Bob: I've been here, in San Francisco, playing in many, many bands since 82-83. I'm currently playing guitar in a psychedelic instrumental band called Melting Euphoria. I also play for a great local bluesman called Big Daddy From Cincinnati.

Bob: Well, the last few months I was in the Lewd I had already started another band with Nyna Crawford from the VKTMS called Murder. We did record some songs that probably will never be released, but they are pretty good. Now there is a girl that can sing. I went from that into the thrash/metal scene, which was sort of exploding in SF at the time. I played in a band called Die Sieger for a few years. We played shows with all the metal bands that were coming to town...Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Exodus… We even opened for Spinal Tap in San Francisco on their first tour. That was a blast.

Olga: I've been in a tropical rain forest, a remote island paradise, sparkling white sand, black sand, red sand, green sand, waterfalls, erupting volcanoes and blue, blue water. I've been hiding in the presence of the lord while obtaining my Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance, Drama & Theater Production at UH-Manoa - where there are rainbows.

Olga: I was recruited to play Magenta in The Rocky Horror Show at the Akebono Theatre, Hawaii's oldest theatre. I worked with the Hawaiian Island Theatre Co. in their production of Rocky Horror at the Southern Star Theatre in Na'alehu where I did choreography, vocal and physical warm ups for the cast, costumes, makeup and props. Now I'm about to be cast in a production of Cabaret to play in the Fall. I'm hoping for the role of Sally Bolles, but don't know if I'll get it.

Sats: I've actually been hiding in plain sight. Been here in San Francisco since the early 80s with the exception of a trip to Colma, the Bay Area's "City of Cemeteries" in 1991.

Blobbo: Various bands, Metal Church, Hall Aflame, Vanderhoof, my studio and the kitchen.

Bob: We have to credit someone that made this release possible. Our friend Gigi, who in 1984 or so, literally rescued ALL the tapes from the garbage. This is not a joke. It's the truth.

Bob: After the band ended, Sats had moved out of the Lewd house and into a place with some friends of ours. When he moved out of there, he accidentally left all the tapes behind. At some point Gigi and her roommate cleaned the garbage out of the back porch and saw our name on some of the boxes. She had lost touch with Sats, but hung out with me a lot, so I went over and got them. I kept them safe, and now I'm glad I did. The tapes themselves were in ok shape but many formats just aren't used anymore. I couldn't find one studio in SF that had a machine to play them. They mostly laughed at me. I sold some unopened Lewd records to pay for shipping, and sent them up to Kurdt. Kurdt engineered and transferred everything to DAT, and here we are.

Blobbo: The tapes were in various states of condition. For example, one of the tapes was so archaic in its format, we had to stack two reel to reel decks on top of each other to be able to get the proper tape speed and proper head type just to be able to hear the recording. Most of the real strange stuff will be on Volume 2 of the CDs.

Bob: We have what looks like 2 CDs worth of material. Every song the Lewd ever recorded. We are releasing the CDs separately, with the first coming out soon, perhaps June 98, and the second following in just a few months. I don't have the exact order for the second, but it will have some of the more humorous songs on it, with some radio spots, and 4 songs from the Mobile Home sessions. The second cd will also feature every song ever recorded by Olga's previous band Vs.

Here's the track listing for CD1: Kill Yourself - Trash Can Baby - Pay or Die - American Wino - Justice/Liberty - I'm Not Pretty - Climate of Fear - Magnetic Heart - Suburban Prodigy - Beyond Moderation - Polluted Brain - Fight - Mobile Home - Cold and Numb - Dressed in Black - Lewd Conduct - We Are Now - Going Downtown - Roman Polanski - Catastrophe - Abomination - Scum of the Earth - Secret Agent Man - Trash Can Baby - Gun Fun - Roman Polanski - Day of Decision - Climate of Fear - (Go To Hell In) Hollywood

Bob: Probably not, although I would like to. I think we would sound great and I know it would be fun. Likewise, don't expect any new songs on the CDs, there just doesn't seem to be much point to it. At my last show we did play one new song. It was an instrumental, with herky-jerky chord changes that we played while our sound man ran a cassette recording of a really filthy obscene phone call that Olga got on her answering machine. An 11 year old with an INTENSE imagination!

Olga: Don't know.

