Greg Coates is the cofounder of Dumb Love, a high energy rock band that will be performing an acoustic set at BuskerFest, which runs from 5-10 PM tomorrow, and takes place at 1st and Linden in Downtown Long Beach.
Even though he’s an import from the midwest, Greg has deep roots in Long Beach. In Part 1 of this series, he spoke about his childhood and his introduction to the music scene in Long Beach. In Part 2, he spoke about his tenure with Bird3, playing the Warped Tour, and seeing all his rock star aspirations collapse around him.
Faced with a mounting stack of soul-crushing disappointments, he was seriously considering abandoning the pursuit of a career in music when he got a call inviting him to audition with Queens of the Stone Age drummer Nick Lucero, who was creating a new project. The rumor was that he’d auditioned and rejected more than a hundred bass players. Greg, a fan of Lucero’s, was up for the challenge.
At the audition, Greg passed the visual inspection, and tolerated the “yammering of an ex-cokehead’s concept of the band. I was there to play with Lucero, arguably the most creative rock drummer since that 2000 release that really put him on the drumming map.
“This was a moment that I should’ve paid more attention to, with regard to the guitarist Peter Perdichizzi’s body language and demeanor. He was over it. Right then and there would be the spark for my next seven years of huge deals and utterly massive disappointments, financial ruin and relationship carnage. ‘Trust your feelings, Luke,’ are words we should all strictly adhere to.
“The four of us got in the room and Nicky threw down a groove that would’ve made Hunt Sales green with envy. I started playing a loose chord melody, and Pete’s eyes light up because I’m writing a song on the spot. Then, I turned on the heavy distorto riff machine and the singer is improvising a pretty good hook over the top of our turbo Stooges melee. Pete’s crapping himself and Nicky runs up to me and gives me a hug, telling me, ‘We gotta do this!’ I finish first, ahead of 160 bassists who didn’t measure up.
“We were prolific, and I found a place to record, write, arrange and make the music I was meant to. Within six months of three to five gigs a week, anywhere and everywhere, we had very strong interest from Warner Brothers. Off we went to the desert to make our post stoner-Rock, radio-friendly Stooges, MC5 flavored soul rock.
“We got one of my personal heroes, Chris Goss (Masters of Reality, QOTSA producer, etc) to produce. He was a huge influence on me from my drug-addled days in Kalamazoo. Much like I never expected to meet and work with Gene Simmons and KISS, I never would’ve predicted that I would be working with this genius who played with Ginger Baker and made the first two QOTSA records, all of which is mind boggling in it’s magnitude and art.”
Unfortunately, once in the studio, it didn’t take long for problems to arise. Greg rather diplomatically avoids pointing fingers at specific band members. “The singer. It’s always the singer.”
“When you get in the studio with someone like Goss, you do what he says, or at least try it! We played it safe and, after a typical freakout from the obvious source, we didn’t finish the record. This left a bad taste in several people’s mouths, including mine. It should’ve been astounding, but it got dumbed down by someone [the singer – srw] who was afraid to exceed their idols. The thing is, he easily could have.
“We recorded all of our best stuff in Simi Valley, in a great studio during a time when Pete, Nicky and myself were playing with Roxy Saint and the Motherf***ers, a darling of Goss’ and an explosive performer in Hollywood. Pete wrote all of her songs and we played a lot of great shows with her. Interest was piqued.”
The band name they were using was ‘LowFive,’ something they discovered later they couldn’t trademark. They finished the record and almost immediately landed a deal.
“It was with a British company, Music for Nations, who are wildly successful at licensing deals with the likes of TOOL, 311, Metallica, Opeth, and Cradle of Filth. Pete left the band to concentrate on Roxy’s band, which Nicky and I were no longer members of. I was bummed to see Pete go,but we had a fat deal,real management,and a great record.
“So we start the look for a new guitarist, to whom Pete had to give up half of his advance to pay for essentially doing his job. Pete was cool like that, he got it and didn’t want to leave Nicky and myself high and dry. Most peeps wouldn’t be so cool, but I think he was just grateful to not have to deal with the bullshit any longer. I was a bit envious of him.
“The best way to find a good band member is to steal one from an existing band, especially if they’re trying to do something similar to your band. Get rid of the competition and strenghthen your group, I thought. I was proud of my ruthlessness,in this case. We auditioned a bunch of guitarists, some of which are fairly well known in some circles, a couple, one in particular who I really hit it off with, but he hated our singer, a common problem in our future.
“I found the guy. It was my job to get with the prospects and coach them on the guitar parts that Peter and I had written, so I spent a lot of time with Brian Murphy, who had his shit together. He was more Jimmy Page in his wreckless style than an exacting, technically masterful Beck-like utterly soulful perfection. Like Page, he has the gift of divine hooks and great, timeless songwriting. The most valuable kind of guitarist is a great songwriter.”
With the line-up complete, they went to London to launch the band’s debut.
