For about three weeks of my life, Glen Stilphen was an enigma. I had been assigned to interview the former bassist for several of the most iconic, original hardcore punk bands from Boston, who had just compiled Drop The Needle: Boston Punk Anthology.
That was more or less all the information I had on Mr. Stilphen. A general Google search turned up the album’s website and a couple of offhand mentions of him on the Wikipedia page for Gang Green. I’ve never seen anyone who has done so much in the musical arena manage to fly so low under the radar. He was like a ninja!
It didn’t help that, due to some communication errors, I had trouble setting up an interview time with him. I was beginning to think, quite possibly, Glen Stilphen was not real.
Was he a figment of my imagination, like in A Beautiful Mind? Was he like the ‘Cigarette Smoking Man’, a part of a vague yet menacing government agency that used punk rock to brainwash masses of unwashed youths to glorify alcoholism and violence to better control them? Did he kill Laura Palmer, or shoot J.R.? Was he the Smoke Monster terrifying the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815? Did he watch nearly as much television as I do?
When I finally spoke with Glen Stilphen, I discovered he was not so much an elusive and mysterious phantom, but really just a down-to-earth bassist who spent his teenage years being way cooler than any teenager has any right to be. At 15, I was reading Harry Potter for the hundredth time and finishing my math homework, but Glen was jamming in his basement and touring around the country with Gang Green, Celebrity Death Certification, Scratch and Mallet Head.
Now, decades later, Stilphen has come back with Drop The Needle: Boston Punk Anthology which offers 13 previously unreleased tracks from the Boston hardcore/punk scene of the 80s and 90s. The album is a virtual time capsule of some of the greatest bands of that time: Smegma and the Nunz, Gang Green, Mallet Head, Scratch and Celebrity Death Certificate. Featuring Chuck Stilphen and Glen Stilphen, Walter Gustafson, Alec Steere, Rick Alexander, Peter Soszynski, John Morton, Michael Lefebvre, Chris Doherty, Erich Thaler, Todd Riggs and Morgan Keating.
The compilation is dedicated to Alec (Al) Steere, who performed with Smegma and the Nunz, Gang Green and Leper. Steere tragically passed away in 1999, and Stilphen and friends, after unearthing some fantastic works through the years since his death, decided to honor the fallen punk rocker by sharing some of his epic tracks with the world.
Gemma/RockRevolt: I asked your publicist for more information about you, since researching for this information proved almost impossible. He said you “kinda do everything.” So, I guess, tell me all about “everything” that this project is…
Glen Stilphen: Well, the project basically started as a labor of love kind of thing. Smegma and the Nunz was pretty early in the
1980s and I was young – maybe 12 or 13-years old. They were basically practicing in my mom’s basement, because my brother was five years old than me. So I was an impressionable kid, and Smegma and the Nunz gained popularity in town because of their outlandish stage show. They used to wear the nuns habits, and in the early 80s it was not acceptable to a lot of people. Punk rock in general…took a lot of the older people by surprise, and that was definitely the case with Smegma and the Nunz. The name was fairly offensive and it made it hard for them to even get a record deal, really. It was hard for them at the time to convince somebody that it could be marketed.
So they didn’t last very long, and moved on to other bands. I grew up a little bit, and me and my brother Chuck moved on to Gang Green in 1984, and it took off from there.
The lead singer of Smegma and the Nunz was Al Steere. He was a little older than my brother and he was in another band prior called Leper. They get credited for actually being the first Boston hardcore band. And Leper, again, not a lot of popularity, probably, at the time, in the late…I think it was ’79 or 1980. They didn’t last a long time either, but gained more attention after they broke up than when they’re actually together, which was kind of strange.
Al Steere was our friend. We went down a lot of roads together, as bands tend to do. He was killed in 1999 when he was hit by a train. Unfortunately, we’d lost touch with him quite a few years before that – you know, it happens sometimes; you lose touch people you were close with a long time ago. So we were very shocked when we found out that he died. It gets you thinking about all of the times you had and stuff that we had recorded together.
There were a lot of tracks that had never been released which we knew were really good. So much of it we had not heard in a really long time. So we started trying to find out where those tapes were, and came across two sets of demos, which were done at two different times over the course of a year. We really liked what we heard, so it became a labor of love finding those unrecorded tracks, then it just slowly started taking baby steps towards the idea of putting out a Smegma and the Nunz record, or maybe a compilation.
I’ve been in five or six different bands and ended up with all these odds and ends recordings, B-sides, things that never made it anywhere, just because they were recorded right before a band broke up or something. But in my opinion, those sometime end up being some of the best material because the band is probably at their best point.
And that’s what I have here in Drop The Needle – a collection of odds and ends and B-Sides and rarities and stuff like that. Plus, I always knew that the Gang Green track was available and I approached Modern Method Records about taking it for this and they were more than happy to do it. So it started building from there. At first, it was kind of just something I was doing to hand out to my friends, and then all of a sudden there was more interest and more interest in the last couple years, so here we are today.
Gemma/RR: Are the bands on the compilation in chronological order?
Glen: Actually, no, it’s not in exact chronological order. It’s a little bit off in the middle, and that was just because we were trying to sequence a record to be a good record, as well. I contemplated doing it in that exact order but it just wasn’t flowing the way I wanted it to, as far as the songs running into each other. We basically switched some things around that we thought were appropriate at the time. Essentially, it is pretty close.
Gemma/RR: And you were the bassist for all five of these bands?
Glen: All but Smegma and the Nunz. My brother, Chuck, was the guitar player in all five bands.
Gemma/RR: What’s it like, jumping from one band to another like that?