Sats: A reunion? Wow! That would be quite a sight. I guess it would not be impossible since no one has died. But it would be a major undertaking after all these years.

Blobbo: I doubt it, but I would like to see it happen.

Sats: The band originally hailed from Seattle in the late 70s. As for me this was my first serious band and Seattle was a great place to put something together. We had come down and played in San Francisco a couple of times and this city has always had a magnetism to it. It was good because there were places for bands with that raw edge to actually play. At about that time the Seattle lineup was undergoing some personnel problems and so it was a perfect time for the most dedicated of us to just pick up and relocate. So with Electra, our excellent sound engineer and our lighting tech, Crystal, in tow, we headed on down to SF. It was me and Blobbo, and a drummer we met in SF, then Bob joined as bass player. When Kurdt left to form the Metal Church, Bob switched to guitar and we learned that Olga's band Vs had broken up. We played one night with her and her drummer Alex, and after the rehearsal we went to hang out at the Mabuhay. As word got around the club that we had just played together, we realised it was perfect for all of us. When Alex went on to LA's Green on Red we found a great guy from Reno, Chris Reece to play drums. So this was the lineup that most people know as The Lewd, Olga, Bob, Chris and me.

Sats: Oh yes, to a certain degree. It was a mostly cool break-up as they go. Chris Reece went immediately into Social Distortion. I really liked seeing him playing with them, but I understand he has moved on.

Olga: I don't waste my time hating anyone.

Bob: Well, when I left there were some very bad moments, but they were just moments and with time we seem to have gone beyond them. I did work with my replacement, and finished up a few shows. My last show was at the On Broadway Theatre and it was excellent. The next show was the second Eastern Front, and I did not want that to be my swan song with them. You see, the Lewd never, ever played good during the day. Sean Greaves was a great guitarist who we met through Chris, and I traded my spot in the Lewd to him for a live rattlesnake!

Blobbo: I'm in touch with Bob, but that's about it. I did produce a project for Brad last year, called Wolf Pack. But I would like to stay more in touch with everyone.

Sats: Of course I'm still into punk/hard-core but it's from the other side of the fence. With so many years between being on stage and now I'm afraid I have become very critical of all the groups that have come and gone. I know I'm prejudiced, but I see so many things we did better.

Olga: Yes, I love most of everything I've seen. I watch Letterman because I don't have cable TV - he has the best bands. I send off for compilation videos and free music...you know the 10 cassettes for 11 cents. I scan RIP, Thrasher and Rolling Stone to figure out what's good and I have one friend that is totally hip and keeps me informed about new music. I also love Hawaiian music. I'm about to join a new band - they've been recruiting me heavy - but I don't know if I'm recruiting them or they're recruiting me. They're surfer girls, so that definitely makes them da-kine.

Bob: Only in theory. I don't ever listen to hard-core. I listen to old punk rock all the time. I think I'm the only one who saw the Pistols last year that liked them. I thought they sounded great, just like they should have sounded at Winterland. I just received a Society Dog CD that sounds so cool to me. I have forgotten what most of the bands sounded like unless they stood out in some way. Because there are a few bands that still remember us, like Turbonegro and the Loudmouths, I find myself interested in what they sound like. But other than the bands we may have influenced in some way?...

Blobbo: No.

Bob: I recognized early after I joined the band that we were not even TRYING to provide an answer to any social/political issues. In fact, I like to think we were completely irresponsible. We seemed to appeal to the most street level apolitical hard-core dope-addled punks that ever existed. I hope we still do.

Olga: We were raw and simple and we cut to the heart of the matter. We were serving up COLD cuts in a COLD world. We were severely hard core...achtung, hasta la vista baby. We were a prototype of today's sounds and 20 years ahead of ourselves.

Sats: As I look back, I was extreeeeeeemly cynical and that did reflect in the lyrics and subject matter. But there was also a satirical side and I firmly felt that every song should have some moral to it, if not a statement or commentary on some value. As for our image back then? We were always the sum of our parts which I know sometimes confused people. The "scene" was embedded with non-conformity but I always thought it was somewhat hypocritical when the hard-core punks marched all in lock-step and had a problem with those that did not fit the uniform. For us it was always the music.

Blobbo: We always had kind a slick approach to the band. Even though we were punk.

