youth maestro? Terrible, you started early. When I was finishing elementary school, I bought a turntable from a garage sale, and I only found out years later that it was playing vinyl at 33 and a third RPM. It was playing it faster, so everything I was hearing was faster, so I was buying like Old Stooges. The first vinyl I ever bought was the first Hives record. Nice. And I was like, that's fucking fast, man. And then I was getting into the Stooges and I was like, that's fast, man. And same thing. I never thought I'd be in a Ska band. I saw this band. I saw the Planet Smashers many times when I was a teenager, but I was like, I had a Mohawk and I was like.

5:41 Ska, dude, what? Right? But now it's the thing about Ska is like, it's going to get you. You know what I mean? Totally. It's infectious. It is. We were just talking about the difference. Scott Van Plain Warped Tour. It's like, especially when we do, you know, we're like, yeah, let's have a dance party. Let's have fun. You know, it's a very loving pit and crowd. And it's like, that stuff will get you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is infectious, like you say, because it's like, it's even funny. I remember being in like the orchestra in school and I was percussion. And at one point, I'm just looking at all the horns. I'm like, Maybe I want to switch to that because it just seems so cool to me. But like your story, okay, first club show I ever went to was Motley Crue at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip before they had an album.

6:31 Damn. When they were horror punk. They weren't even glam yet. That's way cooler than any story that we could tell. I didn't even know. Now, but here's the part that relates to what you said. Then, I was at, like, Metallica and Slayer's first show ever, and now that I was a Slayer fan, my friends were like, we need to burn your Motley Crue shit. And I'm like, you can't burn my shit. We're burning your shit. You're a Slayer fan now. You can't listen to Motley Crue. We're kind of like the Metallica of ska. Kind of? Yeah. Totes. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, like, it is wild how things are today compared to back when you were talking about, back when I'm talking about, where that gatekeeping shit went on all the time. And, oh, like, I was a long hair. I couldn't go to punk shows, or I got my ass beat, you know? And it's like, I remember going at my first Spikes. It was at this place called Posers, which is fucking famous, but a punk place.

7:34 I went with my two punk friends. Figured I'm safe. They know the owners. They're punk. They had mohawks. We're cool. We're there for like 30 seconds. And my friend comes up to me. He's like, we got to leave. I'm like, why? He goes, I'll tell you outside. We need to leave now. And so the owners of the shop, they pulled my friends aside and they're like, listen, we're giving you courtesy because you're friends of ours. You got about a minute to get the long hair out of here or we're going to kick the shit out of them. Couldn't you just say, I'm wearing my mohawk down tonight? I didn't have any gel. Right? Where's my asteroids? Tell me you got the spikes. Come on. That's why I probably shaved that, and I should have been smart and done something like that.

8:19 I mean, we don't have anything like that here. I mean, you could definitely show up wearing whatever you want, even back in the olden days. But, I mean, we had other. We had the neo-Nazis, but they're kind of gone now. It's kind of nice. Yeah, that's kind of nice. Yeah, we got them all. We think. Yeah. That's kind of like when I had a conversation for like 45 minutes at a festival, not an interview, just a conversation with Jello Biafra. And that's what he was talking about. He was like, Nazi punks, fuck off. That was a big, I mean, that was in the late 90s when we were starting. That was a thing. Like you would play shows and you would have skinhead clubs coming to effectively protect the show. It was, you know, I mean, for me, I remember one time we were playing Belgium, Contique, Belgium. at the Limp Fabrique, and we were on stage, and I had this little tape recorder, and I would go and ask people, how do I say, you know, hey man, we're the Plant Smashers, you know, let's fucking party, and it was in Flemish, so the person I thought said that into my tape recorder, and I played it to the microphone, apparently it said something like, hey, you know, put up for the gay skinhead of whatever, let's fuck, or something like that. And they all just came running up and partied. It was crazy. So there was this, these red skins were there to protect the show from the neo-Nazis. That was a thing over there. Montreal, lesser extent, but we did have that problem.

9:44 See, that's pretty cool, because I am a Jew, so I'm not down with the Nazi punks. No. You know, we're also Gentiles and we're also not down with the Nazis. It's unfortunate that we have to stipulate in this day and age that we're not. You know. Right. Especially today. Nazis. It's like weird, you know. And it's funny you say about Flemish because I was doing grass pop a couple years ago. And... Mr. Bungle was playing. And they do Speak English or Die by S.O.D., but they don't do English. Like, when they're in the States, they say Speak Spanish because Lombardo's Cuban. But there, they change the words to Speak Flemish or Die. Amazing.

10:27 That's awesome. That was fun. But, yeah, Warped Tour, you can be anybody here, right? Like... This is the inclusive place. I'm so glad it's back. I'm so glad MySpace is coming back. We need to bring back all that. I wonder if my profile is still up there. Is Tom still my friend? I don't think so. We'll see you on ICQ, man. Yeah, I remember that too. That's great. How many people do remember that? Tell everybody how they can reach out to you guys. Buy your merch. They can't listen to my show unless they buy your merch. Yeah, definitely buy our merch. That'd be great. But if you want to know what we're doing, you can just hit us up on Instagram, The Planet Smashers. You'll find it.

11:09 Or Facebook, if you use that. Or you can just go to old school website, theplanetsmashers.ca. But we're going to be doing some shows in Quebec and Ontario. We're going to be down in Florida. We're going to be in the West Coast. We're going to be down in... Jersey and Maryland. Where in Jersey? Sayreville. We're going to do Skanksgiving. Oh, my God. Like, I'm from there. Well, dude, you know, we're playing where you're from. We're playing where you live. I know. Why are you stalking me, man? Because it's fun. Honestly. All my Jersey people, you have to go see this band. All my Jersey peeps. Or you can fuck off like the Nazis. Meet you at the Wawa. What exit? What exit?

11:56 Six. The good one. And my Florida people, you better be there with me at Propaganda because that's going to be a badass show. Do you give Buc-ee's in Florida? We do. We have a bunch of Buc-ee's, but not South. Okay, not South. You got to see them at.. Exit six. Thanks a lot. Hey, thanks for being here and thanks for being on the Avengers Pipe Man. Boom! Thank you for listening to The Adventures of Pikeman on W4CY Radio.