“We played with Metallica, Linkin Park, Peaches, and The Stooges with Mike Watt. Mike’s a good friend after doing his repairs for the better part of 10 plus years. We’d play gigs together in Pedro too, where he’d marvel at my upright playing, saying, ‘I just don’t get it: How you do that.’ Mike had a respect for the instrument and, apparently, my playing. It was a compliment that I welcomed and greatly respected.
“We had a good show, and the press were kinder to us than I expected. Kerrang gave us four out of five K’s on our record and compared us to ‘KYUSS meets The Cars. They’re too cool for us to hate and they have their finger on the pulse of the Zeitgeist.’ It was a pretty amazing review from a legendary metal magazine for a very non-metal band. But it was lost on us.
“BMG and Sony were merging, and BMG didn’t want to work rock music. They wanted to focus on vacuous pop shit like Britney Spears and her ilk. We were being treated like royalty, like real rock stars. It was an amazing time, but it was short lived when our entire label got the axe for being massively successful for 20 plus years. It was heartbreaking and we witnessed those poor peoples’ lives destroyed by the shit pop machine and their lack of recognizing real music instead of skidmarks across the culture of music. We packed up with our masters and headed back to LA.
“We arrived home to a mangement company who tols us to write a new album. We parted ways for their short-sightedness, but Brian was secretly happy to put that record behind him, because he had an angle. After turning down staff writing positions with both Virgin records and Geffen records, I knew he meant business, so a new record, an ep was in the works. Nicky Lucero became restless and didn’t like the non-jam, non-improv based songwriting that this wave of LowFive was developing. It wasn’t organic enough I suppose, and I understand that. He also missed Peter, who was his guitarist in The Flys when they had ‘that hit.’ He was over it, too.
“We had to get a drummer, and we tried Chuck Biscuits, who was awesome, but scared the living crap out of our singer, which was really too bad. Scott Devours jammed with us a couple times, and wrote the drum part for one of the songs that would end up on our Universal release, but he was in IMA Robot at the time and not available. We wanted him.
“I suggested Miley, who was screwing around at the time with some singer/songwriter and gigging around, but he learned that he needed a bone thrown to him, like publishing, to join, which of course pissed off some peeps, though I was secretly proud of him for knowing his worth. Apparently, my cynicism and business attitude rubbed off on him maybe a wee bit… We found the guy, Ray, and started working with him to get our show on the road however we could.
Ray had a van and trailer, so we just needed to generate the cashflow to keep it moving. It was 2005, early in the spring, and we started a west coast tour that got us stuck for a while in Seattle and Portland at times. We got on Myspace – at it’s peak – and booked a tour to promote our ep and the full length record we recorded in LA the winter before, after we signed a deal with Universal records. We were bound and determined to ‘get in the van’ Rollins’ style and bring our QOTSA meets the Strokes playing ’50’s and ’60’s style soul pop on steroids to the masses.
“We actually did pretty well, having had to change our name to The Bangkok Five after a restaurant in Palm Springs area provided the “Crime gang” kind of image we were grappling with at the time. We added a second guitarist – a huge mistake – and I’m still not sure how it stuck, but bullshit was starting to stink the situation up pretty bad, like it was a solo act in the works.
“I was being offered other situations as well, but I was invested and had a major label release due early the next year. We blew up the death trap of a Ford van and got back to LA, where we realized we needed to head east because Ray, the drummer, owned a house in West Virginia where we could post up and do short runs from. I buy a tour bus because I’m the guy with the good credit, the good job and the sense of responsibility.”
Here, Greg shares what can only be described as a public service announcement.
“Don’t ever buy a vehicle to tour with. Rent one unless you have other people who can help with the financing and maintenance thereof. I did it,and I’m still paying for it, while everybody else got to have their party on my dime. Please learn from my mistake.”
Greg, never one to rest on his laurels, was also involved in another project.
“I was heavily invested in possibly the most powerful and well balanced rock machine I’ve been associated with, being the most undoubtedly ferocious line up of Johnny Jones‘ Suffering Halos. He finally got me. Johnny, Brian Mcintyre (of OC’s Wonderlove), Billy Blaze and myself were like Black Sabbath, Aerosmith before they totally started sucking huge ass, Humble Pie, KYUSS, with a bit of Cream and Zeppelin thrown in for good measure. Every show we played was ridiculous. Every show was packed and we raped people’s brains.
“We made one of the two last records at Karma Studios, and received beyond stellar reviews abroad, including a Toronto newspaper calling us “The Saviors of Rock,” but we couldnt get arrested in the states.
“Mike Watt did the last record at Karma and heard some of our tracks, to which he said, ‘who’s playing bass,’ as he looked on in bewilderment. We tracked those rhythm tracks totally live for 14 hours, with no editing and it was only the third time I had played with Billy.
I had to leave with The Bangkok Five because we had to tour, and we had a contract. If I knew then what I know now, we could’ve been wiping the stage with Wolfmother’s soiled underwear two years before anyone knew who they were. I’m truly sorry, Johnny. I should’ve stayed.
“I even dabbled with what was to become a successsful band for Miley, and eventually Jay Buchanan. It used to be called Black Summer Crush when Tom, of Oleander fame, was the singer. After getting Mike Miley involved with that band, I recorded an album of material with them, with Rich Mouser producing. The seeds of Rival Sons were sewn.