Blobbo: We were very concerned about our performance, being well rehearsed, having stage clothes, good gear, and being good musicians. These were not very "punk" things to do.

Olga: We were well rehearsed, we had backup guitars in case we broke a string and we were always in tune. Each song went directly into the next - the finishes and beginnings were all mapped out. We were a polished act.

Bob: One of the big differences between us and most of the other bands was that we worked the way rock bands are supposed to, and punk bands are NOT supposed to. We rehearsed 5 nights a week, played each song twice in a row, had our own p.a., a lighting tech with a lot of gear, and a good crew that supported us. We worked HARD and sounded good because of it. I still teach musicians the things I learned from Sats about how to rehearse. I totally learned how to rehearse from Sats.

Bob: I don't have a good memory for many of the local bands. Sure, the early ones like the Avengers, Crime, and Negative Trend are still tattooed on my brain, but the ones that came later were much less memorable. I do remember liking No Alternative, Legionaires Disease Band from Texas, the Misfits, and Olga turned us on to a NY band called the Fast that was pretty good. In spite of our hard-core sound we had a lot more in common with the Ramones and the Dead Boys than we ever did with Dead Kennedys or MDC.

Olga: I started the Offs with Billy Hawk and later got Bob Steeler and Bob Roberts. We hung out with the Avengers, The Nuns, UXA and Flipper. Then when I was in Vs. I hung out at the Mabuhay Gardens with Punk Globe, Naked Lady Wrestlers and Mike Fox. The Lewd hung out with Wasted Youth, Social Distortion, DOA, we loved the Ramones...we went to all of their shows, Misfits, 45 Grave, Germs, Spike and Snap and our fan club and its president, Laura Lourda. And then there was the Heavy Metal influence, i.e., Motorhead, Priest, Girl's School, Iron Maiden, Accept, Michael Schenker Group, Scorpions. The U.S. groups we liked were Husker Du, Megadeth, Metallica, W.O.W. & Iggy...Free Beer and Crucifix. They're ALL our favorites, and Metal Church rules of course.

Sats: Back then we were very lucky when it came to hanging out, we had a clubhouse. The Mabuhay Gardens! Bands played there 7 nights a week and hung out there when they weren't playing.

Blobbo: We hung with No Alternative, the Mentors. My favorites were Crime, The Avengers, Rubber City Rebels.

Bob: Ahhhh, the Mentors!!!! When I joined the Lewd, I inherited the 'tors as friends and they have remained friends of mine. I saw them just a few months before El Duce' died, and I think it's fucked that all these magazines that NEVER mentioned them when they were playing had stories about him dying. They were truly every 9 year old boys fantasy band. Sicky Wifebeaters' guitar style is genius.

Bob: On any given night you could go to a show, or party, or even a movie and see all the same folks who "were" the punk scene. They were musicians, photographers, artists, drug dealers, fans and losers. A very wide range of people, but at the beginning at least, we all went to the same shows. If you didn't know the person on your left, your friend to the right knew who they were.

Olga: It was fragmented. Because of the SF Art Institute there were the art bands. There were performance cults and then there was the Mark Pauline experience. There was new wavy gravy, punk rock and heavy metal. These were all talented, different people - nobody was doubling up.

Sats: Your observation is pretty accurate, and even more so in San Francisco. This city has always been a melting-pot for every form of expression known and a few that have yet to be identified.

Blobbo: The punk scene was really strong for a couple years but eventually went New Wave and I got into Heavy Metal.

Olga: It was a real fan club. We had shirts, stickers...fans got a package with their Lewd ID card with their name on it, discounts to upcoming shows...all sorts of cool stuff. But Sats would know more - he's the one who did it all.

Sats: Laura Lorda I'm sure will be known as one of the more unique personalities on the SF punk/music scene. Before we met I would always notice her at our shows since she stuck out from the usual crowd. She has a great Latin accent and more energy than all of us together. She had run fan clubs for some other more mainstream bands like Greg Kihn and Paul Collins' Beat. She offered to set up a fan club for us and we would have been nuts to turn her down. It was more for fun than anything else, she did a great job with tee-shirts, buttons, newsletters, and stickers, and it did serve a purpose for the kids out there in mid America. I'm not sure how many members we finally had.

