It’s White Flag’s World, We Just Live In It: An Interview With Pat Fear

Popshifter: So how did you hear punk being so far away from L.A.?

Pat Fear: It’s a very odd story. Are you familiar with Dr. Demento?

Popshifter: Yeah!

Pat Fear: I didn’t know it at the time, but Dr. Demento was syndicated and his shows were broadcast all over the world, apparently. But where we lived, he was live and you could call in and talk to him on the air and ask questions. It was like a religious thing on Sunday nights; you would turn on KMET, which is kind of a progressive rock/heavy metal station out of Los Angeles, and on Sundays most FM stations had really unique programming.

It started with Dr. Demento for four hours and then the Flo & Eddie Show for an hour, which was insanity; then the National Lampoon Radio Hour, which was unbelievable; and then they had a talk show with the manager of KMET that was barely about music, but which was really interesting because all these people would ask these rock questions but he didn’t know anything about that kinda stuff.

It was a really unique experience because from like, 6 p.m. to midnight, I was glued to my radio. Dr. Demento played a crazy, crazy song. I had been corresponding with him: if you’d write him a letter at KMET and he’d get it, he’d read it on the air and answer questions. It was a really interesting and interactive thing. I had no idea people around the country were hearing him! Because we thought he was a local DJ!

He played a song called “Martian March” by the Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band. There was no record store where I lived, and there still isn’t as a matter of fact, but the big town of Riverside, which is 15 miles away. . . there was no way to get there when you were a kid—there was no such thing as a bus or subway—so it would be when your parents would go into town. It wasn’t that often because as a military family, all your shopping was done on the air force base or mom and pop fruit stands.

There was one Wherehouse Records in town and I wanted to see if I could find the Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band. So I started thumbing through the “R” section in the record store and I pulled out this black and white LP with four people who looked like the smoking section at my high school. They were called The Ramones. I took this record out and turned it over and looked at the song titles and was like, “What?” And then I looked at how long the songs were and was like, “Okay, this has to come home with me.” (laughs)

I had no idea what this was and apparently it had just come out; they had one copy in the “R” section. And the guy at the counter looked at me kinda funny and asked, “Do you know what this is?” And I said, “No, but I’m really curious.” He said, “I am, too, but we’ve only got one copy so I couldn’t open it.”

So I took it home and I put it on and “Blitzkrieg Bop” came on and I thought, “Okay, this makes absolutely NO sense.” And then the song’s over, and the next song sounded exactly like the song before it, and now it’s already over. And that was it! I thought, “I need to explore this.” It was like something completely alien.

But I had been exposed to weird music in 1968 when I was a little kid when my sister brought me the first Os Mutantes album as a present for me when she was an exchange student in Rio de Janeiro.

Click to read more from Pat Fear on. . .

Dr. Demento & The Ramones
Causing trouble
The Malcolm McLaren Handbook
Battle of the Bands
White Flag Goes to Greenland
Those missing 22 copies. . .
Os Mutantes
The Shaggs
Motel Spaghetti
Gasatanka

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