We left for the east coast, playing shows that the singer and drummer would try to book while I would drive 12, 14, 18, sometimes 20 or more hours at a time. We had a system in place and we were guerilla warriors using the internet to infiltrate the rock clubs, house parties, even a couple of Christian rock venues, because we were on a mission to build a fan base and bring the rock to the people. We stayed out there, hitting everywhere possible to build it, using up my paid vacation from WOS, all my American Express cards, and all the money we could make. Whatever it took! In that sense,the band was a success.
“The L.A. Times wrote a nice article on us citing our D.I.Y. ethos and, with the progress we achieved with our own expenses and dedication, we may have started a trend using Myspace as a booking agent. In reality, it was a much better one than what we would end up with. We spent the late fall and the winter getting our record ready to release in the first quarter.
“Then the cover happened. Our EP went over well, with it’s scantily clad – or mostly naked – large breasted Asian girl on the cover. This rattled the bible thumpers something fierce. Not just titties, but Asian titties!
“Our Universal record cover was an amalgamation of photo shopped and ‘treated’ images that no one saw before it was turned in to the label. Big mistake. There was ‘questionable’ imagery, not limited to but including a fellatio scene and tongue wrestling images with a ‘squirt gun’ shooting what appeared to be semen onto said tongues. Needless to say, UMG was not about to make too many of them, though we sold all but a small quantity I have left in my garage for posterity’s sake.
“We were picked up by Linkin Park’s manager, Rob Mc Dermott, and he offered us a way to basically wipe the bad taste of the album cover out of Universal’s mouth, but the person who ‘created’ this abortion of ‘artwork’ refused to budge, due to ‘artistic integrity.’ Basically, it was clip art that wasn’t remotely shocking, but it WAS a finger in the eye of the people who could’ve made our career.
“One person’s agenda killed that band even after touring with Buckcherry during their peak of the “Crazy Bitch” single, touring with The Cult all through Canada and the U.S., and touring with Papa Roach during a hugely successful U.K. and European tour. Still, the stink of that album cover stopped UMG’s efforts cold.”
With a new manager, and despite relentless touring, UMG eventually cut them loose because they weren’t willing to produce the CD with the cover art as it was. Still, some beasts refuse to die.
“Indie 103.1 championed the band and we had huge fans who tried to help us, but to no avail. People just weren’t buying it, even though things like, ‘the best band since Guns-N-Roses to come out of L.A….’ were being said. The truth is that QOTSA, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Bronx were the real deal and we were only running on four of our eight cylinders. Defeat once again.
“I really missed out on some great gigs that I would’ve taken had I known what kind of utter stupidity would be the band’s final undoing. They fired Brian, our main songwriter besides myself, and the singer, effectively cutting off the band’s nose to spite it’s face. I should’ve got up and never turned back, but Brian and I had decided to give the band one more shot at credibility. We decide to get into an all analog studio and make a ‘real’ record, live on 2” tape, and capture a touring machine for real!
“I had previously taken Long Beach band Thinking Aloud into Brian’s studio in LA and recorded 11 songs with minimal preproduction, totally live and amazing! It was one of my proudest moments of production, and a blast to capture a real band at their ferocious best, not a “fashion rock” band like The Bangkok Five had been shamefully labeled as. Thinking Aloud recorded completely live, with no overdubs, pitch correction, sound replacement, or beat detective. Those were the things that made all but the tB5 ep unlistenable to me.
So, we made the mistake of thinking our band could do a ‘live’ record like Thinking Aloud, but it was apparent that we didn’t have the stones to do it. I did, Brian did, our producer did, our manager did, but 60% of the band weren’t the musicians capable of doing so.
“Brian would be fired a few months after we cobbled together that ‘record,’ so I only stuck around to make sure they didn’t completely screw him over. I hung out through one ok tour but the bar of musicianship was so abysmal that I was just going through the motions.
“We were blacklisted by Indie 103.1 and our booking agent, though they sucked horribly, let us go after we shamed them on YouTube, for very good reason. I started doing most of the writing, but the less than mediocre guitarists just couldn’t grasp anything that wasn’t barre chord straight 4/4 vanilla crap, and I couldn’t possibly dumb it down any further.
“My financial world was crushed under the boot heels of non-contribution and irresponsible business partners wallowing in delusion, still to this day, even. So I quit, and watched the mass carnage disappear into the distance in 2009.
“Though the band made me broke and homeless, I still had more going on than what I left behind. I went to Germany, Berlin in particular, and loved it there with my Clash meets Cash folk punk group I’d been playing with. I had also been playing, recording and performing with Thinking Aloud after they had their guitarist break away.
“Everything I had known musically was dissolving, until Brian came back from Hawaii to finish a project that he and I had been working on after he was ejected unjustly from our previous gang of nitwits. That had it’s ups and downs, but out of it came what would turn into Dumb Love, and life has been better since then. So has the music.”
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To keep track of Dumb Love, friend them on facebook.
For more details about BuskerFest, visit SummerAndMusic.com.