Bob: I never viewed punk rock as a vehicle for change, I saw it as a musical movement, so the sound of the early punk bands 77-79 was always my favorite, and as times changed I found myself increasingly unhappy with the way the "scene" changed. The bands sounded increasingly alike, and I was not getting what I needed from the music. That includes what I was writing, it was not Lewd material that was coming to me any more. I had stopped listening to other punk bands sometime around 1981, and although I still really enjoyed playing our wild out of control shows, I knew there was not going to be a second Lewd LP from me.

Sats: I guess everyone had their own reason, and I know the reasons were varied and complicated. It is never a simple thing when a group of artists decide not to be united under the same banner any more. For me it took a piece of my heart, but I knew that from the ashes there would be new doors opening for all of us.

Olga: Girls...they're always a problem when mixed with male hormones, and too much cops.

Olga: No, not jealousy. When girls interfere with practice that really bugs me. No boyfriends or girlfriends should interfere with the band and practice...work shouldn't interfere either. We all had to schedule our work, our money making, around practice and when one member would stand the rest of us up to go make $100 that really sucked. They weren't taking rehearsal seriously.

Olga: Yes. They would close clubs down that they knew we were going to play at. The riot squad came in at one of our concerts in LA - they beat up some of the kids and threatened us in front of 1000 people - then unplugged us one by one - except the drummer Reece who just kept going, like that energizer bunny, cause they couldn't unplug him! In San Jose, where we were playing with Black Flag and a bunch of other southern and central California bands, again, the RIOT SQUAD surrounded the building, pulled the fuse to cut all power, stole all the money at the door then threw tear gas into the building. The punks panicked and started throwing chairs out of windows to let fresh air in. WE couldn't leave because we owned all of our equipment and it was too valuable to risk losing. Sometimes the Fire Department and/or the cops would close buildings before we even arrived! They'd use some bullshit safety code reason or other nonsense....we began to think they hated us.

Bob: As far as turning away from punk/hc I just got sick of unpleasant music. I don't mean loud and stupid, I still love that, but crappy guitarists thrashing around a screaming idiot trying to sound like Satan. I'm just not interested anymore. The same thing happened to the metalheads too. I think the band that got me back on track was a drunken, moronic cover band called Ten Inch Gods. We played "classic rock" songs, Bowie, Stones, Humble Pie, stuff like that. Playing with them reminded me of why I was a guitar player, music not stardom (which has eluded me anyway) but having fun with music, playing what I like whether I'm sitting on my bed, or at some club. It doesn't matter. Now I live for the "magic musical moment" and I don't give a shit about much else. I play with my 19 year old son as much as possible. We are both in a band called chicken Pussy Queen that is fairly close in spirit to punk rock although we don't care enough to try to get a show. I love playing with my son, he used to fall asleep on the stage at the Mabuhay Gardens when he was still wrapped in blankets.

Olga: I got tired of playing with Satanists, Neo-Nazis and lazy bums.

Sats: I needed to take a break. I wanted to stand back and observe the whole thing from afar. As for jumping into another band, that would have been quite a challenge for me. It would have been a lot easier for me if the Lewd was just a so-so band, but we were hot. It would have been an awesome undertaking to top the last one. Besides, I had been dabbling with other artistic expressions?i.e. film, theatre, directing and acting. I also wanted to relax in the shoes of the consumer for awhile, as opposed to being on the delivery end.

Sats: While the group was going most of my experience was in front of the camera, i.e. Lewd footage. I played a sex-crazed bell bottomed rapist in "Justice For Jennifer". Right after the break-up I put a lot of time into directing. We filmed a remake of "Sunset Boulevard" with Laura Lorda in the Norma Desmond part. It was hysterical, with her accent slaughtering all those lines. It was also one of the last films that featured the Sluts a Go-Go. It was never totally finished but we did enough that it could be released.

Sats: I don't know…?

Olga: Don't know. The LP, 2000? 4000? I'm not sure. The Vs 7" only 2000....I have a couple hundred of those. Also, there was a SF Underground EP featuring The Lewd, the Fuck-Ups, UnDead and Society's Dog...LOTS of those were pressed. There were 2 Eastern Front LPs featuring a complete international cast of bands.