Glen: Well, it was not something we ever planned on doing, it just ended up being what it was. When kids are teenagers, it’s like having polygamist relationships with four girls or something. Bands are very much like a relationship, and it’s hard, when you consider the fact that kids are so young and unpredictable. Anything can happen. Unfortunately our fate or demise or whatever was basically…lead singers I would say. It seemed like the singers were always an issue. (laughs) That’s why it ended up being five different vocalists over fourteen years.
Gemma/RR: So you compiled this anthology. Why did you pick the songs that you picked?
Glen: There were a couple of reasons why we did it and picked the songs we did. A) because we had this great material that we
wanted to do something with, and B) our friend Al had died and we thought he deserved a some respect for what he had done even all these years later.
So five of the Smegma and the Nunz songs were chosen along with the Gang Green song. Two of the other songs were a studio project called Celebrity Death Certificate, which was a studio recording we did with the singer from Stompbox. Stompbox was a mid-90s Boston band that was on Columbia Records for a couple years, and we had done a couple tracks with him during that time. And we always thought the songs were good! Then we added the other songs from Mallet Head and Scratch as well. One is a live song from Mallet Head that nobody’s ever heard before. It was done live in the studio. We just thought all of these songs were good. They’re favorites and rarities and demos; that’s how I’ve been describing it. It’s basically a collection of our favorite songs that didn’t make it on to records for one reason or another.
Gemma/RR: I love punk, but I’m only 24, so I only have a basic grasp of what has been told to me what the punk scene was really like during its heyday. Can you describe for me what it was like playing punk music in Boston in the 1980s and 90s?
Glen: Well, the music business back then was very different than how it is today. The punk rock thing started off as an underground thing and it turned into hardcore in the suburbs around the city here in Boston. I grew up in Hingham, Mass, and strangely most of the Boston hardcore bands of the early 80s are from the South shore, which is the south side of the city. Most of the Gang Green guys were from Braintree. I lived in Braintree for a while, so that’s how I met those guys. The hardcore thing I would describe as sort of a suburban teenage rebellion. It was a combination of a few things, really. In the early 80s, music on the radio was horrendous. You had a lot of these older, contemporary stars putting out music at the end of their careers. I don’t want to start singling out particular artists, but radio in general was pretty difficult to listen to as a kid, because if you were interested in something that was…you know, other than disco or the “Top 40” blend of the day…you just weren’t hearing it.
Then, the rock star thing was kind of annoying to a lot of people at that point. You had these crazy stories about The Who throwing TVs out their windows, and wild sex parties, and all that kind of stuff. But you lose interest in that kind of thing after hearing about it too much. A lot of the punk rock thing was rebellion against that sort of
stuff. Nobody wanted to be a rock star; nobody wanted to treat people poorly. I think that was part of it too, trying to show the world there was something other than gluttonous rock stars. Punk rock was introduced to kids as something they could actually do. It’s not rocket science; learning how to play a guitar in a punk rock band. The whole appeal to the younger kids was the fact that they can play it, unlike bands like Yes that you just can’t play that well right off the bat. It was just something that was easy to do.
Culturally, the kids back then…I think half of my friends, or maybe even three-quarters of my friends – were from varying degrees of broken families. There was a lot of divorce, and the parents weren’t exactly on top of what their kids were doing all the time. I think there was a lot more teenage rebellion, back then in the early 80s, and that’s essentially how hardcore formed. It was from outside elements that amounts to teenage rebellion that an entire generation of punk rockers was born.
Gemma/RR: How old were you when you first started playing?
Glen: I was super young. My brother was five years older than me, so he got me into it. But I think I started playing bass when I was like 11. I started playing in Gang Green when I was 15 – so pretty young. I was younger than all the other guys in the band. They were like 16-17. It was like the second rendition of Gang Green. The first rendition of Gang Green were really super young teenagers, like 14 and 15-year olds, way too young to be experiencing what we saw on the road for sure. My mom really shouldn’t have let me go, but she did (laughs).
Gemma/RR: You guys did a reunion tour in ’96 with Gang Green. How much would say the scene has changed over the years since you played with them before?
Glen: Yeah, a lot! I kind of look at ’96 as the end of punk rock. It just seems like it’s taken a really weird turn, for me. After the late 90s, it seems like most of the kids are not really interested in playing bass guitar and drums. When we were kids it was all about getting an electric guitar or getting a set of drums, and going in a basement and trying to thrash it out. But kids nowadays…maybe it’s more of a reflection of our society, but they’re more loners and DJ kids. There is a lot less rock and that’s a little disturbing to me.
Gemma/RR: What’s the most punk rock story from your time on the road?
Glen: Well, there was this situation once, when Gang Green was on their first tour and we had broken down outside of California, probably like 100 miles out of town, which was stressful because we were so close to Los Angeles. So we finally made it into the city and The Circle Jerks were there and had come to see us. It was kind of an underground thing happening.
So we get to the gig and the very first singer of the band was excited to see his teen idols at the show and preceded to get completely hammered, and passed out on the back wall of the venue. And we were supposed to play! (laughs) It was one of biggest shows and we were excited to play in front of all these kids, and here is our singer passed out in the back of the club. It was pretty stressful. Luckily there were no fisticuffs of anything like that, but…puking, just completely out cold. We had like 30 minutes to get him riled up and on stage, and we did it! He did actually get on stage. You probably haven’t seen a Gang Green show if you’re only 24, but they’re all beer-based, throwing beer around and he would typically have his shirt off with three beers dumped over his head by the third song. But this show was a little different, he was just trying to keep on his feet. Inside the CD there’s a full panel photograph of Gang Green doing a live show, and that is this show. It was 15 minutes after we got him up off the ground. So there’s the photo, right there to prove it.
Gang Green “Let’s Drink Some Beer” (2013 vid of 1985 studio version):
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Connect with Drop The Needle: Boston Punk Anthology
By: Gemma Solomons, Jr. Editor