Olga: Yes, they can buy it from me, plus I have half a dozen unopened Lewd Albums for $100 each. The Vs 7" = $25.00. Send requests and post office money orders to : Olga de Volga, Box 241, Volcano, HI 96785.

Olga: No, not really, but there are some songs that Mike Fox's Sauna Studios recorded, which will come out on the CD they're making in Seattle.

Olga: Well, it's personal...due to my magnetic personality.

Bob: YES it exists and we are hoping to someday see it again!!!!

Olga: It's not a video, it's a movie...a 16mm movie produced by Karl Heinz and Sideshow Productions, who also produced several other movies that featured the Lewd, including "Justice for Jennifer", "Congo Confidential" and "Go to Hell in Hollywood". Target Video made uncountable numbers of videos from our live shows and never paid us a dime. This company, owned by Big Daddy Joe, did this to all the SF bands and made enough money to buy a ranch in northern California, a Rolls-Royce, a big cigar and snakeskin cowboy boots - probably silver tipped with spurs! He sent us all a video of himself with this cowboy-booted foot propped up on the Rolls, smoking a cigar, thanking all the punks in SF for making him so rich.

Sats: Yes it does. Somewhere... We just recently got word on the whereabouts of the film maker (he has been missing for years) and so we hope to get our hands on it and somehow get it released in video format. As I remember, it's very raw and was done on film. Even today it would be disturbing to most. I remember the shoot, but not the content. The opening credits were our roadie, Deeogee, carving the title, Loud-N-Lewd into his chest with a razor blade. It got pretty bloody by the last word! Watch for it on MTV!

Olga: Yes.

Sats: Dee-o-gee was our ever faithful roadie and the best friend the band ever had. I can't speak high enough of this person but, unfortunately, he died much too young a few years back. It's truly too sad to even think about…

Bob: These cds are absolutely dedicated to Dee, we love and miss him very much.

Olga: I don't know...it has a plot...but I forgot!

Sats: I don't really remember. I believe it was live footage from the Mabuhay. We worked a lot with this filmmaker, Karl Heinz. We did several projects with him.

Olga: Justice for Jennifer - Listen to the Metallica album "And Justice for All". Congo Confidential - Don't let your pet gorillas kill your landlord. Go to Hell in Hollywood – Ask Sats, he was the main star.

Sats: Bob did the soundtrack/background music for "Justice For Jennifer". As far as "Congo Confidential", all that comes to my polluted brain is a memory of a choreographed dance number where we got a bunch of punks and bums to get in total blackface body make-up with bones in their hair. They danced this production number while Laura Lorda was the Queen of the Jungle. It was so funny we had a hard time finishing the shoot. "Go to Hell in Hollywood" is like a MTV type short film of LA set to one of our songs.

Olga: He has so many tapes of our complete shows - then he splices and dices them to sell to European video bars - who knows? We've never seen 'em. I just don't know...we never got to see ourselves.

Bob: As far as I know, we are only on one released Target video, the song "Fight" is included in the one that I found. However, in the stack of tapes I have, is some very weird format video tape that I have no idea how to view. It is an old Sony format that is unused these days. It has to be early footage of the Seattle lineup but there is only one way to be sure. Perhaps if we find Karl Heinz and get the films transferred to video we can find a way to include this one too.

Bob: Wow, Doug Moody? As I recall he was a very friendly old studio owner who came down the hall a few times to hear us and tell us rock n roll stories. He told us about Led Zeppelin recording some of "Whole Lotta Love" at Mystic Sound because they had a killer old style echo chamber built under the studio. We talked about the Bobby Fuller Four, and many of the other music gods that he had worked with. If we are the only band that doesn't hate him, good. We never cared what the other bands did.

Sats: I think at the time we weren't sure if there would be a second LP, so we used what we had.

Olga: Because we wanted our fans to be able to hear us playing live with no overdubs. We had the opportunity to record at Mystic Sound - a gift from God and Clem Fisher - we wouldn't be ANYWHERE without Clem. He is directly responsible for producing us and deserves all the credit....at least much more than anyone has given him.

Bob Sats and Olga are close, but the reason was really financial. We met Clem Fisher through LAs Wasted Youth, and he didn't have enough cash to do a full LP. He wanted us to come down to LA, record side one, then do the rest after he had sold some WY LPs. We suggested using the Target tapes because it was already done, and he agreed